Marches

Unrest & Rebels

Persia

Imereti: Small kingdom that can appear in western Georgia (or in late start dates). Historically, this state became part of the Ottoman sphere of influence in Georgia.

Circassia: Small Orthodox tribal monarchy in the northern Caucasus representing the various minor states there. This is the primary tag for provinces of Circassian culture.

Gazikumukh: A small Shiite kingdom in the northeastern Caucasus. This is the primary tag for provinces of Dagestani culture.

Tabaristan: A small kingdom along the southern coast of the Caspian sea. Primary tag for the new Mazandarani culture.

Ardalan: A small Kurdish kingdom in the Zagros mountains.

Welcome to the second dev diary for Europa Universalis 4: Art of War. Today, a look at a new way to handle vassals, how we're changing revolts and a sneak peek at how the Persian map is being transformed.Marches are a new type of subject that can be created from existing vassals. By designating your vassal as a March, you are giving that vassal greatly expanded autonomy in exchange for greater military service. A March does not pay taxes to its Overlord and cannot be diplomatically annexed. However, they get a 25% bonus to manpower, a 30% bonus to force limits and have 20% better fort defense, making them useful as military buffers against enemy states, or when you simply need additional soldiers more than you need the income from those territories. March status can be retracted, but doing so results in a stability hit and a very large opinion penalty with the vassal whose autonomy you just revoked.The old system of revolt risk, with a chance of rebels spawning in a province by random chance every month has gone the way of the dodo. It was a system that has served us well through many versions of Europa Universalis, but we think we have something better.The new concept reflecting unhappy subjects is called unrest. Unrest in a province will affect how quickly regiments and ships can be recruited there, but it has no direct impact on your economy, since we've introduced Local Autonomy to cover that side of the ledger.Every province is aligned with one possible rebel faction. Each month, every province has a chance (depending on its unrest level) to see an increase in the progress of an uprising from the local rebels. When the progress reaches 100%, the faction rises up in revolt with as many stacks it has support for, and the unrest is reduced in those provinces - they have expressed their anger through arms and it's up to you to put them down.Because unrest can happen anywhere, building courthouses and employing theologians is now a good strategy to reduce general unrest, not to mention adopting a few policies to placate the masses. The old tyrannical standby of Harsh Treatment now targets rebel factions instead of provinces and reduces the progress towards an uprising from that faction at a cost in MIL points, scaled to the size of this particular rebel faction. This change means we should get less micromanagement and more direct control of popular satisfaction in the hands of the player.There is also no longer a distinction between accepted and enforced demands from successful rebellions. A rebel faction's demands are always the same.In a more positive change, any Rebels that are friendly to you, either through culture or support will lift Fog of War for you.Last week, we dove into the doubling of Indian provinces. Another region that has seen substantial changes in our great map overhaul is Greater Persia and the Caucasus.In 1444 this region is to a large extent split between the still sort of impressive empire of Timur's descendants in the east and the rising Qara Qoyunlu empire in the west. Just like in the last dev diary, the diversity of the region means that it's perhaps best to go over its various parts in turn.In the time depicted by EU4, the rugged Caucasus will be the border line between the Turkish, Persian and eventually Russian Empires. Throughout all of this, the valleys and the slopes of these mountains are home to a number of different peoples and states attempting to preserve their independence against hungry neighbours.In order to portray the independent nature and resilience of the area, a new Caucasian culture group has been added to the game. Apart from the familiar Armenian and Georgian cultures, this new group is also made up of the newly introduced Circassian and Dagestani cultures. The tag and province setups have been revised accordingly.New Tags:While entirely locked in the struggle between the Timurid and Qara Qoyunlu empires in 1444, Western Persia is soon going to be the site of the rise of the Qizilbash and the birth of the Safavid Empire. This region is defined by densely populated valleys with a strong urban Persian culture, both of which the map can now portray in a better way in terms of borders and province density.As in the Caucasus, including more provinces also allows us to include some of the smaller players in the region.New Tags:Where western Persia is dominated by mountain ranges and rich valleys, Eastern Persia is a region of mountain ranges and deserts. Due to the much harsher climate, most of Khorasan would often be incorporated into surrounding empires unless these were too weak to control the vast area. The even more inhospitable Baluchistan would remain independent, divided into various tribal entities, for most of the period covered by the game.The greater number of provinces here primarily means that conquering and traversing this region isn't going to be as easy as it was prior to AoW and will also mean that the revolts that historically started in this area will be a bit harder to put down.Home to thriving cities such as Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan is richer and more influential than the rest of Eastern Persia. During the period covered by EU4, states such as the Mughal or the Durrani empires used this region as a jumping off point to successfully to expand into India or Persia.The AoW map accentuates the role of Afghanistan as a good base for expansion and a gateway between east and west. In order to show the importance of the Khyber and Bolan passes as routes into India, a wasteland province has also been added to represent the Suleiman mountain range in eastern Afghanistan.