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Hello, and welcome back to Europa Universalis IV. Last week we talked about features, where most of them will be in the free update, but todays feature will all be part of the next expansion.

First of all, I’d like to mention that we are adding a new government form called English Monarchy, which England will start with. It will give +0.5 Legitimacy, -1 Unrest, -0.1 Monthly Autonomy and give them access to a Parliament.

So what is a Parliament? It is a new mechanic that Constitutional Monarchies & Constitutional Republics has as well. A Parliament is a political body inside your country, which will have debates that if they pass will give you benefits for a decade.

There is quite a lot of different possible debates, and you are allowed to pick one of five random eligible ones.

To have a debate pass, you need to have a majority of the seats backing the issue. Of course, when an debate is started, all seats are against it, and you need to convince them to back it.

Every Seat of Parliament will have their own reasons you must fullfill to have them back an issue, and their reasons will be different for each issue. A coastal Seat of Parliament may want to be Granted Navy commissions, which reduces your naval tradition, while another Seat may want monetary compensation, while another want some military support, or a fourth want some more autonomy. Luckily, you only have to get half of them to support you to get the debate passed.

Any non-overseas province can be granted a Seat in Parliament and your capital will always have a Seat. There is no way to remove a seat in Parliament, unless the province is lost.

A Seat gets +10% to tax, production & manpower, while reducing autonomy by 0.01 per month. However each Seat increases stability & war-exhaustion costs by 2%.

You are also required to grant at least of 20% of your non-overseas cores a Seat in Parliament, and if you have less than that, one random will be picked for you. There is alert if less than a third of your non-overseas cores have a Seat.

If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition. And if a debate fails, you will lose 20 prestige, so it is not the end of the world, but its not something you want to happen all the time.

Here are three examples of current issues that can be pushed through your parliament.

Backing the War Effort is available if you are at war, and will give you +1 stability when passed, and a 10 year benefit of -0.05 War Exhaustion, and +10% Manpower recovery

Charter Colonies
is available if you have either filled the Expansion or Exloration ideagroup, and gives a +10 year benefit of +1 colonist and +20 colonial growth.

Increase Taxes
will give you about 1/4th of a years income, and increase your tax-income by 10% for 10 years.

Of course, all of these values will change the more we playtest it.

Only countries with Parliaments will get a button, opening the Parliament View, near the Papacy & HRE buttons. And yes, the button you talked about last week, in the province interface, is the one indicating if its a seat of parliament or not.

U4wjCj1.jpg


Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.
 
Hmmm. While this looks fantastic, I'm a bit less-than-sold on the whole 'giving support to make them agree in parliament' thing. Given that the only interactions in EUIV consist of either moving armies places or clicking buttons (click, stability raised, click autonomy increased...) I have a feeling that this is going to be a matter of 'choose debate', 'click the necessary four or five times', 'do nothing for ten years'.

So it is, admittedly, a step forward, but I don't think there are enough ways to interact with the game to make this a very meaningful mechanic. With the removal of sliders we can't even get a "Okay, I'll vote for you if you make us a little more narrow-minded..." or be forced to invest more in stability or whatever (over time) to get what we want. It's just a series of one-click actions, then boom you get your reward.

So I think the problem is twofold:
  • Too few ways to interact with the game: literally the only real interactions with the game world we have are moving armies, building buildings, and clicking in the country-control UI to immediately affect things, and;
  • Too little in the way of development, which follows on from the above point. I imagine that this parliament system will have various 'seats' demanding that the central government, say, become more tolerant (because that seat is in a Catholic province within a Protestant country, for example), but in current-game terms all this means is that they A) take the relevant decision/policy or B) take humanist ideas. I'd like to see these processes fleshed out more into at least a series of decisions with various requirements that give you actual objectives to fulfil in order to enact a policy. Or similar.
I also hope that this system is sufficiently built into the various other systems for it to feel like a cohesive part of the game (kind of like autonomy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant Reformation do) rather than a tacked-on addition (which is sort of how Trade Companies feel, in my opinion). Off the top of my head, two vitally important mechanics I think need to be included to even approach the proper representation of parliaments are:
  • The parliament should be able to do stuff to affect the country other than just reduce prestige or give them a nasty tax income modifier. Parliament should be able to make demands, and if the king doesn't accede to them, I want to see civil wars breaking out, and;
  • The representation of colonial/non-majority culture/non-majority religion populations should definitely be an important factor in a parliament mechanic.
This is the very barest beginnings of what I mean by 'sufficiently built into the other systems' - parliaments should be inextricably linked to the autonomy and rebel systems, and they should also be linked to (at least) the colonial nations and liberty desire systems (do members of a personal union get representation? Vassals?)

I think Paradox is up to the challenge, if they put their minds to it... I just hope that they put in all the time and effort it deserves!

(And furthermore, this system, just like everything else you guys add, needs to be moddable. Please. Please!).
 
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Shouldn't a Parliament be able to approve a declaration of war during a Regency?

Click 'Declare War' button, select CB and everything.
The 'I do' button is now 'Table the issue', which puts you in the Parliament UI where you need to convince the provinces with a seat to approve the war.
 
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Is the policy mechanic going to be tied into this? It would be strange to have countries with parliamentary governments enacting policies without consulting parliament now that the mechanic exists.
 
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More peacetime mechanics and (from the looks to it) a buff to England?

85473-south-park-NICE-meme-fi0v.png
 
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OK, this DLC/Update seems pretty solid for now, just please don't charge 15/20 euros for it...

All our future expansions will be in 15-20 range.
 
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No small expansions? :(

I've liked Res Publica and Legacy of Rome the most of all CK2&EU4 expansions.

They just don't sell as well, and also tends to become more costly with all QA and overhead needed.
 
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Adding new peacetime mechanics and depth is really, really great news, but this bit worries me slightly:

"If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition."

Considering how the goal of the monarch should be to not have to rely on parliament for support and to rule of his own accord, it seems counter-intuitive to punish the player for being able to act in that way, at least with legitimacy which is something very valuable and hard to replace. Then again, if this is only something that comes up every ten years then that's a very reasonable timeframe in which to operate. But if this kind of system is ever to be extended to the rest of European monarchies, one should remember that Louis XIV didn't lose legitimacy for not calling upon the estates-general.

Basically, I think that instead of punishing the player for not using parliament with legitimacy decreases, it should just be harder to get support from them the longer it's been since the last time you asked. Use parliament often and accept their demands frequently and those demands will stay small, but go a long period without making any concessions or consulting them and when they finally get the chance they'll push you for every last concession they can get.

I say this because it seems like what this game mechanic is representing is extraordinary demands by the monarch from parliament, which was not something that parliamentarians wanted to deal with. The English ideal was always for the king to live off of his own incomes and not have to come to them asking for more. Not asking for extraordinary taxes (i.e. not using this mechanic) would increase legitimacy, if anything.

However it goes, I'm very happy to see Paradox focusing on depth, and I'll buy this expansion for sure, whatever it is.
 
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Funny how this works. We had New World expansion, then Republic expansion, then War expansion... Now we get New World expansion and Republic expansion again.

We had Colonisation, trade, government, war, exploration and the next one is X. :)
 
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I have a few, thoughts about new parliament system.


First of all I think it is a move in good direction, but how it was presented in the OP brings to my mind visible flaws rather than joy of seeing good changes being made.


1. I agree with users expressing that desire for parliament system to be linked with more than just debates. It would make it more interesting and less shallow. I mean if there is parliament in a country which is not just a monarch's puppet show, it would have a saying in most issues, choosing polices, ideas, going to war, making alliances and all that stuff that is prerogative of a monarch in centralized absolute monarchy.


2. I can’t see why granting a seat in parliament for representatives of a province would make them harder to convince for the war effort or to stabilize the country, if anything it should be easier then, as people would think they have a voice that would be heard. Instead the cost of upkeeping new administration branch could be portrayed by giving, say -10% tax, production and manpower malus to any province which has a seat in parliament and something like -1RR in those provinces or some other more balanced bonus. I just feel that what Johan presented should be the other way around as it appear more logical to me as you build administration wit money, and giving representatives to a province should result in less monarch/cabinet effort in stabilization of said province (I am talking about spending MP to raise STAB).


3. I can’t see the reason why we couldn’t tie provinces support to factions that could resemble those from merchant republics. It is only natural that delegates would form parties, or groups with certain views and desires. Now player’s task would be to maneuver between those groups, and give them concessions as a whole, not to each one province ( as in big parliaments it will become a clickfest). Provinces allegiance to one party could be decided by religion, culture, wealth, manpower, or some random events. So that high trade power / production province would support party representing merchants, high basetax would be more keen on party that emphasizes stability, provinces with true faith and accepted culture would support monarchy while those which don’t fit in your empire would support party that would grant them more autonomy. It could really work with new province development system.

Then parties could also form coalitions but that would be pretty complex so I think having 2 or 3 of them should be sufficient to portray different desires in your nation. As I mentioned parties could be made to be like factions in ming/merchant republic, granting specific bonuses but also limiting your actions, so for example you can’t declare war on non-rivals if trade faction is in power. But then again it could be made more alive with random events allowing or banning you from certain actions for a set amount of time.


4. Finally I hope English Monarchy will get event chain to transform it into absolute monarchy ( to portray Tudor dynasty reforms) and then if player chooses to transform it could be one of the triggers for Cromwell civil war later on.


5. Also it would be good if CN could get representation. Without it tariffs would be grater but liberty desire also. Numbers should be significant. With representation both would go down a bit. This all could be developed in more complex and alive-like system of interacting with your colonies via events and decisions.
 
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  • The parliament should be able to do stuff to affect the country other than just reduce prestige or give them a nasty tax income modifier. Parliament should be able to make demands, and if the king doesn't accede to them, I want to see civil wars breaking out, and;
  • The representation of colonial/non-majority culture/non-majority religion populations should definitely be an important factor in a parliament mechanic.
I agree with your whole post but this bit in particular is the most important part I feel and to add on to it I would hope that not giving out seats to provinces has repercussions also, especially in land connected to your capital.

As you said, if this turns in to a simple click some boxes for a modifier system it will be incredibly lacklustre.
 
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Will American government types get Parliament too? I'm talking about American Republic and Federal Republic specifically.

The government USA will have when they exist, will have a Parliament.
 
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It's a good step forward. But it wasn't that difficult. I mean, you have already the perfect Parliamentary system. Just take the EU: Rome's one and adapt it to EU IV. EU Rome's Senate was an awesome feature that gave you a LOT of peace time gamplay. This system looks too symplistic to me. You just choose a feature in exchange for a penalty to gain support. But apparently you don't actually interact with the parliament and its factions, leader factions and members as you did in EU Rome's Senate. There should be factions like liberals and conservatives or something like that (instead of the 4 factions that there were in Rome) to make it realistic. And as many have pointed out, it should be tied to things like policies, DIPLOMACY (important in my view), EVENTS (chain of events, that is basic), maybe ideas, national decisions, religious, etc.

With only fulfilling that, you could make a hole expansion out of this parliamentary thing.
 
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Using the mouse to click on buttons is the primary method of input for PDS games, so I think that means of criticism is a bit ridiculous, particularly when people mention VicII as a shining beacon of peacetime mechanics, when those mechanics included, for example, pushing voters towards particular opinions by clicking on one of three or four options.

Nah, we really need a voice input/singstar DLC. The better you sing Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries the more shock pips your cavalry gets, for example. A RTS for the whole family, that's what we need.
 
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What will be the difference beetween English Monarchy and Constitutional Monarchies? Looks like it will make other monarchy types poor in comparison unless you plan to revamp other government types.

We want to add flavor to lots of government types.. all over time :)
 
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This has got to be patch 2.0, rather than 1.12.

Wiz wants to call it that, due to the large amount of huge changes.. And we're updating the engine as well.

I just like having larger numbers.
 
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