Dec 3, 2019

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Today's Development Diary by Groogy

Hello! So finally another Dev Diary is upon us. This one I’ve been teasing over the weeks of what it would be.

So if you haven’t guessed it by now or you haven’t been following my sadistic tweets, what I’ve been spilling the beans on the past mondays are features we call Centers of Revolution and Revolutionary Zeal! The Revolution is some of my favorite features of the game, together with the League Wars. So I’ve always wanted to expand more upon it, make it more than just a mad dash of destroying your country and then getting a nice unique government as a reward. So me and the team got working on expanding on this feature for the new expansion.

So let’s start at the beginning, how does the revolution even start? So from here we wanted to do something where we tied it into the world of the game instead of having a disaster based mainly on your amount of loans. Instead it’s troubles that happen over time and slowly stack up until your people have had enough. So let’s start with the initial conditions needed. First you need a decent population for a revolution to even get going, you need to be an absolute ruler, then for each 30 development province there’s a yearly chance that the Revolution will start.

But of course that is not fun we want some player agency for the player as well, either to try and minimize that his people pick up the pitchforks or that they do. Things that can affect how likely the province is to be the match that ignites the tinder are but not limited to:

Absolutism, the higher absolutism the more likely.
Neglection of the Third Estate influence while you rely heavily on taxation of their production.
How urbanized the province is, the more development it has the more likely it is.
You’ve just lost a horrific war causing you to sit on high revanchism.
Or you are an embarrassment to the world, your prestige is nowhere to be seen.
You hand over control of the grain to the merchants wanting a more laissez-faire approach.
An immense national debt that you do not deal with.

Our Content Designer, Caligula Caesar who has worked on this feature also wrote some detailed text giving some more historical context to things as well:

Historically, the French Revolution rather took everyone by surprise, but in hindsight we can see plenty of events that were significant to its build up and even foreshadowed things to come. We translated these to the game with a series of events inspired by pre-revolutionary France for countries eligible to have the Revolution. Depending on which options are picked in them, the Center of Revolution will be significantly more likely to spawn in your lands. The events we added include:

The Flour Wars – chafing under the harsh restrictions the government places on their trade (among other things preventing them from raising prices in a famine and mixing chalk or ground up bones into the flour), the grain merchants desperately plead for you to liberalize their markets, allowing them to make far greater profits, which they faithfully promise to pass on to you. However, if you do so, you risk being seen as culpable for the people’s suffering should a famine strike soon after:

The Reforms of <a level 3 master of mint> – if you have a talented and prominent master of the mint (cough, cough Neckar), they might propose an ambitious set of reforms that will probably make you better off but will certainly improve their own standing…

The National Debt – having a high national debt will provoke widespread worries, and the people will demand action. You get a choice of which set of uncomfortable reforms to pick – either raise taxes and deal with higher unrest, or reorganise the administration of the economy in return for a stability hit.

The Third Estate’s Demands – if you derive 75% or more of your income from trade and production combined but have particularly unhappy or uninfluential Burghers, they will be understandably upset and demand you make certain concessions to them:

Eventually, the various grumblings will begin to solidify into a full-blown revolutionary movement that threatens to bring chaos - or enlightenment, depending on your viewpoint - to the continent...

The Estates are mentioned here quite a bit, with our overhaul of the estate system we've been working very hard to try and integrate the Estates as a long term thing you deal with internally which then will have effects on the rest of your empire. For instance how Estates interact with absolutism and so on is one case. And here with having them involved with the Revolution is one way for us to do that as well.

So now after you’ve gotten out your pitchfork, you are all hooked on these hip new ideas of equal worth, what happens next? The province the revolution starts in becomes a Center of Revolution, it’s birthplace.

While doing this dev diary I discovered a bug where the Center of Revolution has no Revolution, which obviously is wrong.

This Center will continuously spread the ideals of the revolution further and further across the continent, three provinces at a time and quite quickly as well. When the people have realized that the guy in charge is just so because he has a very expensive hat, the local autonomy of the provinces will be raised equal to half of the absolutism of the empire (So 100 Absolutism would be 50 Local Autonomy), Subjects as well will gain up to 30% Liberty Desire as their population gain revolutionary ideals.

Now you are not meant to be stuck like this of course, there are some ways to combat the peasants getting uppity with your rule. An ineffective way but short term solution is to fight Revolutionary Rebels, this will remove the spread from several provinces but it’s not a long term solution. The cowards but very slow way is to just straight up surrender and adopt the Revolution but you are going to have to wait and try to keep your empire from breaking apart for quite a long time.

Important to say is that any numbers/requirements might still be a bit work in progress as of writing this. Also I noticed after us implementing these features that the AI is a lot better at maxing out Absolutism than I expected which is a happy surprise.

The quick and much more fun way is the new Revolution Disaster. The disaster have gotten a total makeover for the new expansion. The prerequisites of the disaster have changed a bit now focusing on the spread of the revolution within your borders. Besides that a lot of writing has been touched up on, making it better and interesting. But most importantly we wanted it to no longer feel like you have to game the system and destroy your nation on purpose to become Revolutionary if that is what you want to do. So now you get a choice when the disaster starts. Are you Revolutionary or Reactionary?

Now this is important, if you want to turn revolutionary you have to pick the revolutionary side and defeat the reactionaries. If you pick the reactionaries and lose, you will become revolutionary republic but you will be heavily penalized that might lose you the chance to become revolutionary Target, we’ll get to why that is a bit later.

When you do turn Revolutionary you will be prompted with most likely a unique text describing specifically how your people liberated themselves. @Caligula Caesar have written a lot of different unique texts for several major countries all over the world. Yes all over the world, while the Revolution is most likely to happen in Europe, we are no longer locking the mechanics solely to that continent.

As if the Ottomans weren’t scary enough already

Now when you are finally Revolutionary, besides getting access to the old mechanics like factions and the Revolutionary Target, we’ve also added a bit more things to spice things up. First up is Revolutionary Zeal, a feature that replaces Absolutism to fit better with your new government, I mean the commoners did take up arms because of the King’s overreach in power.

Featuring what we imagine would be the Swedish variant of the Committee of Public Safety.

The Max Zeal is dictated by various factors, like your government, Great Power Status, Golden Era and how much the Revolution have spread to your provinces. Zeal itself you can gain from things like Strengthen Government, Supporting Revolutionary Rebels in a Reactionary Country, Spreading the Revolution at the end of a Musket, but can also lose it by losing wars or by being at peace with a reactionary neighbor.

Right now the modifiers that Revolutionary Zeal has is very much placeholder and were based on some older design that has since changed. So we will be switching them out for something “sexier”. Currently they are this at 100% Zeal

+40% Administrative Efficiency
+100% Government Reform Progress Gain
+50% Reinforcement Rate

What would you want the Revolutionary Zeal effects to be? What would be the driving factor of the people’s fervor to push on the revolution?

Anyway the functionality of the Zeal does not end there. It also functions as a measure of how good of a revolutionary state you are. If you are not constantly pushing forward and onwards then what kind of fraternity of humankind are you fighting for? This opens up for the next thing, someone else can claim you are a traitor to the cause and a failure to take the Revolutionary Target from you. When someone goes through the Disaster or Adopts the Revolution but do not come first or qualify to become Revolutionary Target, they become a Junior state of the Revolution, simply put a Republic that have accepted the egalitarian ideals that were born in the Center of Revolution. If one of these Republics have a higher Zeal than the target they can take over the torch of the Revolution.

Here's why you want to win as the Revolutionaries in the Disaster. If you lose as the Reactionaries you will start at 0 Zeal making it impossible for you to keep or stay the Target.

And as long as you are a Revolutionary State but not the Target you can not turn into an Empire or Dictatorship. When you fall down to low Republican Tradition there is instead a chance that the country is taken control of a Committee to safeguard the Revolutionary principles.

Now let’s return to the Reactionaries. What if you don’t want to give people their rights to freedom and equality, what if you are a bit more old fashioned? First you can side with the Reactionaries in the Disaster, if you are successful your land will be protected from the influence of the dangerous ideas coming from the commoners as you’ve proven with might that your authority is absolute and should not be challenged. But you can also of course directly attack the root of the problem by declaring war on the Revolutionary Target to dismantle the revolution. Upon victory the center will be destroyed but if they have managed to spread to another major urban center then they might get a second chance. If there is no Revolutionary Target for 20 years straight it will be deemed that the Revolution failed and the peasants will stop having these futile fantasies.

Last for the Revolutions I want to cover the new government reforms we’ve given them. So I asked @Meka66 to just add a few, replace the absolutism ones and make something interesting. He gave me a "got you fam" and now If I’m counting this right, the mad lad, has made +20 unique reforms for the Revolutionary Nations.

Yet again, warning that these numbers will most probably be tweaked in the future.

Here’s a little taste of what’s available to the Revolutionary Empire. Numbers as per usual subject to change after balancing.

A lot of these affect the Revolutionary Zeal of the country but also replacements have been made where it makes sense to fit with the narrative of your country compared to the old ones. Here are some examples.

Military Electorate will pick the ruler from your General staff, give Army Tradition and Land Leader Fire.
As Guiding Principle of your Government, besides the old Republican ones you can pick between Revolutionary, Equality, or Imperial Principle. Which each focuses on one of the Revolutionary Factions.
The Feuillant System will let you utilize the States General mechanics with their own modifiers on each end.

There is so much content packed into the Revolution now that I had to stop somewhere. But for some honorable mentions we have The French Reign of Terror, The Dutch King fleeing by fisher boat, The English Storming the Tower and so much more.

And that’s it for Centers of Revolution and Revolutionary Zeal, I’ve probably missed some detail here or there but I’ll try and answer any questions you have.

Next is also the Burgundian Inheritance. Not exactly related to this except they got the best Revolutionary Tri-Color Flag. But I’ve seen a lot of questions about how will the Burgundian Inheritance work now with us reworking it and we haven’t been exactly super clear. My guiding principle for this change has been that the Inheritance should be playable for the Player and @Meka66 who have been implementing the rework has been following that and I think he’s better suited to explain it.

The Burgundian Inheritance has been overhauled completely is now something that Burgundy has some control over.

The old Burgundian Inheritance event was somewhat inaccurate in how it represented the chain of events that led to the partition of the Duke’s territories. Although Charles de Bourgogne died without a male heir, he did have an eligible female heir; Marie.

As Marie, Burgundy is presented with a choice as to which royal house it wishes to marry into; France, the Emperor, a strong ally, or stand against its would-be overlords and fight for Burgundian independence.

A Burgundy who sides with the Emperor will be completely subject to the Emperor’s will. This triggers an Imperial Incident wherein the Emperor must choose what to do with his newfound territory and whether or not he wishes to make concessions to France. One option available to a particularly sadistic Emperor is to make Burgundy look more like a typical member of the HRE and fracture all of Burgundy’s holdings into HRE princes.

Siding with France will leave Burgundy’s realm largely untouched, although the Emperor may demand the return of his lowland territories.

Any Christian nation with a royal marriage with Burgundy is eligible to inherit the Burgundian throne, and as such, Burgundy may choose to seek the support of a nation nobody expects, like the Spanish for example.

Whoever Burgundy chooses to devote themselves to, they shall fall under a personal union for a number of years. After some time has passed, Marie will die and her realm shall be inherited in its entirety by her senior partner.

Of course, Marie can choose to stand alone against the odds and fight for Burgundy’s right to rule itself! This will inevitably bring Burgundy into conflict with both France who wishes to end the Bourgogne dynastic claim to their kingdom, and the Emperor who wishes to regain the Imperial territory in the low countries. Though this fight against two of europe’s strongest powers will be difficult, some interesting rewards await a Burgundian player who can succeed against the odds and defend their country against their would-be overlords.

Before ending this dev diary I want to also acknowledge some concerns that the community has had on some features. The Big Three, Corruption from Territory, Trade Companies and Continent Restrictions on Capitals. We are looking into improving these, updating them to new mechanics, to completely overhauling. But to exactly what I don’t have anything concrete that I can give for now but I do want to say what the teams intent is and giving you the opportunity to comment.

Trade Companies are an old feature and have been neglected when it comes to upgrading them to newer features. It’s something we will look into, making it work a bit more nicely with “new features” such as autonomy. If we’re happy with the results this would probably also ease up on the requirements for where you can move your capital as it would not be needed anymore. Corruption from Territory's original intent was to reintroduce some sluggishness or penalties to conquering land rapidly, to not make each time you gain a province as effective as the previous one as you are growing past what your administration can manage. Originally this was coring’s task in the game mechanics. I remember in EU3 for a province to become a core was something like 50 years. In EU4 however the time it takes to get a core has gotten shorter and shorter as obviously people didn’t like to wait 50 years. Now of course Corruption from Territory is not having the intended effect so we’ll figure out something else to accomplish a way where the snowball doesn’t keep being as effective throughout your conquest spree so you get diminishing returns.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this dev diary! The Yuletide is coming upon us meaning the next Dev Diary will be on the 14th of January. But as long as nobody catches me I’ll keep leaking secrets about what the next diary will entail. So until then!