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Hello, and welcome back to Europa Universalis IV. Last week we talked about features, where most of them will be in the free update, but todays feature will all be part of the next expansion.

First of all, I’d like to mention that we are adding a new government form called English Monarchy, which England will start with. It will give +0.5 Legitimacy, -1 Unrest, -0.1 Monthly Autonomy and give them access to a Parliament.

So what is a Parliament? It is a new mechanic that Constitutional Monarchies & Constitutional Republics has as well. A Parliament is a political body inside your country, which will have debates that if they pass will give you benefits for a decade.

There is quite a lot of different possible debates, and you are allowed to pick one of five random eligible ones.

To have a debate pass, you need to have a majority of the seats backing the issue. Of course, when an debate is started, all seats are against it, and you need to convince them to back it.

Every Seat of Parliament will have their own reasons you must fullfill to have them back an issue, and their reasons will be different for each issue. A coastal Seat of Parliament may want to be Granted Navy commissions, which reduces your naval tradition, while another Seat may want monetary compensation, while another want some military support, or a fourth want some more autonomy. Luckily, you only have to get half of them to support you to get the debate passed.

Any non-overseas province can be granted a Seat in Parliament and your capital will always have a Seat. There is no way to remove a seat in Parliament, unless the province is lost.

A Seat gets +10% to tax, production & manpower, while reducing autonomy by 0.01 per month. However each Seat increases stability & war-exhaustion costs by 2%.

You are also required to grant at least of 20% of your non-overseas cores a Seat in Parliament, and if you have less than that, one random will be picked for you. There is alert if less than a third of your non-overseas cores have a Seat.

If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition. And if a debate fails, you will lose 20 prestige, so it is not the end of the world, but its not something you want to happen all the time.

Here are three examples of current issues that can be pushed through your parliament.

Backing the War Effort is available if you are at war, and will give you +1 stability when passed, and a 10 year benefit of -0.05 War Exhaustion, and +10% Manpower recovery

Charter Colonies
is available if you have either filled the Expansion or Exloration ideagroup, and gives a +10 year benefit of +1 colonist and +20 colonial growth.

Increase Taxes
will give you about 1/4th of a years income, and increase your tax-income by 10% for 10 years.

Of course, all of these values will change the more we playtest it.

Only countries with Parliaments will get a button, opening the Parliament View, near the Papacy & HRE buttons. And yes, the button you talked about last week, in the province interface, is the one indicating if its a seat of parliament or not.

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Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.
 
Oh, yeah, you're right. I was thinking in term of legislatures, but I forgot that Merchant Republics would only have one seat. Still, I don't "get" the idea of Merchant Republics having factions. It would make more sense, to me, if they maybe had a system where the Doge is basically a monarch, and you alternate between different bonuses by siding with business interests/families as a way of spending/gaining Republican Tradition.
 
This could also be tied into colonies and their likelihood of starting an independence war

The main grievance of the Thirteen Colonies was their non-representation in Parliament, which the British government was considering a change which would have given the colonies representation but the American Revolution began before that happened
 
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I'm delighted by this addition; I had previously thought that Constitutional Monarchies should have some sort of election system, but this will suffice (especially for the period). Is there a reason, though, why Revolutionary Republics don't get it? I feel that they should have some sort of special mechanics to reflect how unique they are, especially involving (local versions of) the Reign of Terror, Cult of Reason, and radical progressive policies.

Maybe Revolutionary Republics could have a Committee of Public Safety or something similar. It could have decisions like those and eventually the player could use it to create a Revolutionary Empire.
 
If so, I'd prefer the decisions be focused on social engineering rather than just the generic acts that a Parliament passes. I would especially appreciate the ability to adopt the Cult of Reason as an actual religion, at the expense of triggering a National Disaster (maybe that'd be the Thermidorian Reaction?).
 
Add a debate called dependiary representation, which grants all vassals a seat, but also increases their loyality.
 
I like this addition, but the seats sound a bit...basic. Considering Great Britain is in mind here, how will their party system (Whigs and Tories) play into this, and will the Parliament be able to force a civil war as happened earlier under the Stuarts in England?
Having the MPs having one small issue each seems a bit...basic. Surely you could also work factions in here somehow, where supporting one faction gives you the support of them in Parliament at the cost of certain bonuses and penalties.

This! I was really hoping for factions/parties also.
 
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This! I was really hoping for factions/parties also.

The thing is, party system only came about by 1660s or later in actual British history. At first, it was the Court and Country or Opposition parties and then that evolved into Whigs and Tories by 1680s. According to Wikipedia, first election when the labels was used was in 1685, a bit before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an important event that permanently ended any chances at establishing the absolute monarchy in Britain. Even then, the party system in 18th century was not in the modern sense as we understand it, not formally organized so it kind of changes from time to time and even then was split into factions, especially for Whigs after George III's accession. Only in early 19th century did it begin to organize a bit by a bit into parties as we understand in modern sense. Tories evolved into Conservative party in 1834, Whigs became Liberal party in 1859.

tl;dr: It might be difficult but not impossible to emulate the system in EU4. i think Paradox probably considered this low priority. We might see this in EU5 or in later EU4 expansion. Who knows. One can only hope. For now, my parliamentary election mod (found in my signature below), as far as I can tell, is as close as one can get the party system but otherwise my modding knowledge is limited. If anyone can make a far better mod than mine, all power to them. I'd love to see more better emulation of the British parliamentary system.
 
The thing is, party system only came about by 1660s or later in actual British history. At first, it was the Court and Country or Opposition parties and then that evolved into Whigs and Tories by 1680s. According to Wikipedia, first election when the labels was used was in 1685, a bit before the Glorious Revolution of 1688, an important event that permanently ended any chances at establishing the absolute monarchy in Britain. Even then, the party system in 18th century was not in the modern sense as we understand it, not formally organized so it kind of changes from time to time and even then was split into factions, especially for Whigs after George III's accession. Only in early 19th century did it begin to organize a bit by a bit into parties as we understand in modern sense. Tories evolved into Conservative party in 1834, Whigs became Liberal party in 1859.

That rather depends on how you define the term "party system" or indeed political parties in general. Fundamentally, a political party in a Representative Democracy with seats in parliament is a souped-up version of a parliamentary faction, and parliamentary factions predate the Whigs and Tories. Arguably, the Cavaliers/Royalists and the Roundheads/Parliamentarians were the first proto-political parties, and were based around the same fundamental principle as the Whigs and Tories were: the Royalists believed in the sovereignty of the monarch while the Parliamentarians favoured the sovereignty of Parliament and checks on the power of the King. That's a gross simplification of course, but you get the idea.

The underlying principle is that you had one group of MPs that favoured a centralised, autocratic state and another that favoured a decentralised, democratic one. This is a proto-party system in its most rawest form, and gives the devs something to work with. Supporting the "Royalists" too much might help crack down on autonomy and raise tax revenues, but it could increase stability costs, harm production or, worst case scenario, lead to a Cromwell-style revolution. Favouring the "Parliamentarians" meanwhile might raise autonomy and lower taxes, but boost production and lower stability cost and revolt risk. You could also have other "single-issue" factions similar to those in EU: Rome (eg. a mercantile faction, a military faction, etc.) who will support the passing of a law if you be nice to them. So for example, the mercantile faction might agree to let you increase taxes if you build a navy of x number of ships or more.
 
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I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but why are Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands empty? We know that they were most certainly not, and each region had their own unique cultures and religions before colonization. The next DLC should address this issue and put these overlooked cultures on the map, after all the native Americans were no more advanced than the Aboriginal people of Australia, why should they be represented and not the Australians, New Zealanders and the people of the pacific islands?
indigi_map.png
 
I don't know if this is the right place to ask, but why are Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands empty? We know that they were most certainly not, and each region had their own unique cultures and religions before colonization. The next DLC should address this issue and put these overlooked cultures on the map, after all the native Americans were no more advanced than the Aboriginal people of Australia, why should they be represented and not the Australians, New Zealanders and the people of the pacific islands?

Native Americans

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08.-Chumash-Village.jpg


indian-casino.jpg



Australian Aboriginals

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a70e27095f10b44f03238467801ceda9bd8b94104278bb95f74b4ff119d90faf.jpg


5.jpg


:D:D
 
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How is Sejm different? Seems pretty standard parliament to me

My guess is because Sejm had liberum veto that did not existed in most of other parliaments. Liberum veto was often held to be one of the factors behind decline and ultimately partition of Poland because it was almost impossible to put up any kind of resistance against foreign interference in Sejm through bribery of Sejm members. Ultimately, what this new mechanics might entails in EU4 is two possible paths, what actually happened in history or the Sejm becoming normal parliament somehow.
 
My guess is because Sejm had liberum veto that did not existed in most of other parliaments. Liberum veto was often held to be one of the factors behind decline and ultimately partition of Poland because it was almost impossible to put up any kind of resistance against foreign interference in Sejm through bribery of Sejm members. Ultimately, what this new mechanics might entails in EU4 is two possible paths, what actually happened in history or the Sejm becoming normal parliament somehow.
The existence of the Sejm on one extreme and the General Estates on the other screams to me of "STRENGTH OF PARLIAMENTS". I really can't see why it wasn't introduced.
 
Will Colonial Nations be able to get a seat in parliament?

Since CN is technically a separate country, I doubt that's even possible but who knows. Maybe Paradox might find a way to make parliament works as a body for multiple countries but I doubt it.
 
Having started playing Crusader Kings II for first time, it has become apparent to me that parliament mechanics could just as well work in that game for England and to some extent other countries at least after 1200s. After all, the kings in Spain and England had to negotiate with parliaments since 13th century in order to tax the nobles in the Middle Ages.

The problem is trying to differentiate it in early modern era against medieval era for EU4. I would suggest that Paradox consider expanding on it in future to make it evolve into more stronger and eventually supreme body with prototype of political parties in late game. The mechanics as announced would seem to make sense at least until English Civil Wars if and when parliament wins in that war.
 
I can't find how you open the British Parliamant screen. Can someone tell/show me what buttons to press?
Next to the HRE and curia buttons if you have the extension and play with England and the proper governement type.