Mandate of Heaven brings a host of new features to EU4, including:

• Historical Ages and Golden Eras: Meet objectives in four historical ages from the Age of Discovery to the Age of Revolutions, earning new bonuses and powers for your country. Declare a Golden Era to further increase your chance of success.
• Chinese Empire: New mechanics for Ming China, including Imperial Decrees and Imperial Reforms to bolster the Dragon Throne.
• Tributaries: Force your neighbors to pay tribute to your Chinese Empire, paying you in gold, manpower or monarch points.
• New Japanese Rules: Daimyos now owe loyalty to the Shogun – and the Shogun is whomever controls the imperial capital of Kyoto. Compel the loyalty of your daimyos with new interactions that require them to submit to your authority, contribute to your power or even commit seppuku.
• Manchu Banners: Rally the Manchu warlords around your throne and call up the traditional banners to reinforce your army.
• Diplomatic Macrobuilder: Common diplomatic actions are now easily available from the macrobuilder interface.
• New religious mechanics: Confucian nations take a penalty to Harmony for converting individual provinces; however, they also have the option to Harmonize with other religions, a lengthy process that — when complete — unifies heretical and heathen beliefs with the true faith.

Free features

• Devastation: Provinces now have devastation counter that goes from 0 to 100%. Scorched Earth & looting now increases this value instead of having separate modifiers. Unrest slowly increases it in a province as well.
• Added Statistics button that opens End game/Statistics view to in-game menu.
• The game now has four different ages: Age of Discovery, Age of Reformation, Age of Absolutism and Age of Revolutions
• Removed Absolute Monarchy from the game, and replaced with a scaling mechanic called Absolutism which is valid from Age of Absolutism.
• Moved religious locks from before the year 1650 to be valid from script in Age of Discovery & Age of Reformation only.
• Added better and worse comparisons to other players in statistics page.
• [Art of War] Automatic Fleet Transport now docks to pick up and drop off your armies when possible.
• Replaced old Celestial Empire Factions with new ones that better fit history and their respective roles.
• You can now decide to declare bankruptcy on your own if you have loans.
• Units now use retreat animations during shattered retreat.
• Strengthen Government now increases absolutism by +2.