Merchant Republics are dead. RIP Venice.

[Frossa]

Venice experienced multiple resurgences and only fell in the last few years of the game while Genoa dominated Europe through banking at its height. Merchant Republics becoming Empires or majors due to a player aware of what not to do is not unrealistic.

What I mean is that a merchant/burgher-dominated republican governmental form isn't exactly optimal for ruling over massive swaths of land. If we could see Genoa rise to prominence in the game via banking, that'd be great, but that's simply not part of the game.

And it's not like it's impossible to have more than 20 Provinces as a Merchant Republic, it just gets increasingly more difficult to maintain your current order, which makes sense. Do you expect the nobility, clergy and other factions to sit idly by as a merchant-ruled confederation takes over control of all their land? Merchant Republics don't have Estates, but I think it's a reasonable abstraction to have the interests of the non-merchant class be represented by deteriorating Republican Tradition.

And as mentioned several times before, Trade Leagues and Vassals are a way to still expand your influence. Transferring Trade Power no longer costs Relationship slots either, so that provides another option. I think a greater reliance on Subject management is an adequate way to portray the difficulties an early modern merchant-ruled republic would have faced when it comes to administration and stability.

 

[Leninade]

How will merchant republics be able to properly protect their trade against larger monarchies given the nature of the new sailor mechanic, not to mention the ever restrictive forcelimits.

 

[WeissRaben]

What I mean is that a merchant/burgher-dominated republican governmental form isn't exactly optimal for ruling over massive swaths of land. If we could see Genoa rise to prominence in the game via banking, that'd be great, but that's simply not part of the game.

And it's not like it's impossible to have more than 20 Provinces as a Merchant Republic, it just gets increasingly more difficult to maintain your current order, which makes sense. Do you expect the nobility, clergy and other factions to sit idly by as a merchant-ruled confederation takes over control of all their land? Merchant Republics don't have Estates, but I think it's a reasonable abstraction to have the interests of the non-merchant class be represented by deteriorating Republican Tradition.

And as mentioned several times before, Trade Leagues and Vassals are a way to still expand your influence. Transferring Trade Power no longer costs Relationship slots either, so that provides another option. I think a greater reliance on Subject management is an adequate way to portray the difficulties an early modern merchant-ruled republic would have faced when it comes to administration and stability.

An excellent post. I'll state again that - of course in my humble opinion - I'll always back Paradox, if they decide to add more realistic constraints to the abomination that is blobbing in this game; but they keep tearing down the old home before building a new one. There's still no meaningful peacetime gameplay: a Merchant Republic should have to fiddle with its merchants (and merchant class) constantly, just like a monarchy should try to concentrate power in the hands of the state. As long as some cards aren't taken from V2 (a game you can play enjoyably without declaring war once), every attempt to correctly restrain expansion will only result in more boredom and frustration.

 

[gabadur]

What I mean is that a merchant/burgher-dominated republican governmental form isn't exactly optimal for ruling over massive swaths of land. If we could see Genoa rise to prominence in the game via banking, that'd be great, but that's simply not part of the game.

And it's not like it's impossible to have more than 20 Provinces as a Merchant Republic, it just gets increasingly more difficult to maintain your current order, which makes sense. Do you expect the nobility, clergy and other factions to sit idly by as a merchant-ruled confederation takes over control of all their land? Merchant Republics don't have Estates, but I think it's a reasonable abstraction to have the interests of the non-merchant class be represented by deteriorating Republican Tradition.

And as mentioned several times before, Trade Leagues and Vassals are a way to still expand your influence. Transferring Trade Power no longer costs Relationship slots either, so that provides another option. I think a greater reliance on Subject management is an adequate way to portray the difficulties an early modern merchant-ruled republic would have faced when it comes to administration and stability.

Maybe limit states, not land. Trade companies??

 

[FleetingRain]

Only now I realized that the number of provinces threshold could have been number of state cores instead. Maybe even remove all state modifiers for MRs (so they would only have the 5 base ones) therefore forcing the MR to have a bunch of trade companies, colonial nations and territorial cores, maybe even inside their states.

Sigh.

 

[Isaios]

It even counts Colonies... As in, it counts colonies from the moment you drop a Colonist down Makes perf sense...

I like how achievement for Ragusa basically makes you have to blob since you need to guarantee the Ottomans, and at same time stay the merchant republic. Great achievement.

To be fair, if you grab the 20 best provinces you find in the region you're at about 400 dev right there, then build 3-4 100 dev marches, get some of the troop boosting ideas it only takes a couple wars to break the Ottomans. To be evil about it, you can use their former Turkish provinces yo build your pretty Marches as well. There're plenty of Cores there after all.

 

[Artess]

I decided to start a separate thread for Novgorod because I believe they are hit by this limitation much more than the others due to its geopolitical situation, making it almost "literally unplayable".

 

[208]

Why do people confuse "playing tall" with "playing pacifist"? You can still fight wars while playing tall, just don't take territory. Or is clicking the "create core" button somehow much more exciting than clicking a "increase development" button?

 

[earlofbrigand]

I'm playing as Venice with a trade league of Memmingham, Ravensburg, Augsburg, Sienna, Nuremberg, Ragusa, Mantua and The Knights. It's early days, but they can muster quite a few units between them, so if Austria try anything out of order, they'll get a good kicking.

I'm allied with France and Poland too - which doesn't harm things. All of this is easy to set up in a few years as Venice. Maybe the key is to only take a few key provinces - in Italy perhaps and beyond and then take things from there.

 

[grommile]

Why do people confuse "playing tall" with "playing pacifist"? You can still fight wars while playing tall, just don't take territory. Or is clicking the "create core" button somehow much more exciting than clicking a "increase development" button?

Generally speaking, it's very hard to get a CB that covers "weaken your enemy long-term by a means other than taking their clay for yourself".

 

[LordDamien]

And that is why we have mods for this game . Fixes some of the problems with the base game. Which if this is a problem in the base game.. I am pretty sure a Mod will fix it

 

[CrabHelmet]

Generally speaking, it's very hard to get a CB that covers "weaken your enemy long-term by a means other than taking their clay for yourself".

Also, there's not really much point in wars at all. You can't expand, so at best you can release nations (that inevitably get conquered again), return cores (you've normally returned everything quite relevant), or take some trifling sum of money that probably wasn't worth increasing your maintenance costs for.

 

[SrgChris]

Why do people confuse "playing tall" with "playing pacifist"? You can still fight wars while playing tall, just don't take territory. Or is clicking the "create core" button somehow much more exciting than clicking a "increase development" button?

Yes coring is far more exciting. You have a sense of progress; of your country actually expanding. And sure you could compare getting bigger in size, having a bigger font and seeing more of your color on the map to seeing a few development values increase slowly and MORE slowly over time, but if you really just want to sit around for hours and stare at numbers, maybe what you really want to or should be doing is working as an accountant.

 

[Artess]

Also, there's not really much point in wars at all. You can't expand, so at best you can release nations (that inevitably get conquered again), return cores (you've normally returned everything quite relevant), or take some trifling sum of money that probably wasn't worth increasing your maintenance costs for.

I guess the idea would be to constantly cycle the same wars to renew that forced trade power transfer. Which would make for a pretty depressing playthrough, in my opinion.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Yes coring is far more exciting. You have a sense of progress; of your country actually expanding. And sure you could compare getting bigger in size, having a bigger font and seeing more of your color on the map to seeing a single development value increase slowly and MORE slowly over time, but if you really just want to sit around for hours and stare at numbers, maybe what you really want to or should be doing is working as an accountant.

It works well in Victoria 2. I've genuinely had game in V2 where I've basically focused on industrial management for almost all of the game. But that has a much more developed non-war system for the player to be engaged in. EU4 doesn't have anything except clicking the development button every now and again.

 

[earlofbrigand]

With diplomatic ideas or influence, plus a diplomat and a lucky +1 diplo rep event, you can reel in quite a few into your trade league. Plus, the whole point of a merchant republic is that it's rich and trades. It's not supposed to be a big France-like empire. It's been mentioned already that if you want to go down that route, you just have to ditch the league.

Genoa, for example, will be a really tough challenge - so it will be interesting to see some of the youtube vids to see how that pans out.

 

[Dayledose]

I don't really see the problem with this from a historical perspective, it's not like Venice, Genoa or the Hansa remained powerful entities all throughout the game's era anyway (in fact, they all completely succumbed). It's a fair change in the direction of realism and historical accuracy, which should take precedence in cases like this. While some may argue that EU4 isn't a history simulator, it is one way more than it's a senseless blobbing simulator.

If that is what you think, then perhaps we should suggest that paradox make other changes to keep to historical accuracy, such as not allowing any nation to expand beyond historical borders ever, or perhaps not allowing a nation to change religion, culture or government types to anything but historical precedents. I realize these seem like extreme suggestions, but honestly it's about how fun a game is to play. With some of these changes that make little sense outside of an arbitrary " Brings it more in line with historical realism " explanation, I find that the game is just becoming less fun to play. It also seems that many other players are thinking "well that's no fun".

My last over the top suggestion for those that want historical accuracy in their game.

Why not make every game of EU4 now have only the ability to select a nation and just watch it's historical timeline from 1444 to 1821? You can set the speed with which you watch it

I realize this is silly, but honestly PDX seems more concerned with taking away fun from EU4 than adding to the fun of it.

 

[earlofbrigand]

Quick question - does this limit of 20 relate to core-cores (i.e., those within an accepted 'state') or any provinces you own?

If the latter, for merchant republics, perhaps it could be tweaked so the limit is 20 core-cores - which allows you to pick up important trade nodes across the world

 

[Artess]

Quick question - does this limit of 20 relate to core-cores (i.e., those within an accepted 'state') or any provinces you own?

If the latter, for merchant republics, perhaps it could be tweaked so the limit is 20 core-cores - which allows you to pick up important trade nodes across the world

That's a good point, and I think it would be a decent solution, but the description just says "20 provinces", which I'm assuming means any types of cores.

 

[Tacticus101]

Why do people confuse "playing tall" with "playing pacifist"? You can still fight wars while playing tall, just don't take territory. Or is clicking the "create core" button somehow much more exciting than clicking a "increase development" button?

This.

It is easy to play games where you limit conquests, fight massive wars and generally stay small. In fact, I would argue that the game is a lot more interesting when you keep your size similar to that of your enemies and thus fight fairly balanced and challenging wars rather than stupidly one sided ones. I mean, in MP games there is a lot less conquering and a lot more equal wars and they are hardly boring.

Why is a world conquest (or any kind of large conquest) any more fun than playing tall? Beyond the first 100 years you are so far ahead that the game becomes cycling wars, adding numbers and pressing buttons...yet many people seem to level that argument at Tall games.

Generally speaking, it's very hard to get a CB that covers "weaken your enemy long-term by a means other than taking their clay for yourself".

Trade conflict, Cancelled Loan, Diplomatic insult, Defender of the Faith, Cleansing of Heresy, Excommunication, Trade Dispute, Coalition, Trade Protection, Support Rebels; all CBs that are fairly easy to get (some slightly more difficult, some stupidly easy) and that benefit peace offers other than take territory, ie "weaken your enemy long-term by a means other than taking their clay". Enforcing Peace and Supporting independence are also incredibly easy ways to start wars and are incredibly effective at weakening enemies.

Not to mention all the normal CBs that you can just not take territory with (or give things to vassals, allies, etc).

Fighting wars without taking territory is actually incredibly easy.