Too much money in the world

[EllisDee]

I don't feel like i'm misremembering, but i always played a lot of CK2 -- it's definitely one of my favourite Paradox games, though the dumpster fire that is HoI3 is another favourite, so maybe take that with a grain of salt. I specifically remember at the time TOG released, looking on the map for rich places to pillage. It always seemed like Northern Europe was poor, Central Europe was quite well defended, and Southern Europe was rich and easily raided. It maintained that right through the 11th century.
Most of the world was just poor. Most vassals were poor, and blew their money on decisions or mercs. You typically had to upgrade their holdings for them.

I started playing again this year and have really noticed a problem with the amount of wealth in the world. The wealth map is just green.
Just about every capital province, and all but the last-built barony, is maxed out to the tech available level by the ten hundreds.
Every siege is fort level 5 (because the AI can't prioritise "don't assault me" keep tech). Every holding has identical troops, only modified by martial level of the holder and rare terrain buildings. Many vassals sit on big wads of gold.

What changed? The HF Crusades give a real example of this in how much wealth is in the world based on how much money is farted out by the AI into the pot (money which can easily launch the player into stardom by contributing to the crusade).

The money-sinks added in the form of hospitals and great works go some way to demonstrating it's a known problem.

What changed in the intervening years? Is it the law changes from Conclave? Where large vassal levies are much less common, and therefore vassals across the world aren't paying out the bum for their overlord's wars?

It's definitely taken away some of the, perhaps player-lopsided, strategy of rushing the undeveloped land of your enemy.
But then, the change to how levies works has also damaged that level of strategy, since the liege no longer raises vassal levies from their holding's levies, but from a magical ether that isn't represented on the map.

I'm not a fan of this homogeneity. The "prosperity" system most definitely does not address it, either.

Anyone have an opinion on this?

 

[CoSMoS]

This is a really boring answer, but long story short this has been brought up numerous times and just about everybody agrees this is a problem, the new holy fury crusades basically broke the game, but Paradox has moved on to CKIII and thus nothing will change.

 

[jhhowell]

The ludicrous Crusade rewards are moddable, though. I have my own version of the events file that I use when I play a Catholic dynasty. The only reason it's not always in place is because sometimes I dabble with Monarch's Journeys, which require unmodified game files.

Do the major mods (HIP, CK+, others that I'm not aware of?) change the Crusade rewards? Or make other economic changes? I'm certain that people who know what they're doing could do a much better job than my version. Just because Paradox has moved on doesn't mean the rest of us have to be stuck with the status quo; modability has always been a great strength of Paradox games.

 

[Ilyasviel]

The ludicrous Crusade rewards are moddable, though. I have my own version of the events file that I use when I play a Catholic dynasty. The only reason it's not always in place is because sometimes I dabble with Monarch's Journeys, which require unmodified game files.

Do the major mods (HIP, CK+, others that I'm not aware of?) change the Crusade rewards? Or make other economic changes? I'm certain that people who know what they're doing could do a much better job than my version. Just because Paradox has moved on doesn't mean the rest of us have to be stuck with the status quo; modability has always been a great strength of Paradox games.

The great weakness of the Paradox modding community is that the people who know how to mod and have the motivation to do it are always more concerned with adding a ton of mechanics and provinces than with fixing the actual problems left by the devs. The result of that is that there's two kind of mods: the small ones that do almost nothing, and the big ones that do way too much and are super bloated and slow.

 

[DPS]

Haven't noticed it as a problem. I find it not at all unusual for AI rulers to not have enough money to ransom themselves when they get captured.

 

[Aerotinge]

DLC inflation resulting cash devaluation. You can try disable some DLCs (i.e MM, JD, HF) that gives you tons of gold.
Then the medieval world may be a bit more sane.

 

[Rubidium]

The biggest issues are Conclave and Reaper's Due, as far as I can tell. Yes, Crusades add a bunch of money, but they are rare, late, and limited to Catholics. Given enough time the AI will throw all that money away on feasts and summer fairs. Silk road and African trade routes also add a bit of money to certain regions, but again, those are limited in scope.

Conclave, on the other hand, for all I love it, made a huge change: the default setting for taxes/levies is now in the center, such that everyone pays some of both. That means that whereas without Conclave the vast majority of vassals (who are feudal) will pay nothing to their liege, now everyone pays at least something. It may not seem like much, but having every single feudal vassal pay 20% of their income as taxes by default (as opposed to zero) results in a hefty income boost for everyone above the level of baron (and most costs aren't scaled up to match). In particular this is why the top liege always has way more money with Conclave than without.

You'll also note that the AI doesn't spend on hospitals (ever, as far as I can tell), and rarely spends on building new Great Works (although it may add features to ones it already controls more readily), so that cash to the liege gets spent on development, or on buying favors from councillors (which helps distribute some of that excess cash at the top downwards a level).

Reaper's Due, on the other hand, is more subtle: it includes the Prosperity mechanic. Each level of prosperity increases tax income by 10% (and also has a slight decrease in building cost). As prosperity tends to increase outside of epidemics and major wars (neither of which is so common as to depopulate enough to balance things out), this means that there's an average increase in income across the board.