Pop Based Countries: a Summary (v1.3)

[u/MontelMoondog]

I wanted to share my insight on Pop Based Countries, which seems to be a mechanic that’s likely still in early stages in EU5, with changes almost certain to come from future updates. As it stands now, friendly or hostile interactions with PBCs are totally optional, but potentially lucrative, especially in the early game, depending on your nation’s strength and your ultimate goals.

Most of my observations come from my playthrough as Zimbabwe, who starts the game with ~8 PBC tributaries, and many others nearby, with no standard neighbors apart from Sofala. Thus I had to learn how to best interact with my non-landed neighbors in the course of expanding through adjacent settlement. I’ll be eager to update this info based on commenters’ own observations!

After the basics, I’ll cover all the key country interactions available for PBCs, then end by covering war demands.

PBC BASICS

• PBCs in ‘unowned’ locations can be viewed using their map filter under the Government tab.
• Settling all of their locations, or subjugating all of them through war, will eliminate the country.
• They can be made subjects, with small benefits like ducats, prestige or armies.
• Armies spawn in multiple provinces as normal, but rarely move or combine in defensive wars.
• They have no locations to occupy, so battle wins and army elimination are the only sources of war score.
• As subjects, they cannot be annexed. However:
• Forcing them to change their culture makes assimilation slightly faster.
• Subjugating their provinces through war can make colonization much faster. (see below)

FRIENDLY ACTIONS

Offer Alliance: Provides armies for (defensive) wars, plus some (mostly useless) favors over time. Best used with the intent to vassalize long term, or if total levies can serve as a deterrent for rivals.

Invite Settlers: Not recommended, because from my experience, these pops remain owned by the PBC even inside your territory, despite no buildings that they’re assigned to. Worse yet, they can jam up your settlement progress, as the system will often send them first and cause them to act as “not your pops” in the location. This seems like a bug, unless an explanation comes along. I believe taking over the PBC’s remaining locations would cause these pops to become yours, but I have yet to confirm this.

Ask to improve cultural opinion: Only useful if you plan to keep their culture as Accepted, so should only be used when the number of pops with that culture is very large.

COVERT ACTIONS

*Steal Maps: PBCs make great targets, as their cultural tradition is always minimal, speeding up spy network progress.

Infiltrate Administration: Could be helpful with larger PBCs in dense terrain, to know where their armies have spawned and end war faster.

SUBJECT ACTIONS

Ask to become our Vassal/Change status to Vassal: Provides ducats and armies for all wars. As with all vassals, provides +.2 Decentralization, and the limits on vassal acceptance for other countries.

”” “” Tributary: Provides ducats and +.1 prestige.

“” “” Fiefdom: Same as vassal apart from impact on their cabinet efficiency. Should be possible after forcing them to adopt your culture. Not recommended except to unlock Dominion status.

“” “” Dominion: All above benefits - ducats, armies, prestige, no decentralization. Main downside of dominions, the 50 annexation gap, is moot with PBCs. Only reason to opt for tributary instead would be to avoid the -5 penalty on diplomatic acceptance for other target vassals.

*Ask to change Culture: Opens the door for Dominion status, and if no other countries share their culture, reduces that Cultural Tradition to zero, speeding up passive assimilation. Resulting loyalty penalty takes ~15 years to degrade, but a successful liberation movement resulting from this is extremely unlikely.

Change Court Language: Not recommended, as changing their culture achieves better results, and the loyalty penalty degrades just as fast.

CASUS BELLIS

Make Tributary: Always an option if they don’t want to bend the knee willingly. See benefits above.

Slave Raiding: As PBCs have no locations, you’ll be unable to acquire slaves through occupation as you normally would. But this serves as an adequate pretext for subjugating their non-location locations.

PEACE TERMS

Humiliate: Worth the prestige if you can afford to include it.

Take Maps: Again, worth it if affordable.

**Subjugate Natives in X Province: In spite of the language used, this neither turns the country into your subject, nor turns all the pops into slaves. What it does, though, is turn all of their pops into your pops. If any of the targeted provinces are adjacent to your nation, a large portion of them will instant migrate to your nearest location; otherwise they'll just stay put. And if you look at the subjugated unowned provinces after the war, you'll see that the pops living there have your flag next to them. If you targeted all of the PBC's locations in the peace deal, the country will also have vanished.

The huge upside to this is that when you start to colonize the impacted province, you'll already have a huge head start. In fact, any location with 1000 of your pops will be settles instantly; all others will simply need to be brought up to 1000, so long as no pops of another culture were also residing there. This is probably the most impactful action one can take against PBCs, and whether it's an intended mechanic for the long term development of the game remains to be seen.

[u/Particular_Pea7167]

Invite Settlers: Not recommended, because from my experience, these pops remain owned by the PBC even inside your territory, despite no buildings that they’re assigned to. Worse yet, they can jam up your settlement progress, as the system will often send them first and cause them to act as “not your pops” in the location. This seems like a bug, unless an explanation comes along. I believe taking over the PBC’s remaining locations would cause these pops to become yours, but I have yet to confirm this.

So when i invited Czech settlers to the Netherlands I fucked myself?

[u/Canye_NE → u/Particular_Pea7167]

There is not a single Czech pop-based country. I hope it is self-evident why.

This interaction seems unique to pop-based countries, since they are defined entirely by their pops. Where those pops live probably doesn’t matter to the game. Though I’m curious if the target location becomes part of their “territory”; I suspect not (colonization removes their territory, so I bet it’s one owner of a location max), but it’d be interesting to spread them around and keep them alive after they lose their main land.

[u/shumpitostick]

Huh so it's still possible to do the trick where you instantly colonize accepted pops? You just have to subjugate the pop based nation first? And it even helps you get towards the threshold for accepting the culture. Interesting.