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EU4 - Development Diary - 3rd of April 2018

Good morning all. It's Tuesday and that means time for another Dev Diary. As I mentioned in the last non-alcoholic dev diary, we're going to start looking at changes and features coming with the 1.26 and its accompanying, unannounced expansion.

Before that though, we are currently looking to iron out the kinks with the open beta 1.25.1 hotfix (AI allies deciding that money is more important than friendship and nations sometimes failing to explore for a long time). These fixes will be made, applied to the open beta and rolled out in due time.

Governments

The way governments work have remained mostly unchanged for the duration of Europa Universalis IV, still being almost entirely lifted from EU3. While we have added new government types and their own mechanics such as Theocracy devotion, Steppe Nomads and American Natives, the government progression has remained quite stale, where tech sometimes unlocks a new tier within your government tier and you will switch to it at a cost of 100 ADM if you want its better effects, different election times, absolutism etc.

As a feature in 1.26's accompanying expansion this goes out the window and instead we introduce the system of Government Reforms where you will hand-craft your own government through a series of reforms as the game progresses.

The start of any great project starts with burning a few things down, so to set things straight:

All Monarchy types are merged into one
All Republic types are merged into one
All Theocracies are merged into one
All Tribals are merged into one

The differences we had between government types, for example between Administrative Republic and Oligarchic Republic, or Steppe Nomad and Tribal Despotism, will now be modeled through the reforms

Each Government has a starting reform and maximum number of reforms available. When a Reform value ticks up to a required value, a Governmental reform can be made granting a choice of modifiers and effects and advancing Government reform by 1 step. Each bonus gets incrementally more expensive to increase.

Each reform costs 100 Government Reform Progress, plus 50 for each additional reform. Each nation gains +10 Government Reform Progress towards reform per year, multiplied by 1-(its average autonomy across all provinces. As ever, the numbers we talk about today are subject to balancing and can and likely will change by release, but the net effect is that nations who crack down on autonomy are going to have a far easier time passing their government reforms.

We will cover all the different types of governments over the course of a few dev diaries, but today we will focus on the reforms for a Monarchy.

  • Feudalism vs Autocracy
    • Feudalism: +25% Income from Vassals

    • Autocracy: -10% Unjust Demands
    • [Other Special monarchies]*
  • Hereditary Nobility
    • Enforce privileges: +15% Manpower

    • Quash Noble power: +10% Tax Modifier
  • Bureaucracy
    • Centralize: -0.05 Autonomy reduction

    • Decentralize: +2 Accepted Cultures
  • Growth of Administration
    • Clergy in Administration: +1 [HIDDEN] , +5% base loyalty of Clergy

    • Of Noble Bearing: -10% hire leader cost, +5% base loyalty of Nobility

    • Meritocratic Focus: -10% Advisors Cost

    • Seizure of Power: [Early path for Government type change]
  • Deliberative assembly
    • Parliamentary: Enables Parliaments if Common Sense DLC enabled, else -1 Unrest

    • Royal Decree: +5 max absolutism

    • Aristocratic Court: -0.5 Army Tradition Decay

    • States General: +10% Production Efficiency
  • Absolute Rule v Constitutional
    • l'etat c'est moi: +5 States, -15% State Autonomy

    • Regional Representation - 25% lower autonomy in Territories
  • Separation of powers
    • Political Absolutism: +5 max absolutism, +0.1 Yearly Absolutism

    • Legislative Houses: +1 Possible [HIDDEN]

    • Become a Republic

    • Install Theocratic Government
"What about unique government types?"

The game is host to various different unique government types, with their own effects or mechanics. some examples:

  • Shogunate - +1 Diplomat, -25% Envoy Travel Time, +2 Number of states, +5 Max Absolutism. Dynasty is fixed, Enable Shogun-Daimyo mechanics
  • Daimyo - +10% Morale of Armies, 10% Infantry CA. Dynasty is fixed, enable Daimyo mechanics
  • English Monarchy - +0.5 Yearly Legitimacy, -1 National Unrest, 1 states, -30 absolutism, uses Parliaments
  • Prussian Monarchy - -2 Unrest, -0.02 War exhaustion, +3 Monarch Military skill, uses Militarism.

These special tools will now be modeled by unique reforms. In most cases, it will be a special reform on the first level (Feudalism vs Autocracy) ready-unlocked for said countries. We will also be making the system more flexible in that if you fulfill the criteria for having a certain government type, but previously had no way of switching into it, you will be able to change your reform to pick it up. Changing reforms that have already been passed comes at a cost (currently 10 corruption)

This system is still Work in Progress, so expect changes along the way. Here's a screenshot of it in-game at this current time:

government.png

Return of the pink coder-art and overflowing GUI. Games are like sausages, beware of seeing them made.

Next week we will have more information about this feature as well as looking at another reform path. Which shall we look at, Republics, Theocracies or Tribals? See you next week for it!
 
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So Tsardom and Russian Principalities are going to be deleted and Muscovy will have -1 dip point per month from the start?
The four unique types in the diary are listed as "some examples". Considering those two are DLC features, I very much doubt they'll be scrapped.
 
It looks as though, this time, Paradox has the courage to - instead of just adding "new buttons" - fundamentally rework one of the features that has been affected most by a certain feature bloat in past updates. It's probably inevitable that somebody is going to complain about content being "stolen" if any government that was added by one of the expansions isn't replicated exactly the way it used to be, but I'm glad that you are willing to do some house-cleaning here.
The "hidden" stuff also looks quite intriguing :)
I just wish for two things (from the top of my head):
1. that this system properly interacts with the estate system. The base loyalty associated with some of the reforms suggests that it does to a certain extent.
2. that the opportunity is used to extend some "snowflake" mechanisms from expansions beyond certain tags. The most poignant example would be electoral monarchy (there is not much of a reason why Bohemia and Hungary aren't treated as electoral monarchies, and it might make sense to open up the mechanism to other countries, perhaps even to theocracies).
 
Will reform mechanics have any interaction with idea groups, such as administrative or innovative ideas?

What about estates? This might be a chance for that "call diet" button to actually do something.

Adopting a parliament would be a hilarious way to make a troublesome noble estate disappear...
 
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time to nerf minimum autonomy to add in these new features : )
 
For an early dev diary for next DLC and patch it looks pretty good. Great to see that PDS seems to be upping their game with respect to meatiness of updates. That being said I hope you guys have a bit sharp that interesting dynamics need to feel a bit different then some additional click-to-get-a-modifier gameplay. There's a bit too much of that in EU4 I think most will agree so I'll reserve some judgement.
 
Will be new events based on new gov. mechanism?

Any negative effects for countries due to this mechanics or only "selection of bonuses"?

Do forcing change through eg. rebellions, GP interveniton will be possiblle?
 
So Tsardom and Russian Principalities are going to be deleted and Muscovy will have -1 dip point per month from the start?

Doubt it, they will probably be one of the mentioned special cases like the Shogunate, Prussian Monarchy, etc. that were mentioned in the post.
 
Each reform costs 100 Government Reform Progress, plus 50 for each additional reform. Each nation gains +10 Government Reform Progress towards reform per year, multiplied by 1-(its average autonomy across all provinces. As ever, the numbers we talk about today are subject to balancing and can and likely will change by release, but the net effect is that nations who crack down on autonomy are going to have a far easier time passing their government reforms.
Is this a progress bar or mana?

The game is host to various different unique government types, with their own effects or mechanics. some examples:
I assume they'll keep their magic charging buttons?

Absolute Rule v Constitutional
  • l'etat c'est moi: +5 States, -15% State Autonomy

  • Regional Representation - 25% lower autonomy in Territories
Eh... that's not constitutionalism that's federalism. Constitutionalism is about the law being above even the head of state. It's nice that you have federalism but it should be opposed by Unitarianism.
 
Cheers for the DD DDRJake, and way cool :D. Being able to custom-shape our governments sounds all sorts of interesting. Random thought - you could make the cost of switching-out of particular reforms specific to that reform (and possibly even that reform and the era - so switching away from Feudalism early on might be a bit more painful than doing it towards the end of the game). Please ignore my crazy talk if crazy, looking forward to what you come up with - may you and the team have +1 [HIDDEN] whenever you need it :D.
 
"-25% territorial autonomy"
Yeah that seems a mite bit powerful., especially since it's a buff to playing wide which really doesn't need a buff.
 
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The concept sounds nice, but I can’t say the specific options and bonuses are perfect. Especially decentralised seems off, and there’s a lot of absolutism vs not absolutism overkill. Centralisation feels weak, considering how important it was to many states.
 
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So the new game version should be 1.26(France),right?
Since France experienced greatest political change during the era of EU4, the reshuffle of noble power after the Hundred Year's War, the absolutionism of Louis XIV and the great revolution.

So is that mean we will have NEW MISSION TREE for our big blue blob?

Please make Richelieu the new cover person of the game!!!!!!