Let's talk about how strong bankruptcies in SP really are.
Introduction
When I first started out, I was sweating like a Swede in a sauna whenever I saw the "you have a loan" flag.
With time and experience players start to get a grasp on opportunity costs and options presenting themselves.
A popular example would be taking 1000 ducats in loans and a quick DoW on any member of the Lübeck node no matter your location.
Open the ledger with "L", 2nd page, 6th column from the left. Sort it. Lübeck alone usually has around 1500 ducats around that time. In the end you invest a few years of gametime, gain no AE (except for the no-cb, if it was necessary) and get ~2500 ducats + war reps.
So far, so good, but what about bankruptcies.
Effects
The negative modifiers look scary at first.
http://www.eu4wiki.com/National_unrest
- You should never go bankrupt as a colonial nation. The opportunity costs do not justify it.
- Negative 100% morale (0.51 flat morale for armies) looks scary
- Advisors can be lvl1 max due to the +100% increase of costs
- Autonomy in all provinces seems like a horrible idea.
- Institution spread doesn't affect you if you aren't behind in institutions anyways
- Interest per annum will not matter, you will be swimming in cash, more on that later
Also noteworthy:
- All advisors will be fired
- All mercs will be disbanded
- All monarch points will be set to 0 (!)
- Stab and prestige hit
- Buildings and units in progress are cancelled
Reasons for bankruptcy and how to survive it
There are always good alternatives to it, but not only do they require a certain aggressiveness and game knowledge, they also have their own drawbacks. Bankruptcies have _none_ except for a 10 year pause after a war, which is something most people have to do anyways.
Since the AI counts all standing forces of the target+allies as one single entity you need to prepare well.
First you grab the strongest and most stable allies available.
This includes, but isn't limited to: France, Castille, Portugal, England, Muscovy, Russia, Ottomans, Persia (if allied to Ottos)
Stay away from Poland, Austria, Hungary, Mamluks, Tunis, Sweden, and Bohemia at all costs.
Avoid Denmark after Sweden broke off or if their subjects are receiving support.
Not only do they get attacked regularly, but since you're taking up a diplo slot with 0 morale units it means their normal standing forces are reduced by 1 potential ally, making them easier targets for other nations.
Unless your alliance net is already strong enough, in which case you ally them on purpose so they are more likely to get destroyed.
If in doubt about various allies, check if any of them are diplomats or have the "Silver Tongue", "Careful" or "Calm" trait.
Stay away from militarists or the "Malevolent".
Most of the time it won't matter, sometimes it will and if it does it can screw you over bigtime.
Sidenote: If traits and personalities clash it is difficult to predict how the AI reacts. This has been confirmed by a dev.
The reason to do it is if you want to make a massive push, if you absolutely need to break out of somewhere or break an enemy and do not want to wait for a random DoW to weaken them.
You can not plan for a bankruptcy if the general disaster "peasants war" has started to tick as loans will increase the progress and you can't handle its effects.
It can not start ticking if you are already at war.
Warfare
Disclaimer: Ideally you have the first 3 ideas of administrative unlocked for this. Unlocking only the first one is enough to break most enemies though.
Save your monarch points during war, especially admin. Do not tech up. We'll get to that in a second.
If you have a disaster ticking, get rid of it. You can not survive any kind of disaster while in a bankruptcy.
As you can see in the following examples you only want to go bankrupt against clearly superior forces. If they only have 5-10 troops more than you you can easily do it with normal loaning.
What you want to do is is to invest heavily in merc infantry. Your regular troops are cavalry and artillery and whatever infantry you have at the start of your war
After every battle you detach all infantry (mercs+regular), consolidate and fill your ranks with mercs again.
Make sure you always either have at least one stack sieging or a big enough stack left on a fort so you won't lose siege progress.
Big enough meaning enemy armies divided by 10 so you won't get stackwiped instantly and can send in your main army.
The more often you successfully engage, the better. They need to flee, rebuild armies, get their morale back, all of that gives you time to siege in peace.
Remember: You are using at least twice your Force Limit. Barely any nation will be able to compete with that unless they start with combat modifiers or your idea was to attack a GP as an OPM.
If you are very close to your goal but bankruptcy is already looming you can debase. This should be treated as an emergency button. You don't need to 100% your enemy just because you go bankrupt and taking five additional loans + debasing 10 times just for one extra province is rarely worth it.
Don't worry about corruption, if it happens, welcome it!
Your MP will be set to 0 so the monarch point increase doesn't phase you for 10 years and you can get rid of a minimum of 10 corruption during that time.
Even more important: It decreases unrest.
Bankruptcy gives an additional 3, so every bit can help.
2 examples:
An early Reich
A friend of mine wanted to form Germany as BB and got the option to contest a Castille PU over Spain. He gave up and sent me his save.
BB vs Portugal, France and Castille (PU over Aragon and Naples) vs Brandenburg, no allies
Massive amounts of mercs, constantly going over FL, hardpushing for forts, negative income of up to 30 per month. You avoid any war of attrition. You get your goal and you get it fast.
Paying off his loans would have taken ~12 years and his inflation would have skyrocketed. Bankruptcy was the best choice.
After the war was over and an alliance net was set up
No DoW during all of it. Allied Poland in hopes of a DoW from Ottomans so I could ditch them, have them weakened and get their northern provinces later (salt, cloth and rather high dev).
Luck of the Irish
England and Scotland allied minors early, England allied Scotland as well and lost its continental provinces.
You could wait for favors from France or Castille, but with the power of bankruptcy there is no restarting.
Especially since your only enemies are Scotland and England
Pretty sure Castille and France completely suffice, took Denmark for good measures.
Never played Denmark, didn't want to risk them allying England and wanted to take away one of their alliance slots.
Post-war stress relief
So you've fought with twice your FL, paid something upwards of 10 ducats a month (way upwards), got all the land you wanted, completely destroyed your enemy and are now waiting to crash.
Don't speed 5 this. There's more to do.
First you want to check how much time you have and lay out a plan.
Objects you need to achieve:
- Do not get rid of corruption yet. Save the cash.
- All newly acquired provinces have unrest. Core them. Do NOT increase autonomy. You want them to pop to get a 10 year provincial modifier of -100 unrest
- Fire all your advisors. If your alliance net doesn't feel good enough or something changed during the war, consider picking up a dip rep advisor to make new alliances easier to come by as he gives +5 reasons to ally you.
- Get rid of mercs if possible. Check rebel stack size for that.
- After rebels have popped, set army maintenance to 0.
- If you still have enough loans left, take some more and build churches, marketplaces and workshops in all your provinces.
This is one of the main reasons why bankruptcy is so damn effective. Not only do you break an enemy more than twice your size, you will also be rewarded with free buildings for doing so!
- If you have cash left, build barques up to your FL and protect trade in your main node. Do not pirate.
- If you still have cash left... just kidding, you don't.
Make sure all buildings and units will be finished before you accept your bankruptcy. Remember, everything in progress will be cancelled.
- After rebels in provinces with more than 10 unrest have popped, increase your stability to 3.
- All remaining provinces that are still rebellious have their autonomy increased, leaving you with a minimum of -13 unrest in all provinces or between -13 and 0 but the option to increase autonomy, if necesasry
- Buy down war exhaustion if necessary. Won't be, generally speaking. You only lost mercs during your war.
And most importantly
- All excess monarch points HAVE TO BE INVESTED! Develop the hell out of every cloth province, your capital, everything that nets you the most. Your MP will be set to 0, remember? Better have that in your nation than in the pockets of some greedy banker.
I'm bankrupt. And now?
Check your income. Smile.
You've got buildings maxed in all provinces and put a ton of MP into your provinces. You should have a massive positive income way bigger than anything you could achieve under normal circumstances.
Check your rebel stacks. None? Well played.
It is now time to get rid of any corruption you might have acquired. Put the ledger to max.
Still positive income? Well played.
Hire some level1 advisors if you can to catch up with techs.
That's it for now.
The next 10 years you can speed 5 through it. It goes without saying that you will deny any CtA during that time.
None appeared? Well played.
You now have a well developed country, broke your biggest enemy, increased your nation's size by a huge margin, got an income of several ducats a month and maybe even got a decent trade fleet.
All of it for the price of 10 years on speed 5.
And that, my friends, is the power of bankruptcy.
Introduction
When I first started out, I was sweating like a Swede in a sauna whenever I saw the "you have a loan" flag.
With time and experience players start to get a grasp on opportunity costs and options presenting themselves.
A popular example would be taking 1000 ducats in loans and a quick DoW on any member of the Lübeck node no matter your location.
Open the ledger with "L", 2nd page, 6th column from the left. Sort it. Lübeck alone usually has around 1500 ducats around that time. In the end you invest a few years of gametime, gain no AE (except for the no-cb, if it was necessary) and get ~2500 ducats + war reps.
So far, so good, but what about bankruptcies.
Effects
The negative modifiers look scary at first.
http://www.eu4wiki.com/National_unrest
Quick notes about what's standing out the most+3 National unrest
+10% Interest per annum
−100% Morale of armies
−100% Morale of navies
−25% Reinforcement speed
+0.25 Bureaucrats faction influence
+0.25 The guilds influence
−100% Manpower recovery speed
−100% Sailor recovery speed
+100% Advisor cost
−2 Monthly fervor
−200 Global settler increase
+0.20 Monthly autonomy change
−20% Institution spread
−0.25 Militarization of state
- You should never go bankrupt as a colonial nation. The opportunity costs do not justify it.
- Negative 100% morale (0.51 flat morale for armies) looks scary
- Advisors can be lvl1 max due to the +100% increase of costs
- Autonomy in all provinces seems like a horrible idea.
- Institution spread doesn't affect you if you aren't behind in institutions anyways
- Interest per annum will not matter, you will be swimming in cash, more on that later
Also noteworthy:
- All advisors will be fired
- All mercs will be disbanded
- All monarch points will be set to 0 (!)
- Stab and prestige hit
- Buildings and units in progress are cancelled
Reasons for bankruptcy and how to survive it
There are always good alternatives to it, but not only do they require a certain aggressiveness and game knowledge, they also have their own drawbacks. Bankruptcies have _none_ except for a 10 year pause after a war, which is something most people have to do anyways.
Since the AI counts all standing forces of the target+allies as one single entity you need to prepare well.
First you grab the strongest and most stable allies available.
This includes, but isn't limited to: France, Castille, Portugal, England, Muscovy, Russia, Ottomans, Persia (if allied to Ottos)
Stay away from Poland, Austria, Hungary, Mamluks, Tunis, Sweden, and Bohemia at all costs.
Avoid Denmark after Sweden broke off or if their subjects are receiving support.
Not only do they get attacked regularly, but since you're taking up a diplo slot with 0 morale units it means their normal standing forces are reduced by 1 potential ally, making them easier targets for other nations.
Unless your alliance net is already strong enough, in which case you ally them on purpose so they are more likely to get destroyed.
If in doubt about various allies, check if any of them are diplomats or have the "Silver Tongue", "Careful" or "Calm" trait.
Stay away from militarists or the "Malevolent".
Most of the time it won't matter, sometimes it will and if it does it can screw you over bigtime.
Sidenote: If traits and personalities clash it is difficult to predict how the AI reacts. This has been confirmed by a dev.
The reason to do it is if you want to make a massive push, if you absolutely need to break out of somewhere or break an enemy and do not want to wait for a random DoW to weaken them.
You can not plan for a bankruptcy if the general disaster "peasants war" has started to tick as loans will increase the progress and you can't handle its effects.
It can not start ticking if you are already at war.
Warfare
Disclaimer: Ideally you have the first 3 ideas of administrative unlocked for this. Unlocking only the first one is enough to break most enemies though.
Save your monarch points during war, especially admin. Do not tech up. We'll get to that in a second.
If you have a disaster ticking, get rid of it. You can not survive any kind of disaster while in a bankruptcy.
As you can see in the following examples you only want to go bankrupt against clearly superior forces. If they only have 5-10 troops more than you you can easily do it with normal loaning.
What you want to do is is to invest heavily in merc infantry. Your regular troops are cavalry and artillery and whatever infantry you have at the start of your war
After every battle you detach all infantry (mercs+regular), consolidate and fill your ranks with mercs again.
Make sure you always either have at least one stack sieging or a big enough stack left on a fort so you won't lose siege progress.
Big enough meaning enemy armies divided by 10 so you won't get stackwiped instantly and can send in your main army.
The more often you successfully engage, the better. They need to flee, rebuild armies, get their morale back, all of that gives you time to siege in peace.
Remember: You are using at least twice your Force Limit. Barely any nation will be able to compete with that unless they start with combat modifiers or your idea was to attack a GP as an OPM.
If you are very close to your goal but bankruptcy is already looming you can debase. This should be treated as an emergency button. You don't need to 100% your enemy just because you go bankrupt and taking five additional loans + debasing 10 times just for one extra province is rarely worth it.
Don't worry about corruption, if it happens, welcome it!
Your MP will be set to 0 so the monarch point increase doesn't phase you for 10 years and you can get rid of a minimum of 10 corruption during that time.
Even more important: It decreases unrest.
Bankruptcy gives an additional 3, so every bit can help.
2 examples:
An early Reich
A friend of mine wanted to form Germany as BB and got the option to contest a Castille PU over Spain. He gave up and sent me his save.
BB vs Portugal, France and Castille (PU over Aragon and Naples) vs Brandenburg, no allies
Massive amounts of mercs, constantly going over FL, hardpushing for forts, negative income of up to 30 per month. You avoid any war of attrition. You get your goal and you get it fast.
Paying off his loans would have taken ~12 years and his inflation would have skyrocketed. Bankruptcy was the best choice.
After the war was over and an alliance net was set up
No DoW during all of it. Allied Poland in hopes of a DoW from Ottomans so I could ditch them, have them weakened and get their northern provinces later (salt, cloth and rather high dev).
Luck of the Irish
England and Scotland allied minors early, England allied Scotland as well and lost its continental provinces.
You could wait for favors from France or Castille, but with the power of bankruptcy there is no restarting.
Especially since your only enemies are Scotland and England
Pretty sure Castille and France completely suffice, took Denmark for good measures.
Never played Denmark, didn't want to risk them allying England and wanted to take away one of their alliance slots.
Post-war stress relief
So you've fought with twice your FL, paid something upwards of 10 ducats a month (way upwards), got all the land you wanted, completely destroyed your enemy and are now waiting to crash.
Don't speed 5 this. There's more to do.
First you want to check how much time you have and lay out a plan.
Objects you need to achieve:
- Do not get rid of corruption yet. Save the cash.
- All newly acquired provinces have unrest. Core them. Do NOT increase autonomy. You want them to pop to get a 10 year provincial modifier of -100 unrest
- Fire all your advisors. If your alliance net doesn't feel good enough or something changed during the war, consider picking up a dip rep advisor to make new alliances easier to come by as he gives +5 reasons to ally you.
- Get rid of mercs if possible. Check rebel stack size for that.
- After rebels have popped, set army maintenance to 0.
- If you still have enough loans left, take some more and build churches, marketplaces and workshops in all your provinces.
This is one of the main reasons why bankruptcy is so damn effective. Not only do you break an enemy more than twice your size, you will also be rewarded with free buildings for doing so!
- If you have cash left, build barques up to your FL and protect trade in your main node. Do not pirate.
- If you still have cash left... just kidding, you don't.
Make sure all buildings and units will be finished before you accept your bankruptcy. Remember, everything in progress will be cancelled.
- After rebels in provinces with more than 10 unrest have popped, increase your stability to 3.
- All remaining provinces that are still rebellious have their autonomy increased, leaving you with a minimum of -13 unrest in all provinces or between -13 and 0 but the option to increase autonomy, if necesasry
- Buy down war exhaustion if necessary. Won't be, generally speaking. You only lost mercs during your war.
And most importantly
- All excess monarch points HAVE TO BE INVESTED! Develop the hell out of every cloth province, your capital, everything that nets you the most. Your MP will be set to 0, remember? Better have that in your nation than in the pockets of some greedy banker.
I'm bankrupt. And now?
Check your income. Smile.
You've got buildings maxed in all provinces and put a ton of MP into your provinces. You should have a massive positive income way bigger than anything you could achieve under normal circumstances.
Check your rebel stacks. None? Well played.
It is now time to get rid of any corruption you might have acquired. Put the ledger to max.
Still positive income? Well played.
Hire some level1 advisors if you can to catch up with techs.
That's it for now.
The next 10 years you can speed 5 through it. It goes without saying that you will deny any CtA during that time.
None appeared? Well played.
You now have a well developed country, broke your biggest enemy, increased your nation's size by a huge margin, got an income of several ducats a month and maybe even got a decent trade fleet.
All of it for the price of 10 years on speed 5.
And that, my friends, is the power of bankruptcy.
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