Monarch Power Questions and more!

[unmerged(126586)]

I'm a moderately skilled EU3 veteran who has purchased EU4 and played around for a bit. I get how everything works, in general, but I have a few questions about what I should make a priority.

If I understand correctly Monarch Power is the single most important factor in this game. Manpower is necessary to win wars and ducats can help with Manpower, mercs, advisors and such, but Monarch Power is the key. My problem is figuring out what is a waste and what is important. I'll post my impressions and questions. Please correct me if (when) I'm wrong.

For example: Military power--I accumulate this the most readily. Tech is the most important use but when I take a military idea, I'll priorities that. 50mp for a leader can be worth it--especially to keep my monarchs safe, but I may skimp on leaders to keep my tech high. 50 mp for war taxes is a tougher decision. If I can afford it, I may avoid the war taxes to save the mp.

Diplomatic power -- Tech is great. I've taken exploration idea and am sinking all my dp into that. Naval leaders cost 50dp, which I have to swallow. 1 is enough, since as Castile I have a good edge over my foes.

Administration power -- Ugg. So much to do. I need it to core provinces. I need it to raise stability. I need it to raise my tech. I need it to change cultures. I need to keep inflation down. What is the priority of these? I think culture and inflation are least important and can largely be ignored (I hope to address inflation with an adviser, anyway). Coring seems important to drop the overextention (and I'm working towards Spain and the Reconquista continues). But so does improving stability. Yet stability is so fluid. Monarch dies, integrate a vassal, stupid Military Divided decision and you lose your stab. The higher you have it the more points you lose. I've put tech 3rd so far. How does that sound?


Also, trade is difficult to manage efficiently. I love the system and understand how it works pretty well, but I'm not sure how to get the most out of it. I'm not talking about every fraction of the ducat, but general rules of thumb.

For example:
1) I just learned you always collect from your capital node without a merchant. Does that mean as Castile I don't need a merchant in Seville? Or does he help me anyway?

2) I have 13 light ships. Should I split them or concentrate them to maximize use? Is it worth the ducats to have naval supply at 100% or not? Should I focus on Seville where I have high power or Bordeaux or Genoa where I don't?

3)Should my merchant in Bordeaux collect trade (he gets a pittance) or send power back upstream?


If I am misunderstanding anything let me know. I appreciate any help--thanks for helping a guy splashing in the shallow end!

 

[Juggernaught]

You need diplomatic power for culture conversion, not admin power. I have played dozens of games already(500+ hours) and have found diplo power to be most important power due to quality of the ideas it presents.

1) You automatically collect from your trade node but placing a merchant also increase your trade income(thru +%10 efficiency -forgot sorry). Once you own all the provinces in a trade node you can pretty much priotize other nodes for profit. I think there should be a good trade guide on wiki.

2) It might be better pulling power from Genoa node using those light ships. Maybe split them and send half to Genoa and half to Sevilla. Try to experiment.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

Castile shouldn't really have any money problems, so don't use war taxes unless you have nothing else to spend military power on.

I generally don't get a naval leader at all unless I'm about to go to war with someone who has a navy that could be problematic, which is basically just England at the start of the game.

Admin points will be a problem so long as you're still coring everything yourself. You need to teach yourself to take vassals and sell your conquered provinces to them to core as much as possible. Especially if you're going to take on north Africa since the coring costs are brutal there. Personally I hardly core at all and find myself getting ahead of time penalties on admin tech quite regularly. Inflation isn't very important to reduce through monarch points, unless it's getting ridiculously high. However, every time you can get an advisor that reduces it you should (unless he's too expensive). .10 reduction per month saves you nearly 4 monarch points per month!

You don't need a merchant in Sevilla to collect there no, he just adds a tiny bit of trade power (negligible) and 10% income modifier. If you can get more money flowing into the node by steering elsewhere or simply collecting some place you should. But when that is, is kind of a trial/error thing. I'd probably send him to collect in the Caribbean as soon as you have about ten colonies there.

I'd use your ships to protect trade in Sevilla. You can keep a decent share in the node without doing that, but the only node with decent value that leads to Sevilla is Genoa and there are far too many countries there to compete with.

Sending power back upstream is generally not going to get you more money then simply collecting in Bordeaux since it gets a horrendous multiplier. Even if you only collect slightly under a ducat, that's still far more then you'd get for the 5ish(?) trade power it would send back to Sevilla.

 

[xyra]

Militarypower: 1. Tech; 2. Idea (not as you said); 3. General replacment. Situational 1-4: Harsh treatment, forced marsh, general if empty space and general if not space left. Wartaxes: use loans instead
Diplopower:
if trading/naval nation: 1. tech/ideas equaly depending on what is needed more; 2. buildings. 3. peacedeals
else: 1. ideas; 2. diplo relations; 3. peacedeals; 4. tech
adminpower, hard to generalize:
stab should be +1
tech can fall back a little bit, ideas especially if innovative are important, coring can be done by vassels sometimes. sometimes reducing inflation
and buildings. lots of buildings

regarding trade: merchant in sevilla can be important. ships should be where you need tradepower to steer or collect trade optimal for you.
if you don't have a good marketshare in your homenode: put your ships there and try increasing your marketshare with other means: buildings, conquest and war.
if your marketshar in your homenode is good, move your ships to a tradenode where you can steer more trade value.

 

[sinkingmist]

A note on stability.
The comet event (-1 stability) occurs more often when you're at Stability 2, and even more often at Stability 3.
So unless you're using the mod that disables comets *cough*looks meaningfully at own signature*cough*, you should never be paying admin power to go above Stability 1.
Not like EU3, where it's usual to be on Stability 3 almost all the time.

 

[TheBloke]

A note on stability.
The comet event (-1 stability) occurs more often when you're at Stability 2, and even more often at Stability 3.
So unless you're using the mod that disables comets *cough*looks meaningfully at own signature*cough*, you should never be paying admin power to go above Stability 1.
Not like EU3, where it's usual to be on Stability 3 almost all the time.

Use this man's mod! Comets are egregious nonsense. I've used it since about day 5 of my playing the game.

This actually represents a slight buff to the AI, because they will keep boosting themselves to stab +2 and +3, but you as the player know not to bother (especially never to +3.) So removing comets actually gives the AI more points to spend than it gives the player. (I still don't boost past Stab +1 even with comets disabled. I let events take me to +2 and back to +1, and rarely ever fall below +1)

But still disable comets, because they're dumb.

 

[Rubidium]

There are occasional situations where boosting stability past +1 can be worth it (Westernization obviously, but also e.g. if you need to convert that one slightly too high base tax province).

But yeah, if you don't have a very good reason, then don't.

 

[unmerged(126586)]

Thanks for all the replies. This gives me a better idea where to focus and where to skimp. Thanks!

 

[panionios]

Don't waste ADM to core provinces. With proper planning, you can always sell it to a vassal. I think I only core 2-3 provinces in an entire game.

Although the likelihood of a stab hit increases the higher you are, I always keep it at +2 and quite regularly find myself at +3 due to positive stab events. I've never had the bad experiences of too many stab hits. In fact, I believe that overall I get more postive stab events to negative in most of my games (excluding stab hits due to succession). I think people tend to forget the positive stab events they get and only remember the negative ones.

Don't waste DIP to change culture. It's better to build buildings for less MP.

You always have tons of MIL, because there's no much use for it apart from ideas/tech. I think it's not very well-balanced comapred with ADM and DIP.