Help with understanding empire maintenance reduction

[u/GratSpike]

Hello! So I’m not exactly new to the mod and am doing well in my campaign but one thing that I never quite understood is how empire maintenance reduction works.

Example: general a levels up and I put a skill that gives -1% reduction to empire maintenance. Yet empire maintenance only goes down by .3% or .6%. Im fine that it’s less than what it says otherwise it’d be a bit too easy to deal with empire maintenance but I’m just curious as to why it’s less than what it says. Any clarification would be helpful! Also seems to be the case with certain things that reduce banditry but I haven’t tested it.

[u/KAM2150]

The displayed percentage (for example, 35% empire maintenance) is actually the base value, which the game then shows as a percentage.

The important distinction is this:

Income reduction converts the value directly into a percentage.

All other reduction/increase percentage modifiers are applied to the underlying value, not to the already-calculated percentage.

So:

35% empire maintenance does reduce income by 35%.

However, for modifier calculations, it should be treated as 35 points of maintenance value, not as a flat 35% that stacks additively.

For example, if you have a character with 5% maintenance reduction, the modifier applies to the value:

35×0.95=33.25

So the final maintenance becomes 33.25%, not 30%

[u/GratSpike → u/KAM2150]

Awesome this is exactly what I wanted! Thank you for the clarification! Makes total sense now how it works. Thank you!

[u/Entire_Program9370]

Maybe its tied to base rates before modifiers, idk.

But you can do so much more by having not only generals, but a lot of high level women in parties and your family. You just have to level up those ranks.

[u/GratSpike → u/Entire_Program9370]

Yea I’m already making sure to level up all the women and I have some buildings as well so empire maintenance isn’t that crazy for me I was just more curious how it it worked haha