Lesson VII: Uselessness and Futility
Thank you all for your encouraging comments!
Now, I would like to quote the wise words of just about every EU3 player ever. "Regency? REGENCY? I DO BELIEVE RAGE IS IN ORDER!"
Well, perhaps not exactly like that. The majority of the time I believe the quote is a single word which I cannot reproduce on these forums. As such, I came up with the slightly less humorous version you see above.
Now, as luck would have it (and I do mean bad luck) we just so happened to get a regency just as I quoted that.
If you weren't aware, being in a regency means that your king has died before your heir was 15, and thus a council of your country's greatest nobles has been assembled to rule the nation.
However, said nobles are all incredibly dull hippies, because you can't actually do just about anything with your government. Most importantly, you can't declare war! That's a lot like depriving a dihydrogen monoxide addict of his stash. They both end in irritation and death.
Actually, just irritation. Hopefully. But let's talk about how to get around this restriction. You can warn the country you want to fight, guarantee all their likely targets, or ally someone who's in a war with them. There's even an achievement for breaking this system! Good job on that, Paradox.
Regencies can be kind of annoying for smaller nations because it deprives you of your best and (likely) only general: your ruler. Small, peaceful nations like our Holland don't rack up army tradition and don't have the money to hire generals all the time. (Well, our nation has the money, but it's all in the grubby hands of the plutocrats)
Speaking of plutocrats, look at this fantastic offer!
The Hansa has requested us for salt trade rights. Although I don't think the League is worth their salt (haha.) it would give us a nice 66% increase in production efficiency. Whenever you get a window like this, it's a matter of math. A drop in trade income means a drop in production (production value is directly related to trade income), but an increase in efficiency would make up for that in this case. So I agree here.
Now, production efficiency (PE) is how much of your total production value you get out of a province. The "Price" thing in each province is your total production value, as that's how much your merchants are selling the stuff for. Efficiency is basically how much you can squeeze out of said merchants for the government. I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to represent when your PE goes over 100. I imagine all merchants are leprechauns that grow gold on their arms when you hit them and request (very nicely, I might add) their taxes.
A small exception to this is gold, which acts as if it has 100% efficiency all the time. However, it goes in its own category (gold income) so I guess it isn't an exception after all! Genius!
To follow is a detailed lesson on sliders.
Thank you all for your encouraging comments!
Now, I would like to quote the wise words of just about every EU3 player ever. "Regency? REGENCY? I DO BELIEVE RAGE IS IN ORDER!"
Well, perhaps not exactly like that. The majority of the time I believe the quote is a single word which I cannot reproduce on these forums. As such, I came up with the slightly less humorous version you see above.
Now, as luck would have it (and I do mean bad luck) we just so happened to get a regency just as I quoted that.
If you weren't aware, being in a regency means that your king has died before your heir was 15, and thus a council of your country's greatest nobles has been assembled to rule the nation.
However, said nobles are all incredibly dull hippies, because you can't actually do just about anything with your government. Most importantly, you can't declare war! That's a lot like depriving a dihydrogen monoxide addict of his stash. They both end in irritation and death.
Actually, just irritation. Hopefully. But let's talk about how to get around this restriction. You can warn the country you want to fight, guarantee all their likely targets, or ally someone who's in a war with them. There's even an achievement for breaking this system! Good job on that, Paradox.
Regencies can be kind of annoying for smaller nations because it deprives you of your best and (likely) only general: your ruler. Small, peaceful nations like our Holland don't rack up army tradition and don't have the money to hire generals all the time. (Well, our nation has the money, but it's all in the grubby hands of the plutocrats)
Speaking of plutocrats, look at this fantastic offer!
The Hansa has requested us for salt trade rights. Although I don't think the League is worth their salt (haha.) it would give us a nice 66% increase in production efficiency. Whenever you get a window like this, it's a matter of math. A drop in trade income means a drop in production (production value is directly related to trade income), but an increase in efficiency would make up for that in this case. So I agree here.
Now, production efficiency (PE) is how much of your total production value you get out of a province. The "Price" thing in each province is your total production value, as that's how much your merchants are selling the stuff for. Efficiency is basically how much you can squeeze out of said merchants for the government. I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to represent when your PE goes over 100. I imagine all merchants are leprechauns that grow gold on their arms when you hit them and request (very nicely, I might add) their taxes.
A small exception to this is gold, which acts as if it has 100% efficiency all the time. However, it goes in its own category (gold income) so I guess it isn't an exception after all! Genius!
To follow is a detailed lesson on sliders.