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EU4 - Development Diary - 8th of October 2019

Good morning, and welcome to today’s dev diary! As Jake foretold last week, today I’ll be talking about some of the Imperial Incidents coming in next year’s big expansion.

For those of you who have forgotten or for some reason do not read our dev diaries with fervent religiosity, this is what an Imperial Incident is:

“The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity.

When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.”

These Incidents give us the opportunity to both revisit old content and to design something new. Last week Jake gave a description of the reworked Burgundian Inheritance (which we might revisit in more detail in the future). Today I’ll show off two new event chains and their associated Incidents: The King in Prussia, and The Great Peasants’ War.

dd_prussia.png


Prussia is no longer awarded a shiny Kingdom-rank crown simply for existing. An independent Prussia must establish itself as a relevant power before it has the opportunity to claim its crown. After this event fires, the Imperial Incident begins and the Emperor must decide on how to proceed.

  • If the Emperor decides to elevate Prussia to an Imperial Kingdom in the fashion of Bohemia, they will lose 10 Imperial Authority but greatly improve their relations with Prussia. This will also anger any electors that have rivalled Prussia.

  • If the Emperor decides to accept the historical compromise - that the monarch may call himself “King in Prussia” but not “King of Prussia” - the effect is similar but reduced. The Electors will not be angered but Prussia will be only mildly grateful to the Emperor.

  • If the Emperor refuses to acknowledge any Prussian monarch bearing the title of “King”, Prussia must make a decision between their Kingly crown or their status as an Imperial Prince, potentially being ejected from the Empire. This will greatly anger both Prussia and its Elector allies.
dd_peasants.png


The Great Peasants’ War was a time of great upheaval in the Holy Roman Empire. Driven by religious, economic, and social woes the oppressed masses rose up across Germany against their feudal masters. This event can happen prior to the League War, which is delayed until this conflict is resolved. National unrest is increased throughout the Empire, peasant rebels are more likely to spawn, and countries that break to peasant rebels may become a Peasant Republic. While the Great Peasants’ War rages on, the game will track the success of the rebels throughout the Empire. After several years have passed and the dust has settled, the Emperor must make a resolution:

  • [Available only if the rebels are not highly successful] If the Emperor chooses to crush the rights of peasants, the Noble estates across the Empire will become more loyal and more powerful. This effect is reduced if the rebels are moderately successful.

  • If the Emperor chooses to grant concessions to the peasantry and enforce their rights, the Noble estates across the Empire will not only lose Influence but also some of their Land Share. The strength of this effect depends on the success of the rebels. This will mean that Princes of the Empire have more Crown Land, but they will also collect less taxes due to their concessions to the peasantry. If the rebels are highly successful, nations in the Empire will continue to become Peasant Republics when breaking to peasant rebels even after the Great Peasants’ War ends.

We have a lot more Incidents left to talk about: in the unspecified future I’ll talk about such Incidents as the Dutch Revolt and the Shadow Kingdom. For now though that’s all I have to say, I hope you all have a great day and that you return for next week’s dev diary!
 
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In how incidents are done it will primarily have to relate to the empire or the emperor in one way or the other. Other things can still of course get a similar flavor through DHE's.
I think people saw "an event in the game that effects an entire region rather than one or two specific countries" and started imagining the potential for encouraging countries to interact with each other.
 
Incidents really look nice! Things are really shaping up, keep up the great work!

Can a new emperor 'revoke' decisions of these incidents. For example with the peasants war if one emperor decides to crush the rebels and then another emperor gets elected. Then the new emperor can change the decision (with an extra penalty or something)

No, these are one-time decisions that can't be reversed. Usually they'll have a direct and immediate effect that has a big impact on the political landscape, so reversing them would generally not make a lot of sense.
 
A whole incident about elevation to a kingdom rank? I mean, sure it's a big deal, but not so much in the game. It will be nothing more than an annoying AI Emperor decision, because it's not like a kingdom rank is worth leaving the Empire for. The effects are quite underwhelming and it certainly can wait.

Basically you don't automatically become a kingdom, but there is a chance you won't... how very fun. If it's never worth leaving the Empire (at the time of forming Prussia), then it means it's purely a decision made by the AI about your country.
 
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A whole incident about elevation to a kingdom rank? I mean, sure it's a big deal, but not so much in the game. It will be nothing more than an annoying AI Emperor decision, because it's not like a kingdom rank is worth leaving the Empire for. The effects are quite underwhelming and it certainly can wait.

Basically you don't automatically become a kingdom, but there is a chance you won't... how very fun.

interesting, historical, flavourful

Sounds fun to me:)
 
They're tied to the Holy Roman Empire, and they'll be displayed prominently in the HRE interface, so no plans to expand this elsewhere. Given that the Incidents themselves function largely to present a choice to the Emperor in a way that's visible to the HRE at large, I'm not sure it would really be applicable outside of that context.
I'd suppose people are thinking of it like a Vic 2 crisis system
 
While we're on the subject. The TO had a number of lesser holdings in the HRE. Currently, the Danish king has an event where they get a modifier giving them extra base tax to represent the holdings in HRE. I feel like the TO could be strengthened a little bit by giving them a modifier giving some extra base tax representing their holdings in the HRE, that would disappear if they secularize into Prussia.

I approve this message.

No, these are one-time decisions that can't be reversed. Usually they'll have a direct and immediate effect that has a big impact on the political landscape, so reversing them would generally not make a lot of sense.

Could you guys please put every HRE one-time event decision somewhere in the UI? I mean, a record of what was previously chosen and their modifiers.
 
Could you guys please put every HRE one-time event decision somewhere in the UI? I mean, a record of what was previously chosen and their modifiers.

Previous DD:
All incidents, and the path that the Emperor pursued will be visible in the HRE interface, so curious players can see what choices the Emperor has made before, and use their involvement in incidents as a chance to seize an advantage.
 
A whole incident about elevation to a kingdom rank? I mean, sure it's a big deal, but not so much in the game. It will be nothing more than an annoying AI Emperor decision, because it's not like a kingdom rank is worth leaving the Empire for. The effects are quite underwhelming and it certainly can wait.

Basically you don't automatically become a kingdom, but there is a chance you won't... how very fun. If it's never worth leaving the Empire, then it means it's purely a decision made by the AI about you country.
That's kind of the point and the idea. If you are in the HRE, the Emperor can make some decisions about your nation without your input. Which is precisely what the princes didn't like, so it's a little way to represent the historical issue and to give the HRE Emperor the power to actually decide something in the HRE rather than only propose the reforms for princes to decide on.

As a side note, will the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina be represented in the game as a reform (I did not see it on the list of general reforms sadly) or incident (a positive one, for a change)? I feel like the evolution of legal systems in Europe could be something that could add a bit extra historical flavour to the game.
 
In how incidents are done it will primarily have to relate to the empire or the emperor in one way or the other. Other things can still of course get a similar flavor through DHE's.
well I hope some work is put into that effect as the game continues development, big impactful choices are more fun than minor choices

Based on how these work I wonder if some other things could be reworked along these lines, such as the Treaty of Tordesillas
 
I agree with the majority of the comments here. The incident have such a potential influence, that would be a shame to keep them for the HRE.
Treaty of Tordesillas, Controversia of Valladolid, War of the Roses, French internal talks about Burgundy and then Italy, all those event could take benefits from some kind of "incident" managing, with country reacting to each other.

Of course some specific HRE flavour is important, but keeping the whole "incident" things only for the HRE seems a bad idea to me.
 
Can the Peasant War fire during the War of the Religious Leagues? Or is this completely impossible? Because that would be a sweet war.

The text says that the League Wars will be delayed until this incident is taken care of. I imagine the Devs will make sure that the two events can't happen simultaneously.
 
Of course some specific HRE flavour is important, but keeping the whole "incident" things only for the HRE seems a bad idea to me.

The Incidents are very much a HRE feature, as they depend on the Interface and existing HRE code infrastructure.
But we want is a brand new feature that causes regional incidents. But that would be another feature based on a similar concept.
 
You don't have to be an elector for this to happen. We want to move away from having strict conditions on when content appears.

So what happens if you're already kingdom rank? For example, Brandenburg becomes a kingdom before they form Prussia themselves. The incident will be avoided altogether? I currently don't see the downside of trying to avoid the incident by just making sure you are kingdom rank before you form Prussia.
 
So what happens if you're already kingdom rank? For example, Brandenburg becomes a kingdom before they form Prussia themselves. The incident will be avoided altogether? I currently don't see the downside of trying to avoid the incident by just making sure you are kingdom rank before you form Prussia.
The point is you literally cannot become a kingdom in the HRE without certain conditions, and you get demoted if you join the HRE as an empire or kingdom. If you've left the HRE already and form Prussia I imagine the Emperor won't care.