So I am playing OE, and have played the first 10 years over a few times, and have spent some time tinkering with the budget sliders, but I can not get my clergy population to rise. The clergy population has a steady decline, which at best I can slow, but can not reverse to an increase. I am aware of the information in the pop demotion/promotion sheet and strategy guide, but still am unable to fix the situation.
So here is the setup that I think was supposed to be optimal (but I have tinkered with just about everything). Note all analysis was done after getting freedom of trade (so budget is overall healthy) and tarriffs were set to 0:
1. Kept clergy income above 80% to maximize other pop promotion to clergy.
2. Used NI on Thrace to promote clergy
3. Maxed out tax rate on upper class to get demotion to clergy
4. Minimized tax rate on lower class to get promotion to clergy
5. Lowered beurocrat income to 0 discourage that profession.
6. I played around with middle class tax rate, trying both high and low.
I even tried:
7. Changed parties and dropped low class tax rate to 0.
8. I tried finding a "sweet spot" between clergy promotion and demotion by tinkering with the middle class taxes and clergy income.
It seems that the fundamental issue is that the clergy keep getting promoted. Trying to slow down the promotion rate (by lowering clergy profit) will just lead to demotion, which is equally bad. Trying to pursuade low class to promote doesn't work early game, and trying to pursuade upper class to demote doesn't work either (they make money at max tax).
So my question is:
1. Am I missing something that will make clergy population rise?
2. If I am supposed to wait out the decline, what am I waiting for? And how long is the decline supposed to be?
3. If this is a non-optimized parameter issue in the software (I don't want to use the word "bug" to imply failure of the software), will it be resolved in 1.2. And if so, what is the part that is changing.
4. Is there another country that I can play that doesn't experience this problem? And if so, what is it about that country that makes it less problematic?
Edit: I'm guessing the literacy rate less than 30% is hindering the promotion process (-0.5%). Is that the driving factor?
So here is the setup that I think was supposed to be optimal (but I have tinkered with just about everything). Note all analysis was done after getting freedom of trade (so budget is overall healthy) and tarriffs were set to 0:
1. Kept clergy income above 80% to maximize other pop promotion to clergy.
2. Used NI on Thrace to promote clergy
3. Maxed out tax rate on upper class to get demotion to clergy
4. Minimized tax rate on lower class to get promotion to clergy
5. Lowered beurocrat income to 0 discourage that profession.
6. I played around with middle class tax rate, trying both high and low.
I even tried:
7. Changed parties and dropped low class tax rate to 0.
8. I tried finding a "sweet spot" between clergy promotion and demotion by tinkering with the middle class taxes and clergy income.
It seems that the fundamental issue is that the clergy keep getting promoted. Trying to slow down the promotion rate (by lowering clergy profit) will just lead to demotion, which is equally bad. Trying to pursuade low class to promote doesn't work early game, and trying to pursuade upper class to demote doesn't work either (they make money at max tax).
So my question is:
1. Am I missing something that will make clergy population rise?
2. If I am supposed to wait out the decline, what am I waiting for? And how long is the decline supposed to be?
3. If this is a non-optimized parameter issue in the software (I don't want to use the word "bug" to imply failure of the software), will it be resolved in 1.2. And if so, what is the part that is changing.
4. Is there another country that I can play that doesn't experience this problem? And if so, what is it about that country that makes it less problematic?
Edit: I'm guessing the literacy rate less than 30% is hindering the promotion process (-0.5%). Is that the driving factor?
