I just feel that there are not enough ways to manage the Influence other than waiting for some kind of event. The penalty for revoking land seems a little to harsh imo.
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Estates feel like too much Micromanagement
- Thread starter Mztr44
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I just feel that there are not enough ways to manage the Influence other than waiting for some kind of event. The penalty for revoking land seems a little to harsh imo.
In my opinion yes, the estate system could use some fine-tuning and improvements to the UI but it's still very fun to use.
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Revoking lands from non core provinces shouldn't upset the rest of your country if the country is hertric/hethan and/or non accepted culture.
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Get rid of this nonsense of conquered lands keeping their estates already. Its nothing more than getting permanently disloyal factions or they take over your country or you can have fun never expanding waiting around for RNG events.
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Disloyal estates malus are not that important compared to the potential benefits they can give you. Also, since you can't get negative loyalty, once you reach 0% with an estate you can basically remove as much extra provinces of that estate as you want, the only repercussion seem to be a revolt (generally small and easy to handle).
Estates events are also be quite frequent so it should about 30-40 years max getting from 0% to 30% loyalty.
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Time has zero effect on the Loyalty/Influence stat. There are three ways to manage them and a few passive effects that come into play. One is by adding or removing provinces to/from an Estate which affects Loyalty/Influence by a 1/1.5 ratio respectively. So if the province you add raises Loyalty by 10, then it will raise Influence by 15, the opposite of course for removing the province. It also appears to scale in relation to your total development, so the larger you are, the less a single province affects the stat. Second is by events which seem to be on about a 5 year schedule (pulling this number out of my ass, it might be a 10 year schedule), not counting what I think are probably an added event choice for Theocracy/Monastic Order when you choose your heir. Third is by direct interaction with the estate which only affect the stats temporarily from 10 to 30 years depending on what sort of interaction you choose. Like you can buy 10 loyalty for ducats from the Clergy estate and the effect lasts 10 years. Or you can hire a level 3 Inquisitor at 50% maintenance and raise their influence by 10 for 30 years. Direct interactions can raise Loyalty or Influence or both, and some can lower loyalty, but NONE can lower Influence (at least in the Clergy/Nobility/Burghers).
I haven't checked the events files to compare them all, so the following may just be confirmation bias. It seems like there is a slight imbalance in the way Loyalty of the Burghers is gained in relation to the Nobility & Clergy. I've done 3 Burgher purges now (removed all their provinces) to help reset their Loyalty/Influence ratio and every time I have gotten them back up above 30 loyalty I get an event that essentially screws me over by either dropping their Loyalty by 15 and gaining Influence in the Clergy/Nobility, or losing 15 loyalty in both Clergy & Nobility but gaining 10 influence within the Burghers. It's a terrible catch-22 event and I may have gotten the bonuses slightly off but that is the gist of the choices, not to mention other things like losing army tradition/naval tradition or getting an advisor cost discount. The big issue with this, is that once their loyalty drops below 30, not only do you get a trade efficiency/development cost malus, but it raises unrest in any province they own by 10! So unless you own huge swaths of different culture lands to spread them around in, you're looking at separatist uprisings all over the place (or particularists if in your primary culture provinces). On top of that, the province also continues to suffer the 25% autonomy.
Almost forgot...the passive effects. With the Burghers for example, having a city with 30 or more development will passively increase their influence by an amount. There's another one for Hanseatic Influence (not sure what this means) which increases influence as well. Then it seems that trade income affects it, in my case, my low trade income is reducing their influence by 5, I can only assume that if I increase my trade income in relation to production/tax that it will increase their influence. Also, it seems owning a center of trade (doesn't appear to stack as I own Danzig/Stettin/Lubeck and the effect is only +5 influence) gives a passive effect as well. In regards to the Clergy, just by virtue of being a Theocracy/Monastic Order, they get 20 bonus influence over me, on top of the base of 20 influence (40 influence before taking provinces etc into account). Funnily enough, I haven't had a single problem with the Clergy trying to take over, I just adjust their province ownership if it gets too dangerously close to 80% influence and use my heir choice events to raise their loyalty whenever I need to top it off. Same thing with Nobility, even better in fact. I've had them at 100% loyalty and only a measly 45% influence for decades now and just keep pumping Mil MP from them at will with nary a sign of conflict coming from them.
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Yes thought about that too, but we´ll be vulnerable to a -2 stab hit from yet another stupid event ~called "deteriorating relations" . :/
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L0l except for the fact them keeping their land makes no sense at all. Formal rival merchants keep land as well non-cultural and heathen nobles who were once fighting your country. Yah bro it makes perfect sense for your people to rebel because you take land away from their former rivals. 10/10
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thanks, this is exactly the kind of post I was looking for!
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Honestly the only major problem is when estates demand territory but there is no valid territory to grant them.
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Except that local nobles and merchants keeping their privileges were historically the norm, not the exception.
0/10.
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I hate estates. They're extremely frustrating. I had 100% loyalty 70% influence on my merchants for a while, then their territory slipped from 20% to 19% and their loyalty dropped to 0% before I could notice. I was so angry when that happened. It was also ironman.
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I agree that it can be risky, but if you have some manpower/ducats to spare and some admin points just in case, it's definitively worth it.
Reducing the number of provinces an estate control also enable you to use some of the actions without the risk of going over 80% influence.
The system does require lots of micromanagement. It's a lot like the faction system only instead of nation-wide meddling, you're doing it on the provincial level. You get better bonuses out of it (considerably so) and it's far less restrictive than the Ming faction system (ugh), but it's still lots of micromanagement. I would much rather be able to set sliders representing their influence (with appropriate bonuses and maluses) than have to deal with figuring out whether or not I want clergy to help me convert that province, nobility to increase the defensiveness in that fort, or burghers because it's a center of trade. And then changing my mind and revoking who gets control of the province later is both very micro-intensive if you do lots of conquest and reeks too much of min-maxing.
But I'll say this: the system has done a wonderful job of encouraging me to take distant overseas land. Because you don't have to bother with estates in those provinces.
But I'll say this: the system has done a wonderful job of encouraging me to take distant overseas land. Because you don't have to bother with estates in those provinces.
No problem, that is pretty much everything i've been able to divine of how the estate mechanics work on a basic level. I'm just now beginning to make inroads into laying waste to Russia(going for Baltic Crusader), so I have yet to see what happens when I start taking Cossack and Boyar estate controlled provinces. I've given up on trying to play nice with the Burghers and completely removed them, was tired of dealing with the rebellions and I shouldn't need to take Humanism just to deal with them as the TO with 7 frickin TTF.
I perused the map to see how the AI is dealing with their estates and in most of the larger nations it seemed a good number of them are having issues with their Burghers as well, though again, could just be confirmation bias and it was a one time sampling and I haven't been observing them over time. Hungary has pretty much stalemated itself as far as expansion goes because it has both Nobility AND Burghers below 30% for over half a century now and it can barely keep tabs on the separatist rebels that spawn in it's Serbian/Bosnian/Bohemian provinces and has been in debt the entire time from replacing troops and the occasional defensive war it joins. France seems to be continually squashing particularists from it's Bourgeouise estates as well. Ottomans are doing fairly well with their multiple estates, except for the 0% loyalty Dhimmi which appear to be preventing them from converting the Balkans to Sunni. Russia is easy pickings, besides having fallen 3 mil techs behind and not chosen Expansion ideas, they have constant Clergy->Separatist issues which drain their manpower and make their 90k troops a paper tiger. They didn't even take Novgorod province until 1600's and Novgorod itself still exists.
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Yeah, in my experience AI tends to give a large proportion of their provinces to just one faction. Not much diversity (which makes keeping them on conquest even more frustrating) and it means the AI can struggle.
i had a few runs over the last couple of days, several didn't go so well largely due to learning how the estates system worked. there is a fairly steep learning curve with them but once you get used to them it becomes much easier to manipulate them.
people talk about keeping the estates small, in my successful games i tend to put estates in all my provinces, by constantly granting estates land i give them constant loyalty and influence increases, but the influence of each other estate drops when i award land to 1 estate whilst the loyalty doesn't, its all about balancing them off against each other.
but the LA i hear you cry, yes it does reduce my force limits some which sucks especially when you play with AI bonuses on
however if you plan ahead and specialise your provinces the right way you get 50% bonuses to trade in all your cots and estuaries and 50% bonus to man power in all your high military development provinces which is huge and doesn't even count the global trade, tax and manpower bonuses you get from having estates. i no longer have as much trouble maintaining my manpower as i did in the last few patches. by playing this way i get to use whichever of the estate abilities i feel i need as long as i don't overuse them and even swap provinces between estates occasionally to tidy up the crap placement of the ai estates.
one thing i would point out is that the burgher 60+ bonus isn't something you need all the time, its something to get when you want to spend points on development but don't need to bother with most of the time. the church one is quite good for some religions and not needed for others, +.5 or 1 papal influence is very nice, +25% church power is pretty meh. the nobility bonus is good if your poor but otherwise not necessary. so don't feel you need to go for 60+ loyalty all the time with all the estates as long as your over 30 its all good.
once an estate gets to 80 influence you have a disaster counter that ticks up at i think 1 per month which gives you just over 8 years to rectify the situation. you can also fix the situation in a number of ways that don't require tanking the factions loyalty. the easiest way if you are very close to 80 influence and you aren't too big yet is just increase the development in your capital, which isn't owned by an estate and doesn't have LA, a couple of points. as brandenburg i did that a couple of times to avert a disaster, you make the mp back from the bonuses from the estates and you get bonuses to development cost in your capital now. other ways include conquering land with a different or no estate or giving land with that estate away. and this is only if you don't get an influence drop by event or modifier expiring in the 8 or so years you have.
one big tweak i think would help a lot would be the ability to swap estates between 2 different provinces without any influence or loyalty penalty other than that caused by any difference in development between the 2 provinces. so for example you have just taken some land and there is a burgher estate in a high military province and a nobility estate in an estuary province you should be able to switch the nobles to the military province and the burghers to the estuary province and neither estate would suffer loyalty or influence changes unless one province had more development then 1 estate would lose loyalty and influence in proportion to the development they lost whilst the other estate would gain the same amount of both. that would let you plan where you put your estates more carefully without tanking the loyalty on your estates whilst still punishing just removing land from an estate.
for those that want to stay small and not conquer or expand slowly i imagine it should be relatively simple to maintain the balance with no sudden influxes of development with random estates from conquest you just set your estates where you want them and regulate influence through spending mp on development in the right places.
overall i think estates are exactly what the game needed, a peace time mechanic that requires frequent attention without being a mindless task. it also brings more depth to the game since its another factor you have to consider when you decide when and where to expand.
people talk about keeping the estates small, in my successful games i tend to put estates in all my provinces, by constantly granting estates land i give them constant loyalty and influence increases, but the influence of each other estate drops when i award land to 1 estate whilst the loyalty doesn't, its all about balancing them off against each other.
but the LA i hear you cry, yes it does reduce my force limits some which sucks especially when you play with AI bonuses on
however if you plan ahead and specialise your provinces the right way you get 50% bonuses to trade in all your cots and estuaries and 50% bonus to man power in all your high military development provinces which is huge and doesn't even count the global trade, tax and manpower bonuses you get from having estates. i no longer have as much trouble maintaining my manpower as i did in the last few patches. by playing this way i get to use whichever of the estate abilities i feel i need as long as i don't overuse them and even swap provinces between estates occasionally to tidy up the crap placement of the ai estates. one thing i would point out is that the burgher 60+ bonus isn't something you need all the time, its something to get when you want to spend points on development but don't need to bother with most of the time. the church one is quite good for some religions and not needed for others, +.5 or 1 papal influence is very nice, +25% church power is pretty meh. the nobility bonus is good if your poor but otherwise not necessary. so don't feel you need to go for 60+ loyalty all the time with all the estates as long as your over 30 its all good.
once an estate gets to 80 influence you have a disaster counter that ticks up at i think 1 per month which gives you just over 8 years to rectify the situation. you can also fix the situation in a number of ways that don't require tanking the factions loyalty. the easiest way if you are very close to 80 influence and you aren't too big yet is just increase the development in your capital, which isn't owned by an estate and doesn't have LA, a couple of points. as brandenburg i did that a couple of times to avert a disaster, you make the mp back from the bonuses from the estates and you get bonuses to development cost in your capital now. other ways include conquering land with a different or no estate or giving land with that estate away. and this is only if you don't get an influence drop by event or modifier expiring in the 8 or so years you have.
one big tweak i think would help a lot would be the ability to swap estates between 2 different provinces without any influence or loyalty penalty other than that caused by any difference in development between the 2 provinces. so for example you have just taken some land and there is a burgher estate in a high military province and a nobility estate in an estuary province you should be able to switch the nobles to the military province and the burghers to the estuary province and neither estate would suffer loyalty or influence changes unless one province had more development then 1 estate would lose loyalty and influence in proportion to the development they lost whilst the other estate would gain the same amount of both. that would let you plan where you put your estates more carefully without tanking the loyalty on your estates whilst still punishing just removing land from an estate.
for those that want to stay small and not conquer or expand slowly i imagine it should be relatively simple to maintain the balance with no sudden influxes of development with random estates from conquest you just set your estates where you want them and regulate influence through spending mp on development in the right places.
overall i think estates are exactly what the game needed, a peace time mechanic that requires frequent attention without being a mindless task. it also brings more depth to the game since its another factor you have to consider when you decide when and where to expand.
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I haven't noticed this happening. I would think that by completely denying my Burghers any land, that the influence of the Clergy and Nobility in my lands would have risen as well, but it hasn't. One thing I didn't mention in previous post though, is that there is a positive side to high influence. The higher the influence, the larger the bonus. Of course, if you live too close on the edge it only takes a single event to send you over 80%. I'll have to try messing around with raising development in my capital in another game. I don't remember noticing any significant shift when I started dumping excess MP into Konigsberg, and at 1k+ development, an extra point in my capital is a drop in the bucket.
Yah i totes remember the times when trade companies and merchants of the merchant republics lived peacefully. Oh wait. And what world did non-cultural nobles who fought you keep power? Yet people losing their minds revolting over people they don't even like who lose power is acceptable? Your argument is invalid. If anything the single province should gain revolt risk at best, not the entire faction.
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I'm just reading an interesting book about Prussian history and it pretty much says that one of the biggest challenges for the kingdom/nation was managing the local nobility in the areas it conquered or otherwise gained. The east Prussian nobles clung on to their rights and resisted centralization, the Polish nobility AND Catholic clergy in the Polish provinces were an issue for decades.
And of course your "own" nobles are going to be a bit upset because you're cracking down on "foreign" nobles. They know that they might well be next.
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