Lets talk about Estate Placements at game start

[Cathal341]

Mainly I want to know is it random or is it based on historic positioning because you look at some countries and it just seems like a mess of Estates scattered randomly around the country. Like Castile for example:

Did the nobility actually control this much of 15th Century Castile? Or was it done for game balance by Paradox themselves when Estates where added. I love estates and I use them a lot but I do like to put them in provinces I view as Logical (to me at least). Personally I'd prefer to be able to distribute them myself at game start but I understand why that wouldn't be a thing. Still I would like a bit more freedom when setting up my country at game start.

 

[Dakka]

They put in some screwy algorithm that auto-distributes them at game start... something desperately needs tweaking or reverted because it leads to plenty of nations starting with every province owned by an estate except for your capital; very frustrating

 

[Dakka]

Did the nobility actually control this much of 15th Century Castile?

They had a large hold on Southern Castile. Mostly because nobles and military leaders were granted land that they conquered from the Moors during the Reconquista. But your example is nowhere near what it should look like.

 

[a_sophist]

Two general problems I'm seeing:

1. Trade power provinces are being given to the nobility instead of the burghers or left empty.
2. The algorithm is most punitive towards tags in the 3-5 province range, especially with the nobility spam leading to weak economies being even weaker. It doesn't make sense to me that outside of special cases like Free Cities it's better to start as an OPM. It would be tough to determine a balanced threshold but I think the minimum number of provinces before estates get assigned could be higher than 3.

 

[cristofolmc]

I dont mind so many land given to the estates. Historicaly basicall all of the country, except the few personal lands of the king, belonged to the estates. thats easily moe than 90% of the land. What I dont like is that they are so poorly and randomly assigned. Centers of trade going to the church or the nobles, high trade value goods going to the nobility, etc etc.

And as mentioned above, this hurts even more small countries like Netherlands, whose estates are a mess. The fact that you cant have estates in your capital doesn't help either. A country like Holland would hugely benefit from placing burghers on their capital. The trade off is possitive even with the 25% autonomy, from the money they'd get from trade. More so now that trade centers are upgradable and that 50% over 10 trade power can become a 50% over 25!

 

[Lewa263]

Yeah, I don't mind if estates hold most land at the start, I just dislike the way land is distributed. It's just annoying that the Nobility always gets so much of it. It seems like the algorithm must give them first pick, and they'll pick land that the other estates would make better use of.

 

[browd]

And the initial estate allocation wouldn't be that bothersome if they hadn't so dramatically increased the disloyalty effect of revoking estate assignments. Had they left the loyalty hit at 2x the percentage of stated development, the poor initial assignments would be somewhat manageable, but at 5x its too punitive.

 

[Zohtun]

Personally, I'd be fine with the placements being inefficient or even downright painful if it was accurate.

France had massive problems with her nobility. Iberia giving nobles the lands they took from the moors. All that makes sense and having to deal with that would be quite immersive (although some touch-ups on the estates to make it less boring and button-pressing would not go amiss).

But randomly allocated lands is annoying and depressing.

 

[Koser]

Yip, estates placement in Norway is messed up. The 2 trade towns they have are owned by the clergy and nobility. If you want to fight an independence war at start of game you have to wipe those estates and replace them with burghers so you can hire an ace admiral for your fleet. Clergy loyalty you can handle but nobility loyalty can be a thorny issue. You basically have to fight and win the war quick (to placate unrest) or you lands will fall to 16k noble rebels which you can't beat.

If you're lucky you get an event that raises nobility loyalty by 10% but it's pure luck. I've done plenty of runs where I didn't get an event and basically...ragequit...restart.

Personally I think automated estate placement should be capped at 50% of provinces, and trade towns should have burghers, definitely not clergy nobility.

 

[Golladan]

Some of it is random. Some of it is defined in the province's history file. About 80% of the land is given to estates (defined by government). Nobles take up a large chunk of it, with clergy and burghers a small chunk (defined in the respective estates' file).

Those 2 provinces you see given to the burghers are set in the history. Which meets their quota of required land.