Europa Universalis IV: El Dorado - Development Diary 3: Inti, Maya and Liberty Desire

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Wizzington

Game Director (Victoria 3)
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Welcome to the third development diary for Europa Universalis 4: El Dorado. Today, we’ll be talking about America and Liberty… and no, it’s not about the USA. Specifically, we’ll be talking about the Mesoamerican and South American Inti and Maya religions added in the expansion, and the new Liberty Desire system included in the free patch.


Maya
The Maya were divided into a large number of city-states vying for supremacy. In the past, these states were united in a large confederation called the League of Mayapan until infighting shattered the league. In El Dorado, we’ve attempted to simulate this expansion and contraction through Religious Reforms similar to the ones available to the Nahuatl (for details, see El Dorado Dev Diary 1). For a Mayan nation to pass a reform, they will need to own at least 20 provinces, have positive stability, no revolts, and no overextension. This is a little daunting.

Upon passing a reform, a Maya state will lose about half its territory, shrinking to a size of 10 core provinces determined by culture, religion and distance to capital. Other provinces will break away, joining existing nations or forming new nations and requiring you to reconquer them again. For each reform you have passed, you will be able to keep hold of more territory, retaining an extra province in addition to the original 10. As with the Nahuatl, when the last reform is passed and you border a Western nation, you will be able to reform your religion, getting a tech boost and gaining the permanent benefit of the religious reforms.

The Maya religion starts with +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and +1 Possible Advisors and their reforms give -10% Land Maintenance, -2 Global Unrest, +10% Infantry Power, +1 Colonist and -20% Core-Creation cost.


Inti
Where the Maya and Nahuatl religions are about expansion and contraction, the Inti faith is about maintaining the authority of the Sapa Inca by having the people worship him as a God. Inti nations have an Authority value that goes up from owning vast stretches of territory, and goes down when the ruler grants autonomy to a province (either from granting autonomy via by the grant autonomy action, being forced to by rebels, or choosing to do so in an event). Authority is also affected by a number of unique events added for the Inti religion. Authority reduces unrest and makes it cheaper to increase stability.

An Inti state that has 100 Authority and owns at least 10 provinces can pass a Religious Reform, but doing so will remove all their Authority and spark a civil war as a pretender exploits the loss of authority to attempt to seize the throne for themselves. After all, every reformer is challenged if they go too far.

If you lose this civil war, two Religious Reforms are lost, greatly setting back your progress towards reforming your religion.

As with the Nahuatl and Maya, when the last reform is passed and you border a Western nation, you will be able to reform your religion, getting a tech boost and gaining the permanent benefit of the religious reforms. Because the Inti religion does not have the same cycle of expansion and contraction as other two, Inti religious reforms are generally weaker than those of the Maya and the Nahuatl, but easier to accomplish.

The Inti religion starts with +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy in all provinces and their reforms give +10% Manpower Recovery Speed, +1 Colonist, +0.5 Yearly Legitimacy, +0.05 Land Morale and -10% Core-Creation Cost.

As the Nahuatl reforms were not finalized in DD1, I will also take the time to share them: -0.05 War Exhaustion, +1 Diplomatic Relations, +5% Discipline, +1 Colonist and -20% Stability Cost Modifier.


Liberty Desire
In Conquest of Paradise, we introduced the concept of Liberty Desire for Colonial Nations, measuring their desire to break away from their parent country, but the system has always been a bit too simplified revolving almost entirely around tariffs and very rarely resulting in said Colonial Nations winning their independence.

In the 1.10 patch, we will be introducing a major rework of Liberty Desire that turns it into a much deeper and more interesting system, but also expands it to all other subjects such as Vassals and Personal Union juniors. In 1.10, each subject has a Liberty Desire towards their Overlord, calculated based on a large number of factors such as opinion, diplomatic reputation, relative power, and relative diplomatic technology levels. Certain subject types like Marches and Client States are more loyal and thus have inherently lower Liberty Desire, while the Daimyos of Japan are an unruly bunch and have a large bonus to their LD. Vassals will also be aware of the power of all vassals relative to their liege, and their Liberty Desire will go up if they think that they could, together, bring you down. (This might even tame early game France - a little.)

While Liberty Desire is lower than 50, the subject will be considered ‘Loyal’ (as seen in their attitude). They will dutifully pay taxes, send their armies to help you in war, and refuse any offers of Support for Independence.

If Liberty Desire is above 50, but below 100, the Vassal is considered ‘Disloyal’. They will refuse to pay taxes and tariffs, won’t send their armies to help you in war (only defending their own territory) and will both look for foreign powers to support their independence and seek to ally with other rebellious subjects of their liege. If they find allies and supporters, their Liberty Desire goes up by an amount depending on the power of said supporters and allies.

At 100, the subject will be ‘Rebellious’. They will not only refuse to pay taxes and send help, but will declare war for independence the moment they think they have a shot at winning. When a subject declares war for independence, they will automatically call in all other subjects of their liege that they are allied to, and all independence supporters of both themselves AND their allies, meaning that their liege can be faced with quite the independence war indeed.

All in all, this system is meant to make vassals feel more lifelike - they are no longer mere slaves to their liege’s whims, but independent entities with their own goals who may turn on their ‘overlord’ if he does not take care to maintain their loyalty.


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Pretty nice. Two questions.

1) Are there nations left in the cold in Mesoamerica? As the old, tasteless Animists/Shamanists? If yes, you should bundle them somewhere, if you are dead set on internal gameplay being exclusively flavored.
2) Does diploannexation increase the vassal's liberty desire?

1) No, there's a few animists in South America but Mesoamerica is all new religions.
2) Yes.
 
Is there going to be anything special for the Muisca? Afterall, they were, in all likelyhood, the origin of the El Dorado myth (as reflected in one of their NIs).

They get a bunch of DHEs.
 
Will they at least honour truces? I mean, I've just forced PU on someone of my caliber. I'm exhausted. They hate me. What stops them from allying with my rivals to break free right away, while grabbing a little on top of that?

They won't DOW for independence if they have a truce.
 
Are the reformation bonuses listed in order? I'm assuming you lose the bonuses, once you reform your government, yes?

You can take the bonuses in any order, and you keep them after reforming.
 
Doesn't really address the PU issue, though. It's fairly possible to have other subjects and then luck into a PU with another great power and suddenly to have them exceed your army size.

PUs calculate their liberty desire based on individual strength towards liege.
 
How will 'relative power to liege' be calculated? I just feel like Poland-Lithuania will be a lot more unstable, due to Lithuania's initial massive size compared to Poland. The same goes for personal unions enforced in the rest of Europe. For example, last game I played Sweden, I fought Austria for a PU and won, but will this even be possible to maintain with the new liberty desire mechanics?

Vassals and Marches calculate it based on all Vassals and Marches. Other subjects calculate based on their individual power to liege. Lithuania generally stays loyal to Poland because of various friendship factors (and historical friends in particular).
 
Thanks Wiz for the answers. That clears a lot of things up.

I usually liked to keep strong vassals like Prussia or Styria or Persia around, probably have to change that play style and stick with smaller vassals or integrate them sooner than usual.

You can also make them into Marches, as that gives them a large reduction to LD.
 
The thing is that 'them being more than a threat than an asset' in this case could translate into 'it's time for annexation, so the subject is now going to break free, reset the entire annexation process, and then be useless for another 50 years.' At that point, then there's actually no point in even having them at all, since they can't ever reasonably be integrated unless they still don't declare wars while at war, which then just results in AI exploitation to ensure things get annexed. Yes, you can 'feasibly' do it, but you're also banking on two idea groups, not having annexed any subjects, and any other stray modifiers that you might pick up (like a statesman or diplo rep in NIs), and this is just to ensure they stay below 50% so they're actually useful. The moment they hit 50%, they can then seek allies, and if they find any (and they will, because you'll have rivals most likely, given that you're playing a Christian nation), they get LD modifiers based on that, so it can very quickly snowball out of control. All it takes to tip the balance is something minor like a statesman dying, or suddenly low/medium claim heir, or annexing a vassal to put them above that threshold to snowball it out of control.

But yeah, this is all just hypothetical 'worst case scenario' discussion. We'll have to wait and see on launch, but that won't stop me from thinking about it.

If you beat them in an independence war they get a large reduction to LD (that eventually goes away).
 
Will enemy AI take into account the Liberty Desire of your vassals? For instance, you have a few big vassals but all of them are above 50 LD, so they will not help you as much in a war, making your country much weaker. Will the AI be more likely to attack if that is the case?

It's an interesting change, and the new religions sound nice as well.

Yes, AI will understand this.
 
Too much focus on vassals, didn´t really understand what will happen with colonial nations/what will change.

They get the same LD system as everyone else now, meaning for example they don't pay tariffs at 50+ LD and they will start allying each other and fighting for independence together.
 
Is there somewhere in-game that would show another nation's subjects' LD, or is this just magic knowledge the AI has that the player has to determine on his own?

I'm fine with either answer, I just want to know.

Conversely, will the player have a way to see if the AI's vassals are being disloyal?

You can check their attitude towards Overlord.
 
Meaning yon typical hostile vassal will never help their overlord unless the aggressor is moving into the vassal's own land?

They will also try to siege their own cores.
 
I like it, looks good, but why only one screenshot this week? I need more! :sad:
Will the DLC include new advisor portraits as was done with COP? I'm hoping for lots of DHE! What about Chimu's moon worship? I noticed in the dev multiplayer that 100% doom had no event description and picture, I hope that changes.
I'm glad liberty desire got a rework. I hope we don't have to wait long, I want it now, no hint on next week's DD...
Thank you.

El Dorado includes advisor packs for Mesoamericans and South Americans.

Here's a hint for next week's DD.
 
Will +200 opinion no longer keep vassals from declaring on you?

It'll affect LD, but potentially they can still have enough LD at 200 to declare on you.
 
How moddable is the new liberty desire system? Can you mod which ai attitudes give the liege money? The liberty desire modifiers themselves... Are they moddable or hardcoded?

You can mod the attitudes and all variables involved, you can also add and remove LD from events and such.
 
That was my first thought as well. Much like you, I am worried about how all of this will work. With the Influence idea group giving your subjects increased force limits and now with vassal banding together to break free, sounds like if they don't balance it properly, it will just add unnecessary tedium to a fairly simple and already fairly nerfed aspect of the game.

Influence does not increase your vassals' forcelimits, it increases how much forcelimit YOU get from your vassals.
 
Do you have any plans to simplify tariffs? Currently, having to manage multiple colonial nation's tariffs and liberty desire is a pain. Also getting spammed with tariff and liberty desire related events from multiple nations is bothersome. Having a system for making all colonial nations pay the same tariffs and only giving one set of events would help.
Looking forward to spending hundreds of hours messing around in the nation designer and with the new american religions, looks amazing so far.

Tariffs will still be per CN, but we've significantly reduced the event spam (and made the individual events have larger effect).