Europa Universalis IV #HO

Dealing with the rebels & their bloody agenda
As you may know from earlier Europa Universalis games (or can deduce from common sense), revolts occur in provinces when the population there gets grumpy for one reason or another. If left uncontested, the rebellion can spread like wildfire and bring neighboring provinces along for the ride. There are many ways to spot and avoid revolts, so keep an eye out for the warning signs – and read your alert tabs!

Because rebels don’t just pop up because of low stability with vague or nebulous reasons to take up arms. Each rebel faction revolts with clearly stated goals they want to achieve. Whether it is simply a tax revolt by a people being bled dry or a full blown movement for independence, the rebels are demanding, and they won’t take no for an answer.
The new Rebel tab tells you how likely it is for a rebel faction to grow within your nation. You can see whether they will attempt to break free of your sovereignty unless you take urgent action to suppress them or accept their annoying demands. The new Rebel menu reveals their objectives, how close the rebels are to succeeding and how gaining a leader might affect their chance of success.

In Europa Universalis IV, every province in your country has a "most likely" rebel type if the revolt risk in the province is above 0. These rebel factions will exist, even if they have no active armies marching about. Think of them as potential problems you can try to extinguish, and that you should certainly know more about.
From here, you can see which provinces have certain rebel types, the likelihood of another uprising, and who their friends are. How you deal with potential rebels over the long term could include forward thinking measures like converting the population to your own religion, spreading your own state culture in a restless minority region, various suppression tactics and so on.

So you have many options available to deal with a given rebel infestation. If it is still early in the rebel movement, increasing stability might slow them down or put an end to minor rebel sentiments altogether. Crushing them with blunt force is not the only way to resolve a dispute with your people, though it can sometimes feel very satisfying. You can try and be nice and submit to their demands – maybe they are reasonable? However, leaving them alone is almost certainly not the wisest choice. Ignore them at your peril. God knows what they plans they might come up with…
As usual, you can hover your mouse over the Revolt Risk in a selected province to see which factors are combining to make that particular province a problem, plus we have a map mode that will give you a general overview of your troubled kingdom.

How to increase your Stability
ver since the beginning of the Europa Universalis series, one of the core concepts has been stability. This is important to understand for this developer diary, since stability represents how “together” your government is – how efficiently it is running, how well it responds to problems, etc. So, as you might expect, low stability is something that you want to avoid when you can. In the last development diary, I mentioned how stability had changed from previous games; how now you spend your Monarch’s Administrative Power Points to increase your stability.
But let´s take a look at it one more time, since this is the screen where the magic happens

Stability still runs along a seven point scale from +3 at the top to -3 at the very bottom. Since these Monarch Points you spend are also the points that go towards increasing your number of Ideas and access to revenue buildings, it is more likely that you will not always be at peak stability, compared to other Europa Universalis games, since you will have to plan on spending Administrative Monarch Points on other things. As previously mentioned, the base price for increasing your stability is 100 Administrative Power, but overextension and lack of religious unity can increase this cost significantly, while some ideas and advisors decrease this. And, this being Europa Universalis, you can count on events and other random factors also modifying the price temporarily, either giving you a chance a great low price to get things shipshape or forcing you to delay that stability purchase for longer than you had anticipated.

Your Governments & Your Goals
In the Technology interface, you can see all possible governments sorted by category and the technology level you will need to unlock the newer form of government, so you can see what to aim for. However, you can only change within same category; a monarchy is a monarchy and will not convert to a tribal or republican form of government, unless a popular revolution forces it to. More advanced governments get more and better bonuses for your country. Changing your government will cost 50 Administrative Power, so it is not something you can do all the time, but there will rarely be a reason to switch frequently in any case. The information about your current government is available on the Government and Rebel tab.

Watch out for War Exhaustion!
As veterans of the Europa Univeralis series know, when you wage war against other countries, you should be prepared for War Exhaustion. You can’t keep your people constantly at war – it will tire them, they will be unhappy at the cost in lives and money and it draws attention from your ministers who should be focusing on domestic issues. In the Europa Universalis games, War Exhaustion is the general idea that an empire does not have an infinite will to fight, but a well fought war will be less frustrating then a poorly fought one.

War Exhaustion is only generated while you are at war, though its effects may linger long after the guns have fallen silent. Your War Exhaustion is increased by attrition, taking losses in battles, having blockaded ports and whenever you have kept War Taxes going for too long. War exhaustion affects your country in several very bad ways. First, it will increase your national revolt risk, thereby increasing the risk of rebels emerging in your owned or controlled provinces. It also lowers the morale of both your armies and navies, making them easier to beat in battle; and since losses add to War Exhaustion, this morale hit can spiral you into a very bleak situation. War Exhaustion also takes a toll on your manpower, which you will need to recruit brigades, build ships and get reinforcements for your armies and navies. Reinforcements to your armies and navies will take longer to reach them.

Try to keep your wars as brief and to the point as possible if you want to avoid too high a war exhaustion. Remember that, for the most part, this was an era of limited war with very few major conflicts dragging on and on with regular battles and empty treasuries.
Your War Exhaustion will be lowered once you are at peace, but it degrades slowly as your nation recovers from the war and it could take months before it has fully disappeared. War exhaustion has not been changed in any dramatic way since Europa Universalis III, but it’s more clearly shown, and now you can see your situation at a glance!

Overextension, it´s bad for you.
Overextension is one of the new concepts we are using to replace the bad boy system from Europa Universalis III. One of the purposes of “bad boy” was to discourage rapid expansion with a host of external pressure punishing you for grabbing too much. We still have some of that, but we also have introduced the idea of Overextension to capture the internal domestic price you pay for growing beyond your means.

Simply put, your Overextension is the ratio of your base-tax income that is not coming from core provinces. If you fight a series of just and noble wars, fighting for land the rightfully belongs to you anyway, then Overextension is a manageable factor – it might even be zero. But the higher your overextension gets, the more likely you are to be hit with bad events, plus it directly affects revolt risk, stability cost, trade income and a host of other things.
To decrease over-extension, you can spend administrative power to make a province into a core. Currently this costs about 50 power without any ideas impacting it.

Interface
All these lovely and very important game concepts are tracked on the same screens, so you can easily see the important aspects of each. You can see your current bonuses your government gives you and you will also have a quick overview of all active and possible rebel forces in your country. Plus any costs you are paying for running a war poorly or growing too fast.

So, you think you can handle rebels now?
Say your prayers and read this one more time, just so you can spot the signs of trouble and save your country!
Next week, we'll go west...