Playing Castile?

[Anjwalker]

I didn't purposely take loans, however I was forced to automatically take them when I ran out of money.

I do now see my problem. I'm under the force limit, but my maintenance sliders are maxed, which is costing me a fortune I don't need to pay. If I drop those sliders to zero, I'll stop losing money.

[sprites]

i like to keep them at around 25% when at peace for the occasional rebels , pirates , etc

How the hell the AI managed to rack up 17.7% inflation in one year !? in top of tyour 38 , that is.

[Flammehav]

Doesn't 54 inflation also mean you pay 54 ducats a month on nothing?

If you have 50% inflation(to make an easier number). Abuilding that normally cost 50duckats will now cost 75, one that cost 100 will now cost 150. Infanterty that cost 10, now cost 15, same increase for all military units, it also cost 50% more to pay for them once you have them(maintenance), You got colonies or missionaries? Cost is increased by 50% both to place them and pay for their upkeep, not sure abotu advisers though. It will also cost 50% to research a teach.If a teck cost 2000 to research it will now cost 3000 and so on.

That is way inflation is VERY bad and should be kept as low as possible. There are a few times minting and getting inflation and takeing loans can be usefull, f.eks if you are getting attacked and desperatly need armies to fight them off, or to buy buildings that will increase your income, when I started as Oman I took several loans and minted a bit to place as many traders as I could. Within 5 years I had 5 traders in all expet one poor CoT I could, have paid of the loan, 1-2% inflation and a very good income compaired to my size.


However, until you get the hang of the game, don't take loans and don't mint, atleast not the amount you do, it will only make your country worse in the long run. Also your military sliders, keep them at minimum when you are at peace. And only turn them back up when you're at war. That cuts your military expensive in half while at peace.


About the other things. Keeping stability at max reduces revolt risk and increases tax income. Both monthly and annual(the money you get on january first).

If you plan on colonizing keep it to a minimum, like one cololy a year until your economy is better. Missionaries on the other hands are usefull, becouse wrong religion provinces get a 30% tax reduction. So does wrong culture provinces. All provinces increases tech cost with the same amount though, so stay away from the poor wrong culture, wrong religion provinces in Africa. If you have any provinces there, you should consider releasing them as a vassal to speed up your tech.

As for advisors even if you are poor they can pay off. Right now you need one master of mint to help you reduce inflation. Guys that increases your tax, production and trade can also be usefull(assuming you start tradeing). And also guys that spends some money in tech.

As for what techs to focus on, you should go for stability first. When you are at +3, go trade and production to increase your income. If it's 1560 your tech isn't horribly bad yet, but you are about 15-20 years behind what you should be as a latin country, and your inflation is probably going to lag your more behind. If I was you I would seriously consider and restarting the game, either as Castille again or as someone else, and next time don't take loans and keep minting to an absolute minimum.

Oh and one more thing. It's ok to mint a bit so the game don't take up loans for you, but try and keep your expenses so low that it's not needed.

[sprites]

doesn't in DW , bankrupty resulting in halved inflation?

[DDRJake]

In all my hours of playing DW, I've never seen bankrupcy have any effect on inflation in any way.

[Kresaux]

If this is true: http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Economy#Bankruptcy bankruptcy REDUCES inflation by 50%, so I would accually suggest you go bankrupt

[Falahk]

Trade is nice, but you can easily manage without. If he has bad sliders and no trading NI's it may not be worth it. He should still trade in his own COT though. When i play a game with lots of expanding i often ditch trading completely in the early game becuase of low efficency and low probability of success

no not really, you cant manage w/o trade, its vital, it would more be question of how you plan to trade, if it is to go merchantlist and kick everyone out of your CoT's once you hit tech 15, and make sure you have big CoT's in high production regions, or if you go free trade and constantly keep infamy low

[Snapze]

In my current game as normal sized Aragon about 4% of my income is trade. I still manage 150 yearly profit without any inflation, so it's perfectly possible not to trade as long as you keep your production up. When you've reached the good sliders trade is really powerfull, but for many countries it's not worth wasting the merchants early on.

[Falahk]

how far into the game are you Snapze? how many provinces do you have? care to post some screens on income and sliders from the save you mentioned?

[synthshadow]

Having just finished a Spain game without ANY form of cheating to enhance my nation (as I was going for as many achievements as possible so I had no choice), I would probably write this game off as a bad debt and start a new one.

What I did in mine - to add I'm NOT in any way a good player of this game in comparison to many on here so if I can do it YOU most certainly can - is as the start to knock the early sliders on towards Free Trade, take the Church Attendance Duty NI and get the "Gilded Iconography" cultural decision as that is ridiculously powerful. After you've got that switch to take the trade NIs, you'll lose 3 stability but trade like a madman as much as possible and channel all that gold into bumping your stability up to +3 again. This will give you the financial means to raise a few armies to protect yourself.

Early on you start on very good terms with the Catholic nations so cultivate those, especially Aragon, Portugal, and France. That way you save having to build massive armies to conquer them and concentrate on a good size army simply to smash Grenada and annex them. This should really be your only military annexation on the European mainland. Once they've been absorbed, take your maintenance sliders to say 15 to 20% for rebel hunting, keep them there and keep charming your neighbours with gold. Get Royal Marriages with Portugal and Aragon in order to later claim their thrones with the goal of eventually inheriting them. Perhaps don't RM France as the drop in relations you get when you claim the throne of another nation you have a marriage with is costly to build back up, but by all means try for an alliance. With luck and a few goes at "Claiming thrones" you should be able to peacefully unite Iberia under the Spanish crown, could also do the same with England/GBR after if you like but as I hate Monarchies in general in the game, I switched to Republic as soon as I formed Spain.

Once done, the new world is yours to colonise for a long time before anyone else shows up as you've absorbed most if not all the major colonisers of the game . Plough all monies into the Trade Tech (and grab a Trade Tech advisor if you can - you should have a high cultural level due to the gilded icon decision you took early on) to get QFTNW and start colonising the Canary Islands, Cape Verde and Azores first, building them up to cities before moving on. Once they core, go for the tip of Brazil to get an easy port for your exploring ships to get back to while exploring the Caribbean. Discover and colonise the whole Caribbean but DO IT SLOWLY, say five at a time maximum, no-one will race you there.

When you have say five colonies building, mint a little, just to stop you dropping into negative ducats at the end of the year but without gaining too much Inflation. Hire as higher star Master of Mint as you can and plop him in to fight the (low) Inflation you're generating. From there I would say you wouldn't really have to worry about money again. Just keep colonising slow and easy and you should get to the stage where you can have colonies on the go and it wont really make a dent in the money you're making to spend as you please.

Oh I should say once you start colonising the Caribbean, you'll run into the Aztecs/Mayans on the Mexican mainland, just load up with say 10,000 solders in a transport, only then raise your military sliders to 100% take them over and wipe the floor with them. (Take note to drop the maintenance back down afterwards - easily forgotten I can assure you) What I did was take all provinces on the east coast, leaving them the west coast, for three reasons, 1. So you can start wars in the future and keep milking them. 2. Once pirates come along theres nothing more annoying than having to sail around the whole of south America just to kill pirates that are taking your hard-fought provinces money. 3. So that once they core it gives you greater range to expand into both north and south America. Just absorb the Native countries later on when you've peacefully colonised up as far as you can without running into some native civilisation.

As a Catholic nation I'd advise keeping good relations with the Pope just to cover your backside and get cardinals that all help lower your badboy rating that you do get from running these wars but pretty much as long as France is on side you can do whatever the hell you want and learn the rest of the game safe in the knowledge you probably wont have as many money and inflation problems as before. Just another thought, you'll probably want to go more towards Mercantilism the more you colonise as Badboy kills off trade in foreign COTs, and if you go the whole way in having both Americas you wont need to trade in another foreign COT again. Plus also you get a few nice Trading Decision pop-ups once you go Mercantalism.

Good Luck, I hope my long-winded diatribe helps somewhat!

[insolent1]

Halberd infantry at land tech 19?

Change your unit type to a more updated unit ie condetta or terico infantry this is one of the main reasons you are loosing to france

Also Castille can field "charge cavalry" in granada, almeria(before they are converted) and gibraltar(till it becomes a core) these units are far superior to latin tech cavalry till you get latin caracolle cavalry

The only downside to using charge cavalry is that they don't upgrade

[Susanna]

You need to start trading. It's really not all that complicated. I'd do it from the COT page in the Ledger; I usually sort the COTs by size, and prioritize.