How to not suck a** as a Republic in the Age of Absolutism: A guide

[DmUa]

Because gameplay considerations are what make valid choices. Admin Efficiency is an incredibly powerful tool with how EU4 is designed. Not taking it is going to severely negatively impact the viability of a choice unless the counter is incredibly good.

- you quoting me out of context. Dont do that. The whole debacle about republics sucking in the late game is caused by the fact that they have malus to Absolutism which means that they have malus to admin efficiency and discipline. Your and akngn solution is just to slap the same bonus that monarchies have on republics and call it a day. Its a solution, yes. But as a solution it sucks because it doesnt address current mindset of mindlessly stacking Absolutism. With it you just make republics the same as monarchies. This is the same if Blizzard would decided instead of balancing asymmetric Zergs and Terrans gameplay to just copypaste and reskin one of the factions to closely resemble other.

Unless Republics are given something that's very damn close to the power of the 40 AE, there is no real choice being added to the game. Just another in a very long list of false choices.

- hence why i wrote about scale having both bonuses and maluses inverted for opposites and even suggested to nerf admin efficiency gain from Absolutism? I said that whole current Absolutism system should be thrown in to the garbage bin and redone from scratch.

 

[Xdevo]

- you quoting me out of context. Dont do that. The whole debacle about republics sucking in the late game is caused by the fact that they have malus to Absolutism which means that they have malus to admin efficiency and discipline. Your and akngn solution is just to slap the same bonus that monarchies have on republics and call it a day. Its a solution, yes. But as a solution it sucks because it doesnt address current mindset of mindlessly stacking Absolutism. With it you just make republics the same as monarchies. This is the same if Blizzard would decided instead of balancing asymmetric Zergs and Terrans gameplay to just copypaste and reskin one of the factions to closely resemble other.

Its not "mindless" stacking of Absolutism. There's a *lot* of strategies that go into quickly getting absolutism (see: C&C with +10 Unrest from lowered autonomy, Grant -> Seize loop, etc). Its pretty obvious that a lot of thought has went into ways to gain it. Sweeping any strategy you don't like away as "mindless" is incredibly disingenuous.

Republics are already different than Monarchies in many, many ways. Having them both attempt to get one of ~30 resources is not going to make them the same.

- hence why i wrote about scale having both bonuses and maluses inverted for opposites and even suggested to nerf admin efficiency gain from Absolutism? I said that whole current Absolutism system should be thrown in to the garbage bin and redone from scratch.

Because there's next to no way to balance that without just nerfing absolutism into the ground. As shown by any of a very long list of terrible balance choices, the devs are either not aware or not concerned with the balance of things like Absolutism and Republics. I have absolutely no reason to believe that any rework of the system at this time will actually improve anything. I have a lot of reasons to believe that a rework at this time will turn out how "Idea Group Rework" or "Trade Company" last patches did; non-sensible changes that nerf weaker options, have secondary effects, and leave strong options intact. A simple reverting of a change is far more likely to actually improve the game than an ill advised look at something the devs have already clearly misunderstood the power of.

 

[Zqrfmb]

I'm just wondering why republics have to be as "good". Since when was this game considered to be fair?

 

[PhoenixG]

The administrative efficiency is certainly the most powerful, but it isn't totally necessary. You can finish a world conquest with less than 100 absolutism. I mean, we used to do it with 0 absolutism.

Well but before the absolutism is a thing. Getting admin eff from tech was doubled. Your admin eff at admin tech 27 was 60, compare to 30 now. Absolutism is a thing to bridge that gap. So you need to have 25 absolutism at admin tech 17, 50 at tech 23 and 75 tech 27 to break even.

 

[Dasmani]

Absolutism is a thing to bridge that gap. So you need to have 25 absolutism at admin tech 17, 50 at tech 23 and 75 tech 27 to break even.

Those are perfectly reasonable numbers to reach as a republic. But even before absolutism the tech 27 admin efficiency was not strictly necessary for a world conquest.

Anyway, my point was that 100 absolutism is a bonus, not a necessity. I'm not trying to convince anyone that administrative efficiency isn't the most powerful bonus in the game because it clearly is, but it does have diminishing returns on how useful it is from a strategic standpoint, so I don't think republics are as bad as everyone says they are.

 

[Dasmani]

Unless Republics are given something that's very damn close to the power of the 40 AE, there is no real choice being added to the game. Just another in a very long list of false choices.

The administrative efficiency is incredibly powerful but not always necessary. For a lot of games, I'd rather have a republic.

 

[akngn]

Anyway, my point was that 100 absolutism is a bonus, not a necessity. I'm not trying to convince anyone that administrative efficiency isn't the most powerful bonus in the game because it clearly is, but it does have diminishing returns on how useful it is from a strategic standpoint, so I don't think republics are as bad as everyone says they are.

Absolutism or to be more specific Admin Efficiency does not have diminishing returns. More you have better it gets. It is hardcapped at 100 absolutism but it does not change the fact. Though I am not sure what do you mean by strategic standpoint.

 

[dynalon]

Anyway, my point was that 100 absolutism is a bonus, not a necessity. I'm not trying to convince anyone that administrative efficiency isn't the most powerful bonus in the game because it clearly is, but it does have diminishing returns on how useful it is from a strategic standpoint, so I don't think republics are as bad as everyone says they are.

What do you mean by "diminishing returns"? I thought additional Admin Efficiency gains would be more impactful the more you already have, since the amount of land that you can take is essentially divided by (1-AE) - at 25% AE, you can take 133% (because 1.33*0.75 = 1); at 50% you can take double (2*0.5 = 1); at 75% you can take quadruple (4*0.25 = 1).

Am I just misinformed about how AE works (completely possible) or do you mean something else?

 

[Dasmani]

Though I am not sure what do you mean by strategic standpoint.

From a strategic standpoint, what administrative efficiency does is remove or reduce three of the bottlenecks for conquest: Overextension, coring cost, and warscore cost of provinces. However, after a certain point, having more administrative efficiency to reduce these bottlenecks further does nothing to change your strategic situation. If you plan accordingly, those bottlenecks become effectively meaningless well before reaching 100 absolutism. It's the same sort of situation where, if you already make 67,000 ducats a month, making an extra 50,000 isn't going to do much more for you since at that point you're limited by things that can't be solved with more money.

Am I just misinformed about how AE works (completely possible) or do you mean something else?

It has diminishing returns from a strategic standpoint, not a mathematical standpoint. You are correct in your maths.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

I think that strategic standpoint of yours is influenced directly by how skilled you are in conquering clay. If your conquering speed is slow, then yeah you don't need as much absolutism.

 

[Dasmani]

If your conquering speed is slow, then yeah you don't need as much absolutism.

You have the cause and effect backwards, actually. Absolutism lets you conquer faster with no penalty, so if you don't need to conquer faster, or if you can overcome the penalties that absolutism reduces, then more absolutism won't help. If your conquering speed is slow, then absolutism will make it faster by letting you take more per truce timer. Unless you have trouble winning wars against the AI, but that's a different issue.

I've done at least a dozen world conquests at 90 or less absolutism with 30 years or more to spare. I could have done them with 70 absolutism.

In one of my first WC's after Dharma I actually reformed into a republic at the end because I didn't fully read up on government reforms and thought it would help me go revolutionary, so I finished with about 30ish absolutism.

Spoiler: So for anyone following this that's curious, here are the strategies to successfully complete a World Conquest, even with less than maximum absolutism:

1.) Truce Breaking and Timer resets:
One of the major appeals to administrative efficiency is that it reduces the war score cost of provinces, allowing you to take more in a single war. You can, therefore, overcome a relative shortage of administrative efficiency by declaring wars more often. If you have a big target that you want to conquer land from, one way to break them up quickly is to declare on them and take as much land as possible. When you do so, white peace a smaller ally as early in the war as you can. Then, when you peace out with the larger nation, you can declare on the smaller nation (or another nation that will draw your target into a war) and negotiate a white peace with your target, so that your truce time is reset to 5 years instead of however long the original truce was. This lets you take 2-3 100% peace deals in the same amount of time as waiting for a single 100% truce to expire.

2.) Client States, Overextension, and You:

The second advantage of administrative efficiency is reducing overextension, which has nasty events after 100%. Most vassals cannot accept territory that would cause them to be over extended. However, Client States are an exception. You can always add provinces to a client state. This allows you to compartmentalize all the negative effects into a relatively small region of development. Since things like rebel stack sizes are based on the development of the nation they spawn in, this drastically reduces the amount of rebels you need to fight, while also preventing you from suffering the negative economic effects of high overextension yourself. Diplomatic annexation is also doubly discounted: it is affected by modifiers to coring cost, including administrative efficiency, as well as by modifiers to diplomatic annexation cost, so it's very cost efficient, even if your diplomatic point generation isn't very high.

Going over the relationship limit for client states is a possibly beneficial trade-off as well. Each client state over the limit generates (at minimum) 3 administrative points per month for coring land at the cost of only a single diplomatic point, which is a button I think a lot of people would press.

3.) Coring costs, and establishing a power base Pre-absolutism:

So, cycling client states to transform diplomatic points into admin points is one way to reduce the number of points needed to core the world. However, if you look around at the world, a lot of it already has some cores on it. You can use these cores along with the heavily discounted diplomatic annexation costs to conquer a lot of territory at reduced AE and without suffering OE if you can conquer and release a vassal from a single core. This is especially useful if a large state like the Mamluks or Bohemia have been annexed by other big powers. Using subject farms, you can spread out the cost of coring the world over a longer portion of the campaign, with the earlier stages being paid for mainly in diplomatic power. This not only reduces the amount of development you need to core after the age of absolutism, but it also provides a power base that makes it possible to win wars quickly and more importantly fight on multiple fronts without a coalition.

However, since diplomatic annexation costs are affected by administrative efficiency, it can also be a good strategy to feed a lot of development to a few vassals and annex them after absolutism if you're taking land from a region that has a lot of small tags, like Central Germany, where you can't get a lot of cores by releasing and reconquest.

So, if you practice these three fundamental strategies, have a firm grasp of economic matters, and have a keen eye for diplomatic opportunities, you too can conquer the world and not suck as a republic.

 

[Xdevo]

You have the cause and effect backwards, actually. Absolutism lets you conquer faster with no penalty, so if you don't need to conquer faster, or if you can overcome the penalties that absolutism reduces, then more absolutism won't help. If your conquering speed is slow, then absolutism will make it faster by letting you take more per truce timer. Unless you have trouble winning wars against the AI, but that's a different issue.

I've done at least a dozen world conquests at 90 or less absolutism with 30 years or more to spare. I could have done them with 70 absolutism.

In one of my first WC's after Dharma I actually reformed into a republic at the end because I didn't fully read up on government reforms and thought it would help me go revolutionary, so I finished with about 30ish absolutism.

Spoiler: So for anyone following this that's curious, here are the strategies to successfully complete a World Conquest, even with less than maximum absolutism:

1.) Truce Breaking and Timer resets:
One of the major appeals to administrative efficiency is that it reduces the war score cost of provinces, allowing you to take more in a single war. You can, therefore, overcome a relative shortage of administrative efficiency by declaring wars more often. If you have a big target that you want to conquer land from, one way to break them up quickly is to declare on them and take as much land as possible. When you do so, white peace a smaller ally as early in the war as you can. Then, when you peace out with the larger nation, you can declare on the smaller nation (or another nation that will draw your target into a war) and negotiate a white peace with your target, so that your truce time is reset to 5 years instead of however long the original truce was. This lets you take 2-3 100% peace deals in the same amount of time as waiting for a single 100% truce to expire.

2.) Client States, Overextension, and You:

The second advantage of administrative efficiency is reducing overextension, which has nasty events after 100%. Most vassals cannot accept territory that would cause them to be over extended. However, Client States are an exception. You can always add provinces to a client state. This allows you to compartmentalize all the negative effects into a relatively small region of development. Since things like rebel stack sizes are based on the development of the nation they spawn in, this drastically reduces the amount of rebels you need to fight, while also preventing you from suffering the negative economic effects of high overextension yourself. Diplomatic annexation is also doubly discounted: it is affected by modifiers to coring cost, including administrative efficiency, as well as by modifiers to diplomatic annexation cost, so it's very cost efficient, even if your diplomatic point generation isn't very high.

Going over the relationship limit for client states is a possibly beneficial trade-off as well. Each client state over the limit generates (at minimum) 3 administrative points per month for coring land at the cost of only a single diplomatic point, which is a button I think a lot of people would press.

3.) Coring costs, and establishing a power base Pre-absolutism:

So, cycling client states to transform diplomatic points into admin points is one way to reduce the number of points needed to core the world. However, if you look around at the world, a lot of it already has some cores on it. You can use these cores along with the heavily discounted diplomatic annexation costs to conquer a lot of territory at reduced AE and without suffering OE if you can conquer and release a vassal from a single core. This is especially useful if a large state like the Mamluks or Bohemia have been annexed by other big powers. Using subject farms, you can spread out the cost of coring the world over a longer portion of the campaign, with the earlier stages being paid for mainly in diplomatic power. This not only reduces the amount of development you need to core after the age of absolutism, but it also provides a power base that makes it possible to win wars quickly and more importantly fight on multiple fronts without a coalition.

However, since diplomatic annexation costs are affected by administrative efficiency, it can also be a good strategy to feed a lot of development to a few vassals and annex them after absolutism if you're taking land from a region that has a lot of small tags, like Central Germany, where you can't get a lot of cores by releasing and reconquest.

So, if you practice these three fundamental strategies, have a firm grasp of economic matters, and have a keen eye for diplomatic opportunities, you too can conquer the world and not suck as a republic.

Every single one of the things you mentioned is improved greatly by having Administrative Efficiency, and none of them are actually replacements for Administrative Efficiency. You've sort of demonstrated that the game isn't "hard" enough that you cannot WC without Absolutism or Admin Efficiency; which I'm pretty sure the pre-1600 WCs have demonstrated pretty clearly; but not that its not strategically the best choice. There's nothing that the game can give you (except Core Creation Cost I guess) that would be better than Admin Efficiency at that point anyway. Republics getting extra morale or monarch points (ish) isn't going to compare to the ability to spend less monarch points on the only thing that will matter by the time you have access to it, so its going to be better to just switch govt to get it anyway.
Because Admin Efficiency has multiple effects that impact multiple things, the only bottleneck you won't actually improve with more Absolutism is the actual time to siege. Taking more land per Truce (even with truce timer changes, you're still able to take more and reset); Having less OE per Development; Annexing Vassals for Cheaper; Requiring less land Occupied to get a decent sized peace deal; etc. Unless you're consistently getting to the point where the actual input or time to win a war is your bottleneck, Absolutism will absolutely help you finish a WC more than essentially other modifier in the game will. If you are getting to that point consistently, chances are you're already WCing before Absolutism.

 

[Zephyrum]

Besides; both get wrecked by Theocracies anyway who get no Absolutism penalty and get the 10% morale.

The administrative efficiency is certainly the most powerful, but it isn't totally necessary. You can finish a world conquest with less than 100 absolutism. I mean, we used to do it with 0 absolutism.

Back then, AdEff from tech was 60%, not just 30%. So we effectively used to do it with absolutism fluctuating from 0 to 75, as all nations, based solely on admin tech. You usually had the first 20% before the Age hits.

 

[bly08]

Not sure why it's relevant that WCs are possible with low absolutism. Absolutism is the most valuable modifier in the game and does not have diminishing returns. It should be stacked as high and as fast as possible. It's unfortunately that the choice is so obvious but that's the game.

 

[Dasmani]

Absolutism will absolutely help you finish a WC more than essentially other modifier in the game will.

I never disagreed with this. In fact, I plainly stated that Administrative efficiency is the most powerful modifier at least twice. I'm not arguing that administrative efficiency isn't helpful. Administrative efficiency is great, alright?

But it isn't needed.

This thread started out with the premise that republics are bad because they have a lower absolutism cap.

But republics aren't any less capable of finishing a world conquest.

You can finish a WC with the absolutism penalty from republics.

So the strategies I mentioned aren't meant to replace administrative efficiency, they're just strategies that allow the player to finish a world conquest with less admin efficiency.

Yes, I understand that every one of those would be better with administrative efficiency, but that's not the point.

The possibility of a world conquest is binary depending on player skill, right? If I'm in a campaign, and I've set up a scenario that I can finish the world conquest at 70 absolutism, then going to 100 absolutism doesn't change whether or not I conquer the world. Absolutism let's me take more provinces, but I was already taking all the provinces. Theres a finite amount of land in the game, and once you have all of it you can't have more.

So if I have all the land at 1821 with 70 absolutism...

And I have all the land at 1821 with 100 absolutism...

Then in terms of affecting the strategic outcome of the game 70 and 100 are exactly the same. Going to 100 absolutism did not change the outcome in the slightest.

That's why absolutism has diminishing returns with regard to its value in determining the strategic outcome of the game. There comes a point when no amount of additional absolutism changes the end state of the world map.

So the real answer to how to not suck as a republic is to practice key, fundamental strategies until you don't need max absolutism.

 

[bly08]

Diminishing returns is a very specific term that does not apply to admin efficiency whatsoever. In your example, the 100 absolutism run would finish the WC decades faster which matters for tougher starts or One Faiths. 30 less absolutism is a big difference. The outcome will be different for many types of runs.

 

[Less2]

It's probably possible to finish a WC while bankrupt half the time, I guess bankruptcy isn't bad. If there was a Republic that had a modifier that caused them to randomly suffer the bankruptcy penalty that would not make a government bad, at least according to Dasmani.

 

[Xdevo]

I never disagreed with this. In fact, I plainly stated that Administrative efficiency is the most powerful modifier at least twice. I'm not arguing that administrative efficiency isn't helpful. Administrative efficiency is great, alright?

But it isn't needed.

This thread started out with the premise that republics are bad because they have a lower absolutism cap.

But republics aren't any less capable of finishing a world conquest.

You can finish a WC with the absolutism penalty from republics.

So the strategies I mentioned aren't meant to replace administrative efficiency, they're just strategies that allow the player to finish a world conquest with less admin efficiency.

Yes, I understand that every one of those would be better with administrative efficiency, but that's not the point.

The possibility of a world conquest is binary depending on player skill, right? If I'm in a campaign, and I've set up a scenario that I can finish the world conquest at 70 absolutism, then going to 100 absolutism doesn't change whether or not I conquer the world. Absolutism let's me take more provinces, but I was already taking all the provinces. Theres a finite amount of land in the game, and once you have all of it you can't have more.

So if I have all the land at 1821 with 70 absolutism...

And I have all the land at 1821 with 100 absolutism...

Then in terms of affecting the strategic outcome of the game 70 and 100 are exactly the same. Going to 100 absolutism did not change the outcome in the slightest.

That's why absolutism has diminishing returns with regard to its value in determining the strategic outcome of the game. There comes a point when no amount of additional absolutism changes the end state of the world map.

So the real answer to how to not suck as a republic is to practice key, fundamental strategies until you don't need max absolutism.

Nothing a republic offers is better than switching to get rid of Monarchy. No matter how unnecessary, AE is still better than anything a republic offers (outside of rev republic I guess). By staying republic, you're intentionally making a poor strategic choice. Does the choice matter if your only goal is to own the world by 1821? Maybe not. But it is still the worse option. Republics are bad because of this, and the thread is pointing out that getting rid of the malus is better than any of the tier 1 bonuses and demonstrates a way to do so.

Attempting to tell people to "git gud" at WC is irrelevant to the actual topic, especially when directed at people that have watches pre-1615 WC.

 

[Dasmani]

Nothing a republic offers is better than switching to get rid of Monarchy. No matter how unnecessary, AE is still better than anything a republic offers (outside of rev republic I guess). By staying republic, you're intentionally making a poor strategic choice.

I don't disagree with this.

Diminishing returns is a very specific term that does not apply to admin efficiency whatsoever.

I know what diminishing returns means. Just because a value does not have diminishing returns relative to itself does not mean the marginal value does not diminish. If you had a button that doubled your income every time you pressed it, it would have non-diminishing (in fact, exponential) returns, but eventually the nth press would be worth less than the first press even if it gives exponentially more total money.

Attempting to tell people to "git gud" at WC is irrelevant to the actual topic, especially when directed at people that have watches pre-1615 WC.

If there are people struggling to finish a WC with a republic, practicing the strategies I mentioned is much better advice than trying some shenanigans with culture switching and tier 1 reforms.

I'm not telling the people who can one-tag/one-faith/one-culture with ryukyu by 1600 how to play their games.

It's probably possible to finish a WC while bankrupt half the time, I guess bankruptcy isn't bad. If there was a Republic that had a modifier that caused them to randomly suffer the bankruptcy penalty that would not make a government bad, at least according to Dasmani.

Lacking a bonus as not the same as having a penalty, so this is quite the strawman. The fact that monarchies are better does not mean that republics are bad. Lacking the bonuses from absolutism does not prevent them from fulfilling any strategic goals in a campaign. It might be harder, it might be slower, it might require more planning, and it is certainly more challenging than meeting the same goals with a monarchy, but it's not bad.

If you applied this standard to any other evaluation, there would only be one "good" starting nation in the game and everything else in the game would be "sucky and bad" because it's a "weaker strategic choice".

 

[newtlord]

Lacking a bonus as not the same as having a penalty, so this is quite the strawman.

Practically speaking, this is false. If A is half as much as B, C, and D, it doesn't much matter whether this is because A has a 50% penalty or because everyone else has a 100% bonus- A is worse off either way. If you are playing a republic late game, you are intentionally taking the less effective route- there's nothing wrong with this (I routinely play one through 1820), but it remains a fact. Certainly, one can finish a World Conquest as a republic, just as one can finish it while remaining Pagan (or, as mentioned, while bankrupt), but this doesn't mean republics or pagans or bankruptcy are "good"- it simply means that world conquest in EUIV is fundamentally easy, assuming one has a nigh-infinite capacity to endure tedium.