Is Clergy Promotion Broken? Or do I not understand something?

[TheChronoMaster]

Were you using your NF to maintain those? Or did that happen naturally? Did you somehow have access to all your pop's needs on the world market even though you were an unciv? (Or are the promote and demote factors different for uncivs? It wouldn't surprise me if they were.)

I wasn't paying too much attention to life needs, but generally they sat around "partially fulfilled" for the middle and poor classes.

I used NF to build up bureaucrats in the 3 states I controlled (having annexed Transvaal and Oranje out of the gate), and once i managed to hold roughly 80% admin efficiency, I turned to clergy. I generally didn't lose much, and I was shifting one NF through 3 states. When I was about 30% westernized, I found myself in the UK sphere (constantly building relations whenever possible), and my economy just kept improving. As my economy improved, I first maxed out my administrative slider (Slowly, to maintain a positive income), then my Education slider (again, slowly). After that, I put some into my military slider, then started lowering taxes (I had them maxed out prior to this to maintain a positive economy, but the pay my clergy and bureaucrats got evened it out considering the low tax efficiency). By the time of westernization, I had lowered tax on rich and middle class to nil, while maintaining a token tax on the poor (that also went when I westernized). Now, I'm running a fairly successful laissez-faire economy.

 

[dvandyke]

UK sphere would help your pops get the goods they need.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

Yep, I'm betting that's why. You were in the UK sphere, so your pops could buy off the market and weren't devolving at the rate of a basic civilized nation.

 

[EMT0]

Yep, I'm betting that's why. You were in the UK sphere, so your pops could buy off the market and weren't devolving at the rate of a basic civilized nation.

So it's back to Vanilla V2 economics, ie: either be in a strong sphere or get your own sphere, otherwise you're fundamentally screwed?

 

[Wminus]

Were you using your NF to maintain those? Or did that happen naturally? Did you somehow have access to all your pop's needs on the world market even though you were an unciv? (Or are the promote and demote factors different for uncivs? It wouldn't surprise me if they were.)

Trust me, it has nothing to do with the pops needs. I played as Russia, reaching 1# rank before I got bored, and spent all my money on clergy. I even reduced tax for the middle class, yet it didn't work. The clergy still demoted. Besides a pop demoting en masse just because it can't fill its everyday needs is, well, just silly.

I would wager that the issue of getting clergy has to do with low literacy. The lower the literacy the harder to get new, and indeed keep the old, clergy. If you care you could try this out by playing some civilized German state with high literacy. I doubt you will have any trouble with getting clergy.

 

[Foxbyte]

As the USCA I am noticing a lot of clergy just popping out of nowhere, especially when I get huge immigration surges.

 

[Sakkura]

The needs have little to do with it. My clergy mostly have all their needs fulfilled, yet they still demote..

What do you mean, "mostly"? If just a few of them are missing some of their life needs, they'll be demoting.

Trust me, it has nothing to do with the pops needs. I played as Russia, reaching 1# rank before I got bored, and spent all my money on clergy. I even reduced tax for the middle class, yet it didn't work. The clergy still demoted. Besides a pop demoting en masse just because it can't fill its everyday needs is, well, just silly.

I would wager that the issue of getting clergy has to do with low literacy. The lower the literacy the harder to get new, and indeed keep the old, clergy. If you care you could try this out by playing some civilized German state with high literacy. I doubt you will have any trouble with getting clergy.

It's not silly if POPs demote when they can't cover their needs, it's intentional and reasonable. If you can't make a living, you try and find something else to do, or somewhere else to go.

I certainly haven't seen any of the behaviour you describe once I've taken care of POP needs. Even with uncivs.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

As the USCA I am noticing a lot of clergy just popping out of nowhere, especially when I get huge immigration surges.

Foreign priests are immigrating to your country. You'll also get some when officers demote to clergy. Then demote again to farmers.

 

[Foxbyte]

Foreign priests are immigrating to your country. You'll also get some when officers demote to clergy. Then demote again to farmers.

Yeah, I mean, I don't see any huge penalty on clergy without their needs being met, so maybe the priest exodus people are talking about is just them emigrating.

 

[Fishmalk]

Emigration seems to be more severe. I was playing as Bavaria, and experienced a stretch during the late 1850s where despite researching medicine, passing every healthcare reform and all thepolitical reforms, my population was dropping.

I have also notice a whole lot more potato blights.

 

[paracat]

I noticed this when I played Australia, went round with my only NF to increase clergy % in each state to 2 but when I did the last one, the first few were back down to around 1%. However when I started bringing in all the prestige from techs this problem disappeared and I was actually slowly gaining clergy without an NF.

Curiously though I could not keep any Capitalists. I always had at least 2 or 3 factories doing really well and there would be a constant promotion to Capis but they would then immediately demote again. The maximum I ever had was 33 when I was using an NF.

 

[zarinth]

Well, for my experience, you have to use NFs. And what I usually do is first use NFs on bureaucrats to get 100% admin efficiency and only then use NFs for clergy. You get a lot more NFs as smaller countries in AHD, so you just as well might use them.

Is there a reason to get admin first?

 

[Derp]

So it's back to Vanilla V2 economics, ie: either be in a strong sphere or get your own sphere, otherwise you're fundamentally screwed?

Or take provinces with the goods you need from other countries. Or get your prestige higher so you're in a better market position. This game is all about imperialism, either you get what you need with the pen or you take what you need with the sword.

Personally I like how supply of vital goods actually matters to your people, unlike in EU3 where you could be perfectly self-sufficient as a tiny country in the middle of a desert. It creates unique situations and problems based on geography.

Is there a reason to get admin first?

Admin. eff. increases promotion rate

 

[Haukionkala]

I'm having the opposite problem with clergy. It's now 1862 in my Sweden -> Scandinavia game and I got way too much clergy. Currently 3.57% of the population when the optimum would be 2%. The only way to get the numbers to drop is to fund education at 2% or less, which has the negative side effect of stopping my literacy growth. I don't want to kill my clerks by raising middle class taxes too high. Guess I'll just have to fiddle with the promotion numbers a bit.

 

[Wminus]

It's not silly if POPs demote when they can't cover their needs, it's intentional and reasonable. If you can't make a living, you try and find something else to do, or somewhere else to go.

Please read my post again. Not fulfilling all the everyday needs isn't a reason to auto-demote and get even worse payment and goods.

Anyway I just checked several nations in my 1849 savegame: From German minors to the UK to S. American countries - everyone lacked clergy. It seems like the entire middle class everywhere is getting destroyed. Though even pops who get 100% of their luxury needs still seem to demote...

 

[zarinth]

Or take provinces with the goods you need from other countries. Or get your prestige higher so you're in a better market position. This game is all about imperialism, either you get what you need with the pen or you take what you need with the sword.

Personally I like how supply of vital goods actually matters to your people, unlike in EU3 where you could be perfectly self-sufficient as a tiny country in the middle of a desert. It creates unique situations and problems based on geography.

Admin. eff. increases promotion rate

It does???? It doesn't say it anywhere in the tooltip :O

 

[Foxbyte]

It does???? It doesn't say it anywhere in the tooltip :O

It really needs to be fixed, yeah. The tooltip in the budget screen still says that Bureaucrats increase your tax efficiency, which it certainly does not. It's not listed in the manual either. :/ It changed in one of the 1.4 beta patches, so I think it might have slipped through.

 

[delra]

It does???? It doesn't say it anywhere in the tooltip :O

I can confirm that for certain it does.

 

[Wminus]

I've been reading this forum allot today (boring day at school etc.) and stumbled over the pop-growth bug thread.

The problem is that the base pop-growth is set to zero. The clergy keep demoting, for some weird reason, to farmers and labourers so as the RGO gets filled up. The fix for this is increasing the base pop growth from zero to maybe 0.01-0.005 in the defines.lua. You can find this file in the Victoria 2/common directory.

Either that or tech-rushing medicine and chemistry.

 

[De_Genius]

I've been reading this forum allot today (boring day at school etc.) and stumbled over the pop-growth bug thread.

The problem is, that the base pop-growth is set to zero. The clergy keep demoting, for some weird reason, to farmers and labourers so as the RGO gets filled up. The fix for this is increasing the base pop growth from zero to maybe 0.01-0.005 in the defines.lua. You can find this file in the Victoria 2/common directory.

Either that or tech-rushing medicine and chemistry.

I halved the pop demand for tea which so far works well for me. Less demoting this way.