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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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Omg, a dream become true!
I had so many ideas in the last time to simulate the development of feudal societies into post modern national states and absolut states.
But this change everything!

Btw: Next diary should be about republics.
 
Althought I love myself some Monastic Orders, I'd like to see it (theocracies) last as you pick the feedback from us regarding the other government types :)

Anyway, I do really like this idea. I hardly try to change my government type anyway in my games... this will be much more useful to me!
 
Is this a progress bar or mana?

Eh a progress-bar I guess? It's not a resource you spend really but you can lose the progress.
 
Everybody always loves republics to death. Make 'em wait. Make them suffer knowingly you've whetted the taste of a great many people. That tease is part of what's so much fun about being a Dev, isn't it? :p. I'd love to see what you guys have done to Theocracies next, everybody always craps on them as being bad, so I'd like to see what you've done to make them better.
 
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If there are actual, meaningful choices this could make for a really interesting mechanic. Deciding if I want a Spanish Empire with inclusive political institutions at the cost of extractive economic institutions would define the entire scope of the campaign (plus human history, fwiw).
 
@Groogy or @DDRJake I just want to be sure, Is this is an expansion feature? The post says this:
As a feature in 1.26's accompanying expansion(...)
But this feature seems to tie with many many other expansions which makes me partially confused.

edit: Looks really cool guys, really excited for this.

EDIT2: FOR ANYONE THAT WAS CONFUSED AS I WAS THE EU4 TWITTER CONFIRMED THAT THIS IS IN FACT AN EXPANSION FEATURE.
 
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I'd like to see Theocracies; simply because you said all Theocracy types would overlap... but there's only 3... and 2 of them are tag-locked [Monastic Order/Papancy].

Also hoping this makes Republics more than a pure RP choice due to Absolutism.

Everybody always loves republics to death. Make 'em wait. Make them suffer knowingly you've whetted the taste of a great many people. That tease is part of what's so much fun about being a Dev, isn't it? :p. I'd love to see what you guys have done to Theocracies next, everybody always craps on them as being bad, so I'd like to see what you done to make them better.

No stabhit on ruler death; no regencies ever; constant heir generals; great estate control when you select heirs; pretty good events; +1 prestige; +25% tax; and no hit to Absolutism?

Theocracies are great; the only reason they get 'hate' is they are either locked to Dutchy/Kingdom [Special Theocracies] or are minors in bad positions.
 
How will this interact with government ranks? In particular, with fixed ones.

I must say, I always felt like many of the different governments are redundant (e.g. administrative monarchy - I still have no idea what it's supposed to be), so I like this change.
 
It looks like States no longer have automatically 0% baseline autonomy given this option: "l'etat c'est moi: +5 States, -15% State Autonomy"

Unless this is meant to work with estates or corruption.
 
Sounds a bit like Vic2.
I do hope each of those reforms will have events associated with it. Also passing reforms should imo have some temporary downsides.