Marches
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.
Unrest & Rebels
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.
