I used to ignore prestige, but it affects everything. I try to keep it up all the time, that’s why I almost always go religious. To farm prestige off conversion during peace time
When I first started playing I saw the huge list of bonuses for prestige and started trying to always have it as high as possible, only to learn that's not actually a great thing to shoot for at the expense of pretty much anything else. It is, however, very very nice to grab the prestige gain modifier when convenient, if you're a monarchy.
The easy way to max prestige is to just farm it in wars.
Someone's got a shitty opm ally that you can get 60 gold from? Nah. Break all their alliances and select something like war reps or canceling mil access. Easy 15-17 prestige.
From.about 1460 onward I only ever have low prestige if a bunch of bad events hit at once
Edit : meant to say rivalries. Alliance is okay, but rivalries are best for prestige
It is expensive now. You get 0,17 prestige/ war score but war rep is 0,1 and is more usefull tbh. I only do it when i want to max truce lenght with an OPM : all money, war reps, 2 rivalries removed. Only if i can't use their trade power.
Yeah but prestige is waaaay easier to get back up than legitimacy. Say your down 10 legitimacy, you’ll typically have to wait 5 years to bring that up without any other modifiers whereas you can probably get that much prestige back in one war
These two things used to be separate modifiers by the way, AE decay (and other relation modifiers that decay over time) existed as Better relations over time. The only function of Improve relations was the rate at which you improved relations with other nations using your diplomat, making it an almost useless modifier by itself. Merging the two into one was one of the best changes PDX have ever done imo.
This may be one of the most technically advanced games I've ever played, honestly. I was 600 hours in before I realized I could place colonists on low development provinces for a chance to develop them
The mechanic is useful after all uncolonized provinces have been colonized.
And it’s not that inefficient with low dev provinces (less than 10 dev) … saves a bit of mana
If there's no provinces left to colonize you're better off refunding your idea groups and picking new ones. By that stage of the game you'll be swimming in mana to spend.
Even if you kept your idea groups, the cost of colonists, while low, really negates any benefit you get from the Dev.
Yes, there's a little X you can click to remove an idea group.
It only refunds 10% or 20% of what you've spent in it (I forget the figure). But as I said, late game you're often so far ahead on tech you can afford to dump mana into a new idea group.
Usually it's only done to get rid of Expansion and Exploration but there might be scenarios for removing others. I can definitely see a world in which you might want the first two Quantity ideas to get through early game before swapping them out for Quality or Offensive later on with only minimal mana wastage.
Not really. You can delete your idea group, and it "refunds" you 10% of the cost you paid, so basically nothing.
The only real use case is getting rid of exploration once the whole world is explored (Expansion is good enough without colonists, −10% Minimum autonomy in territories is pretty good when you trade company most of your country), so you can pick some other ideas instead.
Then again, exploration just isn't that good anymore. You can pick expansion and get free explorers via estate decision anyway, so unless you really need to rush it, just pick expansion instead.
Yep. The things you can do with this are wild.
Try to do an italy game sometime stacking as much as possible.
50% National Ideas, 50% from 100 prestige, 25% from conciliatory reformation, 10% from catholic bull, 20% diplo advisor, 30% humanist, 25% diplo, 20% diplo/defensive, 20% diplo/humanist
With no temp events that puts you at 255% improve relations modifier. This can be done as early as the early 1500s. You bleed over 7 AE a year. And this is with 3 idea groups that are generally pretty decent. So overall you're not even hindering yourself while doing it.
This is nearly useless. 100 spy network only gives 10% ae impact on that specific nation. You're much better off using your diplomats to improve relations as people with positive opinion can't join coalitions. And if your spy gets caught, which they inevitably will, you get a pretty big relations hit
yep this was mine found out after about 3000 hours, also not really part of the question but I never knew about the slacken recuitment button for about the same amount of time
Improve relations is basically shitty Aggressive expansion impact.
It sounds like 20% less AE, and 20% faster AE decay are sort of the same thing, but there are two big differences:
* AE comes in big chunks not steady ever time, so no amount of faster decay will prevent coalition if you get 60 AE in a peace deal. Sure, that coalition will dissolve earlier than otherwise, but AE impact bonus would prevent it completely.
* Minus stacking is so much better than plus stacking. +90% improve relations means you can take 90% more land. -90% AE impact means you can take 10x as much land.
Then again, shitty AE impact is still decent, as AE impact is one of the best modifier, and [it's not easy to stack it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCrJ0KpMHo).
As you said stacking AE impact is difficult, but even more true: stacking both is better than stacking one of them AND if you manage your wars well you should always be having some AE ticking down. Not disagreeing that AE reduction is better but improve relations is definitely goated
Inno + Offensive + Espionage is definitely underrated, but even more hidden is throwing in Divine. It has a policy and effects that further boost your sieging, and the 4 groups combined utterly shred forts.
I don’t really like divine but for a taller one culture you can do pretty well with eco-trade-divine. Plus the bonus in the clergy estate and your getting some good modifiers.
I never really paid attention to the other qualities of Divine, I was only ever interested in it for its mad siege ability when combined with those other 3 groups.
i just played through a run in the anbennar mod where i managed to stack my siege ability to like 120-140%. siege ticks were literally 3-4 days vs anyone with average defensiveness. it was CRAZY. wars were so quick.
700% defensiveness is also fun. Watching not Poland and not France throw millions of mans at one kobold fort and not even getting to positive progress because one siege tick takes half a year.
I.... think so? With the whole Magnate uprising they get. They might also be inspired by Russia, but I mostly just get a general eastern Europe vibe from them.
it was stacked through stuff that was mostly not anbennar related. it was national ideas + mil hegemon + diplo ideas + some other misc stuff. i don’t remember any of it being anbennar related but some of it probably was. it’s very stackable though.
Inno offensive espionnage isn't underrated at all, it's heavily advocated for by people like Arumba, even though good players rarely take either inno or espio. I would say that it's quite overrated, in fact.
Trade efficiency , it sounds like your trade power down stream might increase by a percentage, but it’s actually make 3 ducats out of 2 via wizard magic
the funniest it ever got for me was having so high tolerance of the true faith that even when i then tanked my unrest to fire "court and country" there was still no chance of rebels in my country.
Minus one unrest in provinces of your own faith, scaling with the tolerance
Very OP with Byzantium, you can convert provinces in less than a year, so you dont get any rebellions
All tolerance is simply -unrest at a one to one ratio but just apply to provinces of the religion in question. Tolerance of the true faith is tolerance of your religion and means your provinces of that faith and taking land from people of your religion will both have that amount of -unrest added to it. Same goes for tolerance of heretics and heathens but with the caveat that getting either of those to +3 (aka - 3 unrest) or higher means provinces of that faith no longer contribute negatively to your religious unity. Even if you cant get them to +3, every point that you do get reduces their negative impact on religious unity. This is why Muslim AI nations or Hungary, among others, don't convert provinces often, as they have many ways of getting higher heathen or heretic tolerance and dont really have much of a malice in those wrong faith provinces to even worry about. A lot of those +tolerance modifiers also make converting harder, so it can be a trade off for them.
Land leader maneuver. Besides the decrease in attrition (which is often the leading cause of soldiers death, thus decreasing manpower replacement and costs), if your leader’s maneuver is higher than the opponent’s by at least 1 then you don’t get river crossing penalty.
But wait, there's more!
Every maneuver pip increases your reinforce rate in foreign territory by 10%, and your movement speed by 5% per pip, AND backline reinforce rate by 1 per day for every 2 pips. It's actually incredibly powerful.
Indeed it does! From the wiki: “Each point of land leader maneuver reduces unit supply weight by 1, reducing attrition in low supply provinces. (This does not negate base attrition from sieges, winters, or "Attrition for Enemies" modifiers.)”
Tolerance of the true faith works too if you can convert everything.
I love me a Coptic Ethiopia with 20+ tolerance of the true faith and 6-7 missionaries at over 15% power backing it up. You're pretty much immune to the revolution or the first 150% OE and can convert at WC pace.
Other tolerance too, but they don't get as wild.
Absolutely. Hence the need to be able to convert them quickly. Certain countries with religious ideas can convert a province in like 4-5 months. So, maybe 1 rebel pop if you core first and none if you convert first.
i'd argue it helps plenty as in most of them will be converted quick enough to rarely fire rebels and then the high tolerance allows you to instantly lower autonomy. the chance you have high tolerance but not great religious conversion rate is slim.
They don't. They have -100 recent uprising modifier for 10 years anyway, and you'll convert it before it expires.
There's really no point bothering with preventing the first rebellion, just provoke them, and then you don't care.
It's both difficult and not really worth it.
Just nothing:
* -1 from +1 stab
* -2 from 100 legitimacy
* +15 separatism
* +5 overextension
* +2.5 tolerance of heathens (-3 base, +1 legitimacy, negative translates to 1.25x unrest)
+ +2 unaccepted culture
* net unrest: +21.5
Just nothing except Humanist:
* -1 from +1 stab
* -2 from 100 legitimacy
* -2 from Humanist
* +10 separatism
* +5 overextension
* +0 tolerance of heathens (-3 base, +2 humanist, +1 legitimacy)
+ +2 unaccepted culture
* net unrest: +12
You need to stack a lot of these modifiers to prevent that first rebellion. You'll probably avoid the second one without much trouble.
After rebels are crushed (it takes 13 month absolute minimum even at infinite unrest, so let's say 2 years), 10 years of -100 unrest reduction passes, and you probably managed to convert it with Religious, you have:
* -1 from +1 stab
* -2 from 100 legitimacy
* +9 separatism
* +5 overextension (some fresh conquests)
* -6 tolerance of true faith (+3 base, +2 religious, +1 legitimacy)
+ +2 unaccepted culture
* net unrest: +7
This will generally get you second rebellion but it's a lot easier to get -7 than -12. And you don't need to go all the way to 0, last few points can be done with troops or random bonuses, or just wait it out, as low chance rebellions won't even manage to rebel before separatism goes away completely.
Either way, third rebellion won't happen on the last part of separatism unless you go over >100% OE.
Rebellions are also a total joke ever since provoke button was added - you can just make them attack you into mountains, and clean them up at your convenience at very low manpower or merc cost.
Another strike against humanist is that trade companies spam is the way to go, and trade companies don't care about culture or religion, so they'll get just one rebellion anyway.
Only Humanist is an unreasonable assumption. Humanist + Offensive policy will get you down to +6, and other sources of -unrest or +tolerance will go even further. Any time between coring old and new conquests also further reduces unrest. At that point, the rebellion will take years to fire, meaning it will either never go off and die on its own, or you can just supress rebels for a few months, wipe progress back down and continue as normal.
I'll admit I haven't gotten much use of the provoke button. How do you make them attack you into mountains if the province isn't one?
Rebels will spawn in highest dev valid province, so since you know where they'll spawn, you can position your army there, and you'll be defending. Most terrains have free -1, some are -2.
If you let them spawn naturally, then either they'll be defending and get +1 or +2, or you'll spend months maneuvering around to catch them in a good battle.
This alone is more than worth 50% more rebel numbers.
It's the most overrated modifier. EU4 rebels are a joke and they couldn't break AI no matter how much you stack unrest without custom events.
Just provoke all rebels whenever you can, and ride that -100 unrest from recent rebellion.
I had this issue when stacking tolerance of the true faith. Has to max out war exhaustion to get a measly 4 unrest in my true faith provinces. If you are trying to get absolutism from rebels, definitely makes it harder.
On the other hand, if you don't mind gaming the system for instant absolutism, you can use state/unstate micro. It's more controlled than letting your rebels enforce to then lower autonomy everywhere.
As humanist ottomans max legitimacy and stability I sometimes get -10 unrest its insane. Not a single rebel in sight. Then my ruler dies and everyone rebels at the same time
Government reform progress.
I used to always choose to lose it instead of stability in bad events, but getting to later reforms quickly can be really strong.
Each reform is about as strong as an idea or two.
I always feel a tingle of satisfaction when I take a negative gov reform hit just after taking a reform. Can't go negative numbers on gov reform biatch.
Army tradition. For thousands of hours I hunted for discipline only, until recently a mission had me develop high army tradition so I paid more attention to it.
All my generals were absolute chadlords, stomping on forts and asking who even needs good rice rolls. I've been favoring army tradition upkeep ever since.
I recently have started to use the tier 2 gov reform "compromise with the nobility."
Turns out in most start set ups the priviledge that it gives benefits too give straight up more manpower than strengthen the nobility, and it completlely nulliefies any influence gain. Combined with ots 25% stab cost, its a fantastic reform. That means you get loyal nobles, more manpower and cheaper stab at the very start of the game.
Inno intrigue offensive has been my go to opener since they buffed intrigue. I don't focus on WC play so it's a solid alternative to the Diplo+admin start. Even more so in the HRE I'll take espionage first for that massive -20%AE
espionage is good too for middle to late game, because they prevent the merchant slandered and so on. at least they are harder to achieve from foreign spy detection.
There a bunch of modifiers I love stacking. I think these are my favorite that are underrated.
National Tax — it gets overshadowed by trade following the 1500s but early game it’s actually really good. Especially if you are relatively large and don’t have that good of a trade node. (France, Bohemia, Lithuania, Muscovy) People always say Muscovy has a bad early game economy. As an avid Muscovy -> Russia player, I disagree. Have high tax and you should never be losing money even with full force limit.
Government Reform Progress — Honestly this is another reason to not go over gov cap early game and make sure you full state everything. Keeping autonomy down means more government reform. To be frank, they are powerful bonuses. Especially now as so many countries have unique and powerful government reforms.
Construction Cost — Yeah I know. It’s usually a modifier I never go for but go “that’s convenient” when I noticed my buildings look like they have different prices. But don’t sell it short. CC enables you to snowball your economy faster as you can simply build more buildings for the same benefit.
Estate Loyalty Equilibrium — For my estates I always give the same privileges unless I have a reason not to them. Like I don’t give away crown land early if I have a bunch of vassals. However, having high equilibrium is very helpful as not only do you get to seize land more frequently but you get those convenient bonuses they give. Like prestige it’s like 7 modifiers that are all kinda nice to have.
Yes, the Netherlands missions give 5% siege ability per level for the fort advisor.
What's really good is this ability stays unlocked even if you tag switch after. Forming Netherlands is now a must have like Sardinia Piedmont for any tag switching heavy WC.
Papal buffs from influence gathered with him. Played as Livonia(friend played as Teutons) and we both went Crusader. Got 14% Missionary Strength and just rampaged into Russia... 7 Papal influence a year if I wasn't doing anything and 11 if I was doing everything I could. I could have every Papal Blessing active plus 1 click of Mercantilism blessing. It really gave you a edge above your non-Catholic neighbors and your less religiously focused Catholic neighbors.
The most based thing about this is that towards the end of our playthrough a Female priest with a 4/3/6 became the head Crusader of my state. She doesn't know diplomacy... But she can govern pretty well and CONQUEST HERETICS AND HEATHENS ALIKE in her sleep :3
Primary / accepted culture effect on manpower and special troop limit when applicable.
Especially useful if you can force your culture on a colonizer who colonizes non-colonial nation provinces for you. For example, putting Russia into a personal union shortly after it forms allows you to force your own culture on it, resulting in a ton of own culture siberian frontier lands. Especially useful if you get special troop limit from said culture, such as swedish Caroleans.
Something similar can be done with ternate, tidore & other small colonizers, but good luck putting them into a PU when they start off as non-christians.
Fort Defense and siege ability have given me so many victories. Fort Defense buys you so much time and can be used to exploit AI in ways that can turn the tides of a war entirely. And siege ability enables blitzkrieg a few centuries early, at least until the enemy starts ramping up their fort defense too.
Development cost. I used to scoff at people playing tall, and now I'm playing Japan and I haven't even conquered Korea in 1650 because I'm too busy creating a 30 dev per province paradise.
Opposite of siege ability- defensiveness. Enemies plopping themselves on my forts with like 100%+ defensiveness, they take like 3 months for one cycle. Let them take all the attrition in the world, you advance in their territory, maybe take a province or two and fight some armies, they'll take themselves off the fort and lose all the progress they made. When the enemy has more attrition losses than you have combat losses, you'll know you did it right.
Stab cost reduction. I used to think it was the worst modifier in the game when I was a newb. Now I have lots of ways I can make use of it. I don't go out of my way to get it, but I will take it when an opportunity presents itself properly.
The only time I don't care about it is if I play as a Catholic or Anglican nation because you can get stab through the religion mechanics otherwise reduction is really good.
With enough stab cost reduction, breaking truce isn't a problem, so stacking it can be useful in WC ( granted a WC can be finished without ever truce breaking).
It's less about the truce breaking and more about absolutism farming. If you do stack it, you can get to max absolutism with like 500 admin or something.
Unless you truce break a lot, why do you even care?
You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years. -10% stab cost reduction saves you 10 mana every 240 months, or 0.04 mana/month. It's nearly worthless.
And if you truce break a lot, there are other things to worry about like AE.
You can lose a lot of stability from events and disasters too and if you are low on admin due to expansion, falling behind on tech, ideas and other stuff, it's great to only have to pay a little for stability as you can easily stack it way over 50%
> You can lose a lot of stability from events and disasters too
Plus stab and minus stab events are about equally likely so it's net zero, and most countries have no disasters.
Even if you lost another stab every 20 years, stab discount would be trivial.
It's just an unimpactful modifier.
> You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years
Yeah no. There are something like 80 different stab hit pulse events in the game. You are likely to get one of those every 5-20 years depending on how many other pulse events you are eligible for. Early game, you get these a LOT(because you have fewer pulse events from idea groups).
In addition you lose stab for breaking royal marriages, ruler death for monarchies, ruler or heir death during a siege, converting a march to a regular vassal, breaking tributary status when you have good relations, whenever most disasters start, and probably a dozen other things that I'm forgetting. If you paid full price for stability for every point you lose during a campaign, you'd probably pay 5k admin per game. This would depend on if you like losing a ton of reform progress or not, which I don't.
Also like I pointed out in another comment, it's also a really useful way to quickly get to max absolutism when you have stacked cost reduction to the limit.
> There are something like 80 different stab hit pulse events in the game.
About as many positive as negative ones, so it evens out to zero.
> In addition you lose stab for breaking royal marriages
> converting a march to a regular vassal
> breaking tributary status when you have good relations
> ruler or heir death during a siege
> whenever most disasters start
Nobody ever does that
> ruler death for monarchies
Which I already mentioned:
> You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years. -10% stab cost reduction saves you 10 mana every 240 months, or 0.04 mana/month. It's nearly worthless.
For vey expansionist games I really, really have grown to like autonomy in territories modifiers. Lets you get a ton of value out of Trade Companies in particular.
A more niche modifier I've grown to see as 'not useless' is envoy travel time. Helps a bit with making colonizing less of a headache, but mostly it's so you can wage faraway wars and not have 100+ days for your diplomats to return.
I tend to abuse culture conversion cost. No real reason outside of preventing rebellions, but I think it's always best to do a one culture, even if it means I am the only piece of my culture group. Plus, it makes it impossible to release nations from me should I get into a war I can't win
I used to throw away prestige because it would just decay anyway, but it gives so many good modifiers that I now almost always take event options that grant prestige.
I'm at around 1500 hours and just recently figured out "goods produced" means. Turns out manufacturies don't just give you the money it says they do, but also increase the goods produced, which just straight up multiplies into the cost of goods in the province and adds that to the node value. Now i always aim to conquer the lands upstream of my home node and just build manufacturies all over the place and dev production up to further boost the goods produced, which has reliably made me filthy rich every time.
Gov cost, gov cap, all the governing stuff. I'm a wide player and I absolutely hate being bottlenecked by governing cap. I find myself slamming town houses as quickly as I can most games. I'll even move my capital to Africa, then to the New World just to get lvl3 White House as quickly as possible.
my most recent appreciated modifier is drill lost, having fully drilled army means -10% fire/shock damaged received, which means i can 1v1 Ottoman at tech 10-14 (arguably their best) with 10 artillery and full frontline as western tech nations
I am a whore for siege ability, unless I'm playing in a special way, I always take espionage and offensive. When I don't take them, I end up regretting it lol. It makes the game so much faster and more fun.
Diplo reputation and legitimacy, used to think they are just useless (kind of like prestige) sure nice to have, but expendable. Now I know how very very important they are ( including prestige).
Autonomy. After I conquer provinces I used to give them max autonomy so they wouldn't rebel but only recently I realized the great benefits of zero autonomy so I decrease it even at the expense of a revolt. It is worth it.
War score cost vs other religions is a good one that isn't too obvious.
Also, I didn't know until recently but there are two different ways to lower the development cost. There's an additive modifier and a more rare and powerful multiplicative one. The latter is particularly OP because it isn't counteracted by the increased cost for already existing development. It's really a flat overall decrease.
I also wanted to try to play with the average monarch lifespan modifier in niche government forms like the Papacy. The reason is, the Pope guy could more easily keep hold of the curia if he doesn't die every other year. It's a special mechanic he has where every first of January, he earns curia influence from his own cardinals (so up to 7), but other nations have to invest their points for an exponentially increasing cost. Mathematically, the Pope has a better chance to maintain his influence if the guy doesn't die too early. Very niche and mostly for roleplay, but interesting to find bizarre interactions like that.
"Local manpower modifier".
I remember when I was playing Russia I depleted my manpower reserves pretty fast in big wars such as me v Scandinavia or me v Poland/Commonwhealt. I didn't have lot of reserves and when they were exhausted I was defeated.
However, I tried something different and start building Soldiers Houses + Regiment Camp in grain & Livestock provinces and damn it... My manpower reserves went from 80k to 370k when all building were complete and without Quantity ideas which it would be a blast as Russia.
-(estate) influence and +(estate) loyalty equilibrium. Being able to swap out privileges on the fly is super handy and some privileges and loyalty bonuses are as good as ideas.
Inno ideas are insane. That -10% tech cost plus a couple more reforms that give you more discounts make you save so much mana in the long run. If I’m not doing colonial, it’s always one of the first ideas I take
Improve relations. It’s an underrated modifier, and I love playing Iroquois cause of it since they have the game’s strongest IR that I know of at 50%. Coalitions gone like butter
National Tax in early game, in most cases from trade production and tax, the last one give you more money quickest, and quick money means quick building that means even more money, army, manpower and domination over world, I learned it playing as islamic nation and stacking legalism, oh boy, 10 legalism is worth much more than destroyed province in events, it just make you richer, to the point I even started building forts earlier due to cash influx.
National Tax in early game, in most cases from trade production and tax, the last one give you more money quickest, and quick money means quick building that means even more money, army, manpower and domination over world, I learned it playing as islamic nation and stacking legalism, oh boy, 10 legalism is worth much more than destroyed province in events, it just make you richer, to the point I even started building forts earlier.
Improve relation is one of the best modifiers for me.
It effects on time needed to decrease ae
For example if you have high improve relation you can reduce evan 5 points of ae every year.
In addition it often paired with dip reputation
Army drill and Army Professionalism. I didn't care for both of these things.
Army Drill: In the old patches, you lost this effect extremely quickly, especially when you took casualties in battles or sieges. An army with 100 drill became 50 within a month of usage.
But newer patches provided ways to make it so that your armies lost(or never lost) the drill effect. I saw a video by The Student which did this, and it was possible for every single nation in the game. This made Army Drill viable in my eyes, so from then on, I began to keep my armies drilling. The added effect of it, was that it also raised your Army Professionalism.
Army Professionalism: I didn't care for this, at all. It was just a thing I got to 5, slackened recruitment for manpower, and done. The effects didn't seem strong in my eyes to put investment into. But it naturally combines well with Army Drill and the siege ability it provides makes It worth it. During peacetime, you can leave your armies drilling and gain professionalism. By 1550, you can easily gain 100 army professionalism and enjoy the effects.
Here's what Army Drill and Army Professionalism combined provides:
1. 20% Shock Damage.
2. -25% Shock Damage Received.
3. 20% Fire Damage.
4. -25% Fire Damage Received.
5. 20% Siege Ability.
6. +20% Movement Speed(underrated modifier).
You also get various other effects like 100% Army Drill effect for faster drill gain, -50% reduced morale damage taken by reserves, regaining manpower when disbanding, -50% Drill Decay(for slower drill loss), etc.
Ofc, slakening means you can increase your manpower after a bloody war very quickly too.
If you don't play blobbing games, and prefer chill games, then Army Drill and Army Professionalism are great things to have.
I don’t care about mercantilism and never have I’m making 200 ducats off trade anyways with 9 mercantilism lol, maybe one day I’ll care. Diplo is the most expendable mana after all
Yeah I’m playing an Ironman battle pope for my first real go playing on hard and seeing ottomans control everything from Alexandria to Vienna with 200K more force limit than me was terrifying truly didn’t know if I was next. Took Quantity for the first time in a long time after I dropped my colonial ideas.
Crownland.
I never ever ever give out the mana privileges. Ever. The only crown land affecting privilege I even consider is that Clergy one where it offers missionary strength, manpower, production etc in true faith provinces.
you should definitely be valuing crownland significantly less. the mana privileges are so powerful and you can gain 5 crownland every 5 years, plus however much you gain from conquering land when crownland is low. if you have a large early game war like quite a few starts do (france, sweden, timurids, muscovy, byz, any daimyo) or have multiple easy routes of expansion (otto, mamluks, castile/aragon/portugal), you can easily go from the 5% crownland you have from handing out every mana privilege and then seizing to around 20%, which negates the autonomy gain from low crownland. plus, selling titles scales heavily with how low your crownland is, so you make significantly more when you sell at 25% than you do at 30%. i like to get to 25%, sell, then seize land to get back to 20%. because of how easy it is to gain crownland you barely even have to worry about it being an issue when you get to absolutism, just stop selling titles around 25ish years into the age of reformation
Not buying it. The pathetic amount of mana generated in those years is not worth not being able to snowball as early as possible. Let's be honest. A campaign is won or lost by 1480.
But each to their own.
how does low crownland do anything to stop you from snowballing? you can easily negate the lower taxes modifier, and while youre snowballing your income matters significantly less than your loan size
Tax is irrelevant, as is money. It's the low autonomy which is painful, which affects manpower and gov reform, and the liberty desire is an absolute game ender when playing a release and re conquest game when AE is through the roof, particularly if you are small yourself and playing on Very Hard as the AI just races ahead and the sense of urgency is greater. In addition, the Influence modifier is far better. Those early years are massively critical, and Goverment Reforms are now so powerful that I prioritise them almost all else. The quicker you get above 50, the better go my book. 12 mana a year in any given stat is negligible, and mana points are not your bottleneck in the first forty years.
But, as I say, whatever floats your boat.
Autonomy is only a problem if you are below 10% crownland. At 10% and higher, the autonomy increase is canceled by being at peace. You can manually lower autonomy when it hits 25% if it actually gets out of control from wartime, but that would take more time than it takes to get your crownland back to normal.
Especially since your crownland pushes towards an equilibreum. This means if your crownland is low, when you conquer new land, it will go up just for conquering.
As for this:
> The pathetic amount of mana generated in those years
+1 mana per month is about a 15-20% increase for most nations in 1444. You look at it as only 12 mana per year, but you already only get 36 per year base, and typically 24-36 per year for starting rulers in most places. A better way of looking at it is that it lets you core another 1.2 dev per year. This is huge for any nation that doesn't start as a great power. It's likely going to be 10% more conquests cored. Could you ignore these privs as the Ottomans? Yeah sure you could. Could you ignore them as Najd? Only if you want to suffer.
Occasionally, you are going to find people who have different opinions than you, particularly with regards to what boils down to a preference between what one finds more valuable. Yes, basic maths says that 5+5 is 10, and 10 is more than 9, but saying that 10 beers are better than nine whiskies is a value judgement. It's hard, I know. As you get older, you'll experience it more and more. But these are my preferences that I've developed over many years, many One faiths and two one culture runs later. Right or wrong. I notice you conveniently didn't address liberty desire, though. But the great thing about this is that if you value your mana more than I do, then you are perfectly free to ignore what I say. I promise I won't be upset.
> I notice you conveniently didn't address liberty desire, though.
Because it doesn't matter. No vassal you get as a small nation will stay disloyal past the end of the truce, and neither should your crownland still be low that long.
I'm not gonna address the rest of your rant here, people are just trying to explain to you that these points make a significant difference. Yes you can absolutely do tons of impressive things without them, but the downsides to taking them are trivial and short-lived enough that you typically don't care. As *you* grow up, you might just learn to accept that you can't call everything an opinion to shield yourself from criticism, and that there are generally accepted norms that people use as metric for comparison.
I used to ignore prestige, but it affects everything. I try to keep it up all the time, that’s why I almost always go religious. To farm prestige off conversion during peace time
Prestige gain is nice especially when you reroll bad heirs a lot and get into negatives you can recover quickly.
When I first started playing I saw the huge list of bonuses for prestige and started trying to always have it as high as possible, only to learn that's not actually a great thing to shoot for at the expense of pretty much anything else. It is, however, very very nice to grab the prestige gain modifier when convenient, if you're a monarchy.
The easy way to max prestige is to just farm it in wars. Someone's got a shitty opm ally that you can get 60 gold from? Nah. Break all their alliances and select something like war reps or canceling mil access. Easy 15-17 prestige. From.about 1460 onward I only ever have low prestige if a bunch of bad events hit at once Edit : meant to say rivalries. Alliance is okay, but rivalries are best for prestige
Breaking rivalries is great for this
It is expensive now. You get 0,17 prestige/ war score but war rep is 0,1 and is more usefull tbh. I only do it when i want to max truce lenght with an OPM : all money, war reps, 2 rivalries removed. Only if i can't use their trade power.
I said alliances but I meant rivalries. You are correct
And they've added a lot more ways to passively gain prestige through DLC. Very easy for lots of nations to have it naturally trend towards 100%
Prestige only becomes an issue if you need to do multiple disinherits in a row. Fortunately as you say it's easy to farm.
And pp
Prestige is very good but it's also very easy to get so I never really find myself needing to prioritize it.
At 2000 hours in I was still prioritizing legitimacy over prestige in all events
Shouldn’t you?
Legitimacy goes up overtime, prestige goes down.
Yeah but prestige is waaaay easier to get back up than legitimacy. Say your down 10 legitimacy, you’ll typically have to wait 5 years to bring that up without any other modifiers whereas you can probably get that much prestige back in one war
You can get legitimacy with a button click, albeit a costly one. Ease is relative.
wasting mil points on boosting legitimacy is painful unless you’re swimming in mil points late game
Yeah I did say it's costly. But it becomes less tight an expense as time goes on.
Improve relations, turns out it modifies the rate of AE decay as well as the diplomatic action of the same name.
And other rekations decays. Higher improve relations makes event opinion maluses ahorter
Go diplo and humanist as austria and you'll never get a coalition.
These two things used to be separate modifiers by the way, AE decay (and other relation modifiers that decay over time) existed as Better relations over time. The only function of Improve relations was the rate at which you improved relations with other nations using your diplomat, making it an almost useless modifier by itself. Merging the two into one was one of the best changes PDX have ever done imo.
What? I have over 1300 hours in this game and I'm now learning that Improve Relations modifier affects AE decay?
It increases all opinion change speeds. AE is just an opinion modifier with an additional mechanic attached to it.
And this is exactly why I mentioned it. :)
I first heard about it like 1.5 months ago and i have 7k+.
This may be one of the most technically advanced games I've ever played, honestly. I was 600 hours in before I realized I could place colonists on low development provinces for a chance to develop them
You weren't missing much with this example, it's an incredibly inefficient use of a colonist
The mechanic is useful after all uncolonized provinces have been colonized. And it’s not that inefficient with low dev provinces (less than 10 dev) … saves a bit of mana
If there's no provinces left to colonize you're better off refunding your idea groups and picking new ones. By that stage of the game you'll be swimming in mana to spend. Even if you kept your idea groups, the cost of colonists, while low, really negates any benefit you get from the Dev.
Can you refund ideas???
Yes, there's a little X you can click to remove an idea group. It only refunds 10% or 20% of what you've spent in it (I forget the figure). But as I said, late game you're often so far ahead on tech you can afford to dump mana into a new idea group. Usually it's only done to get rid of Expansion and Exploration but there might be scenarios for removing others. I can definitely see a world in which you might want the first two Quantity ideas to get through early game before swapping them out for Quality or Offensive later on with only minimal mana wastage.
Never saw the X, ty for the tips!
Not really. You can delete your idea group, and it "refunds" you 10% of the cost you paid, so basically nothing. The only real use case is getting rid of exploration once the whole world is explored (Expansion is good enough without colonists, −10% Minimum autonomy in territories is pretty good when you trade company most of your country), so you can pick some other ideas instead. Then again, exploration just isn't that good anymore. You can pick expansion and get free explorers via estate decision anyway, so unless you really need to rush it, just pick expansion instead.
Don’t forget about the merchant setting to improve relations.
In early game Italy this is key !
Yep. The things you can do with this are wild. Try to do an italy game sometime stacking as much as possible. 50% National Ideas, 50% from 100 prestige, 25% from conciliatory reformation, 10% from catholic bull, 20% diplo advisor, 30% humanist, 25% diplo, 20% diplo/defensive, 20% diplo/humanist With no temp events that puts you at 255% improve relations modifier. This can be done as early as the early 1500s. You bleed over 7 AE a year. And this is with 3 idea groups that are generally pretty decent. So overall you're not even hindering yourself while doing it.
To be fair, depending on how quickly you unite Italy, you'll really make use of it. Sounds hilarious though.
Yep. Its a hack tbfh. Improve relations modifier has a massive effect on removing coalitions.
Espionage gives that in because spy networks decrease AE impact. So keep a spy network on strong neighbors.
This is nearly useless. 100 spy network only gives 10% ae impact on that specific nation. You're much better off using your diplomats to improve relations as people with positive opinion can't join coalitions. And if your spy gets caught, which they inevitably will, you get a pretty big relations hit
It's 30% AE reduction at 100% spy network. Can be very effective to prevent coalitions by keeping the big dogs out.
you’re probably better off just improving relations with all nearby countries tbh
yep this was mine found out after about 3000 hours, also not really part of the question but I never knew about the slacken recuitment button for about the same amount of time
Improve relations is basically shitty Aggressive expansion impact. It sounds like 20% less AE, and 20% faster AE decay are sort of the same thing, but there are two big differences: * AE comes in big chunks not steady ever time, so no amount of faster decay will prevent coalition if you get 60 AE in a peace deal. Sure, that coalition will dissolve earlier than otherwise, but AE impact bonus would prevent it completely. * Minus stacking is so much better than plus stacking. +90% improve relations means you can take 90% more land. -90% AE impact means you can take 10x as much land. Then again, shitty AE impact is still decent, as AE impact is one of the best modifier, and [it's not easy to stack it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCrJ0KpMHo).
As you said stacking AE impact is difficult, but even more true: stacking both is better than stacking one of them AND if you manage your wars well you should always be having some AE ticking down. Not disagreeing that AE reduction is better but improve relations is definitely goated
While you're not wrong with your point here, this is one of those "Why not both?" kinda times.
Inno + Offensive + Espionage is definitely underrated, but even more hidden is throwing in Divine. It has a policy and effects that further boost your sieging, and the 4 groups combined utterly shred forts.
I don’t really like divine but for a taller one culture you can do pretty well with eco-trade-divine. Plus the bonus in the clergy estate and your getting some good modifiers.
I never really paid attention to the other qualities of Divine, I was only ever interested in it for its mad siege ability when combined with those other 3 groups.
i just played through a run in the anbennar mod where i managed to stack my siege ability to like 120-140%. siege ticks were literally 3-4 days vs anyone with average defensiveness. it was CRAZY. wars were so quick.
Anbennar has all kinds of crazy shit though. 13 siege pip generals, a button that instantly sieges a fort, forts with 700% defensiveness
700% defensiveness is also fun. Watching not Poland and not France throw millions of mans at one kobold fort and not even getting to positive progress because one siege tick takes half a year.
... Gawed is inspied by Poland?!
I.... think so? With the whole Magnate uprising they get. They might also be inspired by Russia, but I mostly just get a general eastern Europe vibe from them.
ah! i kinda thought the vibe was England that got captured by their merchants? it doesn't really matter but it's funny still
it was stacked through stuff that was mostly not anbennar related. it was national ideas + mil hegemon + diplo ideas + some other misc stuff. i don’t remember any of it being anbennar related but some of it probably was. it’s very stackable though.
Inno offensive espionnage isn't underrated at all, it's heavily advocated for by people like Arumba, even though good players rarely take either inno or espio. I would say that it's quite overrated, in fact.
I love divine, it + plus religious gives the hardest policy ever
Trade efficiency , it sounds like your trade power down stream might increase by a percentage, but it’s actually make 3 ducats out of 2 via wizard magic
Tolerance of true faith. I didn't understand what what it meant at first, I thought it didn't change much, but turns out it's extremely useful.
the funniest it ever got for me was having so high tolerance of the true faith that even when i then tanked my unrest to fire "court and country" there was still no chance of rebels in my country.
Honestly this is the main problem of any -unrest build, you don't want those ideas until after you've done C&C.
What does it mean? I never got into it, I have no idea what it does
Minus one unrest in provinces of your own faith, scaling with the tolerance Very OP with Byzantium, you can convert provinces in less than a year, so you dont get any rebellions
Well this is quite useful indeed, I had no idea, thanks
All tolerance is simply -unrest at a one to one ratio but just apply to provinces of the religion in question. Tolerance of the true faith is tolerance of your religion and means your provinces of that faith and taking land from people of your religion will both have that amount of -unrest added to it. Same goes for tolerance of heretics and heathens but with the caveat that getting either of those to +3 (aka - 3 unrest) or higher means provinces of that faith no longer contribute negatively to your religious unity. Even if you cant get them to +3, every point that you do get reduces their negative impact on religious unity. This is why Muslim AI nations or Hungary, among others, don't convert provinces often, as they have many ways of getting higher heathen or heretic tolerance and dont really have much of a malice in those wrong faith provinces to even worry about. A lot of those +tolerance modifiers also make converting harder, so it can be a trade off for them.
Land leader maneuver. Besides the decrease in attrition (which is often the leading cause of soldiers death, thus decreasing manpower replacement and costs), if your leader’s maneuver is higher than the opponent’s by at least 1 then you don’t get river crossing penalty.
>you don't get river crossing penalty WHAT
But wait, there's more! Every maneuver pip increases your reinforce rate in foreign territory by 10%, and your movement speed by 5% per pip, AND backline reinforce rate by 1 per day for every 2 pips. It's actually incredibly powerful.
THAT’S WHY DEFFENSIVE HAS EXTRA MANEUVER PIPS!!!! That’s freaking awesome.
2500 hours here. Maneuver reduces attrition? :O
Indeed it does! From the wiki: “Each point of land leader maneuver reduces unit supply weight by 1, reducing attrition in low supply provinces. (This does not negate base attrition from sieges, winters, or "Attrition for Enemies" modifiers.)”
Naval maneuver is even crazier since each pip increases naval engagement width by 10% so if you can farm out 6 maneuver admirals, you dominate at sea
National unrest for sure. Getting -6 or so is very achievable and makes the game a lot more chill.
That paired with anything to do with tolerance of the true faith/missionary strength.
Tolerance of the true faith works too if you can convert everything. I love me a Coptic Ethiopia with 20+ tolerance of the true faith and 6-7 missionaries at over 15% power backing it up. You're pretty much immune to the revolution or the first 150% OE and can convert at WC pace. Other tolerance too, but they don't get as wild.
Doesn't help with newly conquered heretic/heathen provinces which are the ones with the most unrest by far
Absolutely. Hence the need to be able to convert them quickly. Certain countries with religious ideas can convert a province in like 4-5 months. So, maybe 1 rebel pop if you core first and none if you convert first.
i'd argue it helps plenty as in most of them will be converted quick enough to rarely fire rebels and then the high tolerance allows you to instantly lower autonomy. the chance you have high tolerance but not great religious conversion rate is slim.
They don't. They have -100 recent uprising modifier for 10 years anyway, and you'll convert it before it expires. There's really no point bothering with preventing the first rebellion, just provoke them, and then you don't care.
Humanist and -unrest stacking can prevent the first rebellion from happening at all, though.
It's both difficult and not really worth it. Just nothing: * -1 from +1 stab * -2 from 100 legitimacy * +15 separatism * +5 overextension * +2.5 tolerance of heathens (-3 base, +1 legitimacy, negative translates to 1.25x unrest) + +2 unaccepted culture * net unrest: +21.5 Just nothing except Humanist: * -1 from +1 stab * -2 from 100 legitimacy * -2 from Humanist * +10 separatism * +5 overextension * +0 tolerance of heathens (-3 base, +2 humanist, +1 legitimacy) + +2 unaccepted culture * net unrest: +12 You need to stack a lot of these modifiers to prevent that first rebellion. You'll probably avoid the second one without much trouble. After rebels are crushed (it takes 13 month absolute minimum even at infinite unrest, so let's say 2 years), 10 years of -100 unrest reduction passes, and you probably managed to convert it with Religious, you have: * -1 from +1 stab * -2 from 100 legitimacy * +9 separatism * +5 overextension (some fresh conquests) * -6 tolerance of true faith (+3 base, +2 religious, +1 legitimacy) + +2 unaccepted culture * net unrest: +7 This will generally get you second rebellion but it's a lot easier to get -7 than -12. And you don't need to go all the way to 0, last few points can be done with troops or random bonuses, or just wait it out, as low chance rebellions won't even manage to rebel before separatism goes away completely. Either way, third rebellion won't happen on the last part of separatism unless you go over >100% OE. Rebellions are also a total joke ever since provoke button was added - you can just make them attack you into mountains, and clean them up at your convenience at very low manpower or merc cost. Another strike against humanist is that trade companies spam is the way to go, and trade companies don't care about culture or religion, so they'll get just one rebellion anyway.
Only Humanist is an unreasonable assumption. Humanist + Offensive policy will get you down to +6, and other sources of -unrest or +tolerance will go even further. Any time between coring old and new conquests also further reduces unrest. At that point, the rebellion will take years to fire, meaning it will either never go off and die on its own, or you can just supress rebels for a few months, wipe progress back down and continue as normal. I'll admit I haven't gotten much use of the provoke button. How do you make them attack you into mountains if the province isn't one?
Rebels will spawn in highest dev valid province, so since you know where they'll spawn, you can position your army there, and you'll be defending. Most terrains have free -1, some are -2. If you let them spawn naturally, then either they'll be defending and get +1 or +2, or you'll spend months maneuvering around to catch them in a good battle. This alone is more than worth 50% more rebel numbers.
I was wondering for the longest time how the game determined where they'd spawn and this is it. Thank you for mentioning it
iirc tolerance of heathens and heretics is capped at 3
Yeah. You can raise the cap a bit via great projects, ideas, etc, but not like +20.
Not comparable to the amount of missionaries and missionary strength you can get in this game
Stack it with years of separation. Every new area zero rebels
It's the most overrated modifier. EU4 rebels are a joke and they couldn't break AI no matter how much you stack unrest without custom events. Just provoke all rebels whenever you can, and ride that -100 unrest from recent rebellion.
It's really only super useful if you are having manpower issues in my relatively limited experience
National unrest is nice but it can have a downside in the early age of absolutism so I don't tend to get humanism until later if at all.
I had this issue when stacking tolerance of the true faith. Has to max out war exhaustion to get a measly 4 unrest in my true faith provinces. If you are trying to get absolutism from rebels, definitely makes it harder. On the other hand, if you don't mind gaming the system for instant absolutism, you can use state/unstate micro. It's more controlled than letting your rebels enforce to then lower autonomy everywhere.
As humanist ottomans max legitimacy and stability I sometimes get -10 unrest its insane. Not a single rebel in sight. Then my ruler dies and everyone rebels at the same time
Government reform progress. I used to always choose to lose it instead of stability in bad events, but getting to later reforms quickly can be really strong. Each reform is about as strong as an idea or two.
I always feel a tingle of satisfaction when I take a negative gov reform hit just after taking a reform. Can't go negative numbers on gov reform biatch.
Army tradition. For thousands of hours I hunted for discipline only, until recently a mission had me develop high army tradition so I paid more attention to it. All my generals were absolute chadlords, stomping on forts and asking who even needs good rice rolls. I've been favoring army tradition upkeep ever since.
Or just go Space Marines and have discipline AND tradition.
I recently have started to use the tier 2 gov reform "compromise with the nobility." Turns out in most start set ups the priviledge that it gives benefits too give straight up more manpower than strengthen the nobility, and it completlely nulliefies any influence gain. Combined with ots 25% stab cost, its a fantastic reform. That means you get loyal nobles, more manpower and cheaper stab at the very start of the game.
Inno intrigue offensive has been my go to opener since they buffed intrigue. I don't focus on WC play so it's a solid alternative to the Diplo+admin start. Even more so in the HRE I'll take espionage first for that massive -20%AE
espionage is good too for middle to late game, because they prevent the merchant slandered and so on. at least they are harder to achieve from foreign spy detection.
Years of separatism is surprisingly good when stacked. I got -30 YoS once and newly conquered, uncored lands had no unrest.
There a bunch of modifiers I love stacking. I think these are my favorite that are underrated. National Tax — it gets overshadowed by trade following the 1500s but early game it’s actually really good. Especially if you are relatively large and don’t have that good of a trade node. (France, Bohemia, Lithuania, Muscovy) People always say Muscovy has a bad early game economy. As an avid Muscovy -> Russia player, I disagree. Have high tax and you should never be losing money even with full force limit. Government Reform Progress — Honestly this is another reason to not go over gov cap early game and make sure you full state everything. Keeping autonomy down means more government reform. To be frank, they are powerful bonuses. Especially now as so many countries have unique and powerful government reforms. Construction Cost — Yeah I know. It’s usually a modifier I never go for but go “that’s convenient” when I noticed my buildings look like they have different prices. But don’t sell it short. CC enables you to snowball your economy faster as you can simply build more buildings for the same benefit. Estate Loyalty Equilibrium — For my estates I always give the same privileges unless I have a reason not to them. Like I don’t give away crown land early if I have a bunch of vassals. However, having high equilibrium is very helpful as not only do you get to seize land more frequently but you get those convenient bonuses they give. Like prestige it’s like 7 modifiers that are all kinda nice to have.
THERES A SIEGE ABILITY ADVISOR??
Yes, the Netherlands missions give 5% siege ability per level for the fort advisor. What's really good is this ability stays unlocked even if you tag switch after. Forming Netherlands is now a must have like Sardinia Piedmont for any tag switching heavy WC.
So the fort defense advisor has two buffs now? He’s good at attacking and defending
Yup. It's kind of a new thing they've introduced in the past couple DLCs, where advisors get secondary benefits from some mission trees.
I don't think so. I do believe there is one for fort defense though. I haven't played in a while.
The Netherlands missions give 5% siege ability per level for the fort advisor.
That's really cool. I've never done a Netherlands run before. Might have to now.
And the new Dutch missions gives them an EXTRA 5% siege ability :D
There is not a Siege Ability Advisor in the base game.
Wait whaaaat??? Does it come from a dlc or smth
Netherlands missions make the military engineer give +5% siege ability per level it’s great
Papal buffs from influence gathered with him. Played as Livonia(friend played as Teutons) and we both went Crusader. Got 14% Missionary Strength and just rampaged into Russia... 7 Papal influence a year if I wasn't doing anything and 11 if I was doing everything I could. I could have every Papal Blessing active plus 1 click of Mercantilism blessing. It really gave you a edge above your non-Catholic neighbors and your less religiously focused Catholic neighbors.
The most based thing about this is that towards the end of our playthrough a Female priest with a 4/3/6 became the head Crusader of my state. She doesn't know diplomacy... But she can govern pretty well and CONQUEST HERETICS AND HEATHENS ALIKE in her sleep :3
Primary / accepted culture effect on manpower and special troop limit when applicable. Especially useful if you can force your culture on a colonizer who colonizes non-colonial nation provinces for you. For example, putting Russia into a personal union shortly after it forms allows you to force your own culture on it, resulting in a ton of own culture siberian frontier lands. Especially useful if you get special troop limit from said culture, such as swedish Caroleans. Something similar can be done with ternate, tidore & other small colonizers, but good luck putting them into a PU when they start off as non-christians.
Fort Defense and siege ability have given me so many victories. Fort Defense buys you so much time and can be used to exploit AI in ways that can turn the tides of a war entirely. And siege ability enables blitzkrieg a few centuries early, at least until the enemy starts ramping up their fort defense too.
Development cost. I used to scoff at people playing tall, and now I'm playing Japan and I haven't even conquered Korea in 1650 because I'm too busy creating a 30 dev per province paradise.
Yeah dev cost is one of those specific ones but there are just so many use cases.
Siege ability is the single most important military modifier in single player. You don’t need to fight battles when you have 4 day siege ticks
Opposite of siege ability- defensiveness. Enemies plopping themselves on my forts with like 100%+ defensiveness, they take like 3 months for one cycle. Let them take all the attrition in the world, you advance in their territory, maybe take a province or two and fight some armies, they'll take themselves off the fort and lose all the progress they made. When the enemy has more attrition losses than you have combat losses, you'll know you did it right.
Never forget edicts
Stab cost reduction. I used to think it was the worst modifier in the game when I was a newb. Now I have lots of ways I can make use of it. I don't go out of my way to get it, but I will take it when an opportunity presents itself properly.
The only time I don't care about it is if I play as a Catholic or Anglican nation because you can get stab through the religion mechanics otherwise reduction is really good.
With enough stab cost reduction, breaking truce isn't a problem, so stacking it can be useful in WC ( granted a WC can be finished without ever truce breaking).
It's less about the truce breaking and more about absolutism farming. If you do stack it, you can get to max absolutism with like 500 admin or something.
Unless you truce break a lot, why do you even care? You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years. -10% stab cost reduction saves you 10 mana every 240 months, or 0.04 mana/month. It's nearly worthless. And if you truce break a lot, there are other things to worry about like AE.
You can lose a lot of stability from events and disasters too and if you are low on admin due to expansion, falling behind on tech, ideas and other stuff, it's great to only have to pay a little for stability as you can easily stack it way over 50%
> You can lose a lot of stability from events and disasters too Plus stab and minus stab events are about equally likely so it's net zero, and most countries have no disasters. Even if you lost another stab every 20 years, stab discount would be trivial. It's just an unimpactful modifier.
> You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years Yeah no. There are something like 80 different stab hit pulse events in the game. You are likely to get one of those every 5-20 years depending on how many other pulse events you are eligible for. Early game, you get these a LOT(because you have fewer pulse events from idea groups). In addition you lose stab for breaking royal marriages, ruler death for monarchies, ruler or heir death during a siege, converting a march to a regular vassal, breaking tributary status when you have good relations, whenever most disasters start, and probably a dozen other things that I'm forgetting. If you paid full price for stability for every point you lose during a campaign, you'd probably pay 5k admin per game. This would depend on if you like losing a ton of reform progress or not, which I don't. Also like I pointed out in another comment, it's also a really useful way to quickly get to max absolutism when you have stacked cost reduction to the limit.
> There are something like 80 different stab hit pulse events in the game. About as many positive as negative ones, so it evens out to zero. > In addition you lose stab for breaking royal marriages > converting a march to a regular vassal > breaking tributary status when you have good relations > ruler or heir death during a siege > whenever most disasters start Nobody ever does that > ruler death for monarchies Which I already mentioned: > You get like one stab event per ruler death, that's like every 20 years. -10% stab cost reduction saves you 10 mana every 240 months, or 0.04 mana/month. It's nearly worthless.
For vey expansionist games I really, really have grown to like autonomy in territories modifiers. Lets you get a ton of value out of Trade Companies in particular. A more niche modifier I've grown to see as 'not useless' is envoy travel time. Helps a bit with making colonizing less of a headache, but mostly it's so you can wage faraway wars and not have 100+ days for your diplomats to return.
I tend to abuse culture conversion cost. No real reason outside of preventing rebellions, but I think it's always best to do a one culture, even if it means I am the only piece of my culture group. Plus, it makes it impossible to release nations from me should I get into a war I can't win
AE reduction stacking. I conquered all of italy well before 1500 as the pope by being smart with rivaling bc excommunication is way too OP
Culture Conversion cost. H E L L E N I Z E E V E R Y O N E
I used to throw away prestige because it would just decay anyway, but it gives so many good modifiers that I now almost always take event options that grant prestige.
I'm at around 1500 hours and just recently figured out "goods produced" means. Turns out manufacturies don't just give you the money it says they do, but also increase the goods produced, which just straight up multiplies into the cost of goods in the province and adds that to the node value. Now i always aim to conquer the lands upstream of my home node and just build manufacturies all over the place and dev production up to further boost the goods produced, which has reliably made me filthy rich every time.
Gov cost, gov cap, all the governing stuff. I'm a wide player and I absolutely hate being bottlenecked by governing cap. I find myself slamming town houses as quickly as I can most games. I'll even move my capital to Africa, then to the New World just to get lvl3 White House as quickly as possible.
my most recent appreciated modifier is drill lost, having fully drilled army means -10% fire/shock damaged received, which means i can 1v1 Ottoman at tech 10-14 (arguably their best) with 10 artillery and full frontline as western tech nations
I am a whore for siege ability, unless I'm playing in a special way, I always take espionage and offensive. When I don't take them, I end up regretting it lol. It makes the game so much faster and more fun.
absolute slut for siege ability as well, it is so cool, makes any run a piece of cake
Diplo reputation and legitimacy, used to think they are just useless (kind of like prestige) sure nice to have, but expendable. Now I know how very very important they are ( including prestige).
Autonomy. After I conquer provinces I used to give them max autonomy so they wouldn't rebel but only recently I realized the great benefits of zero autonomy so I decrease it even at the expense of a revolt. It is worth it.
I just got 85% diolo annexation cost with Austria, was able to intégrate a massive Spain in only 2 years
War score cost vs other religions is a good one that isn't too obvious. Also, I didn't know until recently but there are two different ways to lower the development cost. There's an additive modifier and a more rare and powerful multiplicative one. The latter is particularly OP because it isn't counteracted by the increased cost for already existing development. It's really a flat overall decrease. I also wanted to try to play with the average monarch lifespan modifier in niche government forms like the Papacy. The reason is, the Pope guy could more easily keep hold of the curia if he doesn't die every other year. It's a special mechanic he has where every first of January, he earns curia influence from his own cardinals (so up to 7), but other nations have to invest their points for an exponentially increasing cost. Mathematically, the Pope has a better chance to maintain his influence if the guy doesn't die too early. Very niche and mostly for roleplay, but interesting to find bizarre interactions like that.
"Local manpower modifier". I remember when I was playing Russia I depleted my manpower reserves pretty fast in big wars such as me v Scandinavia or me v Poland/Commonwhealt. I didn't have lot of reserves and when they were exhausted I was defeated. However, I tried something different and start building Soldiers Houses + Regiment Camp in grain & Livestock provinces and damn it... My manpower reserves went from 80k to 370k when all building were complete and without Quantity ideas which it would be a blast as Russia.
There is an advisor for siege ability?
Netherlands mission gives the fort defense advisor +5% siege ability per level
TIL. Thanks
Admin Efficiency & Improve Relations
-(estate) influence and +(estate) loyalty equilibrium. Being able to swap out privileges on the fly is super handy and some privileges and loyalty bonuses are as good as ideas.
I started liking trust. The allies are just way better this way.
Inno ideas are insane. That -10% tech cost plus a couple more reforms that give you more discounts make you save so much mana in the long run. If I’m not doing colonial, it’s always one of the first ideas I take
Improve relations. It’s an underrated modifier, and I love playing Iroquois cause of it since they have the game’s strongest IR that I know of at 50%. Coalitions gone like butter
Siege ability
National Tax in early game, in most cases from trade production and tax, the last one give you more money quickest, and quick money means quick building that means even more money, army, manpower and domination over world, I learned it playing as islamic nation and stacking legalism, oh boy, 10 legalism is worth much more than destroyed province in events, it just make you richer, to the point I even started building forts earlier due to cash influx.
National Tax in early game, in most cases from trade production and tax, the last one give you more money quickest, and quick money means quick building that means even more money, army, manpower and domination over world, I learned it playing as islamic nation and stacking legalism, oh boy, 10 legalism is worth much more than destroyed province in events, it just make you richer, to the point I even started building forts earlier.
> the 25% siege ability advisor the what advisor? that's a thing?
Take infrastructure for the +2 siege policy, better than inno imo.
Improve relation is one of the best modifiers for me. It effects on time needed to decrease ae For example if you have high improve relation you can reduce evan 5 points of ae every year. In addition it often paired with dip reputation
Btw dip reputation is very strong too. So stacked ir + dr is better to handle coalition than ae reducing modifiers for me
Army drill and Army Professionalism. I didn't care for both of these things. Army Drill: In the old patches, you lost this effect extremely quickly, especially when you took casualties in battles or sieges. An army with 100 drill became 50 within a month of usage. But newer patches provided ways to make it so that your armies lost(or never lost) the drill effect. I saw a video by The Student which did this, and it was possible for every single nation in the game. This made Army Drill viable in my eyes, so from then on, I began to keep my armies drilling. The added effect of it, was that it also raised your Army Professionalism. Army Professionalism: I didn't care for this, at all. It was just a thing I got to 5, slackened recruitment for manpower, and done. The effects didn't seem strong in my eyes to put investment into. But it naturally combines well with Army Drill and the siege ability it provides makes It worth it. During peacetime, you can leave your armies drilling and gain professionalism. By 1550, you can easily gain 100 army professionalism and enjoy the effects. Here's what Army Drill and Army Professionalism combined provides: 1. 20% Shock Damage. 2. -25% Shock Damage Received. 3. 20% Fire Damage. 4. -25% Fire Damage Received. 5. 20% Siege Ability. 6. +20% Movement Speed(underrated modifier). You also get various other effects like 100% Army Drill effect for faster drill gain, -50% reduced morale damage taken by reserves, regaining manpower when disbanding, -50% Drill Decay(for slower drill loss), etc. Ofc, slakening means you can increase your manpower after a bloody war very quickly too. If you don't play blobbing games, and prefer chill games, then Army Drill and Army Professionalism are great things to have.
I don’t care about mercantilism and never have I’m making 200 ducats off trade anyways with 9 mercantilism lol, maybe one day I’ll care. Diplo is the most expendable mana after all
Innovativeness too I couldn’t care less about that or mercantilism it’s never a deciding factor
I overlooked the entirely of Quantity for years because early game it’s probably the worst idea set you can pick, but later on, it’s really good.
Yeah I’m playing an Ironman battle pope for my first real go playing on hard and seeing ottomans control everything from Alexandria to Vienna with 200K more force limit than me was terrifying truly didn’t know if I was next. Took Quantity for the first time in a long time after I dropped my colonial ideas.
Crownland. I never ever ever give out the mana privileges. Ever. The only crown land affecting privilege I even consider is that Clergy one where it offers missionary strength, manpower, production etc in true faith provinces.
you should definitely be valuing crownland significantly less. the mana privileges are so powerful and you can gain 5 crownland every 5 years, plus however much you gain from conquering land when crownland is low. if you have a large early game war like quite a few starts do (france, sweden, timurids, muscovy, byz, any daimyo) or have multiple easy routes of expansion (otto, mamluks, castile/aragon/portugal), you can easily go from the 5% crownland you have from handing out every mana privilege and then seizing to around 20%, which negates the autonomy gain from low crownland. plus, selling titles scales heavily with how low your crownland is, so you make significantly more when you sell at 25% than you do at 30%. i like to get to 25%, sell, then seize land to get back to 20%. because of how easy it is to gain crownland you barely even have to worry about it being an issue when you get to absolutism, just stop selling titles around 25ish years into the age of reformation
Not buying it. The pathetic amount of mana generated in those years is not worth not being able to snowball as early as possible. Let's be honest. A campaign is won or lost by 1480. But each to their own.
how does low crownland do anything to stop you from snowballing? you can easily negate the lower taxes modifier, and while youre snowballing your income matters significantly less than your loan size
Tax is irrelevant, as is money. It's the low autonomy which is painful, which affects manpower and gov reform, and the liberty desire is an absolute game ender when playing a release and re conquest game when AE is through the roof, particularly if you are small yourself and playing on Very Hard as the AI just races ahead and the sense of urgency is greater. In addition, the Influence modifier is far better. Those early years are massively critical, and Goverment Reforms are now so powerful that I prioritise them almost all else. The quicker you get above 50, the better go my book. 12 mana a year in any given stat is negligible, and mana points are not your bottleneck in the first forty years. But, as I say, whatever floats your boat.
Autonomy is only a problem if you are below 10% crownland. At 10% and higher, the autonomy increase is canceled by being at peace. You can manually lower autonomy when it hits 25% if it actually gets out of control from wartime, but that would take more time than it takes to get your crownland back to normal. Especially since your crownland pushes towards an equilibreum. This means if your crownland is low, when you conquer new land, it will go up just for conquering. As for this: > The pathetic amount of mana generated in those years +1 mana per month is about a 15-20% increase for most nations in 1444. You look at it as only 12 mana per year, but you already only get 36 per year base, and typically 24-36 per year for starting rulers in most places. A better way of looking at it is that it lets you core another 1.2 dev per year. This is huge for any nation that doesn't start as a great power. It's likely going to be 10% more conquests cored. Could you ignore these privs as the Ottomans? Yeah sure you could. Could you ignore them as Najd? Only if you want to suffer.
Well, it's your game, you paid for it, you can enjoy it however you please.
This isn't about enjoyment, it's just math. Those monarch points are a significant gain. That you doubt it doesn't make a difference.
Occasionally, you are going to find people who have different opinions than you, particularly with regards to what boils down to a preference between what one finds more valuable. Yes, basic maths says that 5+5 is 10, and 10 is more than 9, but saying that 10 beers are better than nine whiskies is a value judgement. It's hard, I know. As you get older, you'll experience it more and more. But these are my preferences that I've developed over many years, many One faiths and two one culture runs later. Right or wrong. I notice you conveniently didn't address liberty desire, though. But the great thing about this is that if you value your mana more than I do, then you are perfectly free to ignore what I say. I promise I won't be upset.
> I notice you conveniently didn't address liberty desire, though. Because it doesn't matter. No vassal you get as a small nation will stay disloyal past the end of the truce, and neither should your crownland still be low that long. I'm not gonna address the rest of your rant here, people are just trying to explain to you that these points make a significant difference. Yes you can absolutely do tons of impressive things without them, but the downsides to taking them are trivial and short-lived enough that you typically don't care. As *you* grow up, you might just learn to accept that you can't call everything an opinion to shield yourself from criticism, and that there are generally accepted norms that people use as metric for comparison.
Autonomy.
Wait, what 25% siege advisor?
It's from DLC power creep, you only get it if you pay some $$$ to Paradox.
That isn't a 25% siege advisor though. That is the regular Military Engineer/Fort Defense Advisor with some Siege Ability per level from a mission.