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EU4 - Development Diary - 4th of August 2020

Good morning! Welcome to another South-East Asian themed dev diary. This week we’re focusing on the Khmer Empire.

Khmer was once the dominant power in Mainland South-East Asia. Ruling from the mighty capital of Angkor, the empire encompassed most of modern Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Due to a combination of factors which may have included plagues, ecological issues, and the decision to change the state religion from Hinduism to Theravada Buddhism the empire fell into decline starting from the 14th Century. Thai and Lao powers broke away from the periphery of the kingdom and established their own domains. In 1431, the killing blow was struck by Ayutthaya with the sack of Angkor. The Khmer empire would never recover from this final defeat. The period following the sack of Angkor has been called the Dark Age of Cambodia, and neatly corresponds to the EU4 timeframe.

dd_dark_age.png


Like Majapahit, Khmer begins the game in a Disaster. The Dark Age of Cambodia is a lot less punishing than Majapahit’s situation in that there are no additional events that break up the country or spawn rebellions, but you need to contend with a hefty 25% increase to all power costs (as always, numbers presented in dev diaries are not final). Your priorities will have to be on consolidation and reconstruction rather than expansionism.

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Khmer can end their decline and restore the glory of their old empire through their new missions tree. They’ll need to restore their old capital of Angkor, achieve some degree of religious unity, and improve the development of their more rural provinces. When this is achieved the disaster ends and Khmer can truly begin restoring its empire.

Some additional highlights:

  • The Second Golden Age mission rewards -25% powers costs and -33% culture conversion cost for 20 years, compensating for the lost monarch points during the disaster.
  • The Enlightened Rule mission enacts the Chakravarti government reform discussed in previous dev diaries.
  • Around half of the mission tree is focused on military expansion, and like Ayutthaya’s mission tree these missions reward Subjugation CB’s against your targets.
  • The Restore the Empire mission increases your government rank to Empire.
  • The Invade Burma mission grants +0.5 Army Tradition for the rest of the game.
  • The Overseas Adventures mission has you invading Borneo and being rewarded with a permanent +1 Yearly Navy Tradition.

dd_privileges.png
dd_privileges_2.png



Above you can see four new estate privileges, with effects that should be fairly self-explanatory. Brahmins at Court functions essentially the same as the Brahmin privilege for Indian Muslims. This privilege as well as Advanced Irrigation Techniques are only available to specific nations, including Khmer, and are unlocked through their mission trees. Monastic Temples is available to all Buddhists and provides a new way to control your Karma, while Tropical City Planning is available to all countries in the Chinese or Indian tech groups and offsets the penalties for developing and colonizing in Tropical provinces.

That’s all for today! Next week we’ll take a look at the maritime Sultanates of Malacca, Brunei, and Aceh. And I think the week after that will be Vietnam. There's still plenty of content to show off, so make sure to catch up with weekly dev diaries.
 
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The missions look great once again, but those new privileges look a bit unbalanced because of their almost complete lack of negatives. e.g. surely granting special privileges to the elite of another religion would imply lowered absolutism? Likewise if the merchant guilds are made responsible for tropical cities & irrigation. I see that some are rewards for missions, but if the point is that it's a mission reward with no downside, why add the extra step of making it a privilege rather than just adding a country modifier?
 
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surely granting special privileges to the elite of another religion would imply lowered absolutism
sometimes, granting certain privileges to certain elites is done as a deliberate way to knock out the underpinnings of other elites' privileges.

and, y'know. One of the engines of French absolutism was very precisely the issuing of privileges that came with the drawback that you had to spend huge amounts of time right where the king could see what you were up to.
 
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I really feel that the Advanced Irrigation techniques should just be a modifier, it has no interaction with the estate system at all and there is no situation where you wouldn’t take it. Putting it in the estate system just means that you can forget to use it while providing no upside. With the Brahmins at Court there could be situations where you would want to revoke it so making it a privilege makes sense, but then I would still like it to have at least a tiny amount of estate influence.
 
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Why is Advanced Irrigation Techniques an estate privilege? Considering it doesn't interact in any way with estates and is purely a bonus, it seems kinda unnecessary for it to be privilege instead of country modifier. Also doesn't feel like it has much to do with merchants.

The other estate privileges are fitting.
 
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Since the Papacy mission tree is void in current version (compare it to France! at least France has a good mission tree!) and seen that it was the center of the previous so called "emperor" mega patch which focused on Catholicism, I have no hope, and no hype. I would prefer the communication to be silent and just that you release those bits of little bug fixes you only seem to be able to do correctly, instead of promising things which never happen.

EU4 content is fun, but the level of bugs is rising every patch and it's boring.
 
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I have a few more questions to estates. Will Muslim nations in sea gain the brahmins estate or keep the dhimmi? Will sea Hindus get the vaishyas estate, which are the Hindu merchant caste? Can brahmins and vaishyas get the colonizing privileges that regular clergy/burghers have? In India that doesn't matter much, but sea has a lot of islands to colonize.
Because sea Hindus have the regular nobility estate and the brahmins estate you can grant both the supremacy over the crown privilege for 20% influence and loyalty to all estates. I don't think that's intended.
Any changes to the eastern inward perfection privilege? Most of the game it is just 2-3% Dev cost reduction, while you constantly suffer stab hits if going to war. For such a harsh penalty it should actually give a good benefit.

Any changes to Buddhism? It is such a boring religion, mainly because there is no choice involved. Christians have several boons to pick from regardless of their sub denomination, Hindu can pick god's, Muslim have the piety slider with several boons and buttons to spent piety. For Buddhism you always want to stay neutral.
Boons you can activate at a karma cost or the ability to pick the boons of either karma side would make the religion so much better.
 
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Paradox forum members: Paradox is bad because all they do is add expansive new content that introduces new bugs instead of fixing known existing bugs

Also Paradox forum members: why aren't you planning on including this complex change that mostly satisfies my niche pet interests?
 
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Will you make change to Dai Viet and Champa map that "Da Nang" belonged to Champa in 1444 and Dai Viet will get more provinces in their northern core region?
 
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Interesting approach: starting with a small nation that is already in decline and having to build back up.
 
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Their ideas are already the best in the region... what more do you want?

-10% dev cost.. :rolleyes: though honestly i'd prefer if that modifier was just removed from all idea sets, it's incredibly powerful for the mid-late game. I strongly dislike not having it.
 
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I’m impressed on the content being added in this, SEA has been a long neglected region, and it seems the dev team has finally decided to give the region the justice it deserves.

@neondt Around when will we find out if this update is a free patch, immersion pack, or expansion?
 
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