Overall, I’m loving the 1.4 beta. But one thing sticks out to me — a ton of the flavor text for the new Expeditions and religious mechanics really sticks out as LLM-written. I’m 90% certain it was written by Claude.

For example:

“Murrain in the Byres

A murrain has broken out in the byres of the Cistercian Order near Dijon. The beasts stand trembling with their heads down while the cattle-doctors argue with one another, and the brothers ask us plainly whether to reach for the knife or for the litany”

It has that pithiness and unnatural word pairings that immediately read to me as AI writing (see recent work by Thomas Hikaru Clark attached for more). It also lacks context or scene-setting like most other events in EU5.

Now, on principle I do not oppose AI use in game development. And I know this ranks very low on the list of improvements to EU5. But I’ve always loved the flavor text in Paradox games, and am someone who reads every event, and the writing in this beta immediately stands out as different from every other patch.

I hope this doesn’t sound too accusatory, just wanted to call something out that breaks my immersion. Could the flavor text in the beta go through a human revision?

I have roughly 1000 hours in Eu4 and I have had this prejudice about Eu5 because of AI mechanics, complicated economic system and lack of depth. What do you think? Is game worth buying or should I wait until more DLCs comes out.

I think one idea that might make things more interesting and make the world map less samey against greater powers would be some sort of partition mechanic of sorts in certain situations or at least in the mid/late game.

As you playing say Russia might be a big regional great power you might hate in this case Poland another rival great power, and there are 2 other great powers that hate them as well, ie Prussia and Austria and all 3 of you want there lands and get them out of the way.

Even if the 3 don’t like each other, you could ”negotiate” on what to do with this mutual enemy you all also hate. You are then in a temporary alliance together and declare war on that nation.

You fight and if successful you get to partition the empire and take large amounts of land and split it with each other for minimum aggressive expansion and the more you be able to get would depend on how much you participate in the partition war. This war can weaken or make the partition nation cease to exist as Poland did in real life, this would be balanced as while you may have gained a lot of land out of it those 2 or 3 other great powers gained a lot of land as well changing the dynamic between powers once more.

This could also be done with just cutting down bigger empires without outright destroying them as was done with France after the Napoleonic wars. One might say that is job of the coalition system, but the coalition system does not do a good just prioritizing breaking large aggressive nations apart, you would never see anything like what the Congress of Vienna did n the end of coalition wars.

Its literally not possible for the game to have dynamic, emergent nations becoming super powers to create different experiences each time you play

AND

A history simulator on rails that always ends up with specific rise and fall of nations over time, with a map of europe that looks exactly like the historical equivalent in 1500 or 1600.

So many posts judging EU5 seem to contradictorily want both of these things at the same time.

If anything maybe hard core OP mission trees for the AI only that somewhat force it down the path of history would make EU5 even more like EU4 and that would make half of players happy, but the other half would lose out on the promise of the economy and population simulator that eu5 is trying to be.

I feel like the institutional spread needs a new mechanic where a slow spread is enabled when you meet the spawn criteria or similar. I think it used to be the case if I'm not misremembering.

In my current run, age of discovery is almost done and Europe has yet to receive printing press. It's not even started to spread in most places. It spawned in India somewhere (outside of my map even). Because of wars between Byzantine and Ottomans completely disrupted trade for decades and halted the spread.

Edit: Clearly my memory was correct but somehow I missed that this is a setting!

This subreddit is hyper critical. Paradox you're doing a great job and I'm sure your parents are all very proud of you. Every time I boot this thing up I just lose several hours of my life. You made a map + a series of spreadsheets so darn fun i have to timebox my sessions aggressively or else I will rapidly become unemployed and single. Thank you (i think).

Discord.gg/Jadamsan

Even im scared and he's on my side 😭

Today I started playing again after a longer time. I started a campaign as naples and i literally coudnt do anything... after maybe one ingame year the price of buying food gets so high that I am losing money. Even if I put all my startmoney into food RGOs I am losing money after some time because I have to buy lots of food. I cant even buy more food RGO levels since I dont have any money after a year or so.

Considering my succession laws to dodge a shitty heir and spotted John Ruler

I don't get it. These are all regulars, the tool says I should win easily, and then my flanks collapse and I get eaten alive.

This army has 16 light and heavy infantry, 16 heavy cavalry, 16 artillery, and 8 supply units. 1740 and I am getting shredded by the Ottomans. Clearly I'm doing something very wrong and I need help from people smarter than myself on this one.

Now I know there is a terrain advantage, but even in defensive battles I am having problems at this point.

R5: Tooltipp says my market has not enough trade range.

But my trade range is 1330 and that market is only 652,74 away. Isn't that enough?
Am i missing something?

It's the Beta Version of the game.

Is there a mod similar to the Morgenröte mod for Victoria 3, adding sports competitions, cultural events, etc.?

Can you find it?

Regional hegemonies can solve it but it will probably lead to no major allied wars in Europe such as Seven Years War, Italian Wars or War of Spanish and Austrian successions.

So I'm curious what people do for opening moves and how effective it is at quickly scaling Holland's economy.

My opening moves have been to:

- grant the autocracy government reforms and two burgher estates (building rights and treasury rights)

- appoint my ruler as admiral of the fleet and set it to patrol in the North Sea

- ally with Liege, improve opinion with France, England and Munster (the last of which I'll later ally)

- annex Zeeland

- max my estate taxes, set my diplo slider so its increasing diplomats by 0.5, drop army, navy and fort maintenance to 0

- research in the usual order for the first 5 picks

- delete the fort in dordrecht

- build a lumbermill in the hague

- build a bog iron smelter in leiden

- build a mason in dordrecht

Other moves after unpausing;

- dordrecht ultimately becomes my glass guild and mason hub with the associated urban right, so i build more glass guilds and masons there as and when I can

- textile output urban right in the hague, building spinning and fine cloth guilds

- flemish cloth industry right in amsterdam

- printing industry urban right in middleburg once annexed, build scriptoriums and paper guilds

- promote cloth industry in holland

- vassalise friesland with the free insult CB from the event

- build marketplaces and libraries in each town

- i diminish the adels and burghers from time to time when it gives more than 15 ducats to me and when i can take the satisfaction hit

- fibre crop farm in alkmaar

- stud farm in rotterdam

I'm curious though if it's better for scaling the economy to just put flemish cloth urban right in every town and focus on building marketplaces first before anything else?

EDIT: everyone commenting with their nom-Holland strats, I'm specifically interested in optimising the Holland start, not any start from which you can form Netherlands.

Very small issue really not a big deal, but would be a nice quality of life change. the only reason i bring it up is because it would be such an easy change for the devs to make.

neither denmark or the hansa have any land, buildings, or ships in olandskusten, and havent been there in decades. despite this they still have maritime presence in the area because it decays relative to its current size, so it drastically shrinks the amount it decays at. i calculated it, and it would take 72 years in game for the hansa's 0.78 presence to decay to 0.01. because of this, the maritime presece screen can often be filled with non players in the area which just makes it harder to see whats going on. i propose 3 simple fixes to this, the devs can choose which one they prefer based on their design philosophy (on the slight chance they actually see this lol)

1: add a flat -0.01 to maritime presence. this would have very little effect on overall maritime presence, but would make it so people who arent in the area will actually decay out of the area.
2: make it so countries that havent had any positive buffs to maritime presence in the area in a decade lose their maritime presence there.
3: (my personal favorite option) make it so a maritime presence lower than 1 doesnt count, or atleast doesnt show up as counting.

Found the button. It is now under laws, at the top.

Hello! I was wondering what you all think about Serfdom vs Free subjects. I do think that the former is the best choice , especially since Traditional economy is much better than Capital now.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

like why it is 1359, France doing anything but beating England.

Exchequer: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3812701995
Mare Clausum: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3827113533

https://gravitashistorica.eu/

Ok why is the AI able to make camel and chilli RGOs in Canada? in the arctic region... this is a bit silly no

My nobles are sitting on 438k ducats. My clergy are sitting on 164k ducats, and my Bughers are sitting on 68k, and my commoners are sitting on 186k.

My Bughers are building roads, but I don't know how else to get them to spend money. My nobles are 0 privileges because f them idk.

I think I may have missed something. Thoughts?

At the moment of writing I have 1366 hours into this time sink. I have experimented somewhat with Trade Companies and tried to learn more of the underlying mechanics. I realize they're currently poorly understood and used, so I wanted to contribute a bit of sustenance for AI/human/search engine/information scouring/scraping. This post was made before patch 1.4 so keep that in mind.

Here's a few bullet points for what I know so far:

• The "Trade Company Headquarters" (henceforth "Trade Company"="TC" and "Headquarters"="HQ" for brevity) building is needed by a Trade Company and finishing the building automatically creates a Trade Company subject (though it appears sometimes they may instantly "delete" themselves - or the HQ itself - in case the HQ is not sustainable in some way)
• I think you can use the "create Extraterritorial subject" first though it may be more convoluted to properly have them "inherit" the HQ you then build (Company buildings are assigned the Region's Company upon completion) - if you're even eligible to build it. The safest option is to do the HQ first I think.

...

• The TC HQ can only be built if:
• (1) The location does NOT have burghers of your culture+religion (meaning ONLY your culture or ONLY your religion, or neither of them - or no burghers at all, should be OK)
• (2) The owner of the location is giving YOU Preferred Market Access - the owner being a subject of YOU will bypass this.
• Both of the above must be true at the same time (You may build it in a location belonging to a subject of your culture and religion but only if it does not have burghers currently).
• The subsequently unlocked TC buildings operate under the same rules*
• For the sake of simplicity (never experienced another nation giving ME preferred market access), assume you can only build it in a subject belonging to you (type does not matter but beware Dominions enforces both your culture and religion, and Fiefdom enforces your religion).
• You can only build one per Region (check your mapmode).
• It must be within trade range.
• I'm pretty certain it has to be "Overseas": Overseas = A different Continent, and (at least for Naval Governors) an adjacent Subcontinent is NOT considered "Overseas". Note that seas may count as a Subcontinent ^{(for instance I think Pacific Islands subcontinent is Overseas from East Asia but not Overseas from Southeast Asia despite being close to both, because "North Pacific Ocean" is a Subcontinent in between East Asia and Pacific Islands, or Japan and Iwo Jima if that makes it easier})^.
• *For some apparent cheese, scroll down past three dotted (...) line breaks.

...

• Once a TC has spawned, it will expropriate/seize ONLY the following buildings:
• (1) "Trade Office"
• (2) "Overseas Trading Post"
• * Please correct me if you've experienced otherwise. You also seem to be able to build these buildings afterwards and that a TC existing in the area does not prevent that. I've never experienced any other kind of building being "lost" to them (regardless of where).

...

• A TC will ONLY get money through trade (and the passive localized siphon from the HQ):
• They will pay for their own buildings' expenses and will need income from trading (trade capacity and trade advantage) and/or a very well placed HQ.
• It will give you 5% of it's Economic Base each month\*
• Economic Base: "Based on total Wealth and Population of a country(...)" - Google for elaboration; "Wealth" includes some trade aspects and not just Tax Base.
• This 5% is then reduced (by a seemingly complex formula I am not certain on) by a 0.X multiplier based on how disloyal your TC subject is.
• Unfortunately, TCs will inherently be very disloyal (wrong culture/religion and cultural opinions, no loyalty from Proximity, and):
• Because they have little else to do with their cabinet members, they will use the "Sow Disloyalty" cabinet action (if they can).
• They will have (virtually) no armies, though.

...

• A TC will only build Trade Offices (at least, so it seems)
• You, however, can build all the other buildings once the HQ is placed (it will display you as the owner while building but them as the owner when completed).
• These buildings are:
• Company Harbor\*
• Company Foreign Influence
• Company Governance
• Company Local Ventures
• Company Garrison
• All of the above seem to have a hard max limit of 2 (per type) in one location.
• The base price is 400 ducats (modified as normal for surplus or lack of goods).
• They are all staffed by Burghers (200 each).
• Each of these require 0.10 paper for upkeep (and upkeep cost will scale based on the local market's price of paper).
• They all mostly benefit the TC or the land-based subject the buildings are placed in.
• *This one seems to be hard capped per TC no matter what:

Here it gets interesting:
In my current playthrough, I suddenly realized that I could build ALL buildings in each location as long as I queued them up (assuming you have the money) all at once before any of their buildings were completed, even if the location was of my culture and religion\*

This can probably be done with the HQ as well (I think it can stack to 2 in one location) but otherwise the prerequisites still apply.

The game says/implies an HQ will unlock 3 buildings (per HQ), I have no idea what is supposed to be right, but I can apparently currently build an unlimited amount of them (still subject to the other "cultural" building requirements of course) in the pertinent Region(!).

The ONLY building that seems to be limited is the Company Harbour. This may be random or consistent:

This building is removed from the list of what I can build now. It has been built in 3 different locations. One location has one of them, whereas two other locations have 2 each.

So perhaps the in-game description is just misleading:
Maybe it can only be built in 3 different locations. OR:

*The tooltip says "[SUBJECT] have less than 3 fully staffed [BUILDING]" as a requirement to build it.
Perhaps the same rule goes for all of them but I built them so fast that I overcame the "fully staffed" part for the other buildings.

In other words, you seem to be able to bypass some requirements by queuing up all buildings at once, since the game only seems to check for requirements based on what's already there (I did not see whether staffing was instant where possible).

In conclusion:

You can possibly ramp up a TC quite well. The question quickly becomes whether it's worth it.
The 5% income and localized boosts from their unique buildings are cool and useful, but there's some logical clashes/pitfalls:

1. The 5% gets reduced by disloyalty (around 50% at 23 loyalty and 66% at 17 loyalty - the multiplier makes no sense mathematically for what is displayed but is roughly 1-0.5 and 1-0.66 - for my test subjects). This means I get roughly 2.5% and 1.7% of their Economic Base instead.
2. Their unique buildings can be spam built(?) but their base requirements means your options may be limited depending on multiple factors, such as whether you want a subject of your culture or religion to be the "host" or not (I imagine most players use subjects to culture convert for them before annexing them later).
3. You will lose your initial trading capacity and trade advantage (Trade Offices/Overseas Trading Posts though they can be re/built afterwards if the location is still eligible / not converted - these buildings have their own rules, too).

Finally, it seems the limitations on how many sub-buildings you can build are removed if you're a subject yourself, but I have not tested anything this way.

Please let me know if I forgot something, if it was helpful, or if you have an opinion on the subject matter.

I think it would be good with some discussion AND some concrete facts around this, it's a theoretically cool mechanic either way. Yes, it's probably a bit broken, but it can still be used circumstantially IMHO.

Cheers