# r/Europe EU4 Ruleset

# META

## WHEN AND HOW LONG
Saturdays from 17:00 - 21:00 CE(S)T

First session on March 9th

## ADMINISTRATOR RULINGS ARE FINAL
If any scenario arises that is not covered by these rules, or a conflict occurs due to unclear or open-ended rules, the administrators reserve the right to make a ruling at their own discretion. That ruling is final.

## REHOSTS
Rehosts happen at the host’s or moderators’ discretion, in situations such as the game bugging or the host crashing. The players are required to join back as soon as they can in case the game is rehosted. Regular hotjoins will happen after each rehosts to catch lobby bugs, and then every hour into the game, exceptional hotjoins might happen if important players disconnect during wars. All players are expected to set their AI settings in the event they crash.
## PAUSES
Only host, moderators and players who have unconditionally surrendered reserve the right to pause the game. The game will be paused in the event of a mid session break, unconditional surrender, allowing lagging players to catch up, or resolving conflicts that may arise.

## SOLVING DISPUTES
In the event of a dispute, the involved parties may be asked to join a separate Discord channel to allow quick administrator arbitration.

## GAME SPEED
Every player is expected to be able to maintain the minimum of speed 2. While some players may be allowed to catch up if they fall behind on rare occasions, repeated offenses of lagging and falling behind even at speed 2 may lead to the player being asked to leave the campaign.

## PUNISHMENTS
Punishments for breaking any rules will be carried out on a case-to-case basis at the admin team’s discretion.

## RESPECT
Be respectful to other players and show sportsmanship. EU4 is a game above all else, and we want to have fun. There is no winner in this campaign and everyone can set out their own goals. Please do not launch personal attacks against other players or make gameplay decisions based on strong feelings for the player. If you lost a war, please accept that you lost rather than ruin your nation to drag down the other player.

# PLAYABLE NATIONS, MISSING SESSIONS & PROTECTION

## BANNED NATIONS
For the sake of game balance, the following nations cannot be picked by any player:

ASHIKAGA
MING will be broken up into custom nations which can be picked, more info on those in another document.
**This rule takes priority over any other rule in this section**

## NEW WORLD
No colonial nations or natives will be allowed to be played.

## Nation Assignment
Players will submit a list of nations they wish to play. The mods will manually assign players to nations.

Submissions with no valid Discord or Steam name will be ignored. Make sure to create a Discord account as that's where most of the organisation happens.

It is **NOT** first come first serve.

## VACANT NATIONS
Any nation that has not been picked by a player or that had its previous player drop out is considered VACANT and is available to play.
If a player joins the campaign on the day of the session on a country that hasn’t been dropped by another player, he must get approval of all his human neighbours before he may play as that country.

## SUBJECT NATIONS
Players will not be subject nations to any players. This includes tributaries.
You are allowed to play a nation that starts as a subject in 1444, however you must declare independence within 50 years. If you lose your independence war, you must leave that nation immediately.

If your nation is forced to become a subject of another player, you will be asked to leave it and it will no longer be playable.

Players who fall under a "random" Personal Union must gain independence by either convincing their overlord or through war within 50 years.

## SUBSTITUTING A NATION
In the event that a player misses one or more sessions, he can have another player substitute for his nation. A substitute can only be chosen with consent from the original player. The player is required to notify the admins of his chosen substitute. If unable to do so, the sub must provide proof of the player’s consent to the admins.

A substitute player is subject to the original player’s will and must follow their ideas and plans as close as they can.

## PROTECTED NATIONS
If a player cannot make it to a session and does not want or find a substitute, they can ask the admins for protection. A protected nation cannot be declared war upon and if it finds itself in a war as a secondary participant, it must be white peaced.
A player can only be granted protection 2 times. Protection cannot be granted 2 weeks in a row, in the first session or after 1700.
If a player crashes mid session, he will be granted protection until he joins back or the remainder of the session. If they are able to join back within the next 20 minutes, this will not count towards the protection limit.
If a player doesn’t have any more protections and crashes mid session, he will only be protected for 20 minutes.
If there is suspicion of a player intentionally dropping out to avoid wars, they may not be granted protection at the admins’ discretion.
It is recommended to set AI settings to not declare wars, seek fast peace and keep allies and rivals. If your AI declares war on another player, you are liable to lose land in the final peace deal regardless of protected status.
Protected Nations may not be called into offensive wars against other players.
If its after 1700 and a vacant nation is a GP than it will be protected until a player is found.

## SWITCHING NATIONS
If a player has suffered major setbacks and feels like they cannot make a comeback, they can ask the admins to switch nations at the following rehost. They must pick something at a reasonable distance away from your original country. (e.g. You cannot switch from Austria to Milan). Make sure you have tried every diplomatic option available before giving up on your country, as leaving prematurely can create huge imbalances. Purposely ruining your country by taking up useless loans, deleting your army, giving out your provinces or releasing vassals before switching is not allowed.
After switching nations, the player’s original country becomes VACANT.

## PLAYERS NOT SHOWING UP
If a player does not show up for a session without telling the admins beforehand, their nation will be granted protection for the first 15 minutes if the player has protections left (this counts towards the protection limit). If the player has still not contacted the admins after the break, the nation becomes VACANT and it loses its protection.

# GENERAL GAME RULES

## WARS
* Neither the defender nor the attacker can use “A Call to Arms!” to call in new allies in a player war that has already started (you may call in allies you already had before the war started, but not to avoid them being co-belligerents).
* In the event of an unconditional surrender, the winning side must peace out instantly. The game will be paused to give the winners time (at moderator’s discretion) to prepare the peace deal. Winners may only send peace offers to the player who surrendered.
* If a participant in a war is at negative 99% warscore, they must accept any peace deal for their occupied land from the winning side. Also, in rare special cases, the moderators may reserve the right to force a surrender on a nation to prevent abuses.
* "Enforce Peace” is not allowed to be used without the main defender’s consent.
* Players may only send Condottieri once per war

## Alliance/Hugboxing Limit
Players are allowed to have alliances to the amount that their diplo slot allows them not including AI allies. (4 base; national ideas, ideas and governments can increase this)

## NATION RUINING
Nation Ruining, defined as carrying out actions that hurt your nation with no real benefit, and cannot be satisfactorily explained to an admin, is not allowed. Examples of nation ruining include: Releasing all available vassals, declaring war on a nation with the sole intention to give away land or enter vassalage, deleting armies / navies before switching nation or leaving the game, taking out the maximum amount of loans to give the money away without purpose, etc. This list is not exhaustive and administrators reserve the right to call out nation ruining behaviour on the spirit of the rule.

## ABUSE OF GAME MECHANICS
Abuse of game mechanics or bugs in the game may result in punishment and rolling back the save in order to correct the bug.

## Cheating and Exploits
Cheating and usage of exploits is not allowed. In general, exploits are making use of game mechanics in a way that is not their intended purpose and gaining an unfair advantage over other players. GMs reserve the right to determine what counts as an exploit and what doesn’t. If you’re unsure, please check with a GM. If you know an exploit not listed here, please inform us. Examples of exploits include, but are not limited to:

### Economy
#### Loan Size Exploit
Methods and actions that artificially increase the loan size or cap are not allowed.

#### Foreign Debt
Players may not take on foreign debt before they bankrupt with the sole purpose of wiping away someones debt for nothing (since they were going to bankrupt anyway)

#### Estate Contribution Exploit
Being subbed for a month to raise your total income so that when you use the estate interaction from the Burghers for money, you receive a larger sum than you should.
### Military
#### Manpower Farm
Queuing units and canceling one before it finishes to "bank" manpower is not allowed. Additionally any other methods that intentionally generate manpower far over the cap are also banned. Subject to moderation
#### Estate Rebel Spawning/Estate Bombing
A player may not intentionally spawn estate Rebels via removing estates from power in provinces, with the sole purpose of the rebels to fight invading armies. Event spawned rebels are not included in this rule

#### Exceeding Mercenary limit
Using mercenary templates to circumvent the hard merc cap is banned.
Whilst this is hard to enforce and some players may accidentally go over merc FL, as a general rule any methods of circumventing merc FL hardcap is banned.

#### Neutral Transports
The use of using neutral transports to evade enemy fleets is banned

#### Garrison Armies
Merging Sallied out Garrison armies with the rest of your armies after battle is banned.
### Monarch Points + Other

#### Mission spamming
In the event that a mission exists that has spammable potential (monarch points or other), I.E. multiple clicking, this is banned.
#### Autosave spam
Related to this, any other action which can be abused by repeatedly clicking it during an autosave to create multiple instances like adding provinces to the HRE for Imperial authority are also banned.

#### Estate Abuse
Abusing estate interactions as such that you gain monarch points, gold or manpower, then switching estates (common example is Muslim nations in India) to either avoid Estate Disasters or to extort a new fresh set of estates and thus circumventing cooldowns is banned.
### Diplomacy

#### Coalition
A player may not join a coalition with the intent to white peace or give land away from AI, letting the target of said coalition avoid the consequences of aggressive expansion or potentially profit from it.
A full war must be fought. Subject to moderation

#### AI Ally Lands
In the same principle as the coalition rule, allying AI and calling them in against player nations, and intentionally giving up AI land to said players is banned.
#### Revolution target
A player may not declare on the revolutionary target and immediately peace out or stay in a ‘fake war’ to avoid the revolutionary malus or gain score. A full war must be fought or the player/s who agreed to fake war will subject to punishment

## PREVENTING COLONIAL NATIONS FROM SPAWNING
Preventing colonial nations from spawning by moving your capital to a colonial region (known as exiling to the New World) is not allowed.

If you are forced to move your capital to a colonial region by losing your main continent provinces, you will be asked to leave the nation.