Hi everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis development diary. I hope you all enjoyed PdxCon last weekend, either in person or from watching the streams.
As you all know, we announced our new Immersion Pack, Third Rome, which will be out in June this year for 9.99$. So what is an immersion pack then? Well, it is something between a full expansion and a small graphics pack, similar to the story pack Leviathans for Stellaris.
Closest comparison to Third Rome of our previous releases for EU4 would be Wealth of Nations when it comes to amount and size of features. Third Rome also comes bundled with a portrait pack for russians, and 3 new sprite-packs, for 12 countries in the russian region, including Ryazan, Lithuania and Perm.
So, what cool features will we talk about today then?
We’re adding three new russian government types. The actual types are in the free patch, but the abilities we give them as well, belong to the Immersion Pack.
Veche Republic
This is a new republic form, which works like a merchant republic and have access to the russian abilities as well. They are always duchy rank, and their bonus is +1 merchant. Novgorod and Pskov starts as Veche Republics. It also gives +3 to states.
Principality
This is the new monarchy governmentform, which all russian monarchies start with. It has access to the russian abilities, and while they are locked to duchy rank, they have a bonus of -1 unrest and +5% Tax Modifier. It also gives +3 to states.
Tsardom
This government form is given when forming Russia, and is automatically empire rank. Besides giving +10 to amount of states and access to the russian abilities, it gives the following bonuses. +20% Manpower, +0.1 Yearly Absolutism & -0.05 monthly autonomy.
The russian abilities work like this. All actions have a bar to fill up before they can be used. Bar fill up from 0 - 100, increasing yearly by the ruler’s monarch point in the category, and a base +3. The actual bar can hold 150, so you don’t lose by not using it immediately.
- The Administrative ability is called Reform Sudebnik, and reduces autonomy by 10% in all provinces you own.
- The diplomatic ability is called Support Oprichnina, and reduces progress of all your rebelfactions by 30% each.
- The military ability is called Raise Streltsy, and reduces war exhaustion by 2, and raises 20% of your forcelimit as Streltsy Infantry in your capital.
So what is Streltsy units? Previously we had three categories of units, with regulars, mercenaries & banners. In 1.22 there are two more categories added, and one of those is the Streltsy.
Streltsy arrive at full strength, but low morale, and do not cost manpower nor gold at recruit, but otherwise works like a regular unit, if not for two distinct differences. First, the amount of streltsy compared to your force.limit increases your stability costs, while each streltsy regiment provides +10% fire damage.
The other category we add for 1.22 is Cossacks, which is there for everyone that bought the “The Cossacks” expansion. Cossacks work like regulars, except they do +10% extra shock damage.
Cossacks are recruited as an estate interaction, where each province assigned to the Cossacks estate will give you 1 cavalry cossack regiment.
Of course, fittingly for the focus on this update, we have added three new interactions to the Cossacks estate.
- Conscripting Elites: gain army tradition, lose loyalty
- Supply Arms: lose MIL, gain loyalty and influence
- Permit Self Governance: give autonomy to cossack lands, gain loyalty and influence
Next week, we’ll take a deeper look into more abilities of Russia and the Tsardom.
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