• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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!
 
Last edited:
culture changing should be seperated from religion. i dont want to convert albanians into sunni to assimilate them into greek culture.
Wat?

Firstly if we're going off of this historically, you absolutely want to convert Albanians to Sunni, not to convert them to Greek but to use them to culture convert other areas. (I'm not opening the can of worms by specifying where, someone else can have that "Fun")

So yes I agree with you that culture conversion makes no sense, but if Paradox are going down a historical route, chances are that it might be the opposite of what you want them to do.
 
One concern with using average autonomy to compute reform progress is that small nations conquering a few provinces are penalized more than a bigger nation conquering the same amount of development. This is the same as with religious unity that is easier to handle as you grow. Would it be better to also scale the penalty with your total amount of development to make it harder to reform your government as you grow?
 
Wat?

Firstly if we're going off of this historically, you absolutely want to convert Albanians to Sunni, not to convert them to Greek but to use them to culture convert other areas. (I'm not opening the can of worms by specifying where, someone else can have that "Fun")

So yes I agree with you that culture conversion makes no sense, but if Paradox are going down a historical route, chances are that it might be the opposite of what you want them to do.

he wants to convert albanians into greeks or serbians because they are accepted cultures in ottoman empire. and also converting them to neighboring cultures is more cheap. also converting random/far cultures into main culture looks ugly in the culture map.
 
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.

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!

Will you be finally adding American Govt as an unique reform for new world British culture CN? Long story! However short story is that American Dream add a new republic type and has been pretty much "removed from the game" more or less since then. Which made the point of the DLC well pointless since you get nothing but events really.

If you are playing as a "Ruthemia risen from the ash" Orthodox nation, you are completely locked in at duchy due to needing to be Russia primary culture to unlock Empire rank which is messy if you don't want to form Russia to get empire rank. Will you be doing something about this?
 
Is there a special reform for a peasents republic?
One would assume they're going to cover that in the Republic's dev diary. Though for some of the more minor government types they may give them a modifier instead, not really sure. What should be interesting is to see what they've done with things like the Papacy. (Hopefully integrated it into some Catholicism reworks.)
 
Last edited:
Modding questions:
1- Will turning off the expansion remove all changes to government? This system looks incompatible with our design in MU and we're concerned it could interfere without a lot of what we're doing.
2- If we turn it off we can still make separate government types for republics, monarchies, etc. right?
 
he wants to convert albanians into greeks or serbians because they are accepted cultures in ottoman empire. and also converting them to neighboring cultures is more cheap. also converting random/far cultures into main culture looks ugly in the culture map.

I know that's what he wants to do, its just that it works counter intuitively to the way it worked historically and is something I hope gets addressed at some point.
 
Last edited:
I like this.

However, I don’t understand the reason why you relate feudalism and vassals in game. Local autonomy absorbs vassals of France, and vassals in game can’t cover nobles with land in history. Vassals in game can be applied to Prussia under Poland, but can’t be applied to most of vassals in history, like old French vassals. Feudalism shouldn’t give bonus related with vassals, as the bonus makes feudalism affect too limited area. It should give something related with stability or reducing penalty from autonomy.
 
Me too but in this forum if you say this you recive disagres!!
I don't think that anybody is against Spain/Iberia getting a nice update/immersion pack.
It is just a matter of priority.
Apparently, Paradox has decided to do make 1.26 a meaty content patch, with a fundamental rework/enhancement of base game mechanics.

Paradox have said that they plan to continue making immersion packs. It is (I think) quite save to assume that all countries that already got a "named" patch are out of the running for an immersion pack.
I.e., no (more) immersion packs for Prussia, Denmark, Ming, Hungary, Russia, Persia, Japan and England. Among the "Tier 1" countries (according to Johan, way back: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-3-tiers.636355/ , this leaves France, the Ottomans, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Austria, and among the second tier the Netherlands, Poland, Venice and the Mughals. While Paradox's design philosophy has certainly shifted to a certain extent since 2012 - and they already named one patch after a tier 3 country -, I do not think that the likely candidates for an immersion pack are outside those two tiers.

What I am trying to say is: Spain is almost certain to be pegged for an immersion pack by Paradox. They are not going to "waste" a Spain update on a content expansion, because that would prevent them from subsequently making a Spain immersion pack. Which is a marketing decision that people can legitimately disagree with, but still a reasonable decision.

The good news is, if you look at the tier 1 and tier 2 list and the candidates that are already out of the running, I would say that Spain is basically the top candidate for the next immersion pack (which, I assume, will come along with patch 1.28, with 1.27 a smallish update on the new features of 1.26) - the only real contenders, in my opinion, are Austria (along with a general HRE immersion pack) and Sweden (which is probably an objectively less "deserving" possibility, if such a thing exists, but always a likely pick with Paradox ;) ).
 
Last edited:
Is there a special reform for a peasents republic?

"Seizing the means of production" would be appropriate for this proletarian state !

I.e., no more immersion packs for Prussia, Denmark, Ming, Hungary, Russia, Persia, Japan and England. Among the "Tier 1" countries (according to Johan, way back: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/the-3-tiers.636355/ , this leaves France, the Ottomans, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Austria, and among the second tier the Netherlands, Poland, Venice and the Mughals. While Paradox's design philosophy has certainly shifted to a certain extent since 2012 - and they already named one patch after a tier 3 country -, I do not think that the likely candidates for an immersion pack are outside those two tiers.

I don't know about Ottomans, they already have their unique governement with lots of decisions, a recent reworked of its provinces in anatolia. I only see the case where Balkans would be remade, with new provinces in Greece and Thracia.
 
Last edited:
So Tsardom and Russian Principalities are going to be deleted and Muscovy will have -1 dip point per month from the start?
I think what they're doing is the unique governments will still be at their appropriate nations, with the opportunity for reform. Or, they will make it so that the respective nations have the opportunity to reform to that government type, sooner rather than later. Don't quote me on that though.
 
I hope this is part of patch instead of expansion, because it looks really cool.

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!

Hordes are my favourite. Razing and other horde mechanics will remain, and will be...I've already said too much. We'll cover Hordes in a future dev diary on Governments, much like Republics, Theocracies and other tribals

I want to know what happen to Horde, please.