Announcing the Unofficial EU2 FAQ

[Chema_Cagi]

Here's the beta of the Unofficial Europa Universalis II FAQ

Currently it's only 17 questions long, but more will follow soon.

Please read the Disclaimer in it (it's one of the first questions). This is a sort of "lite" FAQ, mostly intended to novice players. In the disclaimer I refer everyone to these forums and the FAQ section of them as the ultimate reference

The FAQ it's mostly intended to novice and near-novice players, but I have included a sort of summary of tips for more advanced players (just below the Disclaimer question)

Over the next days I will add the same questions as they are in the spanish version of the FAQ, now with 34 questions, and over time it will have some 90 questions that I have on scratch, covering all aspects of the game


For discussions upon the FAQ content, I'll give the link to this same thread. I'm sure there are errors and debatable sentences

Enjoy, amigos

 

[Classique]

I really like the missionary description. Thanks for the great work!

 

[unmerged(1095)]

Very Good - this deserves to be stuck.

 

[Prince Eugene]

yes great for people like me who are too lazy to read all the long posts in the FAQ

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Having skimmed the FAQ, a few questions...

From the FAQ (How to slow down inflation)

Try to have more Trade Income (Merchants in Centers of Trade) than Production Income. Develop first your Trade technology (increase in Trade efficiency), then your Infrastructure (you'll have to get to level 5 to build Governors, remember. But this way you'll get more Trade than Production income while you develop till Infra 5)

Income is income. Whether I get it via production or trade, it adds to my monthly income the same way, and generates inflation the same way. The only difference is that the production percentage also counts for gold production. Is that what you mean? Probably not, since you handle gold separately.

By developing trade first, you effectively increase the time for you to gain infrastructure 5, thus increasing the time before you can begin limiting inflation. Developing trade first is in my experience only best if your capital is in Asia or America and you can gain a big 20/20 monopoly early.

If you are colonizing and doubt between Trading Posts or Colonies, TP are less "inflationary" because they only generate Trade income and almost no Production income. Anyway, Inflation should not be your main concern when deciding if you found a colony or a trading post

This completely baffles me.

A TP may or may not add to your income, depending on whether its trade goes to a CoT in which you have merchants, in which case it adds to your trade income.

A colony adds to your trade income the same way (but in a reduced amount), your production income (great!) and, once built up, your census taxes. The increase in production income will be greater than the loss in trade income, since you would likely only be getting 5/20 of the trade value.

Production income by itself does not generate inflation, so I must really have misunderstood your intention here.

Any extra monthly non-gold income is desirable since it reduces your inflation from gold.

Gold mine revenues ARE inflationary. If you plan to conquer some of those "golden empires" of America, wait until you are near Infrastructure level 5, before getting them all (get some of them in the meantime, though: even with Inflation rising, gold is not so bad)

A small note to the effect that gold-induced inflation is based on the proportion of gold-income to your total monthly income, and that it disappears when it is lower than a certain percentage of your total monthly income, would be in order here, which means that one can gradually absorb goldmines as one's nation expands, without gaining any inflation from it at all. This is just one of the reasons one should go for colonies rather than TPs unless money is short - it actually helps fight the gold-induced inflation.


As you can see, I don't quite agree with you Where did I misunderstand you, or where am I wrong?

It is a very good initiative, but I cannot help but feel that your advice would be better if I were capable of understanding it I certainly haven't noticed that production income is inflationary in any of my games until now

 

[Chema_Cagi]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen
Having skimmed the FAQ, a few questions...

From the FAQ (How to slow down inflation)


Income is income. Whether I get it via production or trade, it adds to my monthly income the same way, and generates inflation the same way. The only difference is that the production percentage also counts for gold production. Is that what you mean? Probably not, since you handle gold separately.

By developing trade first, you effectively increase the time for you to gain infrastructure 5, thus increasing the time before you can begin limiting inflation. Developing trade first is in my experience only best if your capital is in Asia or America and you can gain a big 20/20 monopoly early.


This completely baffles me.

A TP may or may not add to your income, depending on whether its trade goes to a CoT in which you have merchants, in which case it adds to your trade income.

A colony adds to your trade income the same way (but in a reduced amount), your production income (great!) and, once built up, your census taxes. The increase in production income will be greater than the loss in trade income, since you would likely only be getting 5/20 of the trade value.

Production income by itself does not generate inflation, so I must really have misunderstood your intention here.

Any extra monthly non-gold income is desirable since it reduces your inflation from gold.


A small note to the effect that gold-induced inflation is based on the proportion of gold-income to your total monthly income, and that it disappears when it is lower than a certain percentage of your total monthly income, would be in order here, which means that one can gradually absorb goldmines as one's nation expands, without gaining any inflation from it at all. This is just one of the reasons one should go for colonies rather than TPs unless money is short - it actually helps fight the gold-induced inflation.


As you can see, I don't quite agree with you Where did I misunderstand you, or where am I wrong?

It is a very good initiative, but I cannot help but feel that your advice would be better if I were capable of understanding it I certainly haven't noticed that production income is inflationary in any of my games until now

The answer is in the first paragraphs:


"First of all, don't panic!: consider the rise in Inflation as a normal part of your games. The matter is just to try to avoid it to skyrocket. By keeping your Treasury slider to the left and avoiding loans you'll keep it at a reasonable level in most cases.

As a rule of thumb, compare your increase in income with your inflation rise. If your income has increased proportionally more than your inflation, you are doing quite well

Anyway, you should be aware of all factors that increase your Inflation:"

Income is income, but Trade income reduces the increase in inflation. A forthcoming question is called "An example of inflation: Spain 1617". Apart from giving the difference in technology costs between having 35% inflation and having 0 inflation, by sending 18 merchants at once (gently provided by that dagama dude), the spectrum of possible inflation rise decreases from .43-1.43 to .36-1.36 (the expected inflation rise given by the treasury slider)

Production income adds to the inflation provided by gold when it's a significative part of the total income figure.

There will be a full question about the trading post/colony dilemma, but for now note that "...Inflation should not be your main concern when deciding if you found a colony or a trading post". For a player concerned with inflation, if all other factors deciding if TP or colony are even, maybe he should found a TP in the doubt

Anyway, you're right about adding an explanatory note about the addition of production income to gold income to increase inflation. It's in the original spanish version ("El efecto combinado de tener una proporción alta de ingresos por Oro y Producción hace que el ascenso de la Inflación sea mayor cuanto más a la derecha pones la barra del Tesoro. Los valores pueden cambiar de un mes a otro porque los ingresos por Comercio son muy variables", test your spanish ) but forgot to translate it in the english version. Will correct it tonight.

Thank you for the observations. When Peter Ebbesen says "in none of my games..." it means "in hundreds of skillful EU2 games"