Posts Tagged Paradox

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May05

Paradox’s Sea

by Rindis 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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Nov19

Lords of the Realm

by Rindis on November 19, 2022 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eighth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom
Charlemagne: Back in Time
Way of Life: The Short Way
Horse Lords: For the Horde

Paradox took a while while to announce the another CK II expansion after Horse Lords, but when they did, it turned out to be focused largely on the inner workings of the realm (while most expansions had been focused on expanding the scope of the game), and hoped to increase mid- to late-game challenge.

Conclave came out on January 1, 2016, alongside patch 2.5, which featured the same ability to log into your Paradox account from the launcher that had recently been introduced to EU IV.

Shattered Combat

Combat came in for a round of changes again. In this case, the number of casualties from each day of combat was reduced. This only has a moderate effect in modest realms as a multiplier was taken out that was causing what was considered excessive losses in huge armies. Overall, the plan was to make combat less decisive, so that one battle would not make the main army useless, and not decide a war completely on that basis.

To aid with this, shattered retreat was brought over from EU IV, so that a defeated army will automatically try to retreat some distance to somewhere ‘safe’, where it can regain morale. Also, an army in friendly territory will start regaining a few men every month, instead of them going to the appropriate muster/garrison.

Overall, the differences are somewhat subtle. The ability to rotate armies ‘home’ for some reinforcing is welcome, but outside of large realms (admittedly, this is more aimed at the experience of the Holy Roman Emperor), shattered retreat isn’t accompanied by the ‘blocking’ action of forts in EU IV, so its still not too hard to chase down a defeated army for another defeat, and so just makes the ‘ping ponging’ that Paradox was working to eliminate take longer.

Education

Children got a rework in the expansion. Normally, they had need of a guardian/educator at age 6, and were then with that character until something happens to him or until the child is considered an adult at 16, when he/she gets all their main traits. Along the way, the child had a chance of picking up traits from the guardian, as well as some form of the guardian’s education trait (and… could even pick up that character’s religion and culture).

With Conclave, childhood is in three parts (including the 0-5 pre-education phase which didn’t really change). In childhood (6-11), they get a focus (akin to the ones used in Way of Life), which determines what kind of (new, child-specific) traits they get. At age 12, they switch to an education focus, which will eventually turn into the education trait at 16.

A lot of the effect of the guardian is taken out, and you can’t really drift cultures and religions that way anymore. The childhood focus generally determines what childhood traits are likely, and those determine which educational focus will be the best fit, with poor fits causing lower-level traits, and good fits making high-level ones likely. Similarly, primary attribute growth is more directly tied to the parents’ base attributes, though the educator can intervene, if he has an appropriate trait and direct the child towards a positive, rather than negative trait.

There are ten childhood foci (two per attribute, just like the normal ones in WoL), all with their own likely traits, which then tend to turn into adult traits. So overall, it’s a much more robust and natural system. I’m not sure how much difference in attribute scores there tends to be between the two, but the results certainly feel more natural.

Diplomacy & Favors

The diplomatic system was overhauled, with marriages now creating non-aggression pacts, which can then lead to alliances. This requires good relations with the ally as well as… relations. Close relatives can also become allies, and while they are rarer, alliances can now automatically pull someone into a war, making them a bit more certain than in the past.

A version of EU IV’s coalitions showed up with the patch as well, though they were renamed defensive pacts in a patch to give a better idea of their purpose. Conquering land generates a threat value with everyone around you, and when it gets high they start entering defensive pacts with each other (this is almost a direct return of ‘badboy’ ratings from earlier EU games). If you go to war with one member, all the other members automatically go to war with you.

Threat does decline over time, and members of the pact will drop out again once threat gets low enough. But it’s not too hard for the pact to feel futile, as the defensive pact is still too small to deal with your expanding realm. But of course, taking land from them drives up threat, and the pact gets bigger….

And finally, the expansion introduced favors, akin to what had just appeared in EU IV: The Cossacks. However, there it was just a brake on using an alliance offensively, and here it’s a more full-featured system in keeping with the personal nature of the game. I find the favors are a little rarer in use than I’d like to see, but there are a number of ways to get one (including providing a hefty amount of cash, though that also requires that they like you). Once a character owes you a favor, you can use it to pressure them into certain actions, such as leaving a faction, or joining yours.

Council

The central feature of the expansion however was the council. Along with the original five positions that help with certain ‘realm scores’, and do tasks such as aiding research and diplomacy, the men in those positions are on the council, which can have little, or great effect, depending. Additionally, kings have an extra advisor seat on the council, and emperors have two.

A new faction goal is to increase the council’s power. The first step is to empower it as a potential decision-making body at all, and then there are seven types of things that can be made into a council decision, instead of the ruler’s, including declaring wars, granting titles, and so on. This is a new tab in the laws section, which got a general overhaul as part of this.

Whereas before council positions were generally a matter of appointing the most qualified person who liked you enough not to stab you in the back (quite literally for the spymaster), now your most powerful vassals expect to be on the council, and get very upset (making them more likely to plot against you, or join factions) if they are not. You can still ignore this, but since they are the powerful nobles, it’s not a group you can afford to have angry with you, even if they are all simpletons.

Once on the council, a character has an attitude that determines largely how they will vote. The three general attitudes are pragmatist (opposes challenging wars, and creating other strong vassals), glory hound (favors a strong realm and wars against stronger opponents), and zealot (favors enforcing his religion in the realm). Some may also be loyalists (who will generally follow the liege’s lead) and malcontents (will oppose anything the king wants that doesn’t grant him power).

All of this adds to the power tug-of-war that CK II has built in to its structure for some time. A relatively weak and unpopular king can be bullied into signing away much of his power to the council (largely through faction demands), limiting his (and his heir’s) options. On the other hand a council can be a way of approving a number of centralization options as the council gets a say in it. Not only can a well-respected king swing members of the council around, but favors can be used to get votes.

Conclusion

This is the second time CK II looked more internally than just expanding the scope of the game, and is very successful at it. Way of Life is a ‘take it or leave it’ expansion, that is generally good, but doesn’t necessarily add a lot to the game as a whole. Conclave is a great expansion of one of the core features that is important to every titled character, and does a good job with it.

I’m a little more iffy on the changes to combat in the patch, but it didn’t really break anything either. The overall changes to diplomacy are something of a wash… except that favors are also a big help to the council system. My biggest disappointment is that I feel the rework of childhood should have gone into the main game, rather than splitting it off into the expansion.

If you like CK II as a medieval drama generator (which is the main reason to like it), this expansion delivers more of that. This is the best ‘general use’ expansion, and short of wanting one of the “scope” features of another expansion, this would be a good first expansion to get.

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May23

Cossack Estate

by Rindis 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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Nov10

For the Horde

by Rindis on November 10, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the seventh in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom
Charlemagne: Back in Time
Way of Life: The Short Way

After the focused expansion of Way of Life, the Crusader Kings II team went back to expanding the scope of the game. In this case, exploring the eastern edges of the map (which was re-worked a bit), and the lives of the nomads of the steppes. Horse Lords was released on July 14, 2015, alongside patch 2.4.

The map was also expanded slightly again for this. The geographical scope didn’t change, but some previous wasteland north of the Tibetan Plateau was made into new counties, and new cultures were introduced for them.

Cleanup

Even before announcing the actual expansion, it was announced that CK II was in for another round of clean up and bug fixing. One of the programmers had found in his own game with a successful (and very large) Byzantine Empire, that the vast majority of AI time was spent with all the characters checking ‘can I blind/castrate him’ on all the other characters. So, obviously there were optimizations that could be done.

Along with this, the interface was cleaned up, and got some nice upgrades. Upon starting a game, there is now a large page that comes up giving all the main ideas you are operating under. That is, the type of culture you are, the main government form, and your religion. Moreover, this page can be accessed at any time through a button next to your portrait, so you can see all the characteristics and bonuses.

The idea of honorary titles was also regularized a bit, and a very important one added: commander. Instead of appointing commanders of your troops directly from your vassals and Marshal, commander is now a minor title with some income and prestige, and your army leaders now come out of this pool. The old system occasionally let the same character be in multiple places at once, which naturally caused problems. The new system is handy, since the position also improves opinion, and allows you to vet potential army leaders before you’re desperately hunting through all your vassals as you raise armies for a war.

Nomad Hordes

The main focus of the expansion itself are the nomad tribes of the eastern regions of the map. Without the expansion, the area continues working under tribal government rules (see the Charlemagne review), but having the expansion changes the government and holding types for the region, and allows you to play as a nomad horde, no matter what their religion (though that might become a problem, and cause a Game Over, if you ‘settle down’ as a tribe or feudal/iqta government).

Generally speaking, nomads are looking for empty holding slots, which are used as pasturage, and contribute to their maximum population and manpower. Unlike tribes, this is not one holding per county, and getting bonuses for empty slots, this is one holding in the realm, and getting bonuses for all the counties’ slots. Additionally, their capital is a new type of holding:

Nomad capitals have khans or khagans in a clan. These do not directly generate levies or taxes, and always have a minimal fortification value. However, they have an extensive list of fairly cheap upgrades to the capital, that provide bonuses to population, taxes, morale, combat bonuses, and even movement speed. Moving a capital is fairly easy, and all buildings will go to the new location.

Like tribal governments, they are stuck with one inheritance rule, which is for the male relative with the highest prestige to take over the primary title. Vassals also get a choice as to whether to stay with the new ruler, or declare independence, creating the usual breakup and scramble whenever the current ruler dies. A new feature is to send sons away to become mercenaries, where they will hopefully become rich and famous.

Nomads can hold other holding types (and even build temples) as vassals, but of course don’t see them as directly useful (though holding, say, a castle, can allow a horde to settle down as a new feudal kingdom… who will lose most of his old bonuses, and all the unsettled land, and will need to get more regular holdings in a hurry). So, regular holdings can be pillaged, which causes all sorts of problems (revolts, lower taxes…), but also destroys two building improvements in the holding, and if the last building is destroyed, so is the holding, returning it to an empty state to become pasturage.

Clans

Each independent nomad ruler has an emperor-level title, while his direct vassals (well, the nomad ones), have king-level titles. Each of these denote rule over a clan, as opposed to any territory. So, every nomad realm will have one or more clans in it.

Clans are fairly independent, and for instance, will never provide troops to their liege. On the other hand, there’s no musters in the first place. As intimated above, clans have population and manpower in addition to other attributes, and population is is the prime determiner of income. Meanwhile, manpower is used to raise 250-man contingents for the horde (this acts like retinues from Legacy of Rome, and replaces them for nomads; they’re generally a lot easier and less expensive to raise, but they’re also nearly the entire sum of the available military).

Inside of a horde, the clans have relations with each other, which are spelled out on a new status screen. The primary things you get to see are all the current clans, and their leader, and whether any have a current blood oath or blood feud going on. The former is basically an alliance between the two current heads of clans, while the feud can keep going for generations. It also shows each clan’s sentiment with the others. That is effectively a relations score like the normal ones between characters, but it is turned into a modifier to actual relations between members of the different clans.

In addition, clans can be absorbed into another (if it is small, and probably, unpopular), a large clan can be spit up (which it’s likely to resist), and new clans can be created (really, just a minor clan being ‘promoted’ to being big enough to show in game). All of this helps add a fair amount of… Brownian motion to the structure of a horde, and seems like a pretty good job of getting the fluid nature of nomads into a static game format.

Tributary

Nomadic nations generally have lots of ability to go to war with their neighbors, but can’t have a lot of vassals, and pillaging a rich area down to pastures may be time consuming, and lead to lots of rebellions to put down (but can make you quite rich!), and absorbing lots of new land may unbalance the clans, and lead to internal chaos.

So there’s a new type of ‘vassalage’ available with the expansion: tributary. This leaves the country technically independent, but subordinate to its master, paying taxes to it, and liable to be called up in wars.

Tributaries are fragile relationships, and can dissolve upon the death of the current suzerain. The tributaries aren’t part of the court, so they can’t be part of a faction there (like ‘independence’), though they can declare war on their suzerain to gain it on their own.

Silk Forts

Another slight change to the interface was the ‘tab’ for trade posts was redesigned and regularized a bit. There’s now two special holdings that can be constructed for cheap in most provinces.

The Silk Road was added to the map (for everyone), as a series of routes stretching from the east edge of the map to traditional end points in the Sea of Azov, Constantinople, and the Middle East. Any province it goes through gets bonus income… until war (sieges, raids…) blocks that branch. That stops income on that route, but others will get more money in compensation.

Trade posts can be built by anyone who controls part of the Silk Road, to get even more income out of it. This is subject to limitations by technology, and Merchant Republics can still build them in any coastal province.

Along with those, forts can be built as temporary fortifications in any county you occupy (except that nomads can’t build them). This is a new slot in the same ‘tab’ introduced for trade posts, and are cheap to build, and have no upgrades.

They can (slightly) delay enemies who will have to besiege it before they can get to the regular holdings when invading a country, but the main uses are offensive. The main trouble with attacking nomads is that their counties have no holdings, so as soon as your army moves on, you give up control of the county, and lose the war score taking it gets you. Typically, the only ways to get war score is by winning battles (which can be difficult), and taking their capital (which still doesn’t give much).

But you can occupy a province, build a fort, and then move on. The fort keeps control, and you extend your supply line, avoiding the attrition that being far beyond your borders can bring. Similarly, building a fort on Pagan territory negates the supply and attrition penalties attacking them gives.

Conclusion

I have some problems with this one, caused by the problems of ‘layering on’ new mechanics after the fact. Introducing nomads is a good idea, and they’re handled very well here. But they only exist if you have the expansion, whereas tribes always exist. Similarly, if HL is the only expansion you have, you’re a bit trapped, as settling down can put you out of the game.

What is outside of the expansion is also quite good, with plenty of little touches that round off more sharp corners. Not mentioned yet is the fact that government type is no longer strictly holding dependent. This was mostly to keep from suddenly changing governments accidentally (and maybe ending the game) by changing your capital. But it opens the door to introducing some extra nuanced types, which would happen.

If one wants to play as Genghis, or some other horde leader, this is obviously the expansion to get, and I don’t think anyone desiring that will be disappointed. But the ability to… paint yourself in corner means that it is unwise as a first expansion. Getting one or more of the ‘religious unlock’ expansions (SoI, TOG, SoA, RoI) would be recommended.

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Oct09

Uncommon Changes

by Rindis 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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Aug18

Expansion of Gold

by Rindis on August 18, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fifth 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

Paradox went back to the New World for the fifth expansion to EU IV. Instead of the North American focus of Conquest of Paradise, the new one, El Dorado, would focus on Mesoamerica and South America, and it would re-work exploration instead of settlement.

It was released on February 26th, 2015, alongside patch 1.10, and patch 1.11 followed on March 8, along with the free “Women in History” DLC.

Exploration

With a focus on the New World, exploration mechanics were re-worked for the expansion. Without El Dorado, it still works the same; get Quest for the New World, hire explorers and conquistadors (instead of admirals and generals), and have them command forces that can slowly uncover new areas.

With the expansion, you never ‘explore’ just by walking into terra incognita (outside of ways that everyone can always do it; notably marching around the interior of a country you’re at war with). Instead, you assign explorers and conquistadors to exploration missions.

An explorer will get options to explore the ‘waters of x’, which will send out his fleet to uncover all the sea zones of a region. Once at least some of these are known, he can ‘chart the coast’ of that region, which will uncover all the coastal provinces there.

These require a fleet of at least three light or heavy warships to do, and once one of these missions is started, it cannot be recalled (you do get a notice when it comes back home). So a lot of control is taken away, and as these only work within your colonial range, it might be difficult to target the area you want. But it takes a lot of micromanagement out, and the ships do not suffer attrition while on these missions (unless the explorer dies, at which point there might be very high attrition on a fleet a long way from home).

Conquistadors can go exploring on their own, which works pretty much like the usual auto-explore command in any game, though the army will halt to rest and replenish troops if too many are lost to combat against native populations.

And finally, explorers can attempt to circumnavigate the world. This takes a slightly higher tech level, and the fleet will take normal attrition. However, the first nation to complete the mission gets 100 prestige, with other nations getting 10 if they do it later.

All of these missions have extra events attached to them, especially the conquistadors. Their auto-explore is actually hunting for the seven cities of gold, and in addition to to the normal dealing with the natives, getting lost, and other exploration events, they may find clues and actually try to find one of the legends of the New World, with a (small) chance of succeeding.

A final note is that a country that builds up a colonial nation first gets a ‘claim’ on all the provinces of that region. Well, assuming you’re Catholic, and only other Catholic nations will care. It’s meant to represent the effects of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Generally, the AI will abide by these claims, and violating them causes relations penalties; though conquering territory from native nations is still fair game.

Religion

With more attention on the New World, three new religions were added: Nahuatl, Mayan, and Inti, displacing some of the generic Animist religion that had been used. They have bonuses roughly similar to Animism, and that’s it.

Unless you have El Dorado, in which case they all have similar enhanced mechanics. Notably, they all have five reforms they can pass for fairly good bonuses. Passing one is difficult, and resets everything that was needed to pass it. For instance, a Nahuatl country needs five vassals, and positive stability to pass a reform, but doing so lowers stability and releases all the vassals. Once all five are passed, the religion as a whole can be reformed (if there’s a Western nation on its border), which will basically ‘Westernize’ the country, bringing its tech level up as is done for other methods. Each one also has a unique extra mechanic:

Nahuatl has Doom, representing the Aztec belief in a series of sacrifices to empower the gods to keep the world from ending. Doom is a counter that slowly goes up, technologies and ideas become more expensive, and at 100, the royal family is sacrificed, eliminating the current ruler and heir in favor of a new 0/0/0 monarch. Large battles and sacrificing monarchs can reduce Doom.

Mayans don’t have an overt mechanic, but have to (directly) control 20 provinces to pass a reform. Doing so splits up the country, releasing nations, or transferring provinces to other bordering nations.

Inti has Authority, representing the current power of the Sapa Inca worshiped as a god. Authority is gained from having a large, prosperous nation, and decreases stability cost and unrest. Once it hits 100, a reform can be passed… which lowers Authority to 0, and starts a civil war with pretender rebels.

All three are neat ideas, and are guaranteed to cause instability in the region, especially in Mesoamerica, where the competing states won’t just conquer each other as they specifically need vassals. And naturally, someone has to lose, and since each Nahuatl nation has its own Doom counter (a universal one might be a little more reasonable), sacrifices of reigning monarchs are common.

Liberty Desire

The colonial nations introduced with Conquest of Paradise had a new stat, liberty desire. As of patch 1.10, all vassal nations now use this. Originally, it was just to allow for colonial revolutions, but now any sufficiently unhappy vassal state can rebel. Since one of of the modifiers for this score is just how powerful all the subjects of a nation are (taken together), it’s also a serious brake on just establishing a handful of powerful vassals, who will then act as a buffer against all the other powers, while you concentrate on one or two things.

Below 50% liberty desire, a vassal is loyal, and will act as vassal states always have in the series; always joining wars with the leading nation, and being a good little servant. Over 50%, and they are disloyal, which causes them to stop paying taxes, and only defend themselves in wars. Also, other countries can promise to support their independence. At 100%, the nation is rebellious, and will actively seek opportunities to successfully rebel.

Trade & Treasure Fleets

Trade came in for another round of tweaks, with some general rework of inland trade power. Also, colonial nations now generate an extra merchant for their parent country if they’re large enough (10 provinces). These can be used anywhere, but the obvious intent is to put them into New World trade centers to steer the trade to your own European trade centers for collection.

With the expansion, treasure fleets were added to the game. Sort of. Colonial nations with gold-producing provinces now store up gold and send it home as one big lump sum. It technically travels down the trade routes to the overlord’s trade capital, and it can be intercepted by privateers, who will whittle away at the amount of gold depending on their trade power in the nodes it goes through.

Once it arrives, the receiving nation gets the money, and inflation, as if they’d gotten it in a peace deal. With them coming in regularly, it can really start causing real inflation problems, instead of the more usual modest problems from gold provinces. Overall, it’s a neat idea, and the use of privateers is good, but it’s not obvious to anyone but the receiving nation that anything’s happening. And of course, since it’s not really on the map, they can’t be directly captured or disrupted by an enemy nation in a war.

Nation Designer

Another addition of the expansion is a custom nation designer. You choose a capital province, and then build out a nation from there, including the territory, culture, religion, traditions, etc. This all uses up a budget of points, which can be set to nearly any level. There’s achievements connected with it that all have a set budget to use, but more usefully, everyone in a multiplayer game can be set to get the same number of points, and then create ‘equivalent’ nations to play with.

I haven’t really used it, but the interface for it is pretty good.

Women in History

This was a free DLC that automatically gets downloaded as part of the Steam copy of EU IV, though it could be disabled in the launcher. Mostly, it adds events for countries to get historically prominent women as possible advisors. This also means that female portraits for all advisor types were also added, and they can, very occasionally, show up without the specific events.

It’s a nice bit of adding a bit of awareness of how much women have added to history, and not even so much in the background. I’m not quite sure why Paradox did it as a DLC instead of adding it straight to the game files; presumably so it would be easier to talk about the fact that they did do it. At any rate, I will say it feels a little odd, because its mostly fixed people at a fixed time, which gets back to the acting out history style of the first two games of the series.

Conclusion

For some, the Nation Designer is the headline feature, and reason enough to get the expansion. I don’t care for things like that (if I had a particular alternate-history to explore, maybe, but then I’d need to adjust more than one nation), so I pretty much ignore it.

As far as filling out the New World, I like it a lot better than CoP. The new religion mechanics are interesting (well, Maya not so much), and make the dynamics of the Aztecs in particular much more in line with history. Exploration is a mixed bag, seemingly taking some of the wonder out as explorers do things on their own, but taking micromanagement out with it, with all the attrition-watching that was needed, is overall worth it. If you get lots of colonial nations the number of extra merchants gets out of hand, but a few extras are a great boon for steering trade from your colonies to your home port.

The main patch is mostly notable for the rework of vassal relations, which gives that system a lot more character, and I think it was really needed. On the other hand, it saw the second rework of inland trade nodes, and this one was way too heavy handed with a flat extra 50 trade power or not.

Overall, the game improved again, and the free Women in History DLC is a nice addition. Assuming you’re not interested in the Nation Designer, I give El Dorado a limited recommendation: it won’t do much if you’re not exploring, and it’s a good, but not essential, addition if you are.

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Jul13

The Short Way

by Rindis on July 13, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the sixth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom
Charlemagne: Back in Time

The next expansion for CKII (the eighth, not counting Sunset Invasion) after Charlemagne was a small, focused, ‘character experience’ one. After a bit of open beta testing, CK II: Way of Life was released on December 16, 2014.

It really was focused, with just one actual feature, though of course it did cause some changes elsewhere. Patch 2.3 featured a change to the UI (right-clicking on a portrait to interact with the character—from anywhere—instead of hitting a button that character’s main screen), and added some more modding hooks, as well as properly multithreading the game startup.

Each count-level and above character can now choose a focus, one of ten different subjects to focus his attentions on. There’s two per primary attribute, and they generally provide similar bonuses to that attribute, but different secondary bonuses. Despite what the main advertising art might suggest, these pairs are just separate interests for each attribute, and not any sort of good/evil pairing.

With WoL enabled, the normal ‘improve this low attribute’ ambitions are disabled (see the Intrigue section of my original review), largely reducing them back to the original set of ‘become wealthy’, ‘become steward’, ‘have a son’, etc., ambitions. However, if you take a focus in an attribute that is low (below 8), the same ambition-driven events to raise them become available, so they’ve just been moved from one system to another. (However… the focus gives a +3 to an attribute, so if you were 5 originally, you go to 8, don’t get any special events to raise it, and go back to 5 if you switch to a different focus….)

Additionally, of these foci can generate character modifiers to ‘level up’ the appropriate abilities. These generally come in three levels, and will stay even if you change your focus. While the AI will generally stick to one focus for a character, you can change it every five years, either as needs change, or once you get the bonuses you want out of them.

Conclusion

As a small, focused (cough), expansion, this is a great idea. It doesn’t really interfere with anything, and doesn’t enhance some major aspect of the game, so it comes down entirely to how you feel about it. The theory is to add a bit of role-playing to the game, but for some it still feels gamey, as you can just cycle through foci, picking up bonuses (starting with some that are known to be very reliable in providing them).

I generally like it, and like pulling the self-improvement goals back out of the ambitions (I felt that was too gamey), but think a couple of opportunities were missed. The AI sticks with one focus his entire life, which is generally fine, but I think it would have been better to have some events have a chance of an AI character switching to another one (say he gets a trait that’s opposed to one of the ones the focus can grant—have a chance to switch out; or a hunting accident causes a change away from the hunting focus, or going on pilgrimage can cause a shift to theology).

I’d say this is among the least necessary expansions, but if you like CK II for the opportunity for a bit of mental role-play, it’s well worth looking at; and if you don’t, you may still find it a fun idea.

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Jun11

Reform-Minded Patch

by Rindis on June 11, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fourth 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

After Res Publica, a fairly small update and expansion, Paradox scheduled a larger expansion, and the biggest overhaul to EU IV yet. Art of War concentrated on warfare, with new events and mechanics for the Thirty Years War and the Napoleonic period. It was released with patch 1.8 on October 30, 2014, which included some massive overhauls of major mechanics in the game.

Patch 1.9 was a major patch with no accompanying expansion (this every-other major patch pattern became the general procedure for EU IV) that was released on December 19th, and did more re-works of the game. This review looks at both patches and the expansion.

Country Update

While different, the EU IV world map was naturally based on EU III’s, and was more detailed in Europe than anywhere else. Patch 1.8 increased the number of provinces by about half, and added a large number of new nations in all corners of the world. Some of these are only ‘potential’ countries; ones that can exist only by revolt or being released by a larger country, but many represent smaller nations that couldn’t be represented on the old map, or just better research on an area.

In addition, a number of new tradition sets were created, mostly for sets of these new countries, but overall the variety and individuality increased substantially. Finally, more dynamic historical events were added for all sorts of countries, enhancing that system overall.

Patch 1.9 then added the idea of disasters. There were a number of large-scale bad events that could affect a country, seemingly randomly. Now, they were surfaced to the user, making the game a bit more controllable, and feeding into the feel of this iteration being a game. Generally, all countries are eligible for the ‘peasant revolt’ (low manpower and stability) and ‘civil war’ (low legitimacy), while some countries have special ones (England can have the War of the Roses and the English Civil War disasters).

When the preconditions for a disaster are met, the clock starts ticking down to it. If the conditions go away, then the disaster stops, otherwise it fires once the clock ends. Peasant Wars have always been a more common one (especially for the AI), and as an example, force stability to -3, cause additional unrest, make stability more expensive, and creates a couple peasant armies for an immediate problem while the unrest and negative stability cause more.

This is one place where I feel too much is being surfaced to the user, as these are the types of events that, at best, are only obvious in retrospect. That said, getting stuck in a poor position, and watching the clock tick to an even bigger problem certainly does add its own brand of tension to the game.

Revolt & Unrest

Speaking of revolts, those changed too. The province-by-province check for revolts every month, that had existed since the original game was replaced by unrest. This is pretty much figured the exact same way, but it does not cause revolts in itself.

Instead, the province’s prominent revolt type is figured (independence, religious, pretender king, etc.), and all the provinces with a positive unrest towards that particular type add together for a chance of progressing a revolt. Then that is checked each month, and when it does come up, that revolt gets 10% progress, which is displayed in a few places. Once progress hits 100%, then an actual revolt happens with a decent army or two.

This makes revolts something of a ‘mini-disaster’, where you can see the problem coming from some time off. The listing of factions will even tell you, on average, how long it will take a revolt to occur based on current unrest and progress. If an in-progress revolt loses all support (i.e., the respective provinces go to negative unrest), it will lose 10% progress each month until it goes away, so solving a problem for a month or two will set it back, but not instantly get rid of it.

A final adjustment is that revolts that start on an island have been a very small problem as they can’t spread, and take control of more territory. Now a revolt that has control of everything it can reach will automatically try to move to a non-connected nearby province, without needing sea movement or anything, just a decent amount of time.

Autonomy and Clients

One of the things revolt risk did was cause lower taxes and recruiting, as the population was resisting the government’s efforts. This did not get taken over by unrest, and instead these factors are now reduced by autonomy.

Autonomy is a new measure of how much attention a province is paying to the central government expressed as a percentage; manpower and income from the province are both reduced by the amount of autonomy, which generally goes down a little each month while the country is at peace, and the later government forms tend to have bonuses to autonomy reduction.

Naturally, newly conquered territory will have fairly high autonomy to start with, though reconquering core areas and inheriting in a union will result in minimal, if any, autonomy. The big thing is that you can also raise or lower autonomy in an area, which will lower or raise unrest in the province. So, take a new province, raise autonomy, which reduces unrest, and then peace will eventually bring autonomy back down again. Or, lower autonomy to exploit a rich province, and garrison the area to put down any revolts that crop up.

Also, releasing independent nations has always been a way of splitting off troublesome areas, or creating a buffer. But, it requires an appropriate possible nation in the area, and that may include areas you don’t wish to let go of. With AoW active, custom client states become possible in the late game (emulating Napoleon’s many reorganizations of the map of Europe). They’re set to be fairly loyal, and get their own traditions, in addition to their territory and name being entirely at the whim of the creating nation (well, the territory has to be contiguous).

Wars of Reformation

The Reformation came in for its own major overhaul. Generally, events would fire to randomly convert provinces to Protestant or Reformed, causing chaos and potentially making conversion a smart idea for smaller central European states.

With the new patch, instead there would be centers of reformation that would actively try to convert other provinces nearby, going for more of a proselytizing model. This makes the entire process much less random, and ensures that anyone near one of these centers will have to deal with the problem for some time to come.

Generally, three centers show up for the Protestants, and then another three for Reformed (with the first of each as an event, and the other two being ‘rewards’ for the first countries to convert to the new religion). The process can be stopped, by conquering the province and converting it (which will destroy the center), but that’s not easy either.

AoW also introduced religious leagues. These are coalitions that form to enforce, or change, the religion of the Holy Roman Empire. To start with, the Emperor must be Catholic; but there’s no restrictions on the electors, and if one of them goes Protestant, then he automatically forms the Protestant League, which can declare war on the emperor to force the official religion of the HRE to change. Once started, anyone (regardless of religion) can join the leagues, but religious tension is what starts them.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

Along with the Thirty Years War, the French Revolution came in for some serious attention. The Revolution was of course one of the major points of events in the original two games, In III, there had been the separate Revolutionary Republic and Empire government types, which had event chains as pre-requisites for them, and some very powerful bonuses, along with plenty of events to make sure that such a government would end up at war with most of the rest of Europe.

Now, a Revolution disaster was added which could happen to any European country that was in dire straights in the late 18th Century, making them the revolutionary target (France gets a customized French Revolution disaster). The lead ‘unhappy’ country gets to be the target of the events that bring about the revolution, changing the government to Revolutionary Republic, and changing the national symbol to a tricolor (many countries have the colors defined, and the rest get random colors picked for them).

Of course, all the relations problems of the old system are kept here, with the Revolutionary government getting a casus belli to ‘spread the revolution’, while everyone else gets reactionary modifiers to put the anti-monarchist upstarts down.

Naval Affairs

Art of War had a few tweaks for the military, the biggest one being the ability to just upgrade ships to modern types with a single click. You still pay the standard construction cost, and the ships are reset to minimum morale and durability, but it’s instant, and saves all the trouble of retiring old ships to stay under your naval limit while building the new ones.

Even better (and really needed), the expansion allows the ability to mothball fleets. Generally, it was common to set naval maintenance to minimum during peacetime in previous EU games. This can save a fair amount of money, and you don’t generally need the morale while at peace. Except now, trade protection with light ships suffers with lower maintenance, so mercantile nations can’t afford to do that (and possibly still can’t afford a regular fleet). Mothballing basically sets maintenance to minimum for selected fleets, so your light ships can still do their thing (along with any anti-pirate patrols you end up needing), allowing big ship and galley navies to not strangle the economy any more.

A final option is the ability to sell surplus ships to other powers, though I’ll admit I haven’t played around with it, and don’t know how eager the AI is to take your old castoffs. Also, as part of the big map expansion, trade was reworked with a more stable pricing scheme, and three new trade items were added.

A final naval convenience is that transporting armies was made simpler in the expansion. If you give an army an order to march across a body of water, the game will now ask if you want to use your transports automatically. And then it will send them out, pick up your troops (automatically dividing the army if it’s bigger than the transport fleet), and ferry them over. It’s not perfect, as it’ll try to do this when the waters are contested, and you need to ‘sneak’ across away from patrolling enemy fleets, but it’s a big convenience when it can be used.

Conclusion

Just in terms of the patch, 1.8 was a great improvement for EU IV. The new Reformation mechanics feel a lot more natural, and let you see whether or not you’re likely to be in the path of religious controversy. The new revolt mechanics aren’t as dramatic, but affect you no matter when/where you play the game as, and was just the beginning of PDS re-thinking core mechanics that had been there from the beginning. EU IV changed a lot of things in the interests of a better game, and this showed that the process hadn’t stopped.

The new map of course added a lot of content. If you’re stuck in Western Europe, you won’t see the changes, but everywhere else saw some major changes, and loads of new nations (and potential nations), adding even more life away from the ‘bright center’ of the game’s roots. The amount of work to update the timeline files for all the extra provinces and counties must have been massive. As much as I say I’m not a fan of patch 1.9’s disasters, they are in line with the rest of the features of EU IV, and I can’t really complain.

The expansion is also big, with a lot of nice things in it, though the out-of-expansion changes are still big enough to get all the top billing. Much of it is paying for convenience, and despite the features, nothing is really essential. It certainly makes you happy to be able to just automatically ferry troops, or any of a half-dozen other things. Content-wise there’s also a lot in the events, but they’re hard to pick up on. So there’s no one ‘get this now’ feature, and I only recommend this to dedicated players.

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May13

Back in Time

by Rindis on May 13, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fifth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom

Paradox went even further back in time for Crusader King II’s seventh expansion. Where The Old Gods had pushed the start date nearly 200 years back, Charlemagne’s headline feature was a 769 start date—98 years before TOG’s. Paradox released the expansion on October 14th, 2014, along side patch 2.2.

In the patch, Paradox streamlined the opening interface, so that you are given five general ‘era’ choices (only three of which can be selected without any expansions) instead of the ten bookmarks. Each one has a description of the main features of the era, and a list of possible rulers to play as. There’s a ‘custom game’ button to get at the old interface, and choose rulers other than the given set. It’s a little annoying for an experienced player, but certainly is an improvement for the novice player.

Realm Update

The major work on the patch away from the headline feature and the things it required (new cultures, religions, and the like) focused on more tweaks to how the ream is administered.

Patch 2.1 had added new penalties for having too many holdings in your demesne, and now they added a limit to how many vassals you can have. Like with the demesne limit, going over reduces the taxes and levies you receive from your vassals, and there there is a chance that vassals will just spontaneously become independent upon your death if you’re over the current limit.

This is meant to keep a large realm from just having a bunch counts as direct vassals, so no one has enough power to become a problem. A ruler needs to delegate power to dukes (or even kings in an empire) to keep from having too large a court to manage.

The interesting part was that they let you balance if you wanted a (modestly) larger demesne, or a larger number of vassals. Realm laws were reworked so that centralization gives you more demesne at the cost of your possible pool of vassals, and both that and the other main authority laws have to be unlocked by the Legalism technology.

Regents got a nice tweak, with regents acting more in their own interest, and with their personality, and less as a swap-in replacement for the ruler. Paradox also added the honorary title designated regent, which lets you choose just who will be running things when your incapacitated.

And finally, with the expansion, a powerful ruler can appoint viceroys. These are duke- or king-level governors who administer the title for you (keeping everyone from getting unhappy because you’re keeping all the good titles to yourself) for life. Once the viceroy dies, the title reverts back to you, keeping his family from becoming a permanent power block that may become disloyal. It will make feudal vassals of that rank modestly unhappy, and does require Legalism IV (say, circa 1150) for viceroy kings, and VIII (end game) for duke viceroys.

Tribes

Away from Western Europe and the Middle East, many areas are still not extensively settled, and cities have not grown up. This means the feudal structure of CK II isn’t accurate at all, and the problem got worse as the development team went back in time. So, a fourth basic holding type was added to the game:

Tribes have chiefs, who can become high chiefs and khans, if they hold extensive lands in a tribal government. They provide moderate taxes, and start lightly fortified, but can get good defensive values later in the game, and provide heavy troops. Generally, the tribe is the only holding in the province (some will have a temple as well), and gets an income and levy bonus per empty holding slot in the province. They generally have lots of light infantry, and most improvements (not all) cost prestige instead of money.

Tribes are locked to elective gavelkind inheritance, so that each generation, the titles are split amongst the heirs, with the primary heir being chosen by the nobles of the realm. Instead of the normal crown laws, tribes have tribal organization, which will generally start at ‘minimal’, and acts like the normal crown laws except only unreformed pagans will get unhappy as it progresses to ‘maximum’. A tribe at maximum organization can adopt feudalism or become a merchant republic (through decision).

This converts the ruler’s primary holdings from tribes to castles or cities, and as all the tribal improvements go away, the ruler is left with fairly minimal resources until he can start upgrading. On the other hand, tribal rulers get no vassal levies, but must call their vassals to war as allies (remaining under the vassal’s control). In a stable realm, this generates lots of (light) troops, but they can’t be forced to join, and an unpopular ruler can’t force them to join.

Ibadi

With the patch, Ibadism was moved from a Sunni heresy, to being a separate branch of Islam (following the lead of EU IV: Wealth of Nations, and adding the Kharijites as the Ibadi heresy), and with Sword of Islam it is as playable as the other two branches.

However, while the southeast corner of Arabia maintains an Ibadi population during the entire game, only the 769 start has an available independent ruler (the Emir of Azd Umanid). He has one neighbor of about his power level… and Abbasid Caliph on the other side.

Past the usual tough start of a more minor religion, they aren’t mechanically different from other branches of Islam, beyond their own holy order (with Sons of Abraham) and slightly different holy places.

Zunist

More unexpectedly, Zunism was added to the list of pagan religions. This was a small, not very well documented religion, that may not have been much more than one royal family’s personal beliefs.

It is completely gone in any start after 769 (swallowed up by Shia Islam), so you need both TOG and Charlemagne to play as a Zunist. At that point, three provinces are Zunist, along with the Zunbils and their vassals.

While they share many traits with other pagans, like being able to reform the religion, they are more of a cross between the offensive and defensive subgroups of other pagan religions. They have the same problems with conversion as other pagans, and have the boosted levy size of offensive pagans, but cannot raid, and have the increased defensive attrition of defensive pagans.

The tough-start problems include being adjacent to the Abbassids, though the attrition penalties should help with that, along with mostly being in mountainous terrain. Converting anything to Zunist is very unlikely at the start, but at least you hold one holy site, and a second one is easily available, but the other three range as far away as Cairo.

A Realm of Your Own

Possibly the most immediately interesting feature of the expansion is the ability to create your own kingdoms or empires. This isn’t modding the game, or using the equivalent of the ruler creator, this an in-game function.

Normally, you need to hold a certain amount of land that de jure belongs to a king-level title, and then you can ‘create’ or usurp that title. With the expansion, if you have a large enough realm that is split between several different ‘potential’ kingdoms (leaving you unable to claim any one of them), you can still promote yourself to king, and a new title based on your main duke title is created. Similarly, a powerful king can promote himself to emperor without conforming to any of the defined de jure empires.

It’s handy, and especially at the emperor-level can take a lot of pain out of attempts to get at the next higher rung of titles. The custom ones are more costly to create than the normal game-designated ones, which also makes them just appropriate for those who are stuck with powerful neighbors, or convenient allies, where the pursuit of power would otherwise take them.

Story Missions

Charlemagne’s rise to greatness was not at all inevitable, especially in 769, shortly after becoming effectively a co-equal king with his brother. This is a bit forced with the addition of story missions.

This is potentially a neat idea, that gives a lot of the history involved, and lets certain characters show up when/where needed. However, they’ve never been instituted for any subjects other than Charlemagne’s life, and give something of an ‘acting out history’ feel from EU II. The flexibility of events in CK II has been its strong point, and I think this takes away some of that, and makes playing as Charlemagne less interesting after the first time, even though he’s potentially a very interesting character to play.

Conclusion

Again, as a patch, this is an excellent improvement to the game. The vassal limit strikes me as a bit useless (it’s fairly high normally), though apparently needed for people determined to break the system. But the designated regent is a nice subtle addition, and the new tribal system makes them play very differently, and gives them some nice medium-term goals.

Expansion-wise, not so much. 769 is actually a fairly interesting start date, full of some of the most famous persons of early Medieval Europe. However, the story missions just make things feel a bit artificial, so primary replay interest is away from Charlemagne himself. The custom realms are a big help however, and the primary useful part day-in and day-out, though not really worth an expansion by itself.

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Apr10

A Tradition of the People

by Rindis on April 10, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third 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

During development of Wealth of Nations, PDS had mentioned merchant republics as being too small and vulnerable, even though they tended to be fairly small and long-lived in history. So the next project was considered a ‘mini-expansion’ and focused on republics in general. Res Publica was released on July 16th, 2014, alongside patch 1.7 for a minimal $5 (most expansions are $15, and ‘small’ ones are $10).

Getting Ahead in the World

One important patch change was a reverse in direction. Like in previous games, being behind your neighbors (or just other members of your tech group) in technology grants a bonus to your progress. Whereas before it had been a bonus to budgetary investment per country and tech, in EU IV it is a reduction in power cost from the most advanced neighbor you have.

This was initially a 5% (30 power) decrease in cost per level, but in patch 1.6 this was decreased to 2.5%. In patch 1.7, it was changed back to 5%, the maximum possible bonus was increased (though it’s really hard to get past the old limit), and the worst tech group penalties were removed. Various Far Eastern and African groups actually had penalties to power generation, effectively lowering their base 3 power per group, and these were removed to give everyone the same overall power generation, though non-Western countries still pay more for technology.

The idea had been to discourage lagging behind in technology for the cost bonus by reducing that, but now, they rewarded staying on top of technology. Any time the next Administrative or Diplomatic technology would be ‘ahead of time’ (each level has a target year, and it is more expensive before that point), you get a +20% to production or trade efficiency, giving a nice boost to income for keeping up with your studies.

An extra addition to the patch were three new idea groups (one per category). This also meant adding new policies for all the new combinations, and brought the number of choices up to seven per category.

Focus, Pinkie, Focus

The most useful expansion feature isn’t republic related: With the expansion, you gain the ability to set a national focus. This is done from the main Monarch Power display on the government tab. Activating one gives you two extra power points per month in the chosen field, while you gain one less in the other two.

It’s a nice bit of flexibility, and kind of a shame that it’s not in the base game, as there are times when one area is starved for points (especially Administration), while the others are doing well. The cost is that it can only be done every 20 years, but some countries will start focused, and are ready to change or remove focus from the start.

Factions

The idea of the faction system for Ming China from EU III: Divine Wind had been retained, but the principles changed a bunch. There were still three factions, and now they were tied directly to the three power types of the government. However, factions no longer prevented you from being able to do things. Instead, they each give two bonuses and one penalty.

Unlike before, faction influence isn’t subject to large shifts due to ruler ability and domestic policies (which no longer exist), but the military faction gains influence from army tradition, and the diplomatic faction gains influence from navy tradition, while the administrative faction gains influence from stability. In addition, you can spend monarch power to give influence to a particular faction.

Patch 1.7 reworked this so that factions are associated with particular government types (for modding purposes), and added factions to merchant republics. These are of course different from China’s factions, granting bonuses around goods, and trade instead of extra advisors and diplomatic reputation.

Republics

As briefly mentioned in the main review, republics have republican tradition. This is a measure of confidence in the government, and replaces legitimacy for monarchies. It is a more limited mechanic, with fewer things affecting it (though there are a number of events that directly touch it), and only a couple things that it affects.

The primary effect is that not being at full legitimacy increases stability cost. High tradition also reduces overall revolt risk, with the same maximum of legitimacy (-2%), but at minimum tradition, there is only an elimination of that bonus, instead of it swinging all the way to the +2% penalty that a monarchy has to deal with.

Republics generally elect (player choice) a new president every four years, with the base stats being one point each in two categories, and four in the one that he focuses in. Re-electing the previous president boosts him by +1 in each category (e.g., becomes 5/2/2 depending on his initial focus), but reduces tradition by 10. Tradition generally increases by +1 per year, so constantly increasing the stats of one president leads to an erosion of six points per election.…

There are, of course, events that give a choice between tradition, and losing money and the like, so the path of a stable democracy can be rocky. On the other hand, there can be stability-boosting events at a cost of tradition, and that’s a pretty good deal if you can afford it.

If tradition gets and stays very low, a republic can turn into a Despotic Monarchy. With the Res Publica expansion, this will instead be the unique Republican Dictatorship government, which will last until the current dictator dies. At that point, it’ll either go over to Despotic Monarchy, or if tradition is back up (probably through events, as it doesn’t raise on its own at this point) it goes back to the previous republic form.

Merchant Republics

An extra bonus for Merchant Republics in the expansion is that they can now create trade posts. These generate a bonus to trade power and naval force limits, with a limit of one per trade node, but must be ‘built’ in an owned province that isn’t in the country’s main node. However, despite what it seems, it’s not considered a building, and only costs Administration power (no money) to build, and is buried away in the trade section of the main province interface (though the existence of one does show up in the trade map mode with all the other modifiers).

This gives merchant republics a reason to develop a network of far-flung territories. Better yet, they continue working if the governmental form changes, but of course, there can’t be any new ones at that point.

Dutch Republic

As something of a follow up to the previous expansion, the Netherlands got more customization with this one. They can now choose (through event) to take the unique Dutch republic government form.

This gives them a slider, showing the relative power of the Statists and the Orangists. This shifts with every election (and, of course, events), and with the Orangists in power, the ruler rules for life, but doesn’t cause the republic to fall (though it will cause tradition to stop growing), and there is another election on his death (and events might kick them out of power). Statists act like a normal republic, though the Netherlands can always have royal marriages with other countries no matter who is in charge.

The primary government bonuses are to trade and heavy ships, the Statists will boost naval capacity and trade power, while the Orangists boost army capacity and stability.

As with most of the unique governments, it’s a fairly flexible form, and the bonuses are certainly good compared to early-game governments, and competitive with later ones.

Elective Monarchy

In 1444, Poland is leaderless, with a 0/0/0 interregnum, that can be solved in a few ways. The easy (and historical) one is to form a personal union with Lithuania, becoming the leading partner with Lithuania’s Kasimierez Jagiellon as the head of the monarchy. With the expansion, this will then fire an event to change the government type to the unique elective monarchy.

On the surface, this is a fairly good government, with bonuses to manpower, revolt risk, and vassals (which Poland starts with two of, plus Lithuania). On the other hand, the succession gets… complicated.

As the nobles vote for who succeeds to the throne, they are vulnerable to outside influences. Other countries can use a diplomat to canvas for a successor from their dynasty. Each month the diplomat is kept on the job there is a small chance of picking up a vote for that country’s candidate. You can spend legitimacy to gain votes for the Polish candidate, which should make it fairly easy to guarantee a native king given the scale of the voting, but there are events that seem to fire fairly often that will reduce his votes.

As a country that successfully supports its candidate, you get prestige, very good relations with Poland (a temporary +100 boost, as well as the normal +25 ‘same dynasty’ modifier), and a good amount of monarch power in all three categories. And once this happens to Poland they lose one diplomat (that hurts) and have a higher than normal cost to reduce inflation or war exhaustion until it can find a way out of the elective monarchy.

Finally, there’s a number of historical events that will fire related to this government, that tend to curtail power. Poland is given lots of possibilities with the setup of Poland-Lithuania, but there’s a lot of challenges too.

Conclusion

It’s hard not to recommend anything this cheap (and 50% off sales are fairly frequent), but… there may not be a lot here. National focus is the big ‘useful to everyone’ feature, and generally worth the money by itself… but it is also available through the later Common Sense expansion, so if you go for that big one, there’s no point getting this just for the focus.

On the other hand, if you want to play as any of the merchant republics, the trade posts are handy, and the extra mechanics for the Dutch are nice, and the electoral monarchy is also interesting, so there lots of good small reasons to buy this small expansion.

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