Bug or bad rules for minor countries

[unmerged(17734)]

I tried to play EU2 with small countries like Serbia. When the game begins, the economy is already negative... If you want to play the game, then you need to ask for a loan of 200 gold. Inflation increase and the interest cost increases too! So you lose more and more money, even with a baillif in the few provinces you may have conquered. You earn nothing. Stablity decreases. You ask a plenty of loan, stabilty is going down, inflation is going up, and you stay at -3 stability with -30, -50, -70 gold each month... That means there is no way to play, and there is no fun. Of course it should be harder for minor countries but it becames ridiculous and absolutely not interresting to play. Please, do something to fix this, for any small countries, and let a way to escape from multiple bankruptcies !!!

 

[Cagliostro]

Your problem is almost certainly army maintenance.

Go to the helmet in the upper left corner of the screen and click on it. You will get an explanation of your military maintenance costs. Your army is almost certainly over your limit. Decrease it to your limit by disbanding some of your troops, and if you are at peace, lower the maintenance slider to 50%.

You will still have a good deal of economic problems (especially finding enough money to build TCs), but your economy shouldn't be in the negative to start out with.

Some other things you should do when starting the game:

1) Change your government sliders. They can be accessed by clicking on your shield in the upper left hand corner, and then clicking on your shield in the country description that pops up. You can change them once per decade.

2) Change your religious sliders. They can be accessed by clicking on your shield in the upper left hand corner, and then clicking on the religious symbol in the country description that pops up. In most cases you should try to maximize tolerance for the religions actually within your borders.

3) If you have enough money, upgrade bailiffs to tax collectors. If you don't, work on getting enough money to upgrade bailiffs to tax collectors.

4) Set your spending sliders. You probably want to focus on infrastructure, especially if you don't have the tech to build tax collectors.

 

[unmerged(17734)]

Thank you but...

Thank you very much for all your suggestion but I have no Income (something like 0.4 or 0.5 every month !) I built a baillif in every pronvince and nothing change. Production is almost 0, commerce (I send traders) is below 1.0), no Income at all !!! The only way I found is to take a loan but when I do it the cost for the loan go up I my treasure becomes negative immediately... the only way I found was to speed up de the game and wait 30-50 years to get a few bucks! (I changed governement policy, send traders, etc. nothing to do.) If you have a very small army you are destroyed very quick... so again you get a loan to build up an army and everything go worst and worst... I am sure the rules are not well balanced!

 

[wryun]

Simple rule for beginning... never take a loan, don't get in major wars.

You're playing Serbia; you can't expect to fight many wars. You should spend years saving money from census taxes (the end of year money), and pray for +50 or +100 ducat random events. Then when you have a good amount of money (to pay for more armies or nasty things happening) start a war with someone you can easily beat up (such as Bosnia...)

You can't just start the game in 1419 and expect to be able to declare war immediately.

 

[unmerged(15967)]

As Serbia the best way to get money by far is to raid Ragusa. They have 500 ducats starting money and are usually occupied building ships so they can't build any troops during the first few months of a war. After you have taken their province ask for their money (probably something like 400 ducats) and vassalization.

 

[unmerged(17734)]

Thanks you for the suggestions. I understand there is always a way to play a small country as Serbia. But the loan process is not very well balanced I believe, because when you asked for a loan, then you'll lose money during the game, and there is no way to go out of the crisis: you get a loan, loan cost increases charge, and the next year you'll be obliged to get a loan whatever you do (even with NO ARMY), this until bankruptcy; then the only thing you can do is to aks loans (or the computer do it for you!)... til bankruptcy... then stability is -3... bankruptcy again... then you always can ask for a few loans but it won't help (without any loan you will be destroyed or always under rebellions, and ANYWAY you lost money, whatever you do). So it's like a circle with no end. Just make a loan and the game is over. That's why I would call that a bug, because there is no way to avoid bankruptcy and to restablish a balance. Another "bug" (or problem with rules) is that sometines rebellions never come to a end... even with a good stability. Not very realistic and annoying.

 

[wryun]

I wouldn't see it as a terrible bug... it's just obvious that it's silly to take a loan when you can't afford the repayments, just like it would be silly to only spend your money on naval tech, etc. etc.

If you really really want to be able to take a loan as a small country (which is almost _never_ a good thing to do with the latest inflation reduction rules, and usually not a good thing to do even as a larger power), then you could always edit the savegame and add/change the line in the country definition which says loansize = 200 to loansize = 50.

And a 'bug' that rebellions never come to an end? You must have war exhaustion or many religions; again just part of the game.