Conundrum, or I miss 1.07

[unmerged(20284)]

Stab depends on what country you play, how you play it, and where your DP sliders are. Ottoman Empire often takes a long time to recover Stab, due to poor provinces and religious turmoil. If you take a lot of different culture, non-core provinces, you can run into this problem, especially if you want to stay innovative. I would think that how many FAA you build would depend on who you're playing, and what you want to do with that country.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

Hey! It's not my fault that the Stuart kings refuse to convert Catholics even though the official state religion is Reformed.


Edit: It should be noted that the reason Stability cost is high is that the country just switched from Catholic (20/46 wrong religion provinces) to Reformed (34/50 wrong religion provinces). I'd convert the Catholic provinces, except for the fact that in about 45 years, James VII is going to be converting the State back to Catholicism; RP is a hinderance to "effective" play.


I opened an MP game I'm playing to see what the OE in that game has for income and stab costs; the income is roughly the same, the stab costs are slightly more than half as high (2750). It takes the OE in that case a full year to invest all monthly income for a +1 increase. Hardly the stab cost of 250 suggested by the example I was suggesting was unrealistic.

 

[Iasius]

The problem with your scenario, Iasius, is that it is unrealistic. If you have 100d a month in income, you likely have stab costs about 10 times as great.

I only accept stabcost/income ratios of above 6 for short durations unless I don't really plan on keeping stab up (Ottomans in thr 15th century for example).
Still, let's talk about your scenario with the stabcost/income ratio at an enormous 22.5:

Rerun your calculations assuming the following:

Monthly Income: 200d
Stability cost: 4500d
10 FAA's or 10 Refineries
Average Monarch (10d/mo stability investment)

You didn't provide a ratio of trade+tolls to the rest of the income so I'll assume 40% (you should get about that much when you could afford ten manufactories).
Let's say you want to recover 3 stab points per decade:

With 10 refineries:
You'll need to invest 13500 in stab. Your income is at 208 per month. Thus it takes about 65 months to raise stability by 3 points, you refineries have researched 3250. The next 55 months are spent researching resulting in a total of 17440.
With 10 FAAs:
You'll need to invest 12150 in stab. You FAAs make up 6000 of that. You'll need to invest in stab for about 31 months. The rest of the 89 months is spent researching for a total of 17800.


So yeah, if you run up such enormous stabcosts and you need to increase your stab by three points per decade you'll research about 2% faster with FAAs than with refineries.


Suppose a more normal ratio of 10 to 1 like you also suggested (I'll decrease your stabcost to 2000 for this):

With 10 refineries:
You'll need to invest 6000 in stab. Your income is at 208 per month. Thus it takes about 29 months to raise stability by 3 points, you refineries have researched 1450. The next 91 months are spent researching resulting in a total of 24928..
With 10 FAAs:
You'll need to invest 5400 in stab. You FAAs make up 5400 of that (600 might be wasted if you've reached +3). You research 120 months with 200 income for a total of 24000.

See how the picture changes even with a 10:1 ratio?

(yeah I'm ignoring the monarch, it won't make much of a difference anyway except for making FAAs look worse in the last example).

 

[unmerged(6147)]

You FAAs make up 6000 of that.

Trying to follow you math Iasius, the only thing I don't get is this quote. 10 FAAs generate 600d per year. If you reach stab 3 faster than 10 years they net less than 6000d. It appears they reach stab +3 faster than that. But you perhaps presupposed that we went from e.g. -1 to +2. But I still wonder about the calculus.

 

[Iasius]

Yes, if you reach +3 your FAAs are partially wasted. This will eventually happen in the 10:1 ratio scenario since your FAAs generate more stability than 3 stab hits per decade cost.
In the first scenario you shouldn't invest 100% in stab until you've reached +3 of course. You need to figure out the appropriate level and time of stab investment yourself.


Other things you have to factor in that make FAAs less appealing:
- There might be more provinces where refineries get you the full 12 per year bonus i your possession (though no with Russia probably).
- A 10% higher TE will increase your merchants effectiveness at competing.
- You might get less than 3 stab hits in a decade, this might waste even more of that FAA bonus.

 

[unmerged(20284)]

Remembering the other effect of low stab (morale, RR, production, trade), I would tend to favor the FAA for a country with high stab cost. It's hard to come up with a formula that reflects reality, taking into account production and trade cost of lower stab, and factoring in risk and opportunity cost. For example, I might be more reluctant to take on a war for some decent wrong religion provinces if doing so will inflict a stab hit and risk angering a strong neighbor. In my opinion, the importance of stability is rarely overrated.

 

[Iasius]

My examples will not lead to a higher stability with FAAs. That's the whole point of investing your refinery-enhanced income into stability.

You can reach a higher stab level faster with FAAs by investing your income into stability at the same time. With the 10:1 example and supposing you start out at 0 stab you could potentially reach stab +3 after 21.6 months. You can reach stab +3 starting at 0 with refineries after 29 months (while your refineries put 1450 into research). That is a 7 month difference at the cost of your FAAs being useless for the entire time you'll remain at +3 and 1450 of research.

I'd say if you're going to stay with a ratio of above 20:1 for most of the game you'll want FAAs instead of refineries. Why you would want that is another question as you can see above it slows down your research by about 25% compared to a 10:1 ratio. AND I think you might want to start looking into goods manufacturies and just stay at -3.

 

[unmerged(29041)]

If I follow you correctly, the only sensible alternative to FAAs is to invest fully in stability whenever you take a hit. Right?

Yet the only part of your research that does not suffer those diversions of funds is the part where you have enough manus for it, which is usually (until late game) only trade.

 

[Iasius]

The way I see it there are four basic options regarding stability.
1) Stay at -2 or -3 at all times, kiss trade income goodbye. Build goods, naval or weapons manus as they become available.
2) Build large numbers of FAAs to increase stab.
3) Build relatively few FAAs and invest in stab as well.
4) Invest your income into stability, add whatever manufactory type you feel like though I think refineries provide the best return on investment.

If I am playing countries like Muscovy or OE I'll go for option 1 in the 15th and early 16th century while I'm conquering huge amounts of wrong religion provinces and generally am a bad boy. I'll switch to 4 once I converted enough provinces to make investing in stab worthwhile. I usually have to wait for my BB to cool down anyway so I'm not much into warmongering for the next decades. Instead I often colonize, build manus, diploannex and especially tech like mad.
This means I have a period of decades with a relatively low number of stab hits. I don't need FAAs, I need manus for research and trade.
When 1700 comes around and I've maxed trade tech I'll have 5 merchants in every CoT and probably many monopolies as well, which means TE becomes really important as trade+tolls usually result in more than a thousand ducats per month. Now every 1% TE gives me 10+ ducats per month in income while my stab costs won't have increased as much as my trade revenue, yet again I prefer refineries over FAAs.

And that's why I don't get the appeal of FAAs. They're not useless of course, not by a long shot. I just find that refineries give me a higher ROI.

I have to say though that I almost always play European countries, China or the Timurids/Mughals or others might be different. I don't know.

Oh and I don't know anything about MP either.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

I'll add my figures for the year 1700. I also add my manpower pool and my income from census tax and manus.


Sta = Stability
Income = Monthly Tax+Prod+Trade+Gold
CTax = Yearly census tax (according to the ledger)
Manu = Yearly income from manufactories (according to the ledger)
No Prov = Number of provinces: cities, colonies, TPS
BB = BB points out of max allowed
IN = Inflation
PE = Production effiency
TE = Trade effiency
T% = Percent of world trade that I own
StaC = Stab cost
MPp = Manpower pool

Year  Sta Income                    CTax Manu   No Prov      BB    Tech       IN  PE  TE  T%  StaC   MPp    
1507  -2   21    6    2   0=   29d   114    0   20+ 1+0= 21  2/40   2- 2-3-3  20  29  38   2   500    70
1550  +3   38   10   36   0=   84d   160    0   28+ 1+0= 29  4/42   3- 2-4-3  18  37  58  14   600    92
1600  -1   64   22   85  13=  185d   ---    -   45+ 9+0= 54  1/46   6-11-4-5  31  36  61  22  1000   146
1650  +1  119   40  152  24=  335d   510   14   77+12+0= 89  1/48  11-13-7-5  34  40  85  24   800   171
1700  +3  362  153  347 160= 1024d  1090  102  195+10+0=205  3/53  15-14-8-8  38  68 118  35  1800   224

The reason behind the big expansion 1650-1700 is that during this period I annexed most of the pagans (Kongo and Zimbabwe left).

 

[DSYoungEsq]

What was the mix of manus in 1650, DanielA? I am assuming the current mix includes your 50 FAA's.

 

[Iasius]

The furthest savegame I have right now is the Teutonic Order game (vanilla, 1.08 latest beta) in 1636.

Year    Sta   Income              CTax    Manu       No Prov   BB     Tech        IN     PE    TE    T%    StaC     MPp
1636    +3    63   80  200  58    700     8/65tech   102       10.9   23-18-8-8    0     77    98    X     1946     220

Income and manufactory numbers are according to ledger for last year divided by 12 (and rounded). Tolls would be 90, tariffs 25, vassals 4 (add that to 'tax' income)
Oh and still 13 refineries, but I'm at 0% inflation so I'll start minting for new ones when I continue.

Doesn't surprise me that I'm ahead in tech considering your inflation (I never went above 8%).

 

[unmerged(6147)]

What was the mix of manus in 1650, DanielA? I am assuming the current mix includes your 50 FAA's.

But of course not. They will be constructed just before the BB wars, earlier than that would indeed be stupid, as you can see stab has not been a problem for me since the 16th century.

No, the 14d somehow stems from my impressing 1 FAA and 1 refinery. One can wonder why it was 14d. But that is what it said in the ledger.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

But of course not. They will be constructed just before the BB wars, earlier than would be indeed stupid, as you can see stab has not been any problem for me since the 16th century.

No the 14d somehow stems from my impressing 1 FAA and 1 refinery. One can wonder why it was 14d. But that what it said in the ledger.

My apologies. I thought you were listing the number of manus, not the income from them.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

My apologies. I thought you were listing the number of manus, not the income from them.

No offense!

I can imagine why you interpreted it like that - its almost inconceivable that an experienced player as myself has only 2 manus in the middle of the 17th century, isn't it?

But as I said before: I got 7 out of 8 burned within a 100 years in a previous game where I sacrificed about 10% inflation in the 15th century to build them (an inflation I never got rid of for the rest of the game). After that I am now more cautious and are even more conservative than before: earlier I started massproducing refineries when I reached INFRA 5 and had my governors in place but now I chose to invest that money elsewhere. That is one of the reasons I hope to see stats from my fellow players. Instead of having to replay the game myself with another strategy I can see how their strategy works.

I want more stats!

Although I know I am a loser when I see that everyone of them seem to have 0% inflation and still appear to expand as I do.

I wonder if we should have one more column

"Inflation from events - plus and minus".

 

[unmerged(6147)]

The furthest savegame I have right now is the Teutonic Order game (vanilla, 1.08 latest beta) in 1636.

Year    Sta   Income              CTax    Manu       No Prov   BB     Tech        IN     PE    TE    T%    StaC     MPp
1636    +3    63   80  200  58    700     8/65tech   102       10.9   23-18-8-8    0     77    98    X     1946     220

Hey, this is a Russian thread

Still, it was interesting to see your figures. Impressing ones. Especially the 109 provinces with a BB of only 10. How did you do that? Are you at ARISTO 10? Have you already been able to capture some pagans? Did you sack Madrid or Tago or did you get an early explorer? Or have you reached the Siberian corridor? As Russia you get a lot of cores so expansion in Europe and in the Steppes is much easier from a BB point of view.

 

[Iasius]

I was at Aristo 10 for the entire game. In Europe I expanded mostly by diploannexing Sweden and Denmark. I started colonizing early on as Spain and Portugal were stupid enough to enter an alliance with Denmark just as I reached land 9. That's the main reason for the province number: colonies, trading posts and Aztecs/Maya/Zimbabwe.

And Russia stats are coming from me soon, I started a Novgorod game today.

 

[unmerged(6147)]

And Russia stats are coming from me soon, I started a Novgorod game today.

Ah, very nice. Then you can compare with me more directly. Are you playing latest beta and vanilla?

 

[unmerged(25696)]

Year 1600 (I just stopped).

Techs : land 9 (30% completion, scheduled 1619 without investing, siw months if investing), naval 5 (40%, scheduled 1661, 10 months if investing), trade 7 (2%, 1656 withoug investing but 8 refineries, 6 1/2 years if investing), infra 6 (40%, 1602 at the current 75% investment rate, first goods manu under construction in Chesapeake).

6% inflation.
Last year's income : 6973d (615d census, 258d gold, 114d manus, 636d taxation, 1132d production, 1104d tolls, 2995d trade - 31.2% world trade and still rising -, 117d trade tariffs).
Stability +2 ; MP pool 185 (and full), maintenance 488k land, 460 ships.
109 cities and colonial cities, 4 colonies. 9 wrong-religion under conversion (mongols only, all pagans).
PE 84% (first, second is England 58%, but only Anglia and two colonial cities ), TE 95% (first, second is Provence at 63%).
StabCost 3508, 8 FAAs.
BB 4.3/46.
DP sliders : ARISTOCRACY 6, CENTRALIZATION 10, INNOVATIVE 1, MERCANTILISM 3, OFFENSIVE 8, LAND 10, QUALITY 10, SERFDOM 0.
Alliance with Corfu (not alliance leader, but simply out of convenience, I don't need any ally).

I bless the name of Koltsov-Mosalski : he's explored all southern NA, up to Alaska on the west coast, and is exploring the Great Lakes and south of them. Yes, I got extensive maps of the seas and some provinces through a war against Mecklemburg (in which I gained a colony in Chesapeake). And so, the Czar Fedor, with the advice of his counsellor Boris Godunov, changed the general orientation of the country. His successor (the same Boris Godunov) continues his work.
In game terms, I've decided to go plutocratic/naval (starting with an help of an event, -2 ARISTO), as I've depicted Godunov as a merchant of the coastal provinces.
The americans will be russian. :rofl:

 

[unmerged(6147)]

I am up to 1775 now, I'll post my numbers for 1750 as well as the old ones.

BTW, I am still missing stats from Norre, Notomol, Strip and BBD. And Fodoron, haven't heard from you for some days now.

Sta = Stability
Income = Monthly Tax+Prod+Trade+Gold
CTax = Yearly census tax (according to the ledger)
Manu = Yearly income from manufactories (according to the ledger)
No Prov = Number of provinces: cities, colonies, TPS
BB = BB points out of max allowed
IN = Inflation
PE = Production effiency
TE = Trade effiency
T% = Percent of world trade that I own
StaC = Stab cost
MPp = Manpower pool

Year  Sta Income                    CTax Manu   No Prov      BB    Tech         IN  PE  TE  T%  StaC  MPp    
1507  -2   21    6    2   0=   29d   114    0   20+ 1+0= 21  2/40   2- 2- 3- 3  20  29  38   2   500   70
1550  +3   38   10   36   0=   84d   160    0   28+ 1+0= 29  4/42   3- 2- 4- 3  18  37  58  14   600   92
1600  -1   64   22   85  13=  185d   ---    -   45+ 9+0= 54  1/46   6-11- 4- 5  31  36  61  22  1000  146
1650  +1  119   40  152  24=  335d   510   14   77+12+0= 89  1/48  11-13- 7- 5  34  40  85  24   800  171
1700  +3  362  153  347 160= 1024d  1090  102  195+10+0=205  3/53  15-14- 8- 8  38  68 118  35  1800  224 
1750  +2  530  280  460 190= 1470d  1602  302  264+ 5+1=270  9/55  43-23- 9- 9  37  89 125  37  2200  476

Slower expansion now. Finished off all pagans and then the bane of 18th century trade is setting in, the trade embargoes.

I am presently in the process of vassalising the big Europeans. Which also means I will temporarily have the embargoes lifted. After that we will clean up some Asian matters and then the BB-wars

I am actually in 1777 just now and have had some bad events I did not know about. They mean I have to postpone my BB war start a few years. Now planned to be in 1787.

I just finished a 15 year period with 100% minting, not the least for my FAAs. Just built 29 FAAs (cost: 260,000d) for a total of 37. Hopefully some of my victims in the first round of the BB wars have built some more so that I will be close to the target of 50 FAAs.