800% Increase In Income Exploit.

[Zardnaar]

Sure...It's a decision that fits a certain type of niche nation or objective.

As for the rest, a lot of unsupported nonsense.

No land-combat based NIs =/= sucks at warfare (swarming mercs is a different way of succeeding at warfare than discipline and combat ability bonuses. Its very effective).

A swap to MR might do a small amount for income in the short run, but hampers the ability to diplovassal/annex and thus gain BT that would otherwise be generating you lots of tax, production, and trade income. It also locks you into two idea groups that could otherwise be used to help a land power expand.

Economics won't really ever come even close to doubling your income. It gives a 10% boost to two types of income, which means at most a 10% boost to income (assuming no vassals, tariffs, or trade). Depending on how much of your income goes to your army upkeep and other land maintenance modifiers, it
could be maybe up to 15% cost savings (if you already had another 30% land maintenance reduction and land maintenance was 100% of your cost).

Even the additional buildings will often be marginally useful, as with -20% from economics and the reduction from having the appropriate faction, you're still using up a ton of ducats that could otherwise have been used to pay mercs/troops/ships and actually expand your territory.

You know nothing young Padawan.



Brandenburg, took economics 4th idea almost 300 ducats a month income. It would probably be around half of that without it. I expanded and got rich. You can live without economics though or just take trade and expand faster but it is not completely useless.

I know how to fight as a merchant republic via mercs but it is a lot easier to steam roll the AI as say Sweden or Brandenburg. You cannot always expand fast to get your income up either and there is a big difference between alright income and "ye ha I'm rich bitch". I think one could probably abuse economics+trade+military idea of your choice+admin/humanism/religious as your 4th idea. Turning a land based empire into a MR may not make you a good as trader as Venice or the Hansa but it will make you better than most of the AI nations and that is all you need. It takes a lot more effort to turn a MR into a good land based nation although you can do it.

 

[Outrider]

Brandenburg, took economics 4th idea almost 300 ducats a month income. It would probably be around half of that without it. I expanded and got rich. You can live without economics though or just take trade and expand faster but it is not completely useless.

No, definitely not useless and it has value, moreso later in the game. As an early Idea, increasing your tax income 10% might just be taking a single province, later on that could be a dozen or two.

But to imply that half your current income is attributable to the economics idea (either the income bump or the building cost reduction) is a bit silly.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, definitely not useless and it has value, moreso later in the game. As an early Idea, increasing your tax income 10% might just be taking a single province, later on that could be a dozen or two.

But to imply that half your current income is attributable to the economics idea (either the income bump or the building cost reduction) is a bit silly.

It was due to the manufactory spam that did it and that screenshot reveals the production income is higher than trade and taxes by a lot.

The 10% tax and production boost is not a lot but it can be a large bump as a % to your disposable income and it combines with the 20% reduction in buildings and early on that can just mean grain provinces as you get farms early. It is 50 or 100 years after you take economics where you will notice massive spikes in your income compared to similar games with similar amounts of base tax and where you did not take it. I did not think it would be that much but I have been testing out how to abuse it with Crimea, Brandenburg and an empire of grain based on the American mid west. It also does generate extra monarch points in effect as I always pick the +50 points for token amount of inflation if I have the economics idea selected. I would not recommend it as a 1st idea outside of nations like Aztec/Inca/Mali/Songhai but it can make a decent 4th pick as your 2nd admin idea and it does boost your income 3 or 4 decades down the track. Its not a useless idea that is more naval and espionage.

 

[MustLoveCats]

Now all you have to do is pull a DDRJake and end the evil flag-stealing Ferrarans.

 

[zodium]

No, definitely not useless and it has value, moreso later in the game. As an early Idea, increasing your tax income 10% might just be taking a single province, later on that could be a dozen or two.

But to imply that half your current income is attributable to the economics idea (either the income bump or the building cost reduction) is a bit silly.

Compound interest is a hell of a drug.

 

[Zardnaar]

Compound interest is a hell of a drug.

That is more or less how I look at economics. Just keep on piling on those modifiers.

 

[hanislost]

brilliant !

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Compound interest is a hell of a drug.

To get that kind of yield, you really need the trade income. I couldn't get anywhere near that w/o trade ideas as an administrative republic Aztec with its trash NIs. Though, economic ideas were still an important factor in fielding +3 advisors and eventually 400 regiments.

If you can control the trade in addition to the production money, the reduction on manufactories looks really attractive.

Have you ever tried a nation like Hindu Gujarat? If you go economic/administrative and take the deity, you get -4% interest per annum (the floor is .25%, which you reach). I've been wanting to try that for a while. Heck, if you leave Sunni being a MR wouldn't hurt you either. It would take a lot of doing to setup a MR switch, but those ideas are excellent for gouging trade.

I suppose even 1% interest/annum is pretty good though.

 

[zodium]

To get that kind of yield, you really need the trade income. I couldn't get anywhere near that w/o trade ideas as an administrative republic Aztec with its trash NIs. Though, economic ideas were still an important factor in fielding +3 advisors and eventually 400 regiments.

If you can control the trade in addition to the production money, the reduction on manufactories looks really attractive.

Have you ever tried a nation like Hindu Gujarat? If you go economic/administrative and take the deity, you get -4% interest per annum (the floor is .25%, which you reach). I've been wanting to try that for a while. Heck, if you leave Sunni being a MR wouldn't hurt you either. It would take a lot of doing to setup a MR switch, but those ideas are excellent for gouging trade.

I suppose even 1% interest/annum is pretty good though.

I've never tried an interest minimization strategy because the benefits seem like they would be relatively short lived. The problem with loans isn't primarily the interest, it's the inflation--though I suppose you'd be maximizing inflation reduction too. I guess I see the appeal, but I don't know how well it would scale up. You should give it a go.

Build cost reductions also help control the trade. Once you get your mercantilism to a respectable level, provincial trade power can easily dwarf light ships. With Quantity, Economic and Guild faction, it costs me (35 + 52 + 70 + 105 =) 262 ducats and (8*4 =) 32 MPP to build tier 4 trade buildings in a province, which gives me +4 TPower, +50% TPower, +3 TValue and +25% TValue, in this Venice game. It would normally cost 375g + 40 MPP. Manufactories are 350g instead of 500g, and I have them in every province acquired before ca. 1800. (As an aside, if you're a merchant republic, you can really supercharge your trade income by conquering and building up coastal provinces, letting the inland owners benefit from the 80-90% production bonus, then scooping up the lion's share with the 15+ merchants you'll be running.)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yeah I know the shake. Just because I didn't make 1.3k from trade as Aztec doesn't mean the economic + quantity combo (which I had) didn't contribute enormously to income. I ran a lot of trader advisors and got mercantilism to ~100% bonus to provincial (it's pretty hard to get the full 200% without being Genoa or running low RT, which I didn't feel like doing). Even without bothering to grab all the annoying islands in the Caribbean, I had 1000's of power there by end game and even without light ships it was pure lockdown there (though I had light ships in good #'s along with 70+ heavies). If you keep the trade value on manufactories, they're great.

The provincial power stacked with trade ideas + mercantilism is really strong even if you aren't MR, but MR makes it better. Econ/quantity can also jack up your manpower and force limit an impressive amount if you're willing to dig that far into it (and quantity scales well off the manpower buildings).

I've never tried an interest minimization strategy because the benefits seem like they would be relatively short lived. The problem with loans isn't primarily the interest, it's the inflation--though I suppose you'd be maximizing inflation reduction too. I guess I see the appeal, but I don't know how well it would scale up. You should give it a go.

The problem in my mind is even with quantity monarch points would bottleneck you, but I suspect the money returns would allow you to go nuts all the same. It's hard to slot in 2 admin idea groups *and* 2 diplo groups (exploration to westernize ASAP, trade to benefit from the buildings more) so early though, and even with the Hindu --> Sikh switch then back for 5% missionary strength from decisions having only 1 missionary kind of sucks.

Compared to just teching up, fleecing AI for money while expanding and stacking military ideas, I'm not sure. For example I wasn't as filthy rich as my Aztec game or especially your game with Venice when I did a Georgia run where I stacked 4 military ideas with military NF at the start, but by the early 1600's range we're still talking +3 advisors and gobs of troops, and those troops with offensive/aristocratic/quantity/defensive hit hard. If money put more pressure I'd be more inclined to bother going that route.

 

[Outrider]

It was due to the manufactory spam that did it and that screenshot reveals the production income is higher than trade and taxes by a lot.

Barely higher than taxes, and not particularly impressive. Farm manufactures tend to be a poor investment now, as supply of grain often routinely (at least in my games) is double that of demand, dropping the value of grain under one ducat. You're spending a ton of cash/mp for negligible value. Better of spending the ducats/mp on the government building line.

It is 50 or 100 years after you take economics where you will notice massive spikes in your income compared to similar games with similar amounts of base tax and where you did not take it.

And this is the entire problem with your logic, zero accounting for opportunity cost.

For example, if instead you took exploration and played games to get to the Mali gold, it wouldn't even take 50 years to start pulling in 50+ monthly gold income, which can be used for stacking on more income.

A 2nd ADM idea could be (depending on what you already chose) Religious, Administrative, Expansion, all of which allow you to rapidly increase you BT.

Compound interest is a hell of a drug.

Exactly. And I'll take compound interest at a 5% rate over compound interest at a 2% rate.

 

[unillogical]

I think what we can all take from this and agree on is that paradox needs to nerf Ulm.

 

[Tijean]

Novgorod is a really insterresting country to play. When you manage to kick mucovite butt you gain a direct access to asia. This way you can recruit mercenary in Asia and gain a good income from trade.

I also play as Genoa, but it was a bit too hard. My manpower and army limit was too low since i add least then 10 province in Europe but a huge empire in Afrika and Asia. My strategie was to take some province and force everything else into protectorate. Was fun, but was too complicated to form a mercenary army in europe to fight in asia.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Novgorod is a really insterresting country to play. When you manage to kick mucovite butt you gain a direct access to asia. This way you can recruit mercenary in Asia and gain a good income from trade.

I also play as Genoa, but it was a bit too hard. My manpower and army limit was too low since i add least then 10 province in Europe but a huge empire in Afrika and Asia. My strategie was to take some province and force everything else into protectorate. Was fun, but was too complicated to form a mercenary army in europe to fight in asia.

Just as Novgorod can spank the North, Venice can, if you jump the Ottomans at sea while they can't get across the strait, stranglehold the Constantinople + Alexandria nodes and those that feed into them.

Genoa's low manpower if you limit expansion in Europe leaves you to make almost all of your regulars cannons, and just merc the front line. Administrative and plutocratic are useful there, not just for the usual things but to double your merc pool and boost up force limit a bit. Genoa has the easiest access to mercantilism in the game at least, and excessively inexpensive naval power.

 

[Ferrous Will]

guise i found another exploit!, i was losing monee you see, and then i cut my military maintenance and then i was, like, making monee again! that's like an infinity % of increase !!11!one!!!1!!eleven!!

 

[Zardnaar]

guise i found another exploit!, i was losing monee you see, and then i cut my military maintenance and then i was, like, making monee again! that's like an infinity % of increase !!11!one!!!1!!eleven!!

Damn I never knew that one.

 

[zodium]

Just as Novgorod can spank the North, Venice can, if you jump the Ottomans at sea while they can't get across the strait, stranglehold the Constantinople + Alexandria nodes and those that feed into them.

Genoa's low manpower if you limit expansion in Europe leaves you to make almost all of your regulars cannons, and just merc the front line. Administrative and plutocratic are useful there, not just for the usual things but to double your merc pool and boost up force limit a bit. Genoa has the easiest access to mercantilism in the game at least, and excessively inexpensive naval power.

This is almost certainly an artifact of me only playing SP, but I almost always fill the front line with all/nearly all mercs unless I have 200k+ manpower. It's not more cost effective, but it saves the trouble of managing attrition almost completely and leads to a neat trick. (I do keep one organic stack, usually.)

When the enemy is beaten, I can take all the merc infantry (usually 4x32) and combine them into a huge siege assault stack. Fun fact: if you have (5x fort level) worth of infantry and a 5/5 or better general, you can assault forts with essentially no losses. Sieging France down takes about a year, regardless of fort level.

 

[DDRJake]

The real tragedy in this thread is that Zardnaar uses Photobucket.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is almost certainly an artifact of me only playing SP, but I almost always fill the front line with all/nearly all mercs unless I have 200k+ manpower. It's not more cost effective, but it saves the trouble of managing attrition almost completely and leads to a neat trick. (I do keep one organic stack, usually.)

When the enemy is beaten, I can take all the merc infantry (usually 4x32) and combine them into a huge siege assault stack. Fun fact: if you have (5x fort level) worth of infantry and a 5/5 or better general, you can assault forts with essentially no losses. Sieging France down takes about a year, regardless of fort level.

This is the first time I've ever seen that general stats in fire/shock influence the ability to assault forts. I'll try to remember to test this when I get home; it's easy enough to test via console commands in a few minutes to give myself 100 tradition + max milpoints to roll an elite general, then compare assaults.

I don't find myself having that kind of money so early in the game in most cases, preferring better advisors sooner, though I certainly work in mercs. It just feels a bit stronger overall to use at least some of the manpower pool (barring situations like the afore mentioned 20k manpower Genoa with a FL of 60+ or something of course, where mercs are life).

Now that I know how to get all CNs that have a colonist to consistently use it I will probably be relying on mercs even more often.

 

[Outrider]

Now that I know how to get all CNs that have a colonist to consistently use it I will probably be relying on mercs even more often.

Which was to subsidize them 10 ducats until they started a colony and then cancel the subsidy?