Introduction
NOTE:THIS FEATURE'S DEVELOPMENT IS UNFINISHED AND MAY BE ALTERED LATER
In M&T 1.2x, the Estates currently function the same as in vanilla, and you won't have access to them unless you have the cossacks DLC.
Estates in M&T 2.0, however, will be avaliable to everyone regardless of whether they own the DLC or not, but these who have the DLC will be able to interact with them through the game interface rather than decision. They will play an expanded role compared to vanilla EU4. All estates will now have a more open influence on your country, as well as their own interests. The effects they can have on your country can vary depending on their power, from issuing demands to giving bribes and gifts, as well as causing revolts and nasty modifiers, or replacing your government form with another. Although each estate has their own goals and interaction, there's one thing they all have in common:A drive to increase their own power.
Estate features
-From time to time, you will get events regarding an Estate attempting to influence your ruler, which can be good, or bad. Their frequency depends on the relative power of that Estate compared to other Estates, which is based on two things:The amount of development they have influence over, and the amount of upper-class population they have influence over, the latter being more important.
-Estate Loyalty no longer automatically ticks up or down over time, and instead is either gained, lost or "spent" on goodies through events. If you play your cards right, you could end up building up a lot of good faith and loyalty among your estates, allowing you to "cash in" during troubled times when you really need them behind you. Aside from having their own treasuries, estates also have their own "monarch points," though specifically only one type. In the same waythat you can spend monarch points to pressure them to act in your interest, they spend monarch points on YOU to pressure you to act in their interests. If they are loyal, you can "spend loyalty" to get them to use these monarch points in your favor.
-Every Estate will give you Corruption depending on their autonomy and privileges. Thus, if you want to expand your country, you will have to accept that your Corruption will also grow the larger and more autonomy it has, and take measures to prevent high Corruption.
Estate types
Greater nobility
Nobles possessing a great amount of influence in their provinces and country, predominately controlling mostly rural provinces where they have developed out of Lesser nobility. They will add +0.25 autonomy in every province where they are present. They appear when Lesser Nobles promote themselves, which is influenced by Autonomy, Lesser Noble wealth, and amount of their privileges. Their focus is exerting control in the matters of state, which means that they can easily be a thorn in the side to any ruler as much as they could be a great boon.
Lesser nobility
Nobles whose state in society does not allow them to constantly intervene in the matters of state. In a healthy country, they would generally be considered to outnumber the Greater Nobles. They will add +0.05 autonomy in provinces where they are present, and will mostly appear in rural provinces that are not eligible to be controlled by Greater nobility. Their focus is to improve their own status, which they will be trying to achieve by different means, from upgrading your provinces to requesting privileges, to attempting to upgrade themselves to Greater nobility by using their resources. In the end, they are much easier to control than Greater nobility, but also offer less benefits from cooperating with them
Burghers
Urban city dwellers, ranging from traders to artisans and craftsmen. They will emerge to control any province which has a significant amount of Urban population compared to Rural. Unlike the nobility estates, they do not have a levy to speak of, and are more concerned about being able to make a profit without getting robbed than matters of state. Thus they will focus on improving their own provinces and requesting privileges from the state. Cooperating with them is likely to bring you benefits in terms of growing cities and allowing you to extract more from them, but making enemies among them will result in your economy being significantly hampered, as well as slowing the development of your state.
They will be particularly upset about wars where your country either attains a high war exhaustion, or those that lead to high province trauma, especially near cities.