Mandated Ages

by on January 21, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the tenth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes
The Cossacks: Cossack Estate
Mare Nostrum: Paradox’s Sea
Rights of Man: Institutions of Man

After Rights of Man, the Europa Universalis team started a series of expansions largely focused on specific regions. Mandate of Heaven was announced on March 6, 2017, and released, along with patch 1.20 on April 6 (the same day as Stellaris: Utopia). The follow-up 1.21 patch came out on April 25, with a rework of the map and events for Hungary.

The Four Ages of the World

The headline new feature was not regional, however. The game was divided up into four ages, which drive certain rules and disasters. In the first two ages, religious rules are active, which means that various abilities of the Papal controller work. In the last two, absolutism rules become active. Some disasters and events that had been bound to certain years are now limited by the current age.

And that’s the general version of the mechanics. With the expansion, there’s a new currency, splendor, which you always get some of, but achieving certain age-related goals gains splendor faster, and it can then be used to gain age-related bonuses, which go away at the start of the next age.

The game starts in the Age of Exploration which headlines with the objective to discover America, but has various goals for strong governments, and special abilities for the Ottomans, Portuguese, Danish, and Venice. The general peasants’ war disaster is bound to this age, along with Castilian Civil War and the War of the Roses.

Ten years after the first Center of Reformation appears, the game goes to the Age of Reformation. Naturally, joining the Reformation is one of the goals, along with general religious conversion goals, and special abilities for Spain, Mughals, Poland, and Persia. The general disaster is religious turmoil, with the French Wars of Religion, the Count’s Feud (Denmark), and Time of Troubles (Muscovy) also possible.

Ten years after the institution Global Trade appears, the Age of Absolutism starts. This turns off of the religious rules for the Pope, and ends the Centers of Reformation, and turns on absolutism. Goals include having a large force limit, having universities, and being multicultural, while the special abilities are for France, Sweden, Manchu and the Dutch. The general disaster is court and country, with the English Civil War also possible.

And ten years after the Enlightenment institution appears, the Age of Revolutions starts. Goals include having a parliament (which requires Common Sense), having large subjects, and being the Holy Roman Emperor, but surprisingly enough nothing about actually getting involved in the revolutions of the era. Special abilities are present for England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. General disasters are aspiration for liberty (a general revolt after gaining Enlightenment), revolution, and its specialized version, the French Revolution.

Additionally, achieving three of the goals in an era allows a nation to declare a golden era. This can only be done once per game, but gives morale bonuses, reduces costs of anything requiring monarch points, and increases goods produced. So for fifty years, the armies will be tougher, income will be greater, and it will be easier to get many things done. It’s not quite the level of bonuses you might expect, but it will certainly help a lot.

To a large extent, a second mechanic dividing the game up into periods right after the introduction of institutions divided progress into periods seems a bit much to me, and adding to the too-tall stack of mechanics even more so. But, it doesn’t do more than define when certain things happen without the expansion, so that helps. Unfortunately, while making time-bound event dates more flexible through the ages is a good thing, outside of that, the base version really only divides the game into two instead of four ages because the rules don’t change. As far the full version with the expansion, it works, and doesn’t need a lot of interaction. It doesn’t do a lot for me, though for some the goals could add some useful direction.

Absolute Devastation

Base mechanics were changed again in the patch, with looted and scorched earth province statuses being replaced with a unified devastation modifier that ranges from 0 to 100. It of course trends towards 0 in peaceful times, and goes up when occupied by an enemy or while under siege or there is unrest (and starting in patch 1.22, from blockades). It of course reduces goods production, supply limits, and movement speed in proportion to the current level.

On the other side, prosperity was added at the state level with the expansion. It goes up randomly, and only when every province in the state is at 0 devastation, and stability is positive. Unlike devastation, it is an on/off proposition. While progress towards prosperity is 0-100, the bonuses to production, development, and autonomy only kick in at 100.

At the government level, Absolute Monarchy was removed as a government type in the patch, and all governments get an absolutism meter (hidden away on the government screen). This starts around 1610 (with the Age of Absolutism), compared to the roughly 1661 date of tech 20 to get access to the old government form (it does of course take time to get any absolutism once its available).

It’s kind of an administrative form of the mercantilism mechanic that has been in place since the release of the game. It has a scale of 0-100, and gives some bonuses as it goes up. Mercantilism mostly helps trade power while absolutism increases administrative efficiency (which previously was only available through higher administrative technology; it might be worth noting that the mechanic comes in shortly after that starts going up). However, there is also a maximum absolutism for the government that starts at 65, and can be increased (or more rarely, decreased, notably by republics) by being a great power, empire rank, a golden era, legitimacy, religious unity, and a host of less-common modifiers.

One of the Age of Absolutism powers is a yearly +1 increase to current absolutism, which should max it out on its own if taken early in the age. The “strengthen government” action introduced in patch 1.18 also adds to absolutism, along with increasing stability, decreasing autonomy, and other measures to improve governance. On the other hand, lowering war exhaustion, increasing stability, and debasing currency will all lower it.

Celestial Empire

Without the expansion, China doesn’t change much, but with MoH, the Ming dynasty goes from using factions (which were tweaked in the patch) to a whole new mandate of heaven system. Other oriental countries can claim the mandate to become the emperor of China, switch to the unique Celestial Empire government, and take over the mechanics.

The mechanics come in three major parts. Meritocracy is another legitimacy replacement, though a few places in the interface still reference legitimacy (which would suddenly become important if you lose the mandate). It natively goes down each year, and the third part of this can make it go down faster. However, the bonuses from advisors push it up. To have a positive total, you generally need the more expensive +2 and +3 advisors, but generally China can afford this, and high meritocracy makes advisors cheaper. Every decade a decree can be enacted for a fairly large national bonus and dropping meritocracy by 20 points.

The empire itself acts like a minor version of the Holy Roman Empire, with mandate replacing imperial authority. It doesn’t have most of the HRE mechanics, but can have a new type of subject, the tributary. Higher mandate reduces unrest and war exhaustion, while it decreases army damage, meritocracy, and goods produced while under 50. There are also five reforms, which act a bit like the HRE’s, though there’s no reward for getting them all passed. They cause a steep hit in mandate, and so care needs to be taken in passing them.

Tributaries are a very loosely-held subject; they still get all their normal diplomatic actions, but if a non-tributary attacks one, it brings the overlord (China) into the war. And instead of a constant percentage of taxes going to the Chinese budget, a smaller sum is granted at the start of every year, and can be taken as monarch points instead of money.

The third part is the new Confucian religion mechanic. Confucianism has harmony, which affects meritocracy (or legitimacy or devotion, depending on government), corruption, and religious tolerance. It can also get cross-religion bonuses (like Tengri or Fetishist) by harmonizing with them. Unlike other similar mechanics, Confucianism can harmonize with everything, instead of just one religion at a time, and get a bonus for each one. However, the process takes over three decades each time, and harmony drops as this goes on, so it can’t be done easily. Once harmonized, that religion counts as the same as Confucian for all purposes within the country, while the usual conversion process also lowers harmony, so there’s a real push towards harmonizing instead.

The three mechanics all have events which may grant or reduce one or the other, or often present a trade off. This makes the Chinese empire a balancing act, as letting any of mandate, meritocracy, or harmony get low can put a fair amount of strain on everything else, and letting all three get low is survivable, but asking for trouble, especially after the early game when the nearby countries have probably consolidated a bit.

Originally, it was fairly easy to get into trouble with the mandate, as non-tributary neighbors decrease mandate, and as the game goes on and development and knowledge of the world increases, this drag can become very serious. So, in patch 1.29 that was removed, making Emperor of China a much more stable title with no real downsides, just competition with countries that may want to take the mandate from you.

Shogun

Japan was re-worked for the patch, similarly to how Paradox had for EU III: Divine Wind. The map of Japan had actually been simplified a bit in EU IV from that version, but the number of separate countries had gone from four to twelve, and they used the normal monarchical government types with an overlord Shogun, instead of the Emperor handling all external relations.

With the patch, Japan was expanded back to roughly forty provinces, with twenty-five daimyos (plus the Ashikaga Shogunate). They all have the unique government types of daimyo or shogun, which they can’t be voluntarily changed from. In addition to their unique (modest) bonuses, the shogun gets several actions with the expansion to keep the daimyos in line. This does a good job of getting the feel of the warring states period, which starts a little way into the game.

The general idea is that any of the daimyos can become shogun by taking the capital province of Kyoto. The islands can be unified as the country Japan once enough of them are under one shogun. The easy way involves just declaring the unification after taking about half the provinces, which releases all the remaining daimyo from their subject status, while the more historical approach requires absorbing them all beforehand, and getting a hefty bonus of monarch points. Either way does away with the unique government types.

At the same time, the shinto religion gets extra mechanics in the expansion centered around isolationism, which has five levels. Up to eight incidents will fire for a shinto country throughout the game, only one of which is possible at the very start, and will move the country towards open or closed doors (countries generally start at “adaptive”, one level away from open doors) depending on the choices made in the events fired by the incident. Isolation actually only has positive effects (no diplomatic or technology penalties or other trade-offs), though the effects of each level do vary quite a bit.

Meanwhile, in Mongolia, the countries in that region/culture can get a special unit category with the expansion: banner. Ordinarily, a country recruits regular units, but they can also get mercenary units, which show up with a green color in unit listings and don’t cost manpower, and are quick to hire. But they are more expensive to hire or replace men in. Banners have more of a magenta background with no recruitment time nor cost, but do cause corruption. They’re an extra way to get some cheap manpower for the Mongolian/Manchu countries, but they reinforce very slowly, and have been toned down a bunch since their introduction here.

Hungary

While 1.20 was about the Far East, patch 1.21 was about central Europe. As it turns out, the start date for EU IV is the day after the Battle of Varna, where the Ottomans defeated a major coalition including Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and Lithuania. Both Poland and Hungary start the game with 0/0/0 interregnums because of this battle (see my review of Res Publica). In the patch, parts of the map in the area were reworked, and new events were added for the various Christian nations involved, especially Hungary.

Various subjects include the rise of the Hunyadi dynasty, special mercenaries (the Black Army), dealing with the reformation, and a choice between the Austrian and eastern Hungary branches of the royal line.

In Bohemia events were added to show lingering support for the Hussites, who had only been defeated a decade earlier. Austria’s events were modified to tie into all the other changes in regional events.

These features are all in line with the usual Paradox approach to injecting a bit of history outside the bare mechanics of the game, and the attention to Eastern Europe here is very nice to see. And I need to find a good book or game on the Battle of Varna.

Conclusion

This is an all-around large expansion. The new mechanics around China alone make it worth considering, while Japan also becomes a more interesting place.

If you’re not interested in that region, then the only big feature are the full age mechanics. This is a fairly nice addition, since the big powers can get a lot of use from it, but small powers should still be able to get a bonus or two from it. For a new player, it’s just an extra thing to pay attention to, so it’s more for an experienced player (which is what expansions should be) though a new player may want it just because they’re interested in the regional parts.

The new absolutism mechanic is the main patch feature (other than tying several time-bound events to the new ages). It’s neat enough, but plays similarly to another mechanic I don’t pay a lot of attention to, though this one is a lot easier to understand. I also don’t think the new devastation and prosperity mechanics are all that great, though unifying a couple of one-off modifiers into this system is a plus. I think prosperity should have been in the patch, and be a true mirror-image of devastation; either both should work on the province level, or both should work on the state level. That said, trying to tie mechanics other than the state/territory choice to the states is a good idea, but not one I think has been followed up on much.

Still, it’s all an overall benefit to the game, and the expansion is a good package. I look at it more as large “immersion pack” like the next few EU IV expansions, and still worth the higher price point than those thanks to the variety of material here. People for whatever reason against playing in the Far East at all probably won’t find the ages worth the price.

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Institutions of Man

by on August 29, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the ninth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes
The Cossacks: Cossack Estate
Mare Nostrum: Paradox’s Sea

After Mare Nostrum, the development team for Europa Universalis IV next decided to tackle a game mechanic that had been in place since the original game for the next big patch as well as add a number of new features in the next expansion. Patch 1.18 came out on October 11, 2016, to support the expansion Rights of Man. The follow-up 1.19 patch came out on November 24.

Institutional Progress

Ever since the original Europa Universalis computer game, nations had been placed in technological “groups”. Most of Europe was in one, the Ottomans started with better technology, but were in a group that meant that they paid more to advance, and things go downhill the further from Europe you get. It was a fairly simple system meant to showcase Europe’s rise to dominance in the period of the game, and a bit of flexibility was added early on with the ability of countries to “Westernize”, shifting them to a better (cheaper) tech group.

Patch 1.18 did away with this system, replacing it with institutions. There are no groups, no fixed cost penalties, and no Westernization. Instead there’s a series of eight institutions, with one active well before the game begins, and the other seven cropping up every fifty years, and not adopting them causes penalties to advancing in technology.

The first institution is Feudalism, which is described as a variety of means of putting together a centralized state. Most, but not all, of the world has embraced Feudalism as the game starts, but tribal areas (most of Sub-Saharan Africa, the New World, and darkest central Asia) have not, and start with a +50% penalty to technology costs.

In 1450, the Renaissance starts, with one Italian capital getting it, and it spreads from there. Any European (with a very generous definition of “European”) province with good development will start embracing the Renaissance on its own, but bonuses from adjacent provinces means it will spread throughout Italy first, and then into Europe before the rest of the world sees it.

Once an institution starts there is a cumulative +1% to technology cost per year for countries that have not embraced it (with a +50% maximum per institution). Even better, each institution grants a bonus when adopted, so it’s not just a race to avoid penalties, but one to get benefits as well. The technology penalties aren’t that bad at first, but it starts adding up, and if you’re still struggling to adopt the Renaissance in 1500 when Colonialism starts, you’re going to have a problem.

There are ways out of the trap. You only need some of your provinces to adopt the institution before you can force your country to adopt it. You just need to spend ducats (money) for all the provinces that haven’t adopted it yet (yes, that is very expensive for a large country). Adding development (introduced in Common Sense, but added to the base game in patch 1.28) to a province also adds to progress towards the next institution to be adopted there, so you could develop a province until it has the institution, and let it spread from there (also expensive—in monarch points, but you’ll be sinking a lot of extra monarch points into technology if you’re behind in all the hot philosophical fashions).

This is one of the bigger changes to core mechanics in EU IV during its post-release development, and a very good one. The overall idea is inspired, and feels a lot more natural than the old tech groups. Its nearly the only feature of the patch, and it overshadows the Rights of Man expansion, which does have a lot of features.

Cultured Court

The other real feature of the patch allowed better internal management. Each province has a culture, and these cultures are arranged in groups. Provinces of “unaccepted” cultures cause trouble, and will never be as productive. It’s always been possible for things to shift around depending on how prevalent a culture is in your borders, but now there’s a way to manually shift this around. Its generally not a big deal, but is a nice extra bit of control when needed.

At the same time, the expansion greatly increases mechanics around the court. Where normally there is the current ruler and his heir (for monarchies at least), there is now a permanent consort position, which takes over when a regency is needed (instead of a generic ‘regency council’). There’s events and such that can happen around the consort, but mostly it’s there for the regency.

Further control was also added in that a monarch can retire in favor of his heir. This is mostly for those very poor-stat monarchs that you just wish would die so his competent son can take over. And there’s a few other wrinkles, such as disinheriting the current (hopeless) heir, so you can try to get a better one.

Additionally, the expansion enables a list of eight great powers, kind of like in the Victoria series. Those that make the list get bonuses, meaning those powerful nations get some extra help with the expansion. What I find interesting is that the ranking is by total development divided by the current institution tech penalty. So Ming starts as the top power, but will quickly drop off as it has no hope of getting Renaissance quickly, and without some very deliberate player actions, no chance at Colonialism either, which combined will eventually reduce its effective development by half.

Traits of Man

All these rulers, heirs, consorts, and military leaders, also got more fleshed out with traits in the expansion. A ruler (or heir) generally has one as soon as they are of age, and then generate a second one after ten years of rule, and a third after twenty-five years in charge. Military leaders get theirs randomly after battles.

This is basically the version of traits seen in Stellaris, mixed with the leader bonuses seen in Hearts of Iron games. Most of these are bonuses to one government statistic or another, but a few are also negative. An interesting twist is the ruler traits will also determine AI behavior. In addition to the five basic personality types in the base game, an Industrious ruler will spend more on building improvements, a Sinner will raze and plunder provinces, and so on. And of course, some traits will open up new options in some events (which will be highlighted, a bit like in Crusader Kings II).

This is a really nice bit of flavor and since it affects everyone, I’d say it is the main reason to get the expansion.

Governments of Man

The expansion also gives access to two new unique government types. First, the Ottomans get a unique monarchy form. It can’t be voluntarily changed, but the general revolution disaster can change from it, and changing religions will revert it to a despotic monarchy.

The main point of the new type is to keep Osman as the ruling dynasty. There will be no shifting to the dynasty of a royal marriage, if there is no heir for too long, an event will fire to present you with a choice of new heirs.

This doesn’t mean there’s no dynastic worries. There’s a number of new events around scandals in the palace (which can turn into a too-easy source of prestige), or the heir may try to depose the current ruler. This turns into a normal noble revolt, but it is fired by Ottoman-specific events instead of the current revolt system. I’ve only seen the “small” version, which is a fairly typical revolt, but the events imply much bigger ones are possible.

The Prussian Monarchy, meanwhile, has some fairly good bonuses, like most of the unique governments, and also gets a militarization mechanic. This is another percentage scale that grants bonuses to discipline, manpower, and maintenance the higher it goes. Legitimacy and army tradition add to it, while having more provinces causes it to go down. Overall, if Prussia has any reasonable amount of territory, it will tend to go down, so it doesn’t feel like the most useful of bonuses. However, military monarch points can be spent to push it up, and at the historical size of Prussia in say, The Seven Years War, it won’t go down very fast.

Finally, factions were added to revolutionary governments in the expansion. I haven’t done much with that, but it makes a lot of sense for Revolutionary France, or any other government undergoing those kinds of stresses. It also adds an appropriate path from a revolutionary republic to empire, as the diplomatic faction, The Imperials, will shift the government type if they get too powerful.

Coptic Fetish

Two more religions got extra mechanics with this expansion. The Fetishist religion (found in southern Africa) gained cults, which are akin to the Hindu gods in Wealth of Nations. Like them, you pick a bonus from a list every time you get a new ruler. However, it’s not a static list of possible bonuses, and depends on where the particular country is. Also, as they come into contact with other religions they can gain access to new bonuses. So it starts out more limited than Hinduism (there’s typically only three possible bonuses at the start), but can become more flexible over time.

Coptic countries get bonuses from holy sites with RoM. There are five provinces considered holy to the Coptic faith (this is an idea from Crusader Kings II), and every Coptic country can get a bonus (“blessing”) for each one held by any Coptic country. Because of this, success for one can breed success for all—if they don’t spend too much time fighting each other instead.

At the start, two holy sites are under Coptic control, with Askum in Ethiopia, and Qasr Ibrim in Makuria, though the province itself is not Coptic. The other three are further away, with the closest being Alexandria, which means conquering the Mamlukes, or taking on the Ottomans. So, don’t expect many powerful AI Coptic empires, but it is not a bad goal for a good human player in search of a challenge.

Conclusion

Patch 1.18 saw another high-level mechanic change to the game. And again, it broke with tradition, and made the game better for the change. Personally, I like the system a lot, but it does seem to be comparatively easier for the rest of the world to keep up on the institutions. Large portions will be behind for long periods, but they do spread, and this means non-European powers can do much better in late-game technology than previously, which robs some of the historical feel, though from a player perspective the decisions around all this are more interesting.

The expansion is overshadowed by all this, but is still a good expansion. I do have problems in that some of it seems too convenient, namely retiring and disowning rulers and heirs. Also, being a great power confers extra power projection (reasonable), which makes it much easier to float over the 25 limit for an extra leader, and at the top end consistently be at 50 to get extra monarch power, which seems too much of a ‘rich get richer’ effect for me. Similarly, the expansion also allows you to debase currency, effectively taking a loan, but getting corruption instead of the usual loan penalties. Since you normally pay monthly money to fight corruption, this is pretty much just extra loans without having to worry about paying it back.

The religious mechanics are expected at this point, and Coptic is certainly a good choice for expanding the mechanics. The two new unique government types are also interesting choices. For me, the biggest draw are the leader traits, which help add another layer of uniqueness, and bit of potential role play to them. I don’t know that I’d recommend the expansion just for that, but it’s a good foundation for deciding if you want the other features.

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Paradox’s Sea

by on May 5, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eighth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes
The Cossacks: Cossack Estate

Paradox’s next expansion for Europa Universalis IV mostly concentrated on naval matters, which also caused a bunch of changes in the free patch. The patch also redid espionage, and Mare Nostrum and patch 1.16 came out on April 5, 2016, with patch 1.17 re-balancing the new espionage mechanics on May 11th.

Stating Territory

The map had always been divided into areas (collections of provinces) and regions (collections of areas), but they had no real effect on the game. Now, areas came to the forefront with the new patch. Each area that a country has provinces of may be a territory or a state in that country.

Provinces in a state act pretty much as normal (except that they can’t be given to a trade company from Wealth of Nations). Territories have a minimum of 90% autonomy and reduced missionary effect, but they are cheaper to turn into a ‘core’ to eliminate overextension effects. In fact, a territory only needs half as much administrative power to become a core, but once a territory becomes a state, the province is still a ‘territorial core’ with 90% autonomy. You then have to pay the other half to make it a regular province (but this, at least, is instant, unlike the normal process).

There are two reasons not to turn a province into a state: First, there is a limit on how many states a country can have (with various modifiers, but administrative tech levels are the main way to get further states). Second, each state requires maintenance in money per month. These costs go up with development and distance from the capital, and thankfully the game has some very good tooltips on whether a province can be a profitable state.

As ever with these systems, it lends a bit of artificiality as you become concerned about preexisting arbitrary lines on the map. At the same time, it does add some interesting decisions, and a bit of a brake on larger countries. Overall, it’s a net plus, acts much better than the equivalent mechanics from Victoria II, and replaces the ‘overseas’ mechanic that had been in the series forever, and which could also be quite arbitrary.

Jack Tar

Paradox also decided to add more detail around manpower to the game, adding sailors to crew navies to go along with the manpower that is needed to build armies, and a new slot in the top bar was added to show them. Each coastal province contributes sailors to the nation, dependent on its development level, with bonuses for those that have trade modifiers.

Ships now need a number of available sailors, as well as money, to build, and when away from port on missions will also consume a small number per month. Repairing a ship also needs new sailors to replace injured crew, so being at war will consume a fair number of sailors for a maritime nation: large fleets on blockade, new ship crews, and repairing damage from naval battles will all consume this resource.

It’s an interesting attempt at an extra bit of simulation for the game. A rich nation can’t just build itself a huge navy, it needs to find the manpower for it as well. Of course, there’s all sorts of detail built into various bonuses, like impressment. Even better, with the expansion, some nations can get the coastal raiding idea, letting them raid other nations for more sailors (slaves forced into the galleys), which is another big part of the period otherwise ignored. However, the AI was never able to properly manage its sailors, and was vulnerable to being deliberately run out of them, and Paradox was forced to let the AI never run out of sailors in a later patch, undercutting the entire system.

Raiding and Other Missions

The interface for naval missions was reworked, allowing the player to set how much damage a fleet could sustain before automatically seeking a friendly port for repairs.

But the bigger reason was so the number of types of missions could be expanded. With the expansion, it is now possible to set a fleet to automatically blockade as many ports in a region as possible (splitting it up as needed), hunt down weaker enemy fleets or try to intercept fleets with transports in them. I’ll admit I haven’t quite trusted the AI enough to try these, but the new interface is an improvement.

Also, the Barbary nations (north coast of Africa) get a mission for raiding nearby shores, letting them loot the province (in peacetime), and take slaves, which go into the sailor pool. This sort of thing was endemic to the Mediterranean for the entire period (American efforts to stop it are where the “shores of Tripoli” line comes from in the Marine Corps Hymn), so its a nice bit to work in. Later, the mission would be reused in Golden Century.

Espionage Networks

Espionage was completely reworked. Instead of directly attempting to do something underhanded (such as claim a neighbor’s territory), you now send a diplomat to a nation to create a spy network (which then has a size from 0 to 100).

The speed at which this happens uses all the old modifiers to spy efficiency, and the diplomat can be discovered and sent home, which will also take a cut out of the network and keep you from sending a diplomat back for a while.

You then spend part of the network’s size for the same actions that the diplomat used to do directly, whether this be creating a claim, supporting a rebellion, or other actions. Overall, it makes the system a little more streamlined (since you can decide what to do after sending the diplomat, instead of before), but isn’t a major change to the results, even though the process changed.

Corruption

Another new statistic on the top bar is corruption, which tracks how well a country’s administration is running, and acts as a potential brake on larger countries. As it rises, spy network creation and detection become slowed, all monarch power costs increase, local autonomy increases, but the estates will tend to be more loyal (i.e., the loyalty value they tend towards over time goes up).

The main drivers of corruption are being overextended, and having a low religious unity. Being further ahead in one technology can also drive up corruption, though being ‘ahead of time’ in administration or diplomatic technologies also brings corruption down (in addition to the tax and trade efficiency bonuses introduced in patch 1.7).

Overall, its a minor system most of the time. It’s an extra thing for a new player to be overwhelmed with, but safe enough to ignore while learning the game. When you do successfully conquer new territory, it does become a potentially major problem, and is a generally worthwhile attempt to show the stresses on a fast-growing empire.

Grant Unconditional Surrender

An interesting new option in war was the ability to just give up on a hopeless war. The enemy may need to spend a lot of time (and possibly troops) besieging fortresses and taking territory to drive up the war score to something that allows a peace offer that the attacker wants.

Unconditional surrender automatically puts all unoccupied territory under the enemy’s control, and all your armies under “exiled” status, and unable to fight. On the other side, the country surrendered to gets 100 war score, a notice of the surrender, and after a couple months his war exhaustion will start ramping up.

This gets what could be a protracted and depressing situation over with quickly, and can let the country get back to other matters; perhaps a different war that can be won….

It’s actually a smart idea, though one that’s largely beyond the ability of the AI to judge, so it will almost never offer one. On the other hand, the AI can be very stubborn about slowly prosecuting a war that it’s essentially already won, while rejecting peace proposals, and this can be a good escape hatch from that.

Conclusion

Overall, the changes to “coring” that came with the new state and territory feature is the most important and widespread change in the game. It made it a bit rougher to administer your country, but the interface lives up to the challenges, and the cheaper “territorial” cores actually make things easier for an expanding nation in the short run. The diplomacy changes (especially around espionage networks) were also nice improvements. Those alone make patches 1.16 and 1.17 a net positive to the game.

On the other hand, sailors added more complexity, and the development team bit off more than the AI could chew. The instincts around them were good, but in the end its an extra system I think the game was better off without (I’d consider it neutral to slightly positive if not for the AI problem). Corruption is also yet another minor worry that can blow up into a big one, and joins a fairly tall stack of things that a new player should ignore for quite a while.

But while the patches were an overall benefit for the game, the expansion itself is more of a collection of minor quality-of-life features, some of which I haven’t even talked about. Unconditional surrender is the best feature of the bunch, as it can end a war that the AI is insisting on dragging out for no reason. Along with the extra naval missions, there’s extra espionage missions that I’ve barely noticed, the ability to rent out troops (condottieri, potentially important), and the ability to increase mercantilism (and income) at the cost of the loyalty of your colonies. While these are nice features, I don’t consider this expansion any sort of “must have”. Get it as part of a package, or on a really good sale—there’s no reason not to have it—but it is at the bottom of the priority list.

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Cossack Estate

by on May 23, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the seventh in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes

The seventh expansion for EU IV largely concentrated on the internal politics of countries, adding a whole new internal mechanic for players to balance along with everything else. At the same time, there was a focus on central Asia and the horsemen of the steppes (following the lead of CK II: Horse Lords released five months earlier), who also got their own mechanics.

Patch 1.14 also featured a slightly revised launcher, which allows you to sign into to your Paradox (not Steam) account to participate in leaderboards and the like. The patch was was released on December 1, 2015 alongside The Cossacks, with revision patch 1.15 following on January 27, 2016.

It’s a New New World

Part of the patch was actually revising a previous expansion. The ‘random New World’ feature from Conquest of Paradise had been disappointing. Not only for the ‘names in a blender’ problem I mentioned in the original review, but the geography generally came out fairly poor (especially when looking at the details; the overall forms could come out strategically interesting, though it was far from guaranteed).

Instead of trying to render a completely random New World every time, Paradox came up with a series of pre-rendered template land masses which could then be fit together into fresh patterns every time. The pre-rendering allowed for more detail, and making sure they looked natural, while not chewing up lots of end-user processor time on the effort. Better, the new system was open for them to add more ‘tiles’ as they had time later, and others could be introduced through mods. In addition, ‘scenarios’ would be applied to the random New World, generating new countries of various types, with new (generally appropriate-sounding) names, instead of just trying to completely re-use the non-random version.

I found the old system acceptable (other than the names), but it was, at best, a bit bland. The new system definitely helps.

The Estates

The main feature of the expansion looked at detailing the internal administration of your country. So, with the expansion, there are now (usually) three estates in the country, which can provide bonuses, but can also cause major problems.

At base, each estate has a loyalty of 50%, and it will naturally go back towards that level after anything which raises or lowers it. At this base, neutral, level it will provide a single bonus to the country; if it is pushed up to 60% loyalty or higher, there’s a second bonus, and if it falls below 40%, the first bonus is instead reversed.

In addition, estates are rated for influence, and generally, more influential estates provide a stronger version of the bonuses generated by their loyalty. However, an estate that reaches 100% influence starts a timer on a disaster where that estate effectively tries to take total control of the country in a coup.

Each estate expects to be given control over a certain number of provinces, which means that autonomy cannot go below 25% in that province (though the autonomy is also negated for a particular category, like a noble estate always contributes the full amount of manpower). Refusing to give enough provinces to an estate cripples its influence, but also sucks away their loyalty.

The nobles generally help with manpower and army maintenance. They can be used to create army leaders, and gain military monarch points. When playing with Common Sense, parliamentary governments don’t have this estate at all (generally leaving them with two), with the separate parliament interaction taking its place.

The clergy help with taxes, stability, and any religious power the country has (e.g., theocratic devotion, protestant church power, etc.) when loyal. They can help with administrative power, gaining particular minister types, or even colonization efforts.

The burghers help with trade efficiency and development cost (which at the time required Common Sense to use…). They can help some with direct income, or gaining admirals, or even getting some new heavy ships.

As implied above, there’s a bunch of interactions with each estate, which can shuffle around the influence and loyalty stats, and can also be used to gain bonuses from them. Smart play can involve a fair amount of interaction, as you use them to gain monarch power, or get extra income or other goodies. You can also generally keep interactions to a minimum, but occasional events, and the need to grant new provinces to estates in a growing country mean that you can’t completely ignore it.

There are also a few other estates with limited availability. Cossacks are only available to eastern tech group countries, and provide bonuses to cavalry. Dhimmi are available to Muslim nations, and provide bonuses to tolerance and technology.

National Revenge

After losing a large war, a country can easily be in dire straights that it can’t recover from. The army is decimated, manpower has been drained dry, the treasury is empty, and 10% of income is going to the victor….

The patch included a new mechanic to help out such shattered countries. Revanchism is gained in proportion of the war score cost of any peace deal against them. This goes down at 10% per year, so even a maximum 100% revanchism is gone by the time a standard 10-year truce is over, but it will help with the rebuilding in between, and during any other wars that happen.

As it helps with tax income, manpower, and unrest (along with several other less prominent things), it really does help a country recover and rebuild, though of course it doesn’t actually replace what was lost.

For the Horde

The expansion introduced a third legitimacy replacement: horde unity. This is used solely by the Steppe Nomad government, which will use legitimacy without the expansion. Unlike the other governmental mechanics, it will always decrease over time, though the rate can be slowed. On the other hand, the larger (/more developed) the country is, the faster it’ll fall.

There are of course, ways of raising it again. Like anyone else, nomad armies will loot enemy provinces they are occupying, and the money earned from that will raise unity again. You can also raze your own (non-core) provinces, reducing development (…which does make it cheaper to turn into a core), but generating money, monarch power, and unity.

Unity itself affects unrest and discipline. The +5% discipline from 100 unity isn’t too bad (there are plenty of other effects that grant a similar bonus), but is available from the start, and one of the government bonuses is to shock damage in clear terrain, and it is easy to get lots of cavalry with a horde. Early in the game, this makes a potent military combination.

In fact, hordes get their own tribe estate (the only one they get), which aids manpower recovery and cavalry costs when loyal. One of the primary interactions with the estate is to raise a host, providing several cavalry units for free, just leaving problems of paying the monthly maintenance.

In all, they don’t feel quite as dangerous as in EU III: Divine Wind, where the automatic war with everyone and territory seizing made them a major short-term problem. However, with all cavalry, and all the shock bonuses, their military can feel nearly unbeatable in the early going, making them a major problem for their neighbors.

I Need a Favor

The expansion also added several features to diplomacy. Countries can now declare ‘places of interest’; this is basically something the AI always did, as it determined what areas it wanted to expand into, but now this is surfaced to other countries (and a human player), and the player can now do the same, warning other countries away from interfering.

In addition, the player can now choose diplomatic stances like the ones the AI uses. It can limit what you can do, but it also signals your vassals on what to do (they will generate claims on bordering provinces of countries you are hostile to, for instance). Also, setting your attitude to ‘threatened’ makes rivals of that country more likely to ally with you.

The annoying part of this is that alliances get a hit from the nerf-bat. Ordinarily, as soon as you have an alliance, you can declare war on a country, and your allies may come along, if they have enough reason to. With the new diplomacy system, you have to use favors for anyone to come along in your war. Now, you can promise them territorial gains in the war, but this only works if there’s something they can gain of course. Failing to carry through will also cause massive relations problems, assuming that you won (the AI will be understanding about a losing war). Otherwise, you gain one favor per year of alliance, and it takes ten favors to drag someone into an offensive war, so alliances are… more unwieldy than they used to be, which really is annoying, though possibly truer to life. Defensively at least , alliances are unchanged.

Tengri

Tengri had been separated out from the general Animist religion a few patches ago, occupying much of of Central Asia. With the expansion, it now gains its own mechanic, like several other religions from the previous few expansions.

By default Tengi countries always gain a discount to raising new land units, and can use a higher proportion of cavalry. Now, they can gain additional bonuses as a syncretic faith.

This means that a second religion can be chosen to be a part of the Tengri faith, and countries and provinces of that religion will be counted as the same as the nation’s (this second religion can be changed later, but it costs prestige to do so). In addition, new national bonuses will be granted, based on that religion’s bonuses.

Conclusion

Estates would turn into another feature too big for an expansion. Like development, this feature moved to being part of the base game with patch 1.26 (before development, actually), but just for the basic three; the variant ones still need this expansion. Personally, I generally feel like you gain far more annoyance from estates than you gain interesting decisions.

In principle, dealing more with the internal stresses of a country is a good idea (and was a much-requested one). The general thrust of the estates is not bad (handing partial control of parts of your country over in return for bonuses), but the entire thing feels way to impersonal. The diplomacy and AI system of other countries gives a certain feeling of ‘personality’ to various countries, but the estates purely react to your interactions, leaving them flat and impersonal. Moreover, their goals (for they don’t really have any) do not grow and change with your country.

On the other hand, the other mechanics work out, and the new horde governments are nicely effective. Similarly, the rework of the random New World was needed, and great to see. With estates in the main game now, this expansion is really just worth getting to round out the collection of religious mechanics and government types, and so is just for the completist.

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Uncommon Changes

by on October 9, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the sixth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold

The sixth expansion for EU IV concentrated on government forms, and administering a country, while the patch introduced major changes to the basic stats of provinces, buildings, and sieges. Common Sense was released on June 9th 2015 alongside patch 1.12. Some general tweaks to the new systems came in patch 1.13 (which is the version I’m reviewing) in late August.

New Developments

In the original two games, each province tracked population, which fed into tax and manpower numbers. By EU IV, this had been abstracted into each province having a base tax, a production amount (which generated money, and value for the trade system), and an amount of manpower. Now all three of these were unified into one system where the total of everything added up to its development.

With the new system, each base tax generates one ducat (yearly) and 1% local spy defense (this was changed to taking over the recruitment bonus of manpower later). Each point of production generates 0.2 trade goods per month, and reduces shipbuilding time. And each point of manpower adds 250 to the nation’s manpower pool, reduces recruitment time, and promotes the growth of fortification garrisons.

The total development in a province has a number of effects: Each point generates provincial trade power, raises the supply limit, adds to the national land and naval force limits, and reduces missionary strength (making prosperous provinces harder to convert). Also, development determines a province’s cost in a peace, the amount of overextension it generates, and other similar things.

As with the old system, you can get events that will add to, or otherwise change around development points, with the expansion, you can also buy development with the appropriate monarch points. The base cost is 50/development, but that is increased by some terrain types, and it gets more expensive as development goes over 10. However, a major part of the idea is for small countries to be able to ‘grow tall’, pumping spare monarch power into the provinces they do have, and making them rich.

Building Forts

With development as a new thing to manage, the building system that had carried over from Divine Wind was done away with for one with fewer buildings, and more choices to be made. Instead of the six categories with six levels each, plus manufactories, plus various unique buildings, there are now 10 separate buildings, most of which have two levels (forts have four levels, trade buildings have three, and universities have a single level), plus five types of manufactory.

More importantly, each province can now have a limited number of buildings at all, and forts count against this. The base is one slot (for having a city; i.e., not being a colony), with bonuses for good terrain (farmlands add two slots), and an extra slot for every 10 development in the province, so only the very richest provinces can even have all the possible buildings.

Forts got a very important change, that reworks how wars work overall. It had always been the case that each province would have a fort, with the level going up as technology unlocked more types, and money was available to upgrade them. Now, the limited building slots mean there just isn’t room, and forts are now expensive.

Maintaining a fort now costs 1 ducat per month per level. Putting a basic fort in every province would wreck the economy of the wealthiest nations. However, forts now protect all friendly provinces adjacent to them, as well as their own province. Moreover, they have a zone of control, which keeps enemy troops from marching through any province adjacent to it.

So instead of wandering around the countryside, seeking out an enemy army to defeat, and sending out lots of small detachments to individually siege every province, movement is constrained by uncaptured forts. Once adjacent to an enemy fort, your only movement choices are to move out of range (or the country as a whole), or to the fortress province itself. Once in a province with an enemy fort, you can only exit out of the country (if it’s on a border), or back to where the army entered the province from.

You still besiege non-fort provinces, and they will fall to you after one month (/siege cycle), but if you have not taken or besieged any adjacent enemy fortresses, it will revert back to the enemy one month after you leave.

Since there’s fewer of them, sieges are now much bigger operations, needing three times as many troops as before. Also, each ‘building level’ generates two ‘fort levels’ in terms of the bonuses against siege rolls. Every capital gets one free fort level, even if there’s no building there (so even the tiniest, poorest, country has a +1 fort in its capital), which gives capitals all the in-between ‘odd’ levels.

The siege rolls changed slightly in that rolling a ‘1’ never generates progress, and instead kills 5% of the besieging army from disease. Also, ‘obsolete’ fortresses have a penalty, making them quicker to siege, as do fortresses that have less than half of their garrison. Overall, sieges tend to take a bit less time than they used to when a military is well-equipped for them; but the higher fort levels (especially in a capital) also lead to some very long and expensive campaigns.

An existing fort can also be mothballed, giving it half maintenance cost and no garrison. This is a great way to have defenses, and a good peacetime budget. However, if war breaks out the fort may need to be reactivated, and it will take time for the garrison to grow back to full, allowing a swift-moving enemy to get the bonus for it being under half strength.

A smaller change also had a big effect on wars: Armies and navies are now locked into going to a province once they are halfway there. That prevents a lot of fiddling around, and ‘faking’ going to a province, and makes actual interception of forces possible, as you might not get there ahead of an army, but you can get there before he can leave again.

Rate My Government

A smaller change to the overall game was that all nations now have a rank, as a duchy, kingdom, or empire. This has nothing to do with governmental forms, but purely with how large and powerful it is. This system exists without the expansion, but is seriously downplayed as changing ranks is generally disabled.

Generally, being a higher rank makes it less likely to be made a vassal (for the AI), and adds to the number of diplomats and military leaders available. Some forms of governments also get scaling bonuses, where it gets better with a higher rank, and the tribal governments generally ease their penalties at higher rank.

Only a handful of countries start as empires (including Byzantium, which is appropriate, as you generally don’t go down in rank). Small duchies can become kingdoms once they have 300 total development, and kingdoms can become empires at 1000 development. There’s a few extra wrinkles thrown in, such as member states of the HRE are always duchies, with electors capable of becoming kingdoms.

It’s a fairly small change to things, but there’s enough wrinkles to it all to make it a fairly neat passive subsystem. Large countries get a little more diplomatic weight, an extra leader to go with all those armies (and fronts), and the AI is protected from predatory vassaling players.

Free Cities

The patch introduced a new unique government type for the HRE, the free city. They get bonuses to trade and development, and in return increase imperial authority and revenue. The city also gets extra protection from the Emperor (attacking one isn’t advised). And, being a free city, once one gets a second province, it stops being a free city, and reverts to an oligarchic republic.

Mostly, this is an attempt to re-work the internal forces of the HRE. Since they get extra protection from the emperor, and they provide money and authority to him, there’s a lot more motivation to keep the member states small, instead of slowly growing to a small number of larger states.

Along with this, the main workings of imperial authority was also redone, to have more monthly changes instead of big events. Having more member states in the HRE, and having more free cities and electors was rewarded. However, as having ‘heretic’ princes lowers authority, it means that reform of the empire is much harder once the Reformation gets going (…which seems like a good side effect).

So You Say You Want a Constitution

The expansion included a new feature for some government types. The late game Constitutional Republic and Constitutional Monarchy, now have parliaments, along with the unique English Monarchy government (only available with the expansion).

Any government with a parliament will regularly have debates (well, you don’t have to, but it costs legitimacy to ignore it). There’s a large number of different possible subjects for debate, most of which will generate a bonus for the next decade, and a few can generate stability, or extra base tax.

When one is proposed, it is debated with a 0% chance of passing. To get it to pass, one must bribe a number of seats in the parliament, which are each attached to a particular province. Each seat gets a bonus to taxes, production, and manpower, but the more seats there are, the more of them need to be bribed for a decent chance of winning a debate. The bribes are varied, and what each seat asks for will depend on the province, but it can run from gold, monarch power, army tradition, to more specialized things like fervor (the Reformed religion special mechanic), to imperial authority (for the Emperor of the HRE).

Since it grants extra bonuses, it is rather like the ‘extra powers’ that some religions get through various expansions. At the same time, its a nice touch for England, as it does give it an extra dose of early flavor, like the other unique governments earlier expansions had added. And it does come with a cost, as a failed debate costs prestige, and winning a debate not only costs the bribes mentioned above, but as the debate goes on, there will be a number of events popping up for further bribes to the seat (almost always money), or lose support.

In the Name of God

When EU III came up with the governmental type system, theocracies were an off-branch for a few governments, with the papacy being a special form. Now that monarchies and republics each had their own mechanic (legitimacy and tradition), theocracies got devotion as an equivalent in the expansion.

This doesn’t generally slowly move up and down a little every month as with other two (it will with positive or negative stability, but other effects are more rare), but there are events that will shift things. Unlike the others, devotion has no effect on unrest or stability, but it does affect taxes and prestige, as well as papal influence (if Catholic) or church power (if Protestant).

Also with the expansion, most theocracies get an event to choose an heir (it’s normally just a random new ruler at the former’s death without it). This can be a fairly long list, and it’s really just a choice between different immediate bonus and penalties (money, prestige, devotion, ect), with the heir’s abilities being decided after the decision.

More Religion

Paradox continued to add nuance to religions, adding Tengri to central Asia (replacing some of the shamanist area), and adding Zoroastrian for one province (and possible CK II conversions). Buddhism was split up into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada branches. All three versions get increased tolerance of heretics, but differ on giving bonuses to morale, advisors, or ideas.

The expansion also gives all three versions of Buddhism a new mechanic, karma. This is a 0 to 100 slider, like several other scales in the game, but the general goal is to balance it in the middle instead of just running it up to max. At low karma, you gain discipline and lose diplomatic reputation, while high karma is the opposite, and balanced karma gives a stronger bonus to both. The reason for splitting Buddhism up was that each version gets its own events, or its own choices for the same event, so that each one interacts with karma and the world differently.

At the same time, the Protestant religion got a new mechanic with the expansion. Church power accumulates, a bit like fervor does for Reformed, and allows purchase of church aspects. Power grows at rate equal to one tenth the total monarch power generation of the country, multiplied by the nation’s religious unity percentage, so a large country split between competing religions will have a hard time getting anywhere until things get under better control, while a one- or two-province minor can generate power quite fast.

Instead of the Reformed mechanic of using power to keep a bonus active, it’s technically a one-time purchase. But there are twelve possible aspects, each with its own bonus, and only three can be active at a time, so once there are three, they can be slowly changed out for other bonuses as more church power accumulates.

Conclusion

Originally, you needed this expansion to be able to manually increase development in a province, which made this very much a ‘must get’ for anyone. The game was just as playable as before, but there were too many references to increasing development to not feel some aggravation over not being able to do it. However, patch 1.28 moved this ability to the main game, so this expansion is no longer needed for that.

That leaves the major reasons for purchase as the new government and religion mechanics. As such, it makes a great companion expansion to Wealth of Nations, as they both enhance India and surrounds and the Reformation religions. Parliaments are a little limited in scope as they belong to later mid-game governments, though they’re a great addition if you wish to play England (which is a good country to play as).

Government ranks (and changing them) are a tiny feature, but if you’re playing to expand from a small start, being told you’ve ‘ranked up’ is at least as good as the actual reward. And finally, there’s the theocracy mechanic, which I feel should be in the main game (though it comes up rarely enough), alongside legitimacy and tradition. Overall, there’s a bunch of smaller things here, and I don’t see this as a meaningful expansion for a new or occasional player. But if a couple of the features strike your fancy, there are some good ones here still (and keep in mind that the ‘national focus’ feature from Res Publica comes with this expansion as well, if you don’t have that).

On the patch side of things, this was another major shakeup of how the game is played. The new siege and committed movement systems make a big difference in war. In some ways, it’s quite easy to miss the more free-wheeling movement and countermarches of any of Paradox’s games until this point, but there are compensations. You really need to think about how your forts ensure the protection of your realm, and how to take apart an enemy’s defense line.

Wars on land are a little more sedate now, though there’s still scope for more mobile warfare away from congested Europe. Coupled with some minor interface changes that made a lot of on-map things more visible, it was a great update to the game.

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