estates

[Virupaksha]

just bought Cossacks dlc.

like the diplo system very much but not sure how to go about managing estates. assuming a blobbing game it seems like centres of trade should be given to bourgeoisie and new territorial cores to the other estates. does anyone have more sophisticated take on it.

 

[Richard-monagha]

Check out this reddit forum, The first poster to reply gives a lot of details on them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/5761bk/how_to_estates/

 

[Kergan]

Missing from that tutorial are:

1. Raising that you get more monarch points the higher the influence. Particularly if influence hits 70%.
2. Raising that it's very useful to re-assign land: as your empire grows in size, and loyalty permitting, remove land from Estates and give them newly conquered land, so as to work around high autonomy.
3. A warning about Estate-related events when influence reaches 70%.

To illustrate the latter point: The Social mobility event can kick in if Burghers have 70% influence, and let you pick between +10% influence for Burghers (putting you in disaster territory) and -20% loyalty for Nobles and Clergy; or -10% Burgher influence, -20% Burgher loyalty, -15% army and navy tradition, and -75 admin points.

Point being, there are two ways to deal with Estates:

1. Keep them happy and mostly ignore them unless you need an advisor or some quick monarch points.
2. Actively micromanage them so as to milk 100+ monarch points from each every 20 years.

The first approach is simpler and carries very little risk: basically assign (or re-assign) land as relevant. Recruit advisors etc. from time to time. And grab monarch points (and ducats) when the situation allows it (that is, 60+% loyalty). The second approach requires much more regular monitoring of what's going on.

Lastly, be wary that there's a bug in the interface, whereby an estate's influence advertised in the Estates menu (or in Estate events) reflects what it was at the beginning of the month rather than what it currently is. An event may therefor give the impression you're about to take a good decision that turns out to be terrible when the Influence is higher or lower than it actually is. To play it safe, pause and double check the Estate menu before picking any event-related option that will increase an Estate's influence, and work out the total manually, else you may find yourself in 70% influence territory.

 

[PhoenixG]

The threshold for getting better stuff is, 25%/50%/75%/100% influence. For Mornach points you'll get 50/100/150/200. Till 75% influence is safe to get without screwing your estate to much. But like Kergan said, you'll get "bad" events if your influence is higher than 70%.

While most of the time the events aren't bad, it's just often it will push you over the 80% influence that starts the ticking of the estates disasters. So you need to check if there is an modifier that will disapear before the disaster hit 100%. But you can always remove land before that.

 

[Palatinus Germanicus]

Give them land to reach the desired level of influence, then extort them. That way you can peel the land away from them over time, loyalty permitting. Conversely, if you just use ministers, etc. to get them up to 75% you may find you're stuck there, and have no flexibility. Then a random event raises it to 85%, and you've got a problem.

I'm constantly doing this. If my estates aren't recovering back to 50% loyalty every month, I feel like I'm wasting a 'cool-down' mechanic that's in the game.

One of these days I'm gonna get those 200 points, though. It'll probably involve some temporary land grants, a soon-to-expire general/admiral modifier, along with some well-timed random event(s). You've still gotta be brave to go to 100 influence, though. I've only been to the mid-90s, and I was terrified.

 

[Virupaksha]

I kind of get the idea of using them for monarch points although mostly I've been running the cheap advisers. I'm more asking how to choose the land each estate is assigned. Seems like centres of trade go to bourgeoisie and newly stated land to clergy and nobility but is there particular land clergy and nobility should be assigned?

 

[Kergan]

Oh, that's fairly straightforward and entirely depends on the specific estate. 3 examples:

- Nobles allow to ignore autonomy for manpower and force limit contribution, and give a bonus to manpower. Assign high autonomy provinces with high manpower, or low value trade good provinces with high manpower. Also, consider assigning them to forts regardless of trade good value, because the higher the manpower the faster a fort replenishes, and loyal nobles give bonus defensiveness to boot.

- Clergy allow to ignore autonomy for taxes. Assign high autonomy provinces with a high tax base, or garbage land you don't intend to develop much (if at all), or e.g. provinces without forts and garbage trade good (grain and fish are the two worst). They also give -1 unrest, which is occasionally convenient to avoid a revolt.

- Burghers allow to ignore autonomy for production and trade power, and give a bonus to trade power. Assign to CoT or equivalent, and to high autonomy provinces with high production in high value trade goods.

The wiki has a full list of what each estate affects. If memory serves the in-game help (hover your mouse) has the gist of it too.

 

[rinehime]

One of these days I'm gonna get those 200 points, though. It'll probably involve some temporary land grants, a soon-to-expire general/admiral modifier, along with some well-timed random event(s).

An easy way to get the 200 MP is when culture-shifting. Time so you can get the points from the estates at the same time. As you unstate provinces, estate influence will go up. Claim the mana at 100 influence, then re-state provinces after shifting so that influence drops back below 80%. It's obviously not a net gain in MP, but if you're going to culture shift anyways, you might as well get a couple extra points out of it.

I kind of get the idea of using them for monarch points although mostly I've been running the cheap advisers. I'm more asking how to choose the land each estate is assigned. Seems like centres of trade go to bourgeoisie and newly stated land to clergy and nobility but is there particular land clergy and nobility should be assigned?

General rule is high autonomy (>25%) provinces go to the estates, trying to concentrate as much dev as possible for the correct category. So clergy get high tax, burghers get high production, nobles get high manpower. This is because the estate reduces autonomy for the matching category to zero. This also gives you the most benefit from the province modifiers (+tax/+goods prod./+manpower) as well. CoT's and higher-total development provinces should go to the Burghers as Trade power is determined by total dev, not just production.

If you have enough high-autonomy states, feel free to hand out more land than need - you'll make better use of your development this way. If all of your states are low-autonomy, then just give the estates the bare minimum, unless granting to increase loyalty/influence before getting the MP - try to balance it to get 150 mana/20 yrs. out of them, like @Palatinus Germanicus suggested. If you're between 50-60 influence and can't get the mana for awhile, you might was well revoke a few provinces if you can because you're just losing the loyalty anyway.

 

[Virupaksha]

Oh, that's fairly straightforward and entirely depends on the specific estate. 3 examples:

- Nobles allow to ignore autonomy for manpower and force limit contribution, and give a bonus to manpower. Assign high autonomy provinces with high manpower, or low value trade good provinces with high manpower. Also, consider assigning them to forts regardless of trade good value, because the higher the manpower the faster a fort replenishes, and loyal nobles give bonus defensiveness to boot.

- Clergy allow to ignore autonomy for taxes. Assign high autonomy provinces with a high tax base, or garbage land you don't intend to develop much (if at all), or e.g. provinces without forts and garbage trade good (grain and fish are the two worst). They also give -1 unrest, which is occasionally convenient to avoid a revolt.

- Burghers allow to ignore autonomy for production and trade power, and give a bonus to trade power. Assign to CoT or equivalent, and to high autonomy provinces with high production in high value trade goods.

The wiki has a full list of what each estate affects. If memory serves the in-game help (hover your mouse) has the gist of it too.

Thanks, this is very useful. Does assigning newly stated land affect the rate at which autonomy reduces or is it just that it won't reduce beyond 25%.

 

[rinehime]

Thanks, this is very useful. Does assigning newly stated land affect the rate at which autonomy reduces or is it just that it won't reduce beyond 25%.

No it doesn't affect the rate of decrease, but note that there are 2 autonomy values: a hidden (i.e. real) autonomy and the displayed (i.e. effective) autonomy. The displayed autonomy is limited by Estates or partial state /territorial core while the real autonomy can go below that value. Manually increasing or decreasing autonomy or having autonomy change by event will change both the real and effective autonomy.
When you assign land to a state, the real autonomy can drop below 25%, and you will see the real value when you unassign the estate.
This is why you wait to increase autonomy if you plan on stating a new province until after the core has been completed. If you increase before completing the core, the real autonomy will be set to 100% while if you wait until after you core it will be lower.