State edicts. Do you use them and when?

[Restless Native]

So I have been thinking about these lately as I have not really used them much.
I think I gave up on them when trying to use the resist reformation edict and realised it just didn’t work well.
I used to use institution spread but always forgot to switch it off after I adopted the last institution. That’s more my fault really.

But looking at them again I’m wondering how useful they can be to your game. State maintenance isn’t that high and there’s some good options.

Trade power is one that seems very useful and could pay for itself in the correct circumstances. Missionary strength seems like another.

So I guess I’m asking the community how much you use these and when and why. Am I missing some opportunity or are they very circumstantial? Any meta out there?

 

[Iferius]

I always use one in the capital (often manpower or trade power) and I use the development edict before developing - if I plan to force develop an institution, I activate the edict a year before the institution spawns so the cooldown to change it is gone and I can immediately switch to institution spread.

If I have some bottleneck forts (like in north Italy) I always use the defensiveness one during wars, and when converting provinces in a state, I use the conversion edict if the conversion speed is less than 8%.

 

[Arizal]

So I have been thinking about these lately as I have not really used them much.
I think I gave up on them when trying to use the resist reformation edict and realised it just didn’t work well.
I used to use institution spread but always forgot to switch it off after I adopted the last institution. That’s more my fault really.

But looking at them again I’m wondering how useful they can be to your game. State maintenance isn’t that high and there’s some good options.

Trade power is one that seems very useful and could pay for itself in the correct circumstances. Missionary strength seems like another.

So I guess I’m asking the community how much you use these and when and why. Am I missing some opportunity or are they very circumstantial? Any meta out there?

I was going to write a list of them with the obvious use you can make of them, but I think you can full well make that observation yourself. The real problem is that you don't have pop ups reminding you that they are active, or you can't set them to automatically expire, so you tend to not use them just because you don't want to then forget them for a hundred years.

 

[Vin55]

So I have been thinking about these lately as I have not really used them much.
I think I gave up on them when trying to use the resist reformation edict and realised it just didn’t work well.
I used to use institution spread but always forgot to switch it off after I adopted the last institution. That’s more my fault really.

But looking at them again I’m wondering how useful they can be to your game. State maintenance isn’t that high and there’s some good options.

Trade power is one that seems very useful and could pay for itself in the correct circumstances. Missionary strength seems like another.

So I guess I’m asking the community how much you use these and when and why. Am I missing some opportunity or are they very circumstantial? Any meta out there?

The reformation one was bugged and should work as intendet atm, for me it does at least.

 

[Zander]

I was going to write a list of them with the obvious use you can make of them, but I think you can full well make that observation yourself. The real problem is that you don't have pop ups reminding you that they are active, or you can't set them to automatically expire, so you tend to not use them just because you don't want to then forget them for a hundred years.

A thousand times this. I use the religious conversion one and the development one because there's a specific end I can remember around - otherwise I never use them because of the terrible UI/design that makes them effectively permanent.

 

[Kapi96]

I use the -10% dev cost one a lot. Often have spare points to spend on dev, or trying to spawn an institution. -10% may not be a lot, but over the course of a game it adds up to a lot of monarch points saved. Besides, if you combine it with other modifiers, eg. prosperity, burgher loyalty bonus, economic ideas, Islamic scholars etc. you can get pretty cheap dev costs early in the game!

 

[Skoonting]

They have some pretty good benefits, so yeah. I mostly use the dev edict and institution edict, but also the defensiveness edict right before someone tries to siege me. But it really is a pain in the ass to enact them if you have many states to manage. I wish there was some way to do many edicts quickly, similar to how the build map-mode works. Would make life so much better

 

[Less2]

Having the state edicts map mode bound somewhere and just skipping through it once in a while is a good way to avoid getting drained all game. I agree that the mechanics are a hassle to deal with.

 

[EmagDrolBot]

- Dev reduction when pushing institutions.
- Missionary strength when converting provinces early game (or late game with a bad religion)
- Defensive when a fort is under siege during a war, to slow the enemy progress down. You can activate this edict while the fort is being sieged.

In all cases, these are a turn on when needed and turn off afterwards deal for me. I don't leave any on, unless I forget to turn them off.

 

[Heiliges Thüringens Reich]

always on:
protect trade on trade/CoT provinces
increased enlistment on manpower-heavy

situational:
change to advancement effort when an institution reaches a state
defensive on important fort provinces when I'm at war
encourage development when I want to spend surplus mana to dev a province
enforce religious unityif I'll convert provinces
religion enforced if I don't want to convert to protestantism

 

[MrSnert]

I use edicts quite a lot, with all the obvious uses desribed by others. It really helps to occassionally check the state edict mapmode however (I have it handy as an alt under areas/states&territories mapmodes, which is useful) to turn off the missionary and institution spread ones, as it is real easy to forget. Alternatively you could use the macrobuilder, although that's a rather recent addition and is certainly not quite in my system yet.

I really like selecting a state that is heavy on grain and livestock, somewhere in or near my heartland, bump their mil dev to around 10 and build all the appropriate buildings (barracks & soldiers households) then have the manpower edict on there. Just having areas light up bright green in manpower mapmode is cool, and it really does boost up your manpower quite massively that way.

 

[Romanix90]

I mostly use them when i want to fasten up institution spreading and missionary strengh. Others i don't use that much.

 

[JangoBunBun]

I was going to write a list of them with the obvious use you can make of them, but I think you can full well make that observation yourself. The real problem is that you don't have pop ups reminding you that they are active, or you can't set them to automatically expire, so you tend to not use them just because you don't want to then forget them for a hundred years.

There is a state edict map mode. I found myself using edicts far more when I added that to the quick bar.

 

[Terixis]

I always switch to the development edict before forcing an institution and then switch it to the institution spread edict after a year. And then I forget to get rid of it and waste ducats.

 

[PDXJon]

I use the dev edict the most. I click the manpower edict on high manpower territories. I would use the defensive one more when fighting except I always forget about it, even when I plan on using it before declaring war.

 

[watchout86]

Some of them I use, most of them I don't.

The ones I'll often use:

I'll use the development edict when I want to develop, obviously.
I'll use the missionary strength edict when I want to convert provinces quickly (or couldn't do so without it).
I'll use the defensive edict if I'm in a tough war.

The ones I'll sometimes use:

The trade power edict is very situational, usually it is not really worth it.
Manpower edicts can be very useful, especially in areas with lots of food goods and manpower manufactories. Only really need it if you're struggling with manpower, though.
I'll sometimes selectively use the institution edict, but not consistently and only in specific situations.

The ones I'll only use for probably non-optimal play:

I'll sometimes use the centraliziation edict ... it's not really worth it, but sometimes I just like to reduce the autonomy a little faster to either get more manpower/forcelimit available (in exchange for the money that comes from state maintenance), or to increase the speed of government reform gain (but the latter is only really useful if it's early game and you don't have many provinces yet).

The Courthouse type buildings helps with the costs and makes it less painful to use the less optimal edicts.

Also, as someone else already mentioned, it will help if you have the state edict map mode on one of your hotkeys to check it every once in a while ... I generally have 2-3 different map modes per hotkey, so e.g. I'll have both the political map and my state edicts on my 'w' key. Just tap the 'w' key every once in a while and you'll notice if you still have any edicts where you shouldn't.

 

[Restless Native]

The map mode usage is good advice. I don’t think I use most of the different map modes as much as I should.

 

[petertju]

I use them a lot more than I expected when they released it, they are quite a nice way to solve problems at the moment.

Defensiveness, missionary strength, institution spread, dev cost, manpower I use in most of my games.

trade power i might 'underuse', I just feel like it is money for money, but I should just try it out a bit more.

autonomy change, devestation change, reformation resistance and unrest I never use.


All things together, I like this mechanic and am quite happy with it. Balance wise only the age specific ones should be buffed imo, to make them 'stand out' a bit more.

 

[Zander]

Really all the system needs is a popup that asks you after a year if you still want it, and has the options:

• Turn it off
• Ask me again in 1 year
• Ask me again in 5 years
• Ask me again in 10 years
• Don't ask me again

That would solve 90% of my complaints about the system.
(The other complaint being that the reformation edict doesn't have any meaningful impact.)

 

[Aner]

Under the top left button (the same that you use to quickly check the diplomatic options and create armies) there is also an option to see the edicts per state. It also shows how long they are active.