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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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There's going to be mutually exclusive reforms, right? It hurts the "strategy" component of strategy game when you can have it all. Make the player make an actual, meaningful choice once in a while!

Also, are the unlocks strictly linear, or will there be a pool of options at a given time (most likely age based)? In my mind, you'd have to be at least in Discovery to get certain reforms, then in at least Reformation to get a different set of reforms (with Discovery still available should you desire), etc. If the gain rate is slow enough and/or there are enough options, it could mean that very few governments are ever actually identical, which could be really neat! And these two things together would open up a ton of role playing opportunities, which the game is seriously lacking right now (in that such opportunities do not exist).
 
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.

Really? For one cycle could you just focus on fixing the game as a whole and integrating the piles of DLC you have already tacked on? Rather than adding yet another round of feature bloat while ignoring old yet promising features like Development and Estates!?
 
@DDRJake , any plans regarding Estates and Parliament in this government revamp? I have an idea I've been cooking for a couple months, but I feel it may be outdated by whatever you guys may have in mind already.
 
I understand that this is going to be used to balance republics vs monarchies a bit (with monarchies being much better due to higher max absolutism.
 
Hmm WIKI is pretty outdate on this then! It is still listed as "constitution republic" instead of "federal republic" or "american republic".

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/United_States

While Govt wiki has it listed. I am not sure if in-game or not. Given Persia patch note safe to say yes.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Government#American_Republic
Because that's its government form. An event can give you a chance to change it to one of the unique ones, but they are not the default.
The governments listed in the wiki are from the history files for particular nations.
 
Because that's its government form. An event can give you a chance to change it to one of the unique ones, but they are not the default.
The governments listed in the wiki are from the history files for particular nations.

You could do something like.

Constitutional Republic (can be formed with American/Federal republic instead via decision).
 
Looks nice. I would be really glad if Zaporozhie could have access to the Cossack estate. Now they're steppe nomads and only have Tribes. It's kinda funny that of all nations, the actual cossacks of Zaporozhie, can't have the special cav granted by the estate. Maybe if they were the new Tribal Federation... I guess I'll see in the upcoming DDs.
 
This looks interesting...
 
Oh, Christ, Pdx, stop changing the game from one patch to the next one. I don't feel like relearning every two months.