Jan 14, 2020

Europa Universalis IV - Addaway

Hello! We’ve returned back from our winter slumber and some of us even got a head start of other people at the office and came back already last week. I hope you’ve all had a great Yuletide and that your New Year got off to a good start.

So last dev diary we towards the end we talked about how we were looking into doing major balance changes for the future patch, directly addressing the most important issues from the community. Me and @Johan have since been working to try and make the game more enjoyable and as we were I realized how many large balance changes we’ve done over 2019. And now we were doing even more balance changes the week before as of me writing this. Of course some of these changes are going to be controversial and not everyone will agree with every single piece that we bring up here. Hence we’ve decided to dedicate this Development Diary to just plainly go through the various bigger changes the team have made and explain them, not only mechanically but also why we did it or what we want to achieve.

I hope you are ready because I have a lot to cover. We can sort of even divide these balance changes into three categories, Government, Naval and Military. As per usual any values you see are work in progress and subject to further balance changes. After the balance changes I'll also give you some new stuff to be excited over, all government reforms we've added so far.

Government

So let's begin with what we talked about last Development Diary. We talked about some core issues that exist in the game right now, specifically Territory Corruption and Trade Companies. Both me and Johan felt over the vacation that we couldn’t take a full month and then not come with something for the next Diary.

Instead of trying to fix something broken by putting duct tape over it we decided to just rip out the Max State modifier all together. The idea I’ve been going with was I wanted something that would slow you down and put you where you have to make certain decisions but not feel as strangling as the old system. I want the player to be able to build up his administrative infrastructure as the game progresses.

We’ve also lowered for now the autonomy of Territories to 90% and Trade Companies to 80%. I am looking a bit towards if I can make the Min Autonomy in Territories a bit more of a relevant and interesting feature. What we want is that you have to make decisions on not only where you expand, what you conquer but also how you organize that development you just gobbled up. Do you try and maximize to just have as many territories as possible? Do you want to focus on a set of core states? Do you try and extract as much as possible from the territories available to you? A humongous Great Britain expanding their way into India should have to make some interesting decisions in order to draw out the full benefit.

And since this feature was added last week UX have not fully caught up so the pictures you see here are extremely Work In Process and just me throwing something together.

So even though we’ve added a cost for actually having provinces dedicated to being Trade Companies now. We wanted to address them a bit more. First is that they are an old feature and when Local Autonomy was added as a concept to the game they were not updated to follow suit. What having the penalty of Trade Companies being applied through Local Autonomy means is that you can no longer “counter” the Trade Company penalty that existed before by simply building the base buildings since Local Autonomy is applied as a multiplier after everything meaning you only get 20% the benefit regardless. However Trade Companies still ignore Local Autonomy on Trade Power, the Local Autonomy Cap can be manipulated by the same Autonomy Modifier that Territories have and they still help you with heathen religion problems in those provinces. Together with these changes and the changes in Golden Century for Goods Produced the real economic benefit should start to kick in Mid-to-Late game.

But their pure benefit as land aside we also wanted to address why players would continent jump just to be able to have them. Which we decided to do by making everyone in the game capable of creating Trade Companies regardless of what Continent they happen to be on. Every trade node in the old world is now fitted with a Trade Company. We haven’t changed the trade system in itself but what this means in essence a Qing colonizing Great Britain can move their Trade Capital to the English Channel node, set up trade companies and force feed the Europeans products they don’t need for maximum profit.

The new rules for where you can create Trade Companies are as follows:

Province religion must be of a different religious group than the owning nation
Province must be considered overseas both from nation and any subjects of nation, not including tributaries.
Province must not be part of the HRE

So at the start of the game Portugal can create a Trade Company in North Africa, but Mamluks can not create Trade Companies in Arabia. You’ll probably find a thousand ways to abuse this but with the new balance and spirit of the feature I figure that it’s better to keep these rules simple and permit crazy things to occur.

Since Trade Companies are now weaker, especially because of the Local Autonomy, we also changed the Trade Company Investments. This in order to make their ROI not too crazy bad and tweaked some parts of it as a whole. You can no longer build more than one Tier 3 Investment in one Region. So pick one you want wisely. But the Tier 1 and 2 Investments have had their costs reduced to 200 and 400. The Governance Category has been buffed giving now instead +50% and +100% Manpower/Sailor buff and the Tier 3 giving +2% Marine FL as well to their -2% Ship Cost bonus. Why the other Investments were not touched more than their cost is because they all gave something that is not affected by Local Autonomy.

Now this is a lot of new Trade Companies we need to come up with names for and there are so many interesting alternative outcomes that players could try and accomplish. Our general idea for now to figure out a base of names that would fit for let’s say the European Colonial Nations would be inspired from Arabic terms of the regions imagining them having spread from the Arab world originally to Africans, Indians and rest of Asia. If you have a great idea for a name that would fit one of these new Trade Company Regions, it can include specific names for a culture or nation, feel free to write suggestions in the suggestion forum! Like the Heavenly Trade Company of Heroes for English Channel when you have the EoC.

We also have the Absolutism Cheese. As it often is pointed out Absolutism is the main culprit of Monarchies strength over Republics, it doesn’t help that it is a very exploitable mechanic. We do not want to nerf absolutism, nor change the core of the feature as it does what we want it to do. However, we will be addressing the cheese of how you generate it. And one of the cheesier and unintended ways to get absolutism quick without any major repercussions. The tactic of having all your rebels spawn, and then quickly reduce autonomy in every recently rebelled province made the mechanic kind of pointless. So now if you actively reduce autonomy in a province, it will also remove the recent uprising block for further rebellions.

The idea that reducing autonomy gives you absolutism was intended as a feature where you enforce your rule in a region and then have to deal with the people not being as happy with that as you might envision through your enlightened rule.

Last thing before we move on to the next category. Missionary Maintenance cost is now very lowered but still with a similar formula. It is now:

0.5 * dev^( 1 + local autonomy * 0.75)

Naval Game

You’ve probably already seen our teasers about some new stuff coming that deals with naval. But first I want to talk about a core part about naval that needed some tweaking first and fix some things that were in essence broken. What I am talking about is Naval Combat. For a long time people complained in Multiplayer games that if one side picked Naval Ideas but the other side didn’t it was a foregone conclusion who would win the combat. And of course if you have a better navy you should win but the result of those combats were so skewed that something had to be wrong. So I think I started digging around while we were working on the Golden Century Immersion Pack to figure out what was wrong and try to fix the underlying problem instead of just nerfing Navies to the ground.

The issue you might or might not already know about, I’ve talked quite openly about it, is that ships when they hit 0 morale means that they stop shooting, but they do not retreat from the engagement. This means you’ll have a totally useless heavy ship occupying three slots just soaking up damage to eventually die and do a morale hit on the entire navy. In the end if one side can outperform the other side in Morale damage you will end up in an “equilibrium” where the losing side will just keep having their ships sink. And they’ll do this without doing anything as they are at such a low morale when entering the battle that it instantly hits 0. This is why you would see battles where 50 British Heavies could defeat hundreds if not thousands of ships.

So the new mechanic we are adding to Naval Combat is called Disengagement Chance and does basically what it says on the tin. Every combat tick after firing and casualties have been calculated the ship will try and disengage from the combat if their morale hits below 0.5 morale. The base value of this chance is 3% but can be modified by national ideas, like part of the reworked Portugese National idea “Legacy of the Navigator”.

To help explain what is happening in the combat the team have done some small visual upgrades for the combat interface. We now show three columns for each type of ship and are in order, Ships present, Ships Engaged, Ships Disengaged.

Also since I started talking with the community about this problem several have asked me to describe how the combat is evaluated and I think the best way is to make a little bit of a pseudo code summary here for people to dig through.

Populate Engagement with Ships until Engagement Width in this order:
Heavy, Galley, Light Transports
Ignore Disengaged Ships.

For Each Ship in Engagement
If previous target is about to die
set previous target to null
If has no previous target
Pick a random target with best score from the enemies engaged ships
Base chance to be picked of 10
Add random integer of 0 to 5
If of same ship type, increase chance to be picked +5
If morale is zero or below, reduce chance to be picked /10
If damage is less than 50%, increase chance to be picked *2
BaseDamage = 0.025 + 0.025 * (2 + Dice + Combat Modifiers)
Damage = BaseDamage * ShipCannons / TargetHull
If Galley type multiply damage with 2
WeaponEffect = 0.05 * ( ArtilleryFire - TargetArtilleryFire )
Damage *= 1 + WeaponEffect
Damage *= ShipCombatAbility + LeaderBonus

MoraleDamage = Damage * CountryNavalMorale / 3 * ShipStrength * 0.25
Apply Splash Morale Damage to 3 random targets, 10% of MoraleDamage
If ship Morale is 0 or below, multiply Damage with 10
Damage *= 0.03
Damage /= DurabilityModifier
Damage *= ShipStrength
[Snip]
For Each Ship in Engagement
If Ship Morale is below 0.5
Throw a 100 sided dice, if it is less than ship Disengagement Chance

Now the second part of Naval and a push to make it relevant. Making Blockades Sexy. So starting with the impact that Blockades have we’ve done some changes. Blockades we feel already have a real hard hit on you as it is already with the -50% Goods Produced, -75% Local Trade Power and +0.1 Monthly Devastation which itself will cause even worse stuff also long term for the provinces. So we didn’t want to make these penalties even harsher. What we want is to make them be more impactful for the nations embroiled in this war of supremacy over the seas.

Blockades now work more like looting where you in essence siphon off income from the nation
Blockades and Looting is an actual visible expense for the country being blockades or looted.
The Waroverview UI now shows the economical impact on each country from blockading or being blockaded instead of a blockade percentage.
Blockades no longer have the Goods Produced or Trade Power maluses

With this we’ve also lowered so you only need 50% of the ships you needed previously to siege the same amount of development.

But we didn’t stop there, we wanted to also make shipping troops across the pacific or atlantic to not be the easiest breeze but give naval oriented nations a small edge here. We’ve increased the attrition troops take when being transported in the open sea to 10%, it is still 1% while you are along the coast. Together with the Mercenary changes meaning Manpower is a much more precious resource than previously. Instead there are now a special unit type any country can build if they pick Naval ideas, called Marines. These do not take attrition at sea, they use sailors, they have +200% Disembarking Speed and ignore crossing penalties. However they do take +25% more shock damage.

These can be perhaps as a part of a larger offensive or to more easily conquer distant islands and coasts. But their intent is to live on your transport ships and be filling situational roles they are better suited to than your conventional army.

Portugal, England and Great Britain have uniquely higher marine forcelimits but we also listened to your feedback and added easy access to Marines for Netherlands, Venice & Castille. The rest have to take naval ideas or a policy to have access to it. Which you really want to already, if you are aiming to be a relevant naval power anyway.

Together with the Marines and the Blockade changes, we felt there needs to be ways to defend yourself against that. So the Coastal Defence buildings were added.

Coastal Defence which is unlocked at Dip Tech 5

+50% Blockade Force Required
+100% Hostile Disembark Time

Naval Battery which is unlocked at Dip Tech 12

+100% Blockade Force Required
+200% Hostile Disembark Time
+5 Hostile Fleet Attrition

Land Warfare

Even if we’ve focused a lot on the Naval stuff we have also done quite some tweaks to facilitate now that you do not have access to the infinite manpower pool known as Mercenaries anymore. First a little quality of life thing though.

All Special Units are now recruitable through the Macrobuilder. They take time to build and are proper “constructions” with costs. Units such as Streltsy and Cossacks who are spawned through their respective Government Interactions are spawned for free and immediate. With this since this will make Banners act more like normal units, they start at full strength when built.

Next is some new Manufactories available to the player. These use up the same slot as a Manufactory but will not give you the bonus goods produced. These buildings are designed around giving you something interesting to put except always manufactories in almost every single province. These buildings for the game are excellent money sinks that give you something that does not immediate money back which also means that this might mitigate late game run-away economy. These buildings are:

Ramparts and unlocks at Adm Tech 6
+1 Fort Level
+15% Local Defensiveness

Soldiers Households and unlocks at Adm Tech 15
+750 Local Manpower
Double if has Grain, Fish, Livestock or Wine province

Impressment Offices and unlocks at Dip Tech 7
+250 Local Sailors
Double if has Salt, Fish, Naval Supplies or Tropical Wood

Another thing tweaked to help you retain your manpower in long drawn out wars is Army Professionalism and Army Drill. First I need to cover that Drill Decay Modifier has been renamed to Regiment Drill Loss to better explain what it does fully. It prevents all losses of Drill on your regiments including the loss you get from casualties.

Now the Army Professionalism modifier has been modified to include a scaling -50% Regiment Drill Loss when full. This results in that every two soldiers you lose, you only lose Drill worth of one. Drill have had their defensive bonuses increased, to -25% Fire/Shock Damage received at 100% Drill, meaning you will lose a quarter less of your normal troops if you can maintain the professionalism of your army.

Together with Merc changes this should make it important for countries to try and maintain high drill to have their manpower reserve last as long as possible.

Portuguese Ideas

I did mention the new Portuguese National Ideas, so figured I should probably label those out for people.

sunk_ship_morale_hit_recieved = -0.33
disengagement_chance = 0.05
}
afonsine_ordinances = {
global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1
}
case_de_india = {
global_trade_power = 0.1
}
land_before_faith = {
global_colonial_growth = 15
}
the_bandeirantes = {
merchants = 1
}
royal_absolutism = {
build_cost = -0.15
yearly_absolutism = 0.5
}
por_royal_military_academy = {
defensiveness = 0.1
artillery_power = 0.1

Government Reforms

And to end things with we will go through the vast amount of new Government Reforms we’ve added. Some of these might be something we’ve mentioned in a dev diary here and there but this can be seen as a complete list of what we’ve added so far. I’ll first start with @Meka66 overhaul of the Theocratic Reforms.

When government reforms were first introduced in Dharma, Theocracies were sadly a little neglected when it comes to government reforms; having only 5-tiers, equal to the number that Tribal governments get.

However, I have now spent a degree of time fleshing out Theocracy government reforms, adding 3 more tiers and a total of 27 all-new reforms! These reforms will be available both to 1.30 patch and Dharma owners and will make the Theocratic playstyle a little more flexible. There are a number of new and interesting reforms available to Theocratic nations, so I’ll just go through and talk in detail about some of my favourites.

At Tier-2, players will be able to set the divine mission of their state to be to civilize those unfortunate primitives who do not yet follow the one true faith; granting a bonus to Native Assimilation and greatly reducing Native Uprising Chance. Combining this with Native Trading Policy will make your colonies stable and secure while always finding new followers amongst the native populace.

But why should your holy state be confined to perform its duties on land when the sea is rife with piratical heathens? Coastal Holy Orders will be able to take a number of reforms specialised in focussing their divine efforts to protecting the seas.

Monarchies and Republics have a long list of unique or regional government reforms, so I took some care to grant a few unique reforms to certain religions and cultures. Certain Asian nations will be able to integrate the Sohei Warrior Monks into their nation to greatly increase the capabilities of their armies.

One great weakness to the Monastic Order government as oppose to Leading Clergy is that Holy Orders are locked to rank-1. However, at tier-6 of the reform tree, Monastic Orders will be able to choose from an array of reforms that will allow them to freely switch government rank like any other nation, and unlock a few perks and mechanics previously unavailable to Theocracies.

At Tier-7 one must decide the nature of how faith interacts with your state. While the rest of the world considers separating the two, you know that we are all one people under the divine. This tier can grant some bonuses to conversion, or a Humanist Theocracy may determine that all people are equal under God.

At the final tier of reforms, the state decides how it interacts with the world and it may decide that the world will never be true and righteous so long as it is misguided by other states. By enacting One State Under God, you will gain a permanent warscore cost reduction against nations following other faiths. However, perhaps instead of uniting people into one faith, you focussed instead on the spread of your religion by force?

By enacting The Global Crusade, players will gain a permanent CB against foreign religions and will be able to force their religion through war even on countries from other religious groups.

Combining this reform with the age bonus gained in the Age of Reformation, you can spread your religion to some quite large nations. Here we can see I’ve spread the reformation into the Ottoman sultanate.

Here’s a fun little out take of where one of our Beta’s managed to make a Warrior Monk Pope. I’m so sad I have to fix that though.

Now to the full list of new Government Reforms that we have added. We have in total added 69 new Government Reforms.

Monarchies

Austrian Archduchy
-0.33 Liberty Desire from Subject Development
+5% Nobles Influence

Austrian Dual Monarchy
+2 Num Accepted Cultures
-2 Unrest
+2 Monarch Diplomatic Skill
-33% Promote Culture Cost

Legislative Sejm
Available for nation with Elective Monarchy
+1 Monarch Admin Power

Integrated Sejmiks
Available for nation with Elective Monarchy
-5 Years of Nationalism
Republics

Stratocratic Administration
Republican version of Prussian Monarchy
-0.02 Monthly war Exhaustion
+0.05 Monthly militarized Society
-0.075 Monthly Autonomy change
-0.5 Republican Tradition
-10 Max Absolutism
Generals become Rulers

Signoria
A better variant of Nepotism for Italians.
+5% Tax Modifier
-30 Max Absolutism

Protectorate Parliament
Enables Parliament Mehcanic
-0.05 Monthly Autonomy Change
+5% Land Morale
-20 Max Absolutism
-0.5 Republican Tradition

Military Dictatorship
-0.075 Monthly Autonomy Change
+10% Land Morale
-10 Max Absolutism
Generals become Rulers

Board of Admirals
Need full naval ideas and is not a pirate
+1 Leader Naval Fire
-0.5 Republican Tradition
Admirals Become Rulers

Imperial Diplomacy
Available for Free Cities
+2 Diplomatic Reputation
+1 Diplomatic Upkeep
Will make the Emperor like you move

Municipal Self-Defense
Available for Free Cities
+25% Land Forcelimit
+5000 Manpower

Revolutionary

Liberte
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Girondists Influence
+2 Accepted Cultures

Egalite
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Jacobins Influence
+0.25 Republican Tradition

Fraternite
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Imperial Influence
-20% Culture Conversion Cost
-25% Harsh Treatment Cost

Legislative Assembly
For Revolutionary Nations
+1.5 Yearly Revolutionary Zeal

National Constituent
For Revolutionary Nations
+15% Improve Relations
+1 Diplomatic Upkeep

The Feuillant System
For Revolutionary Nations
-10% Stability Cost
-0.1 Republican Tradition

The Two-Chamber System
For Revolutionary Nations
+1 Free Policy
+0.15 Republican Tradition

Absolute Power of the President
For Revolutionary Nations
-5% All Power Costs
+1 Election Cycle

A Revolutionary Council
For Revolutionary Nations
+10 Max Revolutionary Zeal
-1 Election Cycle

Revolutionary Principle
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Girondists Influence
+10% Land Morale
+15% Manpower

Equality Principle
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Jacobins Influence
+2 Tolerance of Heretic
+2 Tolerance of Heaten

Imperial Principle
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.1 Imperial Influence
-10% AE Impact
-10% Province Warscore Cost

Equal Electorate
For Revolutionary Nations
-2 Unrest
+10% Tax Modifier
+33% Female Advisor Chance
+0.1 Jacobins Influence

Three Social Classes
For Revolutionary Nations
+10% Administrative Efficiency
+0.1 Girondists Influence

Military Electorate
For Revolutionary Nations
+0.5 Army Tradition
+1 Land Leader Fire
+0.1 Imperial Influence

President For Life
For Revolutionary Nations
-0.5 Republican Tradition
+1 Monarch Admin Skill
+1 Monarch Military Skill

Government For People
For Revolutionary Nations
+20 Max Revolutionary Zeal
Become Rev. Empire
Does what it says. Needs Imperials to have high influence

Theocracies

Mission to Civilize
+35% native assimilation chance
-50% native uprising chance

Mission on the High Seas
+20% sailors modifier
+25% naval forcelimit
+33% capture ship chance

Mercantile Tithe
+5% global trade power
+10% burghers influence
+5% burghers loyalty

Divine Nobility
+1 yearly army tradition
+10% nobility influence
+5% nobility loyalty
Monastic Breweries

Catholic exclusive
+75% production of grain
+50% production of wine

Integration of the Sohei
Japanese/Eastern exclusive
+5% discipline
+10% infantry combat ability
+10% mercenary manpower

Embrace Conciliarism
Papal State exclusive
-50% cost to appoint Cardinals
Partial Secularisation
-10% idea cost
+5% institution spread

Clerical Commission
Theocracies only
-1 unrest
+1 diplomatic relations

Divine Guidance
Theocracies only
+20 max absolutism

Theocratic Democracy
Theocracies only
-1 unrest
Enables parliament (requires Common Sense)

Regionally Elected Commanders
Monastic Orders only
-1 unrest
Enables parliament (requires Common Sense)
Removes Tier-1 restriction

Open Public Elections
Monastic Orders only
-10% stability cost
+20 max absolutism
Enables Theocrats vs Militarists mechanics (requires Res Publica)
Removes Tier-1 restriction

A Dynastic Order
Monastic Orders only
+0.1 yearly devotion
+1 land leader fire
-20% harsh treatment cost
Generals become rulers on monarch death
Enables royal marriages
Removes Tier-1 restriction

Lords of the Sea
Monastic Orders only
+0.1 yearly devotion
+15% naval morale
+1 naval leader fire
Admirals become rulers on monarch death
Removes Tier-1 restriction

Church and State
+1 free policy
Soul and Body
+2 accepted cultures
God and Man
+1 missionaries
+1% missionary strength

Organising Our Faith
Pagan only
+1 yearly absolutism
+0.1 yearly devotion
One State Under God
Non Pagan Only
-30% warscore cost vs other religions

The Global Crusade
-40% enforce religion cost
Enables Global Crusade CB; allowing force conversion on Heathen countries
Using the “Release Nation” peace option will release a country following your religion

The Many Fingers of God
+2 tolerance of Heathens
+2 tolerance of Heretics

Priestly Autonomy
Pagans Only
+250 governing capacity

Proclaim Religious Head
Pagans Only
-20% warscore cost vs other religions
+1 diplomatic reputation

All Under Tengri (Tengri exclusive)
+15% cavalry combat ability
+25 cavalry-to-infantry ratio

Tribes

Barbaric Despoilers
Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform
+33% Raze Power Gain

Unified Horde Identity
Available to Steppe Hordes or nation with Great Mongol State Reform
+2 Horde Unity

Common

Black Army Reform
Available for Hungary
-15% Mercenary Maintenance
+2.5% Mercenary Discipline
-10% Nobles Loyalty

Crusader State
CB On Religious Enemies
+15% Manpower Recovery Speed

United Cantons
-150 Governing Capacity
+1 Free Policy
+50% Mercenary Manpower
-30 Max Absolutism

I hope I haven't missed any Government Reforms now. Hope you've enjoyed this development diary and as usual me and @Johan will be around to answer questions. Next Diary will come on the 4th of February.

Dec 3, 2019

Dev Diary: Vive La Révolution

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!