Prestige....

[Six-Monts]

The problem with Paradox giving away free games is that so many newbies come to the forum asking newbie questions....

Here are mines

I started my game very aggressive (took over Ireland, fought Castille to vassalized all of Scotland for myself, Crusade against Granada and Tripoli). Basically, i got a lot of prestige very early in the game and was #1 for a good 25 years.

I then decided that i would spend some time thinking about internal development (tech, buildings, ecenomy, stability). The problem is that my prestige is falling year after year and i don't know how to raise it other than war. I could probaly go to war, but that would raise my infamy and use my armies (and since Castille and France both have CB against me and around -150 relation, i'm thinking defense).

So i've got two questions
1) Is infamy that bad? I play Victoria 2 where infamy can be a really bad thing. Is infamy as bad in EU3?
2) Is there another way than war to raise prestige? I can hire someone who give a small % of prestige, but it's not enough. Should i be worried about prestige going down? Once again, from a Victoria 2 player's perspective, prestige is a serious thing. Is prestige as important in EU3 than V2?

Thanks!

EDIT : I'm England btw

 

[panionios]

1. Depending on the difficulty level you are playing, if you go above a certain limit, everyone will declare war on you (point your mouse over the infamy icon to see your limit).
2. For prestige, see here (http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Prestige). No you don't need to be at war all the time. Note that there is a -5 base cost per year, so if you have +5.5. per year, then you will not lose prestige.

 

[Ranger900]

Infamy is very bad in EU3. Much worse I find then Vic 2. Here it will cause you to start getting strings of constant revolts and money loss and other things until your infamy goes back under its limit, along with allowing everyone around you to declare war on you for free (and trust me they will)

As for raising prestige, a Philosopher Advisor can do it, and their are a few events that do it but I myself usually find the only reliable way to get it is through wars (forgot about Papal controllers because I don't usually play European Nations).

 

[Serzis]

From your introduction, I gather that you are playing England. If this is not correct, nevermind.


On the issue of prestige, hover your mouse key over your prestige number and you'll see that your prestige is negative over time due to "uncontested claims." At the start of the game, England has experienced set-backs in the Hundred Years War, but still has claims on French Normandie and inner Aquitaine. In other words, you have cores on provinces you do not control [see diplomatic map-mode]. As long as you fail to control territories you simultaneously claim to be yours, your prestige will suffer from this continual failure to assert your sovereignty. You can prevent this prestige drain by conquering your cores, or revoke your claims on the continent by giving it up in a peace deal.

 

[ktk1212]

Successfully proposing a royal marriage gets you a one-time bonus of 1 prestige each (which can add up fast if you royal marriage half of Europe, esp. those German OPMs) and you get prestige for exploring new lands with QFTNW. Also, the trading in furs modifier gives +1% prestige, and being the papal controller is another +1% prestige.

 

[Mongoose87]

Infamy may be worse than in Vicky II, but it also goes away much more quickly, so don't sweat it too much.

 

[chgrogers]

As England you start with 4 maybe 5 cores on France. Each unconquered core is called an uncontested claim. adding -0.3% per year. This is most likely the source of your minus Prestige.

 

[knul]

Infamy may be worse than in Vicky II, but it also goes away much more quickly, so don't sweat it too much.

The effects of Infamy are quite severe. Your stability costs will go up, your merchants' compete chance in foreign CoTs goes down and worst of all, at very high Infamy close to your Infamy limit, bad events will happen. Do not go over the limit: with the latests versions, the amount of very bad events will criple you.

Prestige is mainly useful for boosting trade (it gives compete chance and income bonus). It also apparantly helps in getting and inheriting PUs. The mouseover shows all the bonusses. It is nice to have high prestige, but is nowhere near as important as in Vic2.

 

[Ranger900]

Add onto what Knul said that if your an HRE state you really have to watch your expansion into the rest of the HRE, if you over expand just slightly too fast and get to many unlawful territories it can start going up without you doing any waring at all (which can be near disasterous because the moment you do the HRE will dog pile you and you will be dealing with up to 18,000 stack rebels popping up in your territory every few months without fail), otherwise it can take well over 50 years to burn off whatever infamy you have gained (which is why its a good idea to abandon the HRE if your planning on expanding into it).

And back to prestige, why is it used as the tracker for which nation is in what place? It never made much sense to me when Trier with 100 prestige is ranked higher on the total game score then my Palitanate that has eaten 70% of the HRE just cause his Prestige hasn't been trashed by the Emperor demanding stuff back. I kinda wish they had scored it like they do in Vic 2 where the Military and Economy factor into the rankings list.

 

[Six-Monts]

As England you start with 4 maybe 5 cores on France. Each unconquered core is called an uncontested claim. adding -0.3% per year. This is most likely the source of your minus Prestige.

Hmmm, does that mean that i should give up on those cores? As England, what are my chances of beating France to get them back? I do have a decent military, but France has a lot of allies (most of them small, but still many of them), and Castille hates me with a vengeance and i'm afraid they'll jump on the opportunity to get back at me (this is kinda what i did to force them to release Scotland so i could take over...). As a new player playing on easy setting, is it dangerous to attack France? Btw, they have annexed or vassalized almost all of the modern France territory (i still have Calais, Gascogne and Labourd and a much reduced Burgundy is now vassal to Bohemia).

What do you think?

 

[Ranger900]

England can hit or miss when fighting France. Alot of times I have seen them get booted right back out of Europe but if you focus on a Land Army you can usually beat up France something serious as long as they aren't allied with huge chunks of Europe). Especially with Burgundy mostly out of the picture. If they aren't directly allied with Castille and your Infamy isn't about to push over its limit, you might just get away with it in this case I would think.

 

[arl]

2. For prestige, see here (http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Prestige). No you don't need to be at war all the time. Note that there is a -5 base cost per year, so if you have +5.5. per year, then you will not lose prestige.

In the wiki I found that (at least for military tradition) "All tradition gains mentioned are percentage points, while tradition losses are a percentage of your current total tradition".

I verified that this applies also for Cultural tradition, and I believe it applies to prestige, too.

It means that formula is something like Prestige = (currentPrestige + bonus) * (1 - decay).

For example with CurrentPrestige set to 10, bonus to 1%, decay the usual 5%, formula becomes (10 + 1) * (1 - 0.05) = 11 * 0.95 = 10.45 (rises)
but if CurrentPrestige is 25 then it becomes (25 + 1) * 0.95 = 24.7 (decays)

In other words, prestige stabilizes itself to a certain level, that using 1 as bonus and -5% as yearly decay is around 19: if your prestige is higher than 19 prestige it decays, otherwise it increases.

With no bonus the stabilized level is exactly 0: having a bonus makes prestige to stabilize at higher value (19 with bonus 1, 38 with bonus 2, etc...).

Negative bonuses (like -2 gained by excommunication) are applied directly and not as a percentage.
ie: initial=10, bonus = -2, decay = -5 --> (10 - 2) * 0.95 = 7.6
applying it as a percentage would means: initial=10, bonus = 0, decay = -7 (-5 + (-2)) --> 10 * 0.93 = 9.3

So negative bonuses affect decay speed a lot more than normal decay.
That's also means that having a negative bonus will carry your prestige below zero, thing that doesn't happen if you have only "normal" decay (it stabilizes to 0 in that case)