• 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.
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.

U4wjCj1.jpg


Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.
 
Adding new peacetime mechanics and depth is really, really great news, but this bit worries me slightly:

"If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition."

Considering how the goal of the monarch should be to not have to rely on parliament for support and to rule of his own accord, it seems counter-intuitive to punish the player for being able to act in that way, at least with legitimacy which is something very valuable and hard to replace. Then again, if this is only something that comes up every ten years then that's a very reasonable timeframe in which to operate. But if this kind of system is ever to be extended to the rest of European monarchies, one should remember that Louis XIV didn't lose legitimacy for not calling upon the estates-general.

Basically, I think that instead of punishing the player for not using parliament with legitimacy decreases, it should just be harder to get support from them the longer it's been since the last time you asked. Use parliament often and accept their demands frequently and those demands will stay small, but go a long period without making any concessions or consulting them and when they finally get the chance they'll push you for every last concession they can get.

I say this because it seems like what this game mechanic is representing is extraordinary demands by the monarch from parliament, which was not something that parliamentarians wanted to deal with. The English ideal was always for the king to live off of his own incomes and not have to come to them asking for more. Not asking for extraordinary taxes (i.e. not using this mechanic) would increase legitimacy, if anything.

However it goes, I'm very happy to see Paradox focusing on depth, and I'll buy this expansion for sure, whatever it is.

Nice post.

I'd also like to see the possibility of a Parlimentary Monarchy drifting into an Absolute one should Parliament not be consulted regularly (or indeed, the wishes of parliament ignored). Obviously, Parliamentarian forces would object to such a transition - with the outcome depending on the strength of Parliament relative to the King. A strong king - especially a series of strong kings - should have a good chance of pushing through a transition to absolutism with only relatively minor opposition. A weak king trying to do so...well, looks like we've got us a civil war.

Conversely, it'd be interesting to see the reverse happening - nobles and other with power in an Absolute or Despotic Monacrhy forcing a weak king to establish a parliament.
 
  • 11
Reactions:
Constitutional monarchy OTOH is +1 legitimacy, -5 years of nationalism, +10% manpower recovery and -0.15 monthly autonomy. Mechanically superior in most circumstances, but English monarchy may have special events/decisions/debates that make it better. (And it's available from the start rather than tech 22.)
Const Monarchy is better, but its far later than english monarchy
 
  • 8
Reactions:
  • 2
Reactions:
Will each seat have multiple aims? Cos from that UI it looks like if I want Yorkshire's vote, I have to lose legitimacy, or lose military tradition for Lancashire. This seems really simplistic as any debate would cost, say, x gold, y prestige and z legitimacy all the time, so you'd always have insane boosters on.

each seat has one aim only for that debate.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
I wish all these new governments (elective monarchy, dutch republic and english monarchy) were more general (as in replace Orangists with <dynastyname>ists) and available to all countries somehow outside nation designer. I mean, it wouldn't be entirely unfeasible to imagine governments in the style of those somewhere.
 
  • 11
Reactions:
ETA? For campaign planning purposes?

Like a quarter/half year or closer?

When its ready!

We usually aim to get out about 3 major updates each year though, but how long each takes to do depends on various amount of factors.
 
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
No small expansions? :(

I've liked Res Publica and Legacy of Rome the most of all CK2&EU4 expansions.

They just don't sell as well, and also tends to become more costly with all QA and overhead needed.
 
  • 14
  • 10
  • 2
Reactions:
Would it make sense for the English Monarchy to be in the English Civil War event chain? Depending on which option you choose (English Monarchy/No English Monarchy, something like that)?
 
  • 4
Reactions:
Loving these extra mechanics but I am concerned that they will make warfare less valuable. Why is that bad you ask? Well it is one of two things that players actively compete on with each other. (trade is the other one)

These new mechanics for peace must lead to active interaction and dynamic between players/AI or else it goes into boring feast

IDEA:
- To balance peace time and war time activities the peace time activities should stop(be easier to pass, national unity) while at war but only when war exhaustion is less than 10.
 
  • 6
Reactions:
Funny how this works. We had New World expansion, then Republic expansion, then War expansion... Now we get New World expansion and Republic expansion again.

True, free features expand other areas but it seems when Paradox wants to sell the game it's about New World, Republics and War.
 
  • 9
Reactions:
Funny how this works. We had New World expansion, then Republic expansion, then War expansion... Now we get New World expansion and Republic expansion again.

We had Colonisation, trade, government, war, exploration and the next one is X. :)
 
  • 16
  • 2
Reactions:
Interesting.
I like the fact that the game is becoming more and more complex.
 
  • 5
Reactions:
Are all the convincing of parliament seats be about taking country-wide penalties, or is there going to be some that are tied to doing something specific to the province? I mean something somewhat similar to the current missions:
- Build X in my province
- Increase base tax in my province
- Convert culture in my province
- etc...
 
  • 9
Reactions:
I think I can see the rationale behind losing legitimacy by not consulting Parliament. Given that this feature is constricted to Constitutional Monarchies and Constitutional Republics, not at least consulting Parliament can be seen as dictatorial and reduce the mandate of the government in the eyes of the electorate and the general populace.
 
  • 7
Reactions:
I hope that with the new government-related features, we'll have also negatives for some - such as annexation/annexation speed for feudal monarchies (stealthBBBnerf).
 
  • 2
Reactions: