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Hello everyone! Today’s Development Diary will be focusing on features part of the Emperor expansion. These features aim to enrich the gameplay surrounding the Holy Roman Empire, both for Emperor and Princes part of the Empire.
You might have noticed that there’s been some quite heavy changes to a very old interface in our Developer Clash.
So now let’s go through these changes today. First up is the new reforms. We wanted to accomodate more playstyles than simply always uniting the Empire under the Emperor. So the Reforms have been divided up to three types, Common, Decentralized and Centralized. In order to access either the Decentralized or Centralized path you need to first get some of the Common reforms. Specifically you need to establish a permanent diet for the Empire.
The common reforms are
Call for Reichsreform
- -5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
- Enables Imperial Ban
Institute Reichsregiment
- Emperor gets +1 Diplomat, +1 Diplomatic Reputation
- Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest
Absolute Reichsstabilität
- Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance
Enact Gemeiner Pfennig
- The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
- All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.
Perpetual Diet
- +50% Imperial Authority Gain
- Establishes the Perpetual Diet in a Free City.
Create the Landsknechtwesen
- Mercenaries with home in HRE are cheaper for HRE Members by 25%.
Ewiger Landfriede
- Emperor gets 0.5 Monthly Prestige
- All members gets -5% Tech cost
- Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
- Disables internal HRE Wars
After you’ve taken the 5th reform, Perpetual Diet, you can go into one of the specialized paths. However these are mutually exclusive and you can’t go into both.
Following is the Decentralized Reforms
Establish the Reichstag Collegia
- +3 Free Cities
Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig
- Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
- Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
- Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
Embrace Rechenschaft Measures
- +1% Imperial Authority per Prince.
- +1 Max Electors
Geteilte Macht
- Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
- -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
Reichskrieg
- Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
- Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.
Following is the Centralized Reforms
Reform the Hofgericht
- Emperor gets -10% Core Construction cost
Curtail the Imperial Estates
- +25% Imperial Authority
Proclaim Erbkaisertum
- +25% Imperial Authority
- HRE becomes hereditary
Revoke the Privilegia
- +25% Imperial Authority
- Princes & Free Cities gets -10% Stability Cost
- Members are given a choice to stay within the empire and become a vassal under the Emperor or to leave the empire.
Renovatio Imperii
- The Emperor unites the empire under the Holy Roman Empire tag.
The centralized reforms are based on the old vanilla reforms to unite the empire with some slight changes. The idea is still that you are uniting the empire under one monarch. The Decentralized path has more of a focus on a strong united empire by devolving some of the responsibilities and powers to the Electors.
The last reform on the Decentralized path might not unite the entire Empire in one tag under the Emperor, but it does give the Emperor a powerful tool to call upon the entire empire in a war against the empire’s enemies. This costs 25 Imperial Authority.
If you become Emperor and the previous Emperor has gone into a path you didn’t want, you can now also revoke reforms once per Emperor. This act costs 50 Imperial Authorities just like adding a reform.
To give the Empire a bit of life we’ve implemented something we call the Imperial Incidents. These are big dynamic historical events that affect huge swaths of Europe. From the Burgundian Inheritance, the German Peasant War, the Question of the Swiss to the Dutch Revolt. In total we’ve made 13 of these.
Every single prince will be allowed to weigh in on the issues at hand. For instance, in a case where Burgundy is properly invited to join the Empire, Princes at the border worried about the duke’s ambitions might not want to permit that.
However the Emperor still gets to pick what option he wants to happen, but if it goes against the diet it will hurt the unity of the empire considerably. The Emperor will either gain or lose imperial authority depending on how the diet positions itself in the incident. It calculates this relative between your pick and the option with most support (besides your pick so if you picked the most supported one it takes the second most picked). Princes are worth 0.2 Imperial Authority each and Electors are worth 1 Imperial Authority. Besides the Imperial Authority there’s also opinion changes with members of the empire depending on what you pick.
Together with these new features we’ve done quite a few balance changes. First let’s cover how things are added to the empire. We don’t want you to keep a “reserve of provinces to add” in order to burst through the reforms of the HRE. We want a “healthy” empire is what leads to progress within it. So when you join all legible provinces gets added at once and a lump sum of 10 IA is given. You can add more provinces as you conquer but this is also done with all provinces all at once in the HRE screen instead for one by one. This does also mean that when the Reformation hits and if left unchecked, it becomes a serious blow to the authority of the emperor.
Of course we’re giving the Emperor some more ways to garden his Empire though, for starters there are now 12 Free Cities at start which gives a good baseline of Imperial Authority generation. Overall there’s a lot more princes & fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive. This together means it’s easier to keep the empire above the 25 princes limit for a lot longer. We’ve also made it easier for the Emperor to enforce peace within the Empire by being able to ignore the opinion requirement so you no longer only have the Imperial Ban as an option.
We’ve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty.
That’s it for today! Next development diary will be two things you’ve seen hinted here and there from time to time in various screenshots from previous development diaries and in the dev clash.