Emperor's estates

[Thucydides7]

Because I enjoy pre-Emperor estate play, I have not yet installed patch 1.30. However, I notice that players seem content with Emperor's estate play. Few players are complaining in the forum, at any rate.

Is Emperor's estate play better in your opinion? If so, why?

 

[TheSpider]

A lot better imo. If you don't want to min-max, you can basically just ignore them. but they have cut out all the micro of assigning estates to provinces, you miss the free 100-150 points you could milk from them - though that was very game-y and not very interesting - but that's been replaced by a host of new privileges you can grant them, giving you some neat modifiers like an extra monarch point each month, advisor cost reduction, extra morale when fighting heathens/heretics, extra diplo slots if you have 2 or more vassals etc. Of course, that comes at the price of crown land (low crown land gives certain maluses), and absolutism, which is a fair trade off. You can summon diets and gain rewards for completing estate agendas, usually they're just something like dev a province or construct a building, but sometimes you get a subjugation CB which is neat. Only negative is that it's harder to directly control their influence which can make completing certain missions a pain but all things considered, I consider the new system an improvement and I'm happy with it.

 

[FrogCrusher]

I already gave my thoughts here : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tates-are-quite-boring.1440709/#post-27081437
While the new system is not bad by itself, I miss the old one more often than the opposite.

 

[EarlKonrad]

There is an elephant in the room with the new estate system: Special Unit Build Limit.

Some estates, like the Cossacks, will allow you to build special regiments depending on their land share, and here in lies the issue; it is incredibly difficult to field any meaningful amount of special regiments that are tied to land share because it is exceedingly hard to give land to any one estate without all of them also getting land. Moreover, the scaling special regiments share is really small and will necessitate that you have a very large FL before you can field more than a handful. To make matters worse, some missions require you to have at least X regiments and these missions weren't updates to take into account how hard it is to recruit them now, meaning that these missions are exceedingly difficult.

 

[Nevars]

There are some issues like some privilege give bonus scaling with influence in exchange with something but the bonus is either really low so not worth it when low influence to just decent when influence is dangerously high so there is really no point to pick that privilege but imo it is a vast improvement from the old estates, I actually engage with it instead of just ignoring it entire game cuz too micro.

 

[Thucydides7]

I already gave my thoughts here : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...tates-are-quite-boring.1440709/#post-27081437
While the new system is not bad by itself, I miss the old one more often than the opposite.

Do Emperor and 1.30 compensate with other features that improve the game on balance in your opinion? If so, how, please?

 

[holyvigil]

Other than estate special forces only accounting for 10% of what you could recruit before the estates are better.

A lot better imo. If you don't want to min-max, you can basically just ignore them. but they have cut out all the micro of assigning estates to provinces, you miss the free 100-150 points you could milk from them - though that was very game-y and not very interesting - but that's been replaced by a host of new privileges you can grant them, giving you some neat modifiers like an extra monarch point each month, advisor cost reduction, extra morale when fighting heathens/heretics, extra diplo slots if you have 2 or more vassals etc. Of course, that comes at the price of crown land (low crown land gives certain maluses), and absolutism, which is a fair trade off. You can summon diets and gain rewards for completing estate agendas, usually they're just something like dev a province or construct a building, but sometimes you get a subjugation CB which is neat. Only negative is that it's harder to directly control their influence which can make completing certain missions a pain but all things considered, I consider the new system an improvement and I'm happy with it.

The 150 points has been converted into the extra 1 monarch point privilege. The cool down on the 150 equals the point generation of 1 monarch point per month to that cool down period.

So it's actually a net increase in monarch point generation if you don't pay attention the 150 cooldown and click it everytime the day it goes off cooldown.

 

[Vaximillian]

The cool down on the 150 equals the point generation of 1 monarch point per month to that cool down period.

150 points every 20 years equals 0.625 points per month, way less than 1 per month.
Even the extreme 200 points every years eqials 0.833 points per month, still less than 1.

New estate privileges are vastly superior to the old estate interactions point-wise.

 

[Blust]

New estates are more interesting and diverse in the bonus they can grant (and the bad events too)

 

[jdavis86]

They're an improvement for sure, but they could use some tweaks.

I wish they would remove all rebel spawn from estates completely. Just give us the penalties. Rebels are nothing more than a qol punishment for the player.

Losing crown land% on conquest is also no fun for the player.

 

[EarlKonrad]

New estates are more interesting and diverse in the bonus they can grant (and the bad events too)

Really? In my experience neither the old nor the new system offers diversity in choice. I always selected the same privileges and still do. The only difference now is that you have to think how many slots should go towards monopolies instead of other privileges. I don't see many choices with the new privilege systems.

 

[Quickmelty]

The new way to control your lands and not having to assign provinces constantly is a good thing imo, not really that boring because who really messed with estates that much pre 1.30 besides maintaining loyalty? The new system gives me the ability to semi-control the random events and take hits I couldn't otherwise take pre emperor DLC. (The one that makes you choose between two estates being the one I mostly am talking about here. ) And It allows you to gain lots of early mercantilism, among other buffs if you have lots of vassals that help with liberty desire. The church one is the most well designed IMO because they were always the most disloyal/influental in my games and are tied to lots of tax benefits that the early game needs to maintain an early game economy.

 

[Quickmelty]

They're an improvement for sure, but they could use some tweaks.

I wish they would remove all rebel spawn from estates completely. Just give us the penalties. Rebels are nothing more than a qol punishment for the player.

Losing crown land% on conquest is also no fun for the player.

This is why you always choose the centralization reform. Any new land you conquer will quickly revert back to you control and sometimes even seize even more than you anticipated because the centralization is more valuable than any of the other reforms unless you're playing someone who has to assimilate lots of cultures (austria)

 

[Thucydides7]

[W]ho really messed with estates that much pre 1.30 besides maintaining loyalty?

I did.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Do Emperor and 1.30 compensate with other features that improve the game on balance in your opinion? If so, how, please?

I do prefer 1.29 due to AI. And even 1.25 to says so. Beside AI, lots of things are different and it depends on the taste of each for the different mechanics: mercs system is different, governing capacity is new and you can build trade company everywhere. You have a thread on new merc system here : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-horrible-rework.1409427/page-2#post-26777466 I don't like it only because of the micro nightmare to use them with regular army (and the bug with different arrival day when attached is not yet solved despites what it is written in the patch notes) and the lost of possibility to carpet siege with them. Trade company everywhere is a real power creep due to the possibility to have quicky 2-3 additionnal merchants leading to an easier game (but you are not oblige top use them of course). And governing capacity are badly scale also, so for any decent player, it turns out you have either to spam town building everywhere or use all your reform points to increase the limit. For example, by not doing anything on the gov. capacity, you hit the ceil easily with France by 1500 and can't even full core all the current French frontier.

 

[makaramus]

they are super fun and allow you to do many diffrent things
Do you want to have a super military? Give estate control over army more for more tradition(same for venice but... yea its not as much valueable isnt it )
do you want a super goverment? Give estates rights that giving you more capacity
do you hate being limited by monarch points? Well then you can use them for more monarch point every month! Especially useful if you are a theocracy with little control over their ruler.

 

[Siddy00]

There is an elephant in the room with the new estate system: Special Unit Build Limit.

Some estates, like the Cossacks, will allow you to build special regiments depending on their land share, and here in lies the issue; it is incredibly difficult to field any meaningful amount of special regiments that are tied to land share because it is exceedingly hard to give land to any one estate without all of them also getting land. Moreover, the scaling special regiments share is really small and will necessitate that you have a very large FL before you can field more than a handful. To make matters worse, some missions require you to have at least X regiments and these missions weren't updates to take into account how hard it is to recruit them now, meaning that these missions are exceedingly difficult.

I recall having this issue with Mewar and the 20 Rajput regiments achievement. However (and completely by accident), I noticed a few days ago that, when you grant a privilege that lowers your crown land, all that crown land actually goes to that estate (instead of being distributed, e.g., when selling titles). I imagine that you can actually control it quite well, with the proper management. (You can also revoke a privilege and grant it again to grant that estate more land this way.)

For example, Mewar starts with 20% Rajput land. Establishing the Rajput regiments raises that to 25%, and a 12.5% special unit force limit. Granting Primacy of the Rajputs and Rajput Land Rights (or Enlist Purbias), and then revoking and regranting Primacy nets you 50% Rajput land share (25% special unit force limit) before unpausing (although it also lowers you to 19% crown land, but you get the idea ). Seize land to revoke land shares from all estates, then every once in a while revoke and regrant a privilege to the Rajputs to increase their land share; I suppose you could (eventually) get them to a 70% land share that way with the other 30% being crown land, or anything up to 100% if you don't mind the penalties.
This requires you to be careful about granting crown land privileges to other estates, but even if you do so, you can still reach those numbers. It'll just take more cycles of revoking land and refreshing privileges.

As for the Cossacks, they lack a 10% crown share privilege but they still have four 5% privileges to play with. It should be possible (in time) to field anywhere up to 50% of your force limit as cossack regiments (or up to 35% without suffering crown land penalties).
Edit: make that up to 100% of your force limit; I missed the second privilege doubling your cossacks force limit after you grant the first. Shame on me for never using them, I suppose

Mind you, I haven't actually played with this yet, so I don't know if this approach is practical I'll have to revisit Mewar (or something in the area) sometime soon to try it

 

[holyvigil]

150 points every 20 years equals 0.625 points per month, way less than 1 per month.
Even the extreme 200 points every years eqials 0.833 points per month, still less than 1.

New estate privileges are vastly superior to the old estate interactions point-wise.

Huh well never mind then about that.

Really? In my experience neither the old nor the new system offers diversity in choice. I always selected the same privileges and still do. The only difference now is that you have to think how many slots should go towards monopolies instead of other privileges. I don't see many choices with the new privilege systems.

There are more privileges than previously and the slot limit with the influence limit makes it a harder choice than before.

Sometimes I do the diplo relations limit. Sometimes I do the tradition sometimes I prefer pure loyalty. Sometimes I need governing capacity.

My major pet peeve with paradox updates though is that they don't expand systems they already have. I would love age objectives, special privileges, etc for an African or American nation. That's right an African or American nation with something special that would be nice.

 

[EarlKonrad]

There are more privileges than previously and the slot limit with the influence limit makes it a harder choice than before.

Sometimes I do the diplo relations limit. Sometimes I do the tradition sometimes I prefer pure loyalty. Sometimes I need governing capacity.

My major pet peeve with paradox updates though is that they don't expand systems they already have. I would love age objectives, special privileges, etc for an African or American nation. That's right an African or American nation with something special that would be nice.

Aside from tags that are forced to take privileges, I don't see how the four slot limit adds diversity. There are 2-3 privileges for each of the regular estates that are quite stronger than the other options and pretty much every single other privilege is situational. For example, governing capacity is situational and you can always get it from the estate whose privileges are less useful to you. On the other hand, I'd say that +1 ADM is one of the best, if not the best, privilege that you can get.

Welcome to PDX's model for expansions! The land where more and more systems are added via expansion and they don't communicate at all with one another! And as an added bonuses only a couple of tags that happen to existit near where the expansion is centered get to play with the new toys, never mind if they would work well with so and so tag that is half a container away or not!

In all seriousness, this is what I hate the most about EU4's continued support.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I wish there was a lot more ties between influence/land-controlled and privileges. Increased levies is nice, it slightly reduces tax income but gives more manpower, but if nobility is not present in the nation anymore it just becomes a needless -5 absolutism.
Interactions before Emperor were weird and didn't quite make sense, but if you wanted 200 points that meant pushing influence dangerously high, now you just give each one a privilege and then gradually reduce them into non existence and the points generation is even stronger.