Welcome to the first developer diary for the Res Publica mini-expansion for Europa Universalis 4. In this diary we’ll be looking at the various ways in which Merchant Republics are expanded and fleshed out in both the expansion and the patch, as well as the new ‘National Focus’ mechanic.With the Res Publica expansion, Merchant Republics will now have the option to create a Trade Post in provinces they own. A Trade Post costs 50 administrative power and gives the province +15 trade power and +1 naval forcelimits. Each Merchant Republic can only have a single Trade Post in each node, and cannot create Trade Posts in their home node. This makes territorial control of outposts such as Venice’s Crete far more important to a Merchant Republic that wants to pull a large amount of trade home.With the Res Publica expansion, all nations will be able to set their National Focus. National Focus can be set to either Administrative Power, Diplomatic Power, Military Power, or unfocused. When set to a power, the National Focus increases the base gain to that power by +2 but reduces the base gain in other powers by -1, so a National Focus in Administrative gives the player a base power gain of +5 administrative, +2 diplomatic and +2 military instead of +3 to each when unfocused. This allows a country to focus power into a category where they have a need, for example due to a new idea group, being behind in technology, or having a monarch with poor abilities in that category. The National Focus can be changed every 25 years.Included for free in the 1.7 patch is a faction system for Merchant Republics similar to the one for Ming. Merchant Republics will have three factions, The Guilds, The Traders and The Aristocrats, and will be able to spend monarch points to increase the backing for the faction they prefer so that faction is in control. If The Guilds are in control, the republic gets +10% national goods produced and -10% build cost but -10% national manpower. If The Traders are in control, the republic gets +10% global trade power and -10% naval maintenance but -5% to tax income. If The Aristocrats are in control the republic gets +10% land morale and -10% land maintenance but -15% foreign trade power. For those that own the expansion there are also quite a few new events for the Merchant Republic faction system.Lastly in this dev diary, we’re making some tweaks to the neighbour bonus and technology groups that are included for free in the 1.7 patch. We felt that the reduction of the neighbour bonus in 1.6 was too harsh on nations that needed to catch up after Westernizing or from falling behind due to a poor monarch, so we’ve increased the neighbour bonus back to -5% for each technology level you are behind the tech leader in your tech group, with a maximum reduction of -75%. To encourage countries to stay on the cutting edge of administrative and diplomatic technology instead of waiting for the neighbour bonus, we’ve instead introduced bonuses for nations that are ahead of time in those technologies, with nations that are ahead of time in Administrative tech gaining +20% production efficiency and nations that are ahead of time in Diplomatic tech gaining +20% trade efficiency. No additional bonus was added for nations that are ahead of time in Military technology, as the military advantages are bonus enough.In addition to these changes, we’ve also made life a little easier for some of the slower tech groups by removing all monarch power penalties associated with technology groups, so Chinese nations will no longer gain -1 to all monarch powers, African nations will no longer gain -2, and so on.In the next dev diary we will talk about the Dutch Republic mechanics and new idea groups, so stay tuned!