Improved Diplomacy

Catholic Church

Indochina and Indonesia

We’re already at the fifth developer’s diary for Europa Universalis IV: Art of War! So many things to talk about, so many changes…This week we’ll talk about a few of the changes to diplomacy in Art of War, our revamping of the Catholic curia and Papal Influence and, as usual, a detailed look at changes we are making to the map; this time it’s Indochina and Indonesia.Declare war in Support of RebelsIf you are declaring war on a nation, you can now declare war in support of a rebel faction that you are supporting inside that country. If you do this, you are committed to supporting the rebels for as long as the war lasts. If you use this “support rebels” casus belli, then you have the possibility to enforce the rebels demands on the defeated enemy.Other Peace OptionsIn Art of War, we have added the possibility to have the losing side give up claims in a peace treaty. We also added the option to have the loser pay war reparations for the duration of the truce, which is currently set at 10% of their monthly income.Fight for your SubjectsIn an earlier dev diary, we explored a few of the new things you could do with your vassals. Furthering that theme, you can now fight for your subjects’ casus bellis. So if for example, if your vassal has a claim on a border province, you can now declare war on behalf of your vassal using that CB.Sell ShipsThis is a new diplomatic action for when you are allied to a nation that does not have good shipbuilding capacity. You can sell any ships you have to any nation with a port for the price you want to set for it.We’ve removed the subgame of investing papal influence to gain cardinals. It wasn’t interesting, and though automating the spending of influence to dominate the curia made things easier, it did nothing to address the underlying problems with the system.Cardinals are no longer just a person. They are a title permanently tied to one Catholic province. The game will generate new cardinals until there are 49, so you could have a cardinal in Paris or Vienna. These cardinals give benefits to whomever controls their province, as long as that province is still Catholic. If there are less than 49 cardinals, such as at the beginning of the game or when they start converting to new religions, a new one will be spawned each year, with rich European provinces being most likely to be chosen.There is still papal influence, and this is generated by the number of cardinals in your territory, so there is some randomness you will have to deal with. Your relation with the Papacy also has an effect, as do events and other game decisions. You can store up to 100 papal influence points.The Curia controller is now determined when a new Pope is elected and the controller will remain in charge until the Pope dies. At any point during the game, you can spend papal influence in an effort to strengthen your chance of a friendly candidate winning the next election. If France spends 70 total papal influence, Poland 40, and Spain 30, then France has 50% chance of winning the next Papal election and controlling the Curia.You can now also spend your papal influence on other actions in the Papacy View. For example, you can spend papal influence to increase your monarch’s legitimacy (a handy blessing from the Pope for rulers with tenuous claims), or to persuade the Pope to send you money.Now I hand over the keys to chatnoir17 who has been in charge of this area of the map:We might tag both of these regions "South East Asia". However, they have different characteristics, both in our history and in how we model that history in Europa Universalis IV. So we’ll refer to them as separate spaces and what we say about one may not apply to the other.Between 1444 and 1821, Indochina was a dynamic region with quickly changing borders, a lot of warfare and some small empires. If you look at the map of 1444, you will find no large Vietnam, united Siam (Thailand) or single Burma (Myanmar). These were countries yet to be born, and, in the time frame of EU4, we see that movement to the states we recognize today.Beside simply adding more provinces in Indochina (which we have), the changes represent one of the most important attempts to represent the political map of 1444 and after in Art of War. You will find big Lan Xang and divided Shan in the grand campaign. If you change the start date, you will see how the Taungu dynasty expands their territory, or how Vietnamese Trinh and Nguyen war lords appear. More provinces and revised borders have enabled us to represent these historic changes in the political borders more precisely.Of course we had to simplify the historical facts for the game. For example, there were many small Shan states, but we can't put each of them on the map. We have settled on having three Shan states (Mon Yang, Hsenwi and Ava) to represent the fragmented territory.One of the bonuses of the new map to make the course of history in Indochina more unpredictable. The power balance is a big issue of the current version (1.7x) with both Ayutthaya and Shan being too powerful and very likely to run roughshod over the region in ahistorical ways. So Shan is split into smaller factions and Ayutthaya has lost its southern territory, now incorporated as Ligor (Nakon Sri Thammarat), their new vassal. On the other hand, Malacca owns more rich provinces now, so Siamese expansion down the Malay peninsula won’t be as easy as it is now.The base tax, manpower value, trade goods, cultures and religions in provinces have also been revised in order to balance the power of countries in Indochina.We have changed not only Indonesia, but also Polynesia and Australia so let’s throw them into this discussion, too.We are very aware that the current division of provinces (ver.1.7x) is quite rough. Not to mention the fact that we have too few of them, in spite of the area’s rich population and history. We are missing many important countries in this region.But, Indonesia was one of the important targets of European colonization and world trade. So some provinces should be colonizable, even though local sultanates or tribes governed there. This is a problem we face in many parts of the world; you don’t want to say that nobody lived in Massachusetts or Timor or Namibia, but you do want to give Europe the historical openings it had; modeling history is a great saga of compromises.For players who want to choose a faction in Indonesia, we have added many new countries. And taken out others. Aceh, for example, has been removed from the 1444 start of the grand campaign. It was an ahistorical abstraction to begin with, but it also was a major balance breaker, since Aceh quickly became a beast. It is same in Java and Borneo. We have also added some important states through the history such as Ternate and Tidore. Western countries can conquer them or make them their protectorates.As for Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand, we haven't added any playable provinces. We are aware of the civilizations of Aboriginal and Maori people, but we stuck with the decision to completely open these regions to colonizers. Some people might also wonder why we haven't removed the wastelands entirely when we have added more provinces that weren't colonized before 1821. This basically comes down to that bit of magic we call the "feeling of the era". We need some impassable areas to represent the limitatins of the pre-industrial period. Yes, the explorers in this region discovered different coasts and mountains and not just a big wasteland. There were also many attempts of colonization before 1821, even though they failed. Still, the outback has to remain a forbidding barrier if we want to have the spirit of 18th and 19th century Australian settlement.For the beta team, discussion on the number of new provinces and the effect they have on balance has taken up many hours. Changes to the map are always exciting, and Art of War is full of exciting changes.