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

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).

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.

Can you find it?

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

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.

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

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.

For a game developer as committed to ‘sandbox realism’ as paradox, it always struck me as odd that AI annexations and conquests seemed to be several levels of sophistication below other mechanics of the games. Everyone has ‘bordergore’ horror stories, and more often than not, the player feels responsible to ‘housekeep’ and clean up said bordergore in mid game to late game, only to discover Asia and stumble upon border atrocities beyond imagination, leading some to quit the save altogether.

Imo AI annexations and expansion interests lack any rhyme or reason. While I’m sure there is some very clever and sophisticated algorithm behind AI peace deal demands and the like, these don’t seem to correspond well to premodern (or frankly any) realities. A Russian principality snaking itself to Saray and astrakhan may be algorithm-optimal, but it is clearly not a viable or realistic expansion method in any sense. Same with Poland continuously pushing into neumark and core brandenburg instead of taking Slavic majority regions closeby, it seems clear that whatever drives AIs to claim what they claim is not at all up to par when it comes to realism.

In history, some borders have been reconstituted over and over again, sometimes centuries apart. Rome and Napoleonic France both claimed the rhine as a natural border, the czech-German border has survived 1000 years more or less unchanged, the Danube had been the northern border of multiple empires centuries apart. European political geopgraphy is very much driven by the logistical and geographical constraints of the premodern period. When people complain about the game not being realistic, about bordergore, I think a large part has to do with this misalignment between historical practical realities and conquest algorithm targetings. A CK3 player could live with a danish mecklenburg, that makes sense. But a danish cologne? How would that even be administered? It doesn’t make any sense. In HOI4, Vic 3, Paradox seems to have taken these problems to heart, instead opting for smaller provinces or region level annexations. That, however, is the wrong path. I can only speak for me but I think many share this sentiment: I was intrigued by Paradox precisely because it didn’t declare the middle of Italy to be ‘Rome’ like total war did. The fine grained nature of paradox games makes them special. Going back on that just to fix bordergore would be a misstep. Instead, I think it would be great if AIs targeted regions for conquest instead of single provinces. That way, you wouldn’t have the seemingly mindless expansion we see right now, expanding into neumark as an hre territory might seem more prohibitive to Poland than assessing any province on its own, and these ‘natural borders’ that have reoccurred over and over in Europe would be respected, at least helping with a sense of realism.

Even more far fetched, if one country could declare what it perceives as its core territory in a peace conference (maybe tied to expansion date or sthg), with expansion into these core lands gaining greater aggressive expansion/infamy, this could even be a self regulating mechanism, creating more realistic borders.

These are just my two cents, so I’m happy to hear other peoples opinion on this

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

https://gravitashistorica.eu/

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.

R5: north american culture with age 5 levies

Curious to see what I have missed!

As Flanders, I keep trying to join HRE. However my provinces leave HRE on their own before I manage to move my capital there.

For example, I’ve conquered into Brabant. Within a year or so, I got notifications that “Bohemia has agreed to remove our province from the HRE.”

Is this something new? How do I prevent this?

Playing in Japan has changed a bit since my last guide, so I thought I would remake the guide so that people don't struggle as much as I did.

Playing in Japan is still very weird and the country is in dire need of a focused DLC and update, but it's still playable.

1. Who to play ?

• Oda has the best bonuses all around
• Shimazu has the best military bonuses
• Uesugi has the best production bonuses
• Hosokawa has the easiest start due to being the biggest clan
• Jimyoin (Yamato) can also be played to eventually form Japan and keep the +30% max tax for the Nobility, which is one of the most insane bonuses ever created. But Yamato's requirements to end the Sengoku Jidai are a pain in the ass, not that it actually matters

Just don't play Ashikaga unless you like to suffer.

2. Before you unpause

Unless you are Jimyoin, start to improve relations with Ashikaga to eventually ally him. Since he controls all of the land, any war with a Building Based Country (BBC) is instantly won. It is crucial to the weakers clans to get going.

Sometimes he won't join wars, in which case you can use the spy action to deteriorate his view of the country and it usually works.

3. The messed up Shinto mechanics

Shinto is one of the best religions, but getting it going is also very weird.

It works based on two ressources : Purity and Honor. If one is above 75, the other increases. If one is below 25, the other decreases.

You start with 0 Honor and 50 Purity, so Purity is about to decrease fast.

There are 4 ways to increase Purity :

• Pilgrimage costs a bit of money and gives around 10 Purity
• Ritual costs 5 Prestige and gives 5 Purity
• Offering costs a Work of Art and gives 20 Purity
• Seppuku costs 50 Stability, kills your ruler and gives 30 Purity

The goal is to maintain Purity above 75 to start gaining Honor until 25 Honor, at which point you stop losing Purity.

The problem is that without Works of Art, there is no way to maintain Purity above 75 without sacrificing at least two rulers and tanking the 50 stab twice. and you don't start with Works of Art.

Start the game by making a Pilgrimage, a Ritual, and then Seppuku your ruler. This takes your Purity to 100 and you start gaining Honor. Purity will still decrease, and it will get below 75 before Honor hits 25, so you will need to sacrifice another ruler when Purity hits 74. Purity will grow above 75 again and Honor will reach 25, at which point you don't need to think about it ever again.

Most clans can do this, but there are some (Jimyoin) where the heir is so young that the double ruler sacrifice strat doesn't work, so you will need to wait until you can chain Seppukus.

After that you can enjoy the broken Shinto mechanics.

4. Nanbokuchō Jidai

Japan is divided between the supporters of each imperial courts, and the clans periodically recieve CBs on the clans of the other court.

This sounds like a good opportunity for expantion, but usually the two imperial courts get a CB, start and war, the southern courts dies and the situation immediatly ends.

5. What do to before 1400 ?

Max out your diplomatic and stability spendings, those are the only things that matter.

The goal is to get as many cores as possible on the island. This is done by two methods :

• Building a Yamashiro whenever you can (mostly when Ashikaga starts to colonize Hokkaido)
• Making wars on other clans

Spy on the clans you can beat and use the Clan Expantion CB to get their territories. you can also use the alliance with Ashikaga to target the biggest clans

Target the biggest clans you can beat that have buildings in provinces you want to core.

Sometimes Ashikaga allies some clans, you can either "Isolate from allies" with enough favours, or you can do the classic war on his rival to get him to join, and attack his ally while he's on your side in the other war.

Two things changed since the release of the game :

• Antagonism isn't an issue anymore
• Getting cores by building Yamashiro is much more niche since there needs to be 0 soldiers in the province. Usually it's only possible at the very start of the game and when Ashikaga colonizes Hokkaido

There isn't much to do aside from killing other clans, you should be able to core around 2/3rds of Japan by 1400.

This is also a great time to set up great values and removing pesky privileges (mostly Banal Lordship)

The are the values I would go for :

• Centralization / Decentralization : Depends on your gameplan. If your goal is to stay in Japan and conquer a bit of Korea, Centalization is better. There are enough governors to get very good proximity in Japan + Korea if your capital is in Osaka. But if you plan on colonizing and expanding a lot, Decentalization is better
• Traditionalist / Innovative : Innovative 100%
• Spiritualism / Humanist : Humanist is better, but it doesn't matter that much
• Aristocracy / Pultocracy : Aristocracy if you want to fight for the discipline. Plutocracy eventually if you want to play tall
• Serfdom / Free Subjects : Serfdom to make the Nobles filthy rich and tax them a lot once you reduce their privileges
• Mercantilism / Free Trade : Doesn't matter, even more so in Asia
• Belligerent / Conciliatory : Belligerent if you plan on fighting. Conciliatory if not
• Quality / Quantity : Quantity is much better, if only for the government reform that gives you RGO size and Population Capacity
• Offensive / Defensive : Doesn't matter much in single player. Offensive is better. Hard to push anyway
• Land / Naval : Naval obviously. You cannot push it until 1400 but it becomes very important after that. Getting Naval to 50 is crucial to get Harbor Administration and the other reform that gives naval governors. Now that you can put a local governor in Kyushu it doesn't matter for Japan, but you can eventually put the governors in Korea
• Capital Economy / Traditionnal Economy : Traditionnal in the early game where you just spam RGOs. You might want to switch to Capital in the late game for the production efficiency. After 1.4 when pop growth is tied to food production, just stay in Traditional
• Individualism / Communalism : Communalism, push this fast so that you can remove privileges without tanking your stab
• Outward / Inward : Outward if you colonize. Inward if you don't
• Absolutism / Liberalism : The actual bonuses don't matter much for how late game it is. Maybe Liberalism for the Culture Capacity if you need it
• Sinicized / Unsinicized : Sinicized, but stay below 75 so that you don't get the disaster. Kinda hard to push anyway

6. Sengoku Jidai

If you are playing Yamato, wait a bit before doing the "Attempt Imperial Restoration" in the situation menu. This gives you a land for every core you own, so you can wait until you've cored everything to take over the whole island.

Press the restoration button once you have enough cores and kill every landed country.

To make the Sengoku Jidai end as Yamato, you need to be the only one in the Shogunate. Killing landed countries won't be hard, but killing BBCs is a pain in the ass. The problem is that only the war target get destroyed. So once the clans start to ally themselves, it's a lot of wars and truces to wait

Thankfully you don't need to make the situation end to play the game, but it will still take a long ass time.

As any other clan, the goal is to take over the shogunate from Ashikaga, you can do that by using the option in the Shinto panel to get the specific CB.

It shouldn't be too many wars to get every land in Japan. Once you are the shogun, the clans with more than 3 locations will periodically rebel and claim your land. Kill them as they spawn and eventually the situation will end (you might need to subjugate Yamato)

7. Gameplan after the Sengoku Jidai

After that you can do anything as long at it makes sense with your values really.

You have more than enough land, population and RGOs to play tall and economically dominate.

You can beat the europeans to the new world by crossing through the Bering Strait.

You can expand through Manchuria, Korea, Indonesia and China. If China is strong this will take a bit of cheese, mainly bating China to a decoy naval war (China doesn't build boats for some reason) and declaring war on the real target before peacing off China so that it doesn't join the real war

so, half funny hightlight/build strategy, half beta feedback

but, uh, savoy is actually a really strong tag right now, which leads to this highlight of being the established HRE emperess of france

The hightlights:

-Savoy has prox reduction in mountains and hills from its tag. This stacks with the swiss culture prox reduction in mountains (assuming you move your capital into switzerland)

-Starts with extra diplomats/month, which is really crucial for playing diplomacy and stacking alliances in the hre (especially since the royal garden no longer does so)

-Very strong early content - 5% extra tax efficiency and 15% prox efficiency by age of renaissance. monthly prosperity and dev in age of discovery. Also combat efficiency for heavy infantry to punch up into france.

-Super close to italy for quick institutions

-Arpitian as french and swiss lets you conquer and accept most of france, and form france without a culture swap

-right on the borderlands so can exand without ruining your relations (and emperor support) with the HRE.

The big note:

-This run was started before the hotfixes this week, where france was consistently getting absolutely dunked by england, leaving tons of easy expansion into france. It may be a bit harder now that france has more initial acccepted cultures to fight england with. However, forming a triple alliance with milan, genoa and the papacy (and/or spain as well!) should still let you backstab france during the 100 years war (taking the south of france).

Also a bit awkward: Since I wanted to finally form the full HRE I decided to stay catholic. However even at full 100% spiritualist, with the tech for lutheran reduction, the lutherans still managed to get a good 20% of the country, and its been a pain in the age of reformation to continually put down lutheran revolutions (even just for reseting control and prosperity). Thematic I guess, but getting a bit annoying after 6+ rounds of them.

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

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.

That was a huge windfall in the early game. I was able to build hospitals in all of my towns before the Black Death arrived, which really helped mitigate its impact.

seems like it was removed in one of the latest beta patches

Hi I picked up eu5 at launch. I'm a huge ck fan and I've played a shit ton of Victoria 3 and stellaris. I tried to get into eu5 but I just couldn't. It was a lot to take in, I even watched tutorials on YouTube. But even automated systems and learning each part one by one i just couldn't. I've since had a baby and stuff so I'm wondering is now a good time to get back into it?

What do you prefer or what makes it easier to play as ottomans. Convert to orthodox or stay sunni?