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Welcome back to our weekly series of development diaries about Europa Universalis. This time we’ll talk about four new features that will be part of the next expansion.

Free Cities of the Holy Roman Empire
Now the Emperor can designate up to seven free cities in the empire. A free city is a one province minor with a minimum of 10 development.

Free cities provide Imperial Authority to the emperor, as well as manpower and income. A Free City also have some rather nice bonuses to their development.

If a Free City gains another province or leave the HRE. they lose the free city status. And a Free City is always a type of Republic, so countries that aren't a Republic will become one upon accepting Free City status.

A Free City is always protected by the Emperor if attacked, so be careful when expanding in the HRE. A Free City can never be the subject of another nation.

Of course, as the ruler of a OPM, you can always refuse the offer of becoming a free city, and the emperor can spend some Imperial Authority to revoke a cities rights.

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Remove Electorate
The next expansion lets you get even more control over your electors. If your religion is now official in the Empire, you can now spend IA to remove the Electorate status of your disloyal Electors.

Pause Westernisation
Sometimes while you are westernising, you end up where you need to use your power for something else, like boosting stability, but currently you can’t. Now we have added the option to pause westernisation. You’ll still get the unrest from westernising, but there will be no events spawning while westernisation is paused. Most importantly though is the fact that your power is accumulating again instead of contributing to the westernisation process.

Retire Advisor
Have you ever sat there with a lot of money, but cursing the options you for advisors. In the next expansion, you can now spend the amount of money it would cost to hire an advisor, and permanently retire him. Within a month, if there is available space in your pool of advisors, you will get a random new one in the same category. Maybe you get the +discipline one you wanted..


Next week we’ll focus on Luther and Buddha.
 
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Great!
 
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There will be a cooldown period for retirement? Because we will just keep retiring them until we find the one we want.

I like pausing westernazing, so we'll be able to assault forts in case the military points is down to zero :)
 
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Can't wait to see Buddhist mechanics, the collective fever-dream is something something about a karma meter where being in the middle gives you the most balanced bonuses, and being in the ends give you topical bonuses and maluses when added up, doesn't compare with being in the middle, but we'll see.
 
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Sexy. I've been waiting for free imperial cities for awhile. I've also noticed that Paradox has been learning from some of the most popular mods. Government ranks and the new "free imperial cities" mechanic comes to mind.
 
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The little fort graphic is nice and helpful and it was my hope that we'd be able to see where the forts are from the political map. But it looks a little out of place; seeing a 2D graphic randomly around the map will take some getting use to. It would look so much better with a 3D graphic on the province instead.

Like in victoria 2 where you build a fort and you can see it right on the province. Now that forts have a very large importance in this game it is my opinion that while the current 2D fort graphic is useful, a 3D fort graphic would serve the purpose of being useful while not hampering the visual experience of the game
 
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New tag in one of Wurttemburg's former provinces. Anyone know what it might be?
I think Fürstenberg because the province name is longer than the old name Konstanz?
Edit: It's indeed Ravensburg.
Also new provinces in Provence, Liege, Münster, Cologne and Cleves. Thüringen is now owned directly by Saxony.
 
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Just got off a night shift and seen this!

Savoy looking quite thin in parts. A lot of new HRE nations! You swear they reinvent the game every expansion.