14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Paradox Development Studios is delivering a second diary for its upcoming Art of War expansion for Europa Universalis IV, which is designed to give players more details on new core features and show how Persia has changed in terms of provinces.
The official forum post explains that marches are a new type of subject that can be created starting with a clear vassal, allowing them to avoid paying any tax while getting more manpower, bonuses to force limits and improved fort defenses.
Paradox says that the move makes 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 studio is also using Art of War to eliminate the classic rebel feature of Europa Universalis IV with an entirely new mechanic called unrest.
This means every province is now aligned with one possible rebel faction, and every month, it progresses a measure of its ability to rise up until an actual army appears, and the players need to deal with it using force of arms.
Paradox adds, “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.”
In Art of War, players can also see all areas where rebels aligned to their cause are causing trouble for other nations.
Persia is another area of the world of Europa Universalis IV which is being upgraded with more regions and better culture representation, with the area of Afghanistan now a better base for empires that want to move from Europe to Asia or the other way around.
The fact that more provinces are added to the entire map means that players who want to play countries outside of the classical Western world have more options to do so.
The Art of War expansion will be accompanied by a solid patch for the grand strategy title, and launch should take place before the end of the year.
