Looting

[Duke of Wellington]

Despite playing the game for years I was unaware of the bonus from looting until reading AARs on here recently. Could someone please explain some of the finer details of this (my own attempts at minting seem to end in nothing but higher inflation). Also how can you calculate how much you will receive in bonus from a province?

 

[Grundius]

You should ask ws2_32 about this. He finances world conquests by looting. You should check his Trebizond AAR. (It's in his sig an he posted in the 50 years reign thread)

 

[unmerged(15337)]

Here's the condensed version. At the start of a war, coordinate several of your armies, if possible, so they all arrive at enemy provinces during the same month. Set your budget slider to take all cash to treasury, then at the end of the month you get a full year's tax, in cash, from every looted enemy province. Then reset your budget slider back to whatever you normally invest in. You get a pretty good amount of cash for a cost of just one month's inflation (i.e. .083%), which is really a good deal. If you have a small country near the beginning of the GC, just looting 1 or 2 rich provinces can make a huge difference in your cash flow.

Once looted, a province cannot be looted again until the city icon stops burning, which is 13 months. During that time, the owner gets no tax income from that province. That includes the annual census tax, and be careful because you can lose tax money the same way to enemy armies or rebels.

 

[Duke of Wellington]

Thanks, thats gonna be helpful. I'll be making sure to mint more loot from now on I didn't realise it was such a big bonus.

 

[unmerged(3931)]

Only corrections to above are that the money you receive is the unmodified bas tax of the province. On 1.09 you get twice that amount of loot. AI gets all income from looted and besieged provinces at normal to very hard difficulty levels. Only on easy and very easy does looting hurt AI income.

 

[Thistletooth]

AI gets all income from looted and besieged provinces at normal to very hard difficulty levels. Only on easy and very easy does looting hurt AI income.

That's lame. I mean, at least I'm getting mine, but still. Lame.

 

[unmerged(3931)]

That's lame. I mean, at least I'm getting mine, but still. Lame.

If you think that is lame, how about this? One-province AI nations get multiplied income while at war. At normal it is perhaps 4x. At hard it is about 6x. At very hard it is 8x to 10x. A one-province minor can mint more money than the starting Castile of the GC (17.5d per month). Actually AI nations on the higher difficult settings mint at most only about half their total income. Still that is nearly 9d per month for some nations.

The plus side is that once you have 100% victory, the little one-province nations mint money faster to pay you reparations. It is also a plus for looting once you have the enemy completely covered or captured. That the AI gets more money, which it cannot spend, is a good thing for you then.

 

[unmerged(25936)]

The plus side is that once you have 100% victory, the little one-province nations mint money faster to pay you reparations. It is also a plus for looting once you have the enemy completely covered or captured. That the AI gets more money, which it cannot spend, is a good thing for you then.

Exactly. It's only lame if you are concerned about 1 province Hoelstein actually beating you. Otherwise it makes Hard easier in some respects then lower difficulty levels because you can loot them multiple times and still easily extract huge indemities from them with your easy 100% warscore. It turns 1 provinces minors into banks (as ws2_32 demonstrated).

As for synchronized looting, it's best to use military access to synchronize it. pre-position troops, cancel access then declare war. Entire country goes in flames at once.

 

[unmerged(40258)]

pre-position troops, cancel access then declare war. Entire country goes in flames at once.

or dow its ally, they join, suppy is higher.

 

[unmerged(25609)]

I'm still in awe of Tom's achievement with the Xhosa (especially since I think that it was me who said "Oh yeah? That's like trying a WC with the Xhosa!")
But this synchronized looting campaign seems too much like an exploit to me. And you should get some serious BB for it; the English chevauchees during the 100 years' war were intended to loot and de-stabilize, but they were hated for it.

Go ahead and loot - but your reputation should suffer.

(and that province should have a particularly high RR - just for you - if you do eventually annex them)

 

[unmerged(25936)]

or dow its ally, they join, suppy is higher.

Yeah but you're not guranteed their entry unless you have low-low relations, in which case how'd you get military access? =P But yeah, that's the idea either way you do it (and once you break the BB threshold that's the ideal way because you obviously don't want to ruin stability by declaring yourself and you CAN be assured theyll join, relations or not. But the flipside there is....if you've broke the BB threshold what do you care about looting? =)

But this synchronized looting campaign seems too much like an exploit to me. And you should get some serious BB for it; the English chevauchees during the 100 years' war were intended to loot and de-stabilize, but they were hated for it.

Of course it's an exploit. World Conquest itself is an exploit. You read the Xhosa WC, so you know the kind of stuff that was pulled to accomplish it. That's not the point...or rather that is the point =P WC is essentially an exercise in abusing the game engine. The fun is in new and creative ways to manipulate the game into doing what you want it to do.

 

[unmerged(15337)]

Go ahead and loot - but your reputation should suffer.

(and that province should have a particularly high RR - just for you - if you do eventually annex them)

These are good ideas, and certainly historical and appropriate. But I don't think the EU2 game engine would support them. This looks like EU3 material.

As for the military access and looting exploit, I don't think looting in and of itself is exploiting the game -- the concept is certainly historical over literally thousands of years. The real problem in this case is the game bug that military access isn't canceled by a war.

 

[unmerged(25936)]

Military Access is canceled by a war. And you have to cancel it before you can declare war anyways. The issue is while cancelling military access ends your ability to move onto territory, it does not automatically remove your troops, you have to do so yourself.

The fix to this "exploit" would be to give troops on enemy territory BEFORE the declaration of war zero moral when war is declared and prevent them from looting until they recover it.

 

[the_genius]

Military Access is canceled by a war. And you have to cancel it before you can declare war anyways.

There you have two opposite statements ... the thing is that if you have an MA with an ally of a country you DoW, this MA won't get cancel... it's a really common thing to exploit..

 

[unmerged(3931)]

I wanted to point out that I did very little synchronized looting in the Xhosa AAR. Most of the time I looted, and not much more than is typical for any war by any player. In the AAR I just made the reader aware how my looting was helping me. I could not synchronize because of battles and rebels and other obstacles.

In my Trebizond and Benin games I made extensive use of synchronized looting. Synchronized looting is much more difficult in the 1.08 versions mostly because the AI is smarter. Xhosa's timeline did not allow much time to sync up the looting. Synchroinzed looting can still be done if you have enough wars going on with some nations rich in base tax. Or you can have military access and join a war with a new alliance, have an ally DoW for you (you have two months to preposition your troops), or DoW an ally of theirs and get the nation that you have MA with into the war. If you have to send some insults after getting military access, then so be it. It can pay off much more than the investment in raising and lowering relations. If you force-annex, relations may drop on their own.