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EU4 - Development Diary - 31st of March 2020

Hello everyone! Today’s Development Diary will be focusing on features part of the Emperor expansion. These features aim to enrich the gameplay surrounding the Holy Roman Empire, both for Emperor and Princes part of the Empire.

You might have noticed that there’s been some quite heavy changes to a very old interface in our Developer Clash.

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So now let’s go through these changes today. First up is the new reforms. We wanted to accomodate more playstyles than simply always uniting the Empire under the Emperor. So the Reforms have been divided up to three types, Common, Decentralized and Centralized. In order to access either the Decentralized or Centralized path you need to first get some of the Common reforms. Specifically you need to establish a permanent diet for the Empire.

The common reforms are

Call for Reichsreform
  • -5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
  • Enables Imperial Ban
Institute Reichsregiment
  • Emperor gets +1 Diplomat, +1 Diplomatic Reputation
  • Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest
Absolute Reichsstabilität
  • Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance
Enact Gemeiner Pfennig
  • The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.
Perpetual Diet
  • +50% Imperial Authority Gain
  • Establishes the Perpetual Diet in a Free City.
Create the Landsknechtwesen
  • Mercenaries with home in HRE are cheaper for HRE Members by 25%.
Ewiger Landfriede
  • Emperor gets 0.5 Monthly Prestige
  • All members gets -5% Tech cost
  • Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
  • Disables internal HRE Wars
After you’ve taken the 5th reform, Perpetual Diet, you can go into one of the specialized paths. However these are mutually exclusive and you can’t go into both.

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Following is the Decentralized Reforms

Establish the Reichstag Collegia
  • +3 Free Cities
Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig
  • Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
  • Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
  • Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
Embrace Rechenschaft Measures
  • +1% Imperial Authority per Prince.
  • +1 Max Electors
Geteilte Macht
  • Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
Reichskrieg
  • Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
  • Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.


Following is the Centralized Reforms

Reform the Hofgericht
  • Emperor gets -10% Core Construction cost
Curtail the Imperial Estates
  • +25% Imperial Authority
Proclaim Erbkaisertum
  • +25% Imperial Authority
  • HRE becomes hereditary
Revoke the Privilegia
  • +25% Imperial Authority
  • Princes & Free Cities gets -10% Stability Cost
  • Members are given a choice to stay within the empire and become a vassal under the Emperor or to leave the empire.
Renovatio Imperii
  • The Emperor unites the empire under the Holy Roman Empire tag.

The centralized reforms are based on the old vanilla reforms to unite the empire with some slight changes. The idea is still that you are uniting the empire under one monarch. The Decentralized path has more of a focus on a strong united empire by devolving some of the responsibilities and powers to the Electors.

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The last reform on the Decentralized path might not unite the entire Empire in one tag under the Emperor, but it does give the Emperor a powerful tool to call upon the entire empire in a war against the empire’s enemies. This costs 25 Imperial Authority.

If you become Emperor and the previous Emperor has gone into a path you didn’t want, you can now also revoke reforms once per Emperor. This act costs 50 Imperial Authorities just like adding a reform.



To give the Empire a bit of life we’ve implemented something we call the Imperial Incidents. These are big dynamic historical events that affect huge swaths of Europe. From the Burgundian Inheritance, the German Peasant War, the Question of the Swiss to the Dutch Revolt. In total we’ve made 13 of these.

upload_2020-3-31_11-58-3.png


Every single prince will be allowed to weigh in on the issues at hand. For instance, in a case where Burgundy is properly invited to join the Empire, Princes at the border worried about the duke’s ambitions might not want to permit that.

However the Emperor still gets to pick what option he wants to happen, but if it goes against the diet it will hurt the unity of the empire considerably. The Emperor will either gain or lose imperial authority depending on how the diet positions itself in the incident. It calculates this relative between your pick and the option with most support (besides your pick so if you picked the most supported one it takes the second most picked). Princes are worth 0.2 Imperial Authority each and Electors are worth 1 Imperial Authority. Besides the Imperial Authority there’s also opinion changes with members of the empire depending on what you pick.



Together with these new features we’ve done quite a few balance changes. First let’s cover how things are added to the empire. We don’t want you to keep a “reserve of provinces to add” in order to burst through the reforms of the HRE. We want a “healthy” empire is what leads to progress within it. So when you join all legible provinces gets added at once and a lump sum of 10 IA is given. You can add more provinces as you conquer but this is also done with all provinces all at once in the HRE screen instead for one by one. This does also mean that when the Reformation hits and if left unchecked, it becomes a serious blow to the authority of the emperor.

Of course we’re giving the Emperor some more ways to garden his Empire though, for starters there are now 12 Free Cities at start which gives a good baseline of Imperial Authority generation. Overall there’s a lot more princes & fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive. This together means it’s easier to keep the empire above the 25 princes limit for a lot longer. We’ve also made it easier for the Emperor to enforce peace within the Empire by being able to ignore the opinion requirement so you no longer only have the Imperial Ban as an option.

We’ve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty.



That’s it for today! Next development diary will be two things you’ve seen hinted here and there from time to time in various screenshots from previous development diaries and in the dev clash.


Edit: Since I keep getting asked this no matter how many times I try to clarify....
You do not get 10 IA for adding provinces to the empire, that's only for when a new prince joins the empire. You do not get IA for adding provinces to the Empire.
 
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Are there any changes to the way the empire defends itself? A good bonus for a decentralised empire could be that if any imperial nation is attacked from outside then every prince will be called to the defence.
 
Thank you for good DD today @Groogy . I have two questions.
1. Province addition
So previous HRE addition by province interface is no longer available? And Whether I add just 1 or 100 province by add all provinces, will I get only fixed 10 IA (before applying growth modifier) at everytime? And that 10 IA will also be applied with growth modifier?
2. Force HRE CB
Do I need to do some HRE reforms to get CB? If not, can I use it at 1444 to france as Austria? Also, If I succeed to add country (for example, Provence), Which of provinces will be added to HRE? No provinces? Only their Capitals? Only their connected land to HRE border? Whole provinces?
 
We’ve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty.

This really needs some more info. We already know from the comments that you can't bring big countries into the empire this way (probably the warscore limit will be the same as for vassalization/conversion). But we need to know more:
1) Is it available from the start or is it unlocked by some reform? Imperial Ban CB is unlocked by a reform, so it makes sense to lock this (arguably, more powerful) CB as well.
2) Does it cost IA/relations with existing electors/prestige/etc., or everyone in the Empire is OK with some random state brought into the Empire by force?
3) How much AE does it generate?
 
I like these changes a lot, but please do something with Bohemia, giving her more manpower (if the AI goes for the decentralization route, could it?) would worsen the problem, in all of my playthroughs they blob heavily and easily.
 
fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive
Euh, how weak do you want players in the HRE to be? You get more expensive claims (slower conquest), more unrest on conquest (cf demand mechanic), very bad relations with members (cf demand mechanic), more AE (slower conquest), more coalition members (compared to having something like Irish minors) and improving relations in the HRE to make people have less AE opinion of you is already troublesome. The HRE is already extremely hostile to conquer in. Do you guys perhaps want to encourage a tiny nation like Nassua to no-CB some random minor far away, integrate that nation, expand in that region till you are big enough to hold your emperorship, and unite the HRE that way? Because else you're just sitting there the whole game doing absolute nothing else but waiting for AE and relations.

I also want to stress that the diplomatic opinion hit of the demand unlawful territory is already very, very punishing. You lose alliances, it makes vassals harder to get to 190 opinion to integrate, forget about convincing electors, and some nations will suddenly care about your AE and will consequently join the coalition against you. Because of this, diplomats on improving relations are crucial. With more members, it becomes way harder to keep relations ok, and now you also want everyone to spend more diplo time on spying...

I recommend introducing a mechanic that encourages players and AI to release nations. Releasing nations is now one of the worst things to do: costs a lot of WS, costs lots of diplo points, and it creates a very lengthy treaty. That way, the AI will keep each other shattered, and if you happen to be in a losing war, they'll try to shatter you.

Also: the HRE is know for its beautiful borders. However, everyone except for the emperor still must care about coring distance here. I can provide you with loads of examples of exclaves and enclaves in the HRE. Even current Cologne can work as an example. So please, you can make HRE provinces not care about coring distance, for gameplay and historical accuracy's sake?
 
I was not expecting the decentralized reforms to be what they are.

Could you go over all the crises? Is it harder to complete the shadow kingdom with the additional provinces?
I remember from my play through that because the ruler starts with -aggreesive expansion Austria has just enough time/ae to absorb all of the required provinces.

It looks like the new strategy is to go OPM hunting? So budget Monk's strategy of splitting apart Hungary is the most efficient?
 
The force into empire CB sounds fun and adds a new strategy for the emperor where he might want to attack big nations and force them to release a bunch of tiny countries so that he can force them all into the empire.
 
Are France and Austria still historical rivals from the start of the game? With the new Imperial Incidents it would make sense for it to be an outcome of the Burgundian Inheritance depending on the emperors choice
 
Regarding the reforms, will only the Emperor be able to pick reforms or will electors have some way to try and enforce a trip down the "Decentralized" path?

I think it would be cool if the electors got some form of mechanic to try and enforce the Decentralized path, giving them some extra agency in the whole deal (after all, the electors are supposed to be more powerful than a generic prince). Maybe some mechanic where if an elector can get enough princes/other electors behind them they can enforce a decentralized reform? Or maybe give them a special "Enforce Decentralization" CB on the emperor where they can force the emperor to pass decentralized reforms?
 
You don't get 10 IA for adding provinces after you've joined. So adding 1 province here or there by snaking in creative ways won't give you any advantage.
 
Hey Devs,

I really enjoy all new changes upcoming with the new expansions, but I've got several questions:

1) (I know it doesn't fit with the topic of this dd) Will the jewish faith get some new flavour like the abbility to form Israel, or new mechanics - maybe not this expansion but someday?

2) Does dismantling the HRE have been changed?
 
Why is revoke still on the centralised path? I thought the entire point to the two paths was supposed to be to prevent players from staying at revoke, instead of renovate.
 
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I have a non related idea, I already posted it on the EU4 subreddit.
Forming a nation out of a subject (maybe it makes more sense if it was just for PUs). For example, say you had Milan as a PU and you conquered all provinces to form Italy for Milan. Shouldn't you be able to form it out of Milan. So Milan became Italy.
 
@Groogy , my dude! You were an active MP player, and a quite decent one to say the least! How did Catholic Church end up without a single military bonus? Will there be any changes to Italian minors and formable Italy NIs? Considering how India, Far Eastern Hordes and Japan have previously been stuffed with military modifiers, it would've been fair to expect at lest something for Milan, Florence, Savoy, Napless, Papal States, Genoa, Venice and formable Italy.
 
Force join Peace Treaty goes by warscore as if they would be vassalized, can only be used if they have valid provinces to enter into the empire and if you used the Force Join CB.
 
Is there a religious restriction, or after cutting them down to size could you force the Ottomans to join?

Yes there's a religion limitation.
 
I do like the prospect of an alternative to revoking the privilegia, but in the decentralized path, does the AI actively persue furthering the goals of the empire, such as forcing other countries to join the empire? Also could there be some free alliances (diplo slot wise) within the HRE, that seems like a reasonable way to direct the princess?