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Besuchov

Studio Manager, PDS
Paradox Staff
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Mar 6, 2001
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The Middle Kingdom

I told you last week that we were working on some new gameplay for two nations. Last week I talked about Japan, this week the turn has come to China.

China has always been a bit of a problem in Europa Universalis; a huge nation with huge potential power, that for some reason spent the era in decline and failed to compete with the European powers. This kind of situation, where a nation is theoretically strong (and therefore strong in a historical setup) but due to bad decisions or factors not modeled in the game acts weak, is always a problem in a strategy game. We have always had the problem where the Chinese AI takes a look at what it has to work with and goes on to conquer large chunks of the world. The solution so far has been to give China a modifier that simply penalizes it for being China. We figured we could do better than that.

We sat down and thought about how we could tame the Chinese monster with something that felt more historical and fun and that would give someone playing China something to play with. We came up with what we call Factions.

In the present implementation, China has three factions that compete for influence over the empire. These are the Eunuchs, the Temples and the Bureaucrats. Each of these factions will have an influence value, and the faction with the highest influence will be considered to be in power. Which faction is in power will have a great impact on what you can do with your country; one faction might allow you to build colonies and fleets but will only let you fight defensive wars and so on.

The influence of the factions will change with the mood of the country, represented by the current monarch and the domestic policy sliders. A monarch with a high military value will cause the influence of the warlike Temples faction to increase, while a domestic policy setting favouring Naval over Land will increase the power of the Eunuchs.

The second thing we are implementing is a new government type for China called the Celestial Empire. The key property of the Celestial Empire is that its ruler has the Mandate of Heaven. This represents the very strong belief of both the rulers of China and its citizens that they have the support of heaven. As long as the emperor has the Mandate the people will support him and China will enjoy peace and stability. Should signs appear that he no longer enjoys the Mandate of Heaven his people will lose faith in him with the result that revolts are more likely, stability will be harder to regain and so on.

These effects combined will make China a colossus on clay feet, fettered by an internal power struggle. A Chinese player will have a huge potential at his fingertips if he can maneuver the right faction into and out of power at the right time while at the same time trying to maintain a stable and harmonious country. Should things go against him though, he can quickly find himself in a situation with an unstable country, possibly facing mass revolts with factions that will not release the tools needed to correct the situation; a great challenge, in other words...

Screenshot will follow!
 

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Yes! At last!
Now let's read.

Edit: I like the sound of it. China is a big beast with has great potential but is difficult to steer in any particular direction and needs to contain itself as well.
 
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That sounds pretty good and historical. I can't wait to get the Eunuch faction in power and go for a voyage of discovery with Zheng He. Chinese North America here I come.
 
Interesting DD.

Does this mean China will also have faction-specific rebels. For instance, when the Bureaucrats are in power, you can get rebels alligned with the Temples, trying to increase their influence by military means?
 
Faction are certainly what lacked in Europa Universalis. It's a good addition.
Are those factions specifics to China or does each countries have faction in vanilla ?
If this is not the case in vanilla, could those faction be implemented to others countries in mods ?
 
The Mandate of Heaven thing sounds like a gadget, but the faction system for China, now, THAT sounds really good.

Will it be possible to implement it for other nations ? Potentially, all countries have "factions".
 
Will it be possible for foreign nations to receive the mandate? (I'm not familiar totally familiar with its history, please excuse if it sounds unrealistic)
 
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I believe factions could be a way to avoid blobbing. The bigger you are, the more factions cripple you.
 
This looks very very promissing...i'm getting eager by the day to get my hands on Divine wind :cool:

Same question as GenericDude : is the faction system like the shogunate feature, only possible for one nation at one time ? or for one culture ? or can we have this for lots of nations ?
I mean, if we have several chinese factions, can we have that sytem for all the factions ? ...
 
Will it be possible for foreign nations to receive the mandate? (I'm not familiar totally familiar with its history, please excuse if it sounds unrealistic)
No. The Mandate of Heaven is just a blessing "from the heavens" a Chinese Emperor receives for being a righteous and competent ruler.

This made it easy for people to blame the Emperor when things went wrong. So if there was an earthquake, the heavens were angry because the Emperor was being a bad ruler. Considering China is pretty huge and there's always something going wrong, it was a great excuse to get rid of an Emperor you didn't like.
 
Awesome, i can't wait until this expansion is released!
 
Temples?
Why not add also Family of Empress, Buddhist Faction, Confucian faction, Neo-confucian faction etc?
And maybe more revolting states?
Check MEIOU and its glorious Red Turban rebellion. :cool:
And what of making it possible to place fleets in Yangtze and Hehong?