You missed an important inflation reducer, even if it is not available until mid-game:
- tax assessor building. If built in every province you own, they would result in a 0.5% inflation reduction by themselves.
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You missed an important inflation reducer, even if it is not available until mid-game:
- tax assessor building. If built in every province you own, they would result in a 0.5% inflation reduction by themselves.
also, when you get tax assessors, and you build a nice bunch of them,
you can forget about inflation,
ditch national bank idea if you have it,
and you can mint quite a bit without gaining any inflation whatsoever at that point
Ok, great that you share your experiences. I've tried to make sure that mining is successfully explained. Do you think it's good enough?
Oh yes, forgot those. They are added to the post.
Yes, like above, I added them in and took a bit of your post in it as well. Thanks for mentioning it!
i think youve been able to explain the basic concept of inflation = bad very well
Haha that's great! Now let's hope at least somebody learns anything from this work
. I think I've completed chapter 5 with a small but detailed piece about income and expenses. I'm no EU3 economist, so I'm not totally sure about what I've said. Please if you think something is slightly wrong or even complete bullshit, please let me know! Do note that I want to cover the monthly income at a basic level, so very detailed formula's are not worth anything here. Because well, I may not know everything about the economy, my games go fine
.
From my recent and present beginner experiences I would add the following:
1) Loans! You mention that it is perfectly ok to run a negative balance as it comes out of your overall treasury. However, I think it should be stressed that you must carefully watch these monthly negative balances (expenditures) or end up with an unintended loan.
Again for a beginner I don't think it's obvious that these incrementel minuses are monthy. And they add up... so you have to make sure you have enough in the bank to cover them over the course of the year until your next annual tax income.
You might also mention the handy icon that pops up if you are risking an annual deficit and a resultant loan.
Just my beginner opinion.
Thanks,
Javaslinger
I just read what you said about A.I. rivals. Is there a list of them all anywhere? I checked the wiki, but nothing.
Now that I think of it, I don't think rivals are hard coded. I think that the game chooses rivals based on your nation's size and location, so that you will get rivals of similar size and that are close by. Hence, France will often consider England a rival, and Japan will consider Ming a rival, but if, for example, a French minor replaces France, they'll become England's rival instead.
Once the game is underway it's no more than logical to talk about keeping ones finances in the green. You may have noticed that I've left every 'handy popups' out of this beginning AAR since I find it unnecessary to explain right now. I'd like to talk about all the popups once they appear in the game.
Many thanks for your support! My only hope this AAR turns out to be what you hoped it to be.
I mentioned the rival AI programming because they are something to know about if you fight wars with allies. It also explains the wars between France and England right from the start. I have no intention to work out the full details about how the AI behaves, only if it becomes relevant to the game. Unless anyone thinks that it should be explained? Missions are an exception though.
On to a new chapter!
Chapter six:
Coat of Arms menu. Part Three.
Brief Military, Policies, Advisors, Tradition, Missions and Decisions
Brief Military, Policies, Advisors, Tradition, Missions and Decisions
I'm very glad that we made it through the difficult income and inflation bit. It is time to finish this menu and then finally, we can actually start playing this game.
---A little warning, this chapter has become larger than what I expected. Every remaining tab will be discussed as briefly as possible so you will know the basics. After that more information will be given as we progress through the game.---
Next to the budget screen tab, we find the military tab. Here's what it looks like.
Any idea what we're looking at here?
Just like in history, almost every nation has an army. I don't need to tell you that those armies were used to fight wars, but also to keep the peace when rebels popped up. EU3 divides the army into three different units which all specialize in either fire or shock. Do take a note that every technology group has its own separate units.---This is a mere basic explanation of the workings of the army, it will be fully discussed in the split-off section of this AAR.---
- Infantry. European armies manly consists out of infantry. These guys begin fighting with a pike, but, as our land technology gets more and more advanced, gunpowder is used. Before gunpowder becomes dominant in the battlefield, infantry are not very strong in defeating enemies. Infantry units are capable of sieging a fortress. They are important when assaulting ---will be explained later--- a fort. Infantry are specialized in their fire attribute.
- Cavalry. Cavalry are the guys on horses. In EU3, cavalry and infantry both move at the same speed. These regiments ---one unit of cavalry--- are very important for destroying the enemy in the first 150 years. Cavalry are able to siege a fortress, but can't assault it. Also important is that cavalry weigh more for attrition casualties. ---Attrition will be fully explained in the split-off section.--- The cavalry units specializes in shock.
- Cannons. Cannons cannot be made until they are researched in land technology. They are slower than infantry and cavalry, but are more powerful and can speed up a siege of a enemy fortress a lot. Like infantry, cannons specializes in fire. Something to remember is that cannons can not fight on their own. They will be wiped out! Mix cannons with infantry.
As our land technology gets more advanced, newer and better units appear. Infantry remains infantry though, just better units. Now we field Latin Medieval Infantry and Latin Knights. Our existing army can be upgraded to better units in a instant. This will get covered once the game gets going.
Besides our land army, we also have a fleet of ships. Those are also categorized.
- Big ships. Big ships are the most powerful ships in the game. Remember that scene from 'Pirates of the Caribean 3' with that big badass Britain ship? Well, that's a big ship. These ships are good at destroying any navy. We also need them to protect our sea lanes once we have established colonies, hence to secure our tariffs.
- Light ships. Light ships are smaller but faster than their big ship counterpart. Great for exploring and as an escort for your transport ships. They do get destroyed easier when compared with big ships. They can also protect our tariffs rate.
- Galleys. A galley is old type of ship used in the Mediterranean area. Thanks to the high shock multiplier on lower naval tech levels and +1 bonus to damage in inland seas---will be covered in the split off section---, they can wreck havoc on your expensive big ships when fighting in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea in the first 100-150 years. Galleys can not protect our tariffs income from overseas.
- Transport ships. These ships can transport our troops are not good at fighting sea battles. We need to make sure those ships are protected when we send them out. Transports are too not able to protect our tariffs sea lanes.
Our naval technology will improve over time and that unlocks new ships. Now we only have a Carrack, Galley and a Cog. Unfortunately we are not able to upgrade our existing navy to a better one in an instant. We need to build a whole new navy when that happens. Don't worry, those old ships are excellent for fighting pirates ---will be covered later.---
That was some basic information about our armed forces, it will be covered in depth in the split-off section. Including what those modifiers we see exactly mean and what the optimal composition is for our army stacks. A stack is a part of our army grouped together. The army standing in London is called a stack. Don't confuse a stack with a regiment, as a regiment is just one thousand men, either infantry, cavalry or cannons. 2 regiments 'stacked' together is called what...? Correct! A stack.
Below the summary of our troops we see something called War Exhaustion. Again, as the split-off section specializes in War, I won't go into detail here. Suffice to say now is that war exhaustion shows how much support there is for the ongoing war(s). The higher it gets, the more time troops need to get recruited and ships need to be build. Ships and regiments will also become more expensive. But the worst part of war exhaustion is that it increases Global Revolt Risk. How to deal with war exhaustion and how you get it, will be covered in the split off section.
Now we see two sliders, one for our land troops and one for our fleet. This is our monthly maintenance we need to pay to keep our troops equipped. We also see that we have 7 regiments at the moment and our support limit ---formerly known as force limits, here on the forum force limits is used--- is 37. That means that our nation can sustain and equip 37 regiments of men, regardless of those being cavalry, infantry or cannons. Take note that cavalry maintenance costs more than infantry and cannons. If we have more then 37 regiments, our maintenance costs will increase dramatically. It's important to always know your support limits! The same applies for the naval support limits. ---Support / Force limits will be explained in full detail in the split-off section.---
What do those sliders actually do? Well, as you can see here...
...putting a slider towards the left decreases the maintenance cost. However every stack fights with morale. When we decrease the slider ---that means put it to the left--- morale plummets. With low morale our troops won't fight long enough to win a battle! In peace times, it is normal to lower your maintenance slider for land troops. If you put it between 25% and 50% of the slider it will be enough to fight rebels. When going to war though, those sliders needs to be at the full right. For now, set the maintenance slider for naval fully to the left. ---More on morale in the split off section.---
The next tab is called our religious and rebellious negotiations tab.
Certain religious decisions can be made here. I will cover those when we need to enact them in the game. More importantly is our religious tolerance towards other faiths. As you can see, our Catholic faith is tolerated fairly well. The heretic faith of Orthodoxy is not. All heathen ---Muslim, Hindu, Buddha etc--- faith is also not tolerated. Those tolerance levels are important as they have an impact on our tax incomes and population growths. We don't need to worry about the tolerance levels right now, only when the Reformation hits in ~1500.
Below the tolerance levels you see a grey icon, that is called the claim Defender of the Faith button. Once we are eligible to become the DotF, this button will light up. In the game we probably won't become DotF as it will involve us in many wars we don't want to be part of.
The rebel factions part of the tab will contain demands of rebels when they pop up. They can be anything, from releasing a particular country to changing our religion of the state. Just like in the movies, we don't negotiate with rebels/terrorists! Only when our nation is on the verge of collapse it may be worth it to do it. The demands are always very heavy and we get nothing in return.
To the next tab.
In this tab we can change our government type, select a National Idea and change our policies.
Feudal monarchy is the best governmental type available for us at the moment, so we won't change that anytime soon. If you click on Feudal Monarchy you will see a small list of other governmental forms. We won't change at this time. The game has numerous governmental types available.
Monarchies
- Despotic Monarchy
- Empire
- Feudal Monarchy
- Administrative Monarchy
- Absolute Monarchy
- Constitutional Monarchy
- Revolutionary Empire
Republics
- Noble Republic
- Merchant Republic
- Administrative Republic
- Republican Dictatorship
- Constitutional Republic
- Revolutionary Republic
Despotisms
- Enlightened Despotism
- Bureaucratic Despotism
Theocracies
- Theocracy
- Papacy
Tribal governments
- Tribal Despotism
- Tribal Federation
- Tribal Democracy
If you want to know more about them, I strongly suggest going to the Wiki.
The black squares are empty National Ideas slots. A National Idea is a general policy you take to specialize your nation. They are very beneficial. If you hover over the first slot, it will tell you that we can open it at governmental technology level 4. This is precisely why I advised an statesman advisor at the court section, he will help to get us to governmental tech 4 sooner. When this happens in the game, we can get to pick from numerous idea's which I will list when we can choose.
It's time again for something important. Our policies. The sliders you see affect everything we do and can only be changed once every 11 years, depending on what kind of governmental form we have. I will discuss them briefly.
- Centralization vs Decentralization. This determines our grip of our king on our nation. The game modeled it so that centralization is by far better than decentralization.
- Aristocracy vs Plutocracy. Here we can choose if we favor the nobles of our nation or the burghers. These burghers are predominately merchants. Both have very nice bonuses.
- Serfdom vs Free Subjects. Do we want to give our citizens more rights and more liberty or do we keep them on the farm and work as they always did? High serfdom is good for recruitment for our armies and keep stability in check, but Free Subjects reduces the costs for technological advancements and boost morale a bit.
- Innovative vs Narrowminded. Innovative also reduces the costs to advance our technology but is bad for our religion as we won't get missionaries. Remember that we are going to convert in the future? We need to be a bit narrowminded. A further plus for being narrowminded is that it enhances our colonization abilities.
- Mercantilism vs Free Trade. If we chose to be mercantile, we'd be supporting our own domestic trade. This is great for large empires. Free Trade however supports trading in foreign CoTs. I'm a bit shallow here, but we probably go towards Mercantilism when we have established our own CoT. ---For more information, Check this out, made by Naggy.---
- Offensive vs Defensive. Do we favor the attack of the defense? Both have great bonuses, it's quite difficult to say which to favor. Defensiveness can give free fortresses which can be a very good reason to chose that. Offensive helps you to defeat powerful armies...choices choices!
- Land vs Naval. As England we will go naval. This will make colonization much more profitable and a bit more easy as it costs less money. Land is better for land orientated nations like Burgundy for example.
- Quality vs Quantity. Again a difficult choice. Many people here on the forum have different opinions which is better.
These policies can be changed once every 11 years, but that can be decreased when we change to a better government. Certain events give free slider movements. For now, centralization is the most important slider movement we can choose. So put that centralization slider towards the left. Now every slider movement can come with two negative effects and one positive. The centralization slider is the one exception, it only comes with negative events. National Ideas and the policy slider status both have a great deal of effect what kind of events your nation will receive, for better of worse. Now what did you get when you changed the slider?
That happened to me. We will squash those rebels when we unpause the game!
The next tab is the leader tab.
Here we can see our army tradition, discipline and naval tradition.
Land and naval tradition, what is that? Well it is how war is traditionalized in our country, it ranges from 0% to 100%. Do you know of the famous quote 'Prussia is hatched from a cannonball' by Napoleon I? It simulates how well we are in war. A high army tradition will make very good generals and a high naval tradition will make for very good admirals. Whenever a general or an admiral is recruited, the respective tradition is lowered by 20% of the amount of tradition you have. Tradition is earned when winning battles and exploring Terra Incognita ---the white spots on the map---. Land battles for land tradition and sea battles for naval tradition. It will slowly decrease however, so a war once in while is good for tradition.
Discipline is something else though. It resembles the quality of our troops. So if we move the quality vs quantity slider towards quality, discipline will improve. Discipline is important as it determines how good our men are in killing others. When discipline is beneath 100%, we need more men to do the job. When discipline is higher than 100%, fewer men are necessary to do the fighting. ---As a rule of thumb: morale determines how long our troops can fight, discipline says how good they are at it.---
In this tab we can also recruit new generals and admirals. We won't do this however any time soon, as the good generals and admirals only come with a tradition of at least 50%. In order to create one, we need 50 ducats and a diplomat available. Conquistadors and explorers are the only ones who can explore the Terra Incognita on land and sea respectively. We need those when we go colonizing. Do take note that if we ever get into a war with a country that is still covered in Terra Incognita, our troops can march there even if they aren't led by a explorer.
The button convert our leader to a general will make our Henry a general! He can die on the field of battle though, so it's not always smart to do it. Even more, remember his stats? The military one was a 3. That means he really isn't good at commanding an army. Luckily we see that we already have a general!
Sir Robert Knolles is pretty good general. He isn't assigned to any army yet, we'll do that later. We see some stats here too. What do we see?
- Fire. That's his fire modifier. That means how good he is with directing fire. This doesn't aid us much because fire only becomes relevant in about 150 years from now.
- Shock. Shock is nice, as these improves our shock ability of our cavalry. 3 pipes ---as they are called--- are pretty good for a starting general. The max is 6 though.
- Maneuverability. How fast is our general? Pretty fast. He can outrun many opponents which is crucial in a war.
- Siege. Is Sir Knolles any good at attacking a fort? Well, a tiny bit.
The next tab, we are almost there.
In this tab we find yet another type of tradition, namely cultural tradition. Cultural tradition is if we have any great poets or artistic people. It's also related to our intelligentsia. The higher it gets, the better our advisors will be. It will slowly increase in peace time but will decrease in war time. We also use up this tradition when we recruit a advisor. Our naval and land tradition is also shown here.
Below that we see all the advisors in the game. By clicking on one, we can recruit one for the price of 20% of our current cultural tradition. When we recruit an advisor, he will become available for hire for us for a year. After that other nations can hire him. So it is possible to recruit an advisor when we have a high cultural tradition, but we don't actually going to use him. That way, we can make some money by other countries buying him. Hover over all of the advisors to see what they do.
In the bottom of the screen is where we find cultural decisions. These decisions are made to increase our cultural tradition, prestige and technology. Some of them can only be enacted once, while others can be done several times. If you hold your mouse over the question mark '?', you will see what we need to enact a decision. When you hold your mouse above the envelope, we see what every decision does. Explore them a bit.
And now the final tab, the mission and national decision tab.
As you can see, we have not yet given a mission. Missions are generated by the game to 'steer a player to play a bit historical.' They give rewards when completing them. Take note that decisions are optional and can be safely ignored. We however will try to follow them throughout the game. We even abuse them a bit
. Now we see the national decision part of the screen. This is where very important decisions are made. One of them is the formation of the United Kingdom. Go through the decisions and see which are beneficial ---which are nearly all of them!---
Phew, we got through that long menu. Finally it's time to get the game going!! I hope I was right that these six chapters took about 15 minutes to read. On to the next chapter. Chapter seven: Your first gameplay day.
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Great update. I already know much of this myself, through painstaking trial and error mixed with searching the wiki/forums. It's great to have it compiled in one place. I'm also getting little nuggets of info I didn't know about. I can't wait till we get to the gameplay, as that's where I could really use the help. Keep it up!
What about it? Praising one person's work isn't denigrating another's. The strategy guide was quite useful. The manual, for a beginner, somewhat less so.
Nope. They aren't
Thanks to the high shock multiplier on lower naval tech levels and +1 bonus to damage in inland seas they can wreck havoc on your expensive big ships when fighting in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea in the first 100-150 years.
Of course they are useless for England but not for Aragon, Italians, Byzantine, Ottomans etc.
Great that you're still following! I do my best to keep it as informative as possible.
What about the original manual by Rennslaer?
I didn't like the original manual. I haven't read the strategy guide though
. So I'm starting that at this very moment! . Are we talking about the AAR here or am I missing something?
[no quote]Galleys[/noquote] Nope. They aren't
Thanks to the high shock multiplier on lower naval tech levels and +1 bonus to damage in inland seas they can wreck havoc on your expensive big ships when fighting in the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea in the first 100-150 years.
Of course they are useless for England but not for Aragon, Italians, Byzantine, Ottomans etc.
Oh? I thought there was a consensus on galleys that they should be avoided at all costs in HT³ as they are a 'poor mans' navy which isn't even any good. Hmm..will start a thread about this on the board.
I say the same as Mortius. Galleys could be very good in the mediterranean and the baltic sea. And the reason is simply that they are cheap. You can get a whole bunch of them instead of a single big ship. Though I have not really tested to see if that bunch of galleys would beat a big ship in an inland sea battle so I can't say for sure..
There are also a couple of other things that I see as quite questionable..
A statesman is not better than any other type of tech increasing guy (except if there is a tech you scrap of course). Since you will be changing techs to invest in during the game you would get an equally good return for a land tech guy or a production tech guy, the only thing that would change is when you swap tech to invest in.
And you have a very strong bias against any kind of minting. That is quite wrong as I (and many with me) see it. Minting (while not gaining inflation) is always good if you invest those money in a proper way. Minting to build a CoT gives a great return on the money. Minting to build buildings and manufactories will give you a huge boost to the economy. Minting to be able to afford a conquest of a gold province or something similar is also something that will hugely boost your economy. And minting to be able to afford a bigger colonial empire is probably also great for the future.
You have also said "points" a lot of times when talking about investments in research and stability. That could be a source of confusion since those points really are ducats. Money and points sounds like different things.
Besides these small things I have to say you have done a great job. Now we know where to point beginners.
And also.. Could it be possible to get a mod to delete posts (like this) between your updates after you are done with them? It would give the AAR a much better structure if there aren't a bunch of small posts between the important stuff.
There are also a couple of other things that I see as quite questionable..
A statesman is not better than any other type of tech increasing guy (except if there is a tech you scrap of course). Since you will be changing techs to invest in during the game you would get an equally good return for a land tech guy or a production tech guy, the only thing that would change is when you swap tech to invest in.
And you have a very strong bias against any kind of minting. That is quite wrong as I (and many with me) see it. Minting (while not gaining inflation) is always good if you invest those money in a proper way. Minting to build a CoT gives a great return on the money. Minting to build buildings and manufactories will give you a huge boost to the economy. Minting to be able to afford a conquest of a gold province or something similar is also something that will hugely boost your economy. And minting to be able to afford a bigger colonial empire is probably also great for the future.
You have also said "points" a lot of times when talking about investments in research and stability. That could be a source of confusion since those points really are ducats. Money and points sounds like different things.
Besides these small things I have to say you have done a great job. Now we know where to point beginners.
And also.. Could it be possible to get a mod to delete posts (like this) between your updates after you are done with them? It would give the AAR a much better structure if there aren't a bunch of small posts between the important stuff.
Okay that's great to know. I will edit the post that galleys are not useless and should be used for nations around shallow waters. I don't know what to say exactly though as in my experience they suck rather badly.
Yes, you are right. However I don't recall saying that they are better than any other tech guy. I just recommend a statesman because it helps to get government tech 4 faster. I completely agree that the others are very beneficial.
And you have a very strong bias against any kind of minting. That is quite wrong as I (and many with me) see it. Minting (while not gaining inflation) is always good if you invest those money in a proper way. Minting to build a CoT gives a great return on the money. Minting to build buildings and manufactories will give you a huge boost to the economy. Minting to be able to afford a conquest of a gold province or something similar is also something that will hugely boost your economy. And minting to be able to afford a bigger colonial empire is probably also great for the future.
You have also said "points" a lot of times when talking about investments in research and stability. That could be a source of confusion since those points really are ducats. Money and points sounds like different things.
Well yes, I do have a strong negative attitude towards minting. But I've not stressed it out so just because I have a certain feeling. No, I made sure that new comer know that minting = bad under all circumstances. This will prevent technology backwardness in the long run. However, minting is important to save money for a CoT or a manufactory. You will soon see that I will mint too in the game. When that happens, I will rediscuss minting and say that some investments are better than to uphold a strict non-minting policy. Don't worry
.Yes I see technology as points. But that can cause a bit of confusion...I did do that so new comers will know that their treasury money does not go into research, only 'invisible' monthly money. Will try to clear it up. Thanks.
Besides these small things I have to say you have done a great job. Now we know where to point beginners.
And also.. Could it be possible to get a mod to delete posts (like this) between your updates after you are done with them? It would give the AAR a much better structure if there aren't a bunch of small posts between the important stuff.
Haha, thanks. I too hope that this AAR will be used by at least one beginner
. But about the posts, no I think they are beneficial. The AAR can be read when clicking on the links in the Table of Content to exclusively see the posts. But these posts in-between can help players to understand more. I am simply not capable to tell them everything. Just like your arguments about galleys and minting are important.
Perhaps the best could be to simply cut that part out. It's nothing that needs to be here and could be discussed later, in the war version of the AAR perhaps? Maybe we will have some answers from the galley-caravel thread so we know what we are talking about then.
# If you see a Statesman ---my pretty avatar picture---, hire him. Hire the highest star ranked statesman. He will help you with your governmental research ---explained below.---
# If you don't see a statesman....
That's pretty much statesman or nothing. You don't even mention there is any other type of tech guy.
Well yes, I do have a strong negative attitude towards minting. But I've not stressed it out so just because I have a certain feeling. No, I made sure that new comer know that minting = bad under all circumstances. This will prevent technology backwardness in the long run. However, minting is important to save money for a CoT or a manufactory. You will soon see that I will mint too in the game. When that happens, I will rediscuss minting and say that some investments are better than to uphold a strict non-minting policy. Don't worry
But it's not bad under all circumstances.. I would actually say it's good under all circumstances since it is a very good tool to prevent tech backwardness.. If you mint as much as you can without gaining inflation you can build workshops in all of your provinces almost as soon as they come in play. You can build temples in every province and when you get marketplaces you can spambuild them everywhere the very same day they become possible. You will get money to build CoT's and manufactories. And the more money you have the faster you can build them. More minting => faster/more buildings/manufactories => faster tech progress.
Inflation = bad
Minting = good
am i missing something or doesnt moving the centralization to the right mean youre becoming more decentralized? then again i havent played in a week...
Damn you're right. Changed, thanks
. Perhaps the best could be to simply cut that part out. It's nothing that needs to be here and could be discussed later, in the war version of the AAR perhaps? Maybe we will have some answers from the galley-caravel thread so we know what we are talking about then.
I leave it in just for now. I think it helps more to understand the navies.
# If you see a Statesman ---my pretty avatar picture---, hire him. Hire the highest star ranked statesman. He will help you with your governmental research ---explained below.---
# If you don't see a statesman....
That's pretty much statesman or nothing. You don't even mention there is any other type of tech guy.
Well eh..
The text written in italic have I added just now. I believe I'm quite clear about other techies? If you disagree then I need to remake this part of text.
Hmm..I believe we're in agreement to disagree
. I'm the kind of guy who says that you shouldn't mint because you can. I don't know if your idea ---that is, to mint if it's possible--- is worth it in the long run. I will make a remark in the text about this 'school of thought.' Yet another reason why these posts below the actual chapters are important .
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