Which Italian state to start with

[Blindbohemian]

what does "drill your armies" mean?

It is a DLC feature from Cradle of Civilisation; don’t sweat it.

I think I was avoiding France and England because I played them (with much fun and enjoyment) in EU2, so was trying another path.

Good call. England is the most boring country in the game, in my opinion. France is okay. Florence is a good starting out country though, in my view. You just need to relax into the pace of Italy and the HRE—expansion happens verrrrrrry slowwwwwwly.

Can you help me understand the development aspect of the game--you didn't say this in your post, but over and over I see people mentioning something about developing provinces or being happy to take an area that has high development. I know how to do it by using the monarch points, but why would someone use them rather than getting to the next tech, unless they were far ahead of others?

Typically you do it because you’re far ahead of the others, but it’s worth bearing in mind that development is itself really quite powerful. Every point of development for example grants 0.2 force limit, so 5 development is +1 forcelimit — not to be sniffed at, as a tiny Italian country! The potential wealth from development is substantial as well.

Is there some nation benefit, say "if you get 50% of your lands up to 10 development, you get X benefit?"

No, but there should be…

The benefit is that you’d be getting 2 forcelimit per province, plus money and trade power.

the balance of overextension is connected to admin tech, right? Being able to core what you take in a relatively short time?

Overextension is a function of the amount of development you hold in non-core provinces. I don’t believe coring time is attached to admin tech, its development again: higher dev provinces cost more and take longer to core, and mess you up more (i.e higher overextension) until you core them.

 

[Selvydius]

Overextension is a function of the amount of development you hold in non-core provinces. I don’t believe coring time is attached to admin tech, its development again: higher dev provinces cost more and take longer to core, and mess you up more (i.e higher overextension) until you core them.

Admin efficiency lower coring costs and overextension, so technically admin tech is related but only 3 admin technologies give admin efficiency, and it's from tech 17 onwards.

 

[ProfCC]

It is a DLC feature from Cradle of Civilisation; don’t sweat it.

Good call. England is the most boring country in the game, in my opinion. France is okay. Florence is a good starting out country though, in my view. You just need to relax into the pace of Italy and the HRE—expansion happens verrrrrrry slowwwwwwly.

Typically you do it because you’re far ahead of the others, but it’s worth bearing in mind that development is itself really quite powerful. Every point of development for example grants 0.2 force limit, so 5 development is +1 forcelimit — not to be sniffed at, as a tiny Italian country! The potential wealth from development is substantial as well.

No, but there should be…

The benefit is that you’d be getting 2 forcelimit per province, plus money and trade power.

Overextension is a function of the amount of development you hold in non-core provinces. I don’t believe coring time is attached to admin tech, its development again: higher dev provinces cost more and take longer to core, and mess you up more (i.e higher overextension) until you core them.

Thank you blindbohemian…this is brilliant. The “happens verrrrrry slowwwwwwly” part is where I was struggling to get a hold of. I think it’s the feel of “I’m just sitting here watching the clock run; I should be doing something.” Of course, I am/was doing things like slowly building force limit or adding another trade protection ship or working the diplomats. Yet, when you read others saying things should happen quickly, or that they did something like a war or added a province in what sound like maybe 5 years of game time…well, just feels like “I must be doing something wrong.”

 

[nobodyinparticular]

Thank you Hayseed. Brilliant advice. I recognize that I struggle to accept that I might accomplish one or two goals in only 25 years of game time. In other games that I play, there is more of an urgency to accomplish things consistently.

Questions to your comments:

• what does "drill your armies" mean?
• I think I was avoiding France and England because I played them (with much fun and enjoyment) in EU2, so was trying another path. And I just played Castile to start, so maybe not wanting another Iberian war. Still, your point is absolutely correct as I played that version on vanilla, and then added some other DLC on sale...so, I'm learning fresh yet again.
• Can you help me understand the development aspect of the game--you didn't say this in your post, but over and over I see people mentioning something about developing provinces or being happy to take an area that has high development. I know how to do it by using the monarch points, but why would someone use them rather than getting to the next tech, unless they were far ahead of others? Is there some nation benefit, say "if you get 50% of your lands up to 10 development, you get X benefit?"
• the balance of overextension is connected to admin tech, right? Being able to core what you take in a relatively short time?

As a stubborn player who went for playing countries like holland or brandenburg in my first runs, you really learn a lot more from succeeding with a stronger country than failing over and over again with a minor/medium. France is an absolute blast IMO and it's better to play the big boys first and then gradually go smaller, until you go form Germany as Dithmarschen.

 

[hayseed]

Questions to your comments:

• what does "drill your armies" mean?
• I think I was avoiding France and England because I played them (with much fun and enjoyment) in EU2, so was trying another path. And I just played Castile to start, so maybe not wanting another Iberian war. Still, your point is absolutely correct as I played that version on vanilla, and then added some other DLC on sale...so, I'm learning fresh yet again.
• Can you help me understand the development aspect of the game--you didn't say this in your post, but over and over I see people mentioning something about developing provinces or being happy to take an area that has high development. I know how to do it by using the monarch points, but why would someone use them rather than getting to the next tech, unless they were far ahead of others? Is there some nation benefit, say "if you get 50% of your lands up to 10 development, you get X benefit?"
• the balance of overextension is connected to admin tech, right? Being able to core what you take in a relatively short time?

drill requires Cradle of Civilization DLC. Your Army has a professionalism value that is gained by drilling an army. Drill requires that a leader be attached. drill reduces morale, so that you need to conduct drill when you don’t expect to need an army. morale takes three or four months to recover. Drill improves your regiments ‘ combat abilities and reduces damage suffered in combat. It also gives special bonuses at certain levels of professionalism. Wiki article Army discusses near the end of the article. It’s time consuming on a scale from 0% to 100%, you gain 1% every time you hire a leader, a fraction of a percent per year for drilling (based on how much of your Army is drilling) and lose 5% when you hire a Mercenary force.

Agree with your second point. Every DLC changes the flavor of the game. Some slightly and some in major ways. My approach is to go back and play a major after every DLC, just to get my feet under me.

Development is complicated. You probably already know most of this, but it’s easier to explain if I start at the beginning. In EU4 parlance, development is different than building economic buildings, so it is important not to conflate them. Every province has an administrative value (the quill and paper symbol), a diplomatic value (the dove symbol), and a manpower value. You can see them near the top of the province screen. Adm corresponds to tax revenue. Diplo corresponds to production and manpower corresponds to manpower. Your ruler has corresponding values which give you monthly accumulated admin, diplo and military points to spend. One of the ways you can spend these points is to increase the corresponding values in a province. This is what people mean by development. Why would you spend these precious resources this way? Several reasons. If you are playing with Mandate of Heaven DLC, you earn splendor from having a capital with 30 development, and later for having one with 50 development. Institutions (iirc are in the vanilla game) can be forced to spawn in a province by adding development once the institution has spawned somewhere in the world. It’s an expensive way to start the spread of an institution but, if you are playing a country that is far from the origination point, it’s painful, but worth it. Also, every additional adm development point increases your tax revenue, every additional diplo development point increases your production revenue and every additional military development point increases your manpower and force limit. In the early game, it’s prohibitively expensive to spend mana this way. Later in the game, if you are way ahead in technology and ideas, and if you are bumping up against the ceiling for accumulated mana, it’s another way to spend them.

Overextension is a function of how many development provinces you are trying to digest. On the stability tab, you will see the percentage of your overextension. Hold the tooltip over it and you will see all the bad things overextension does to you. It really depresses your trade revenues and amps up unrest across your country. Plus other bad things as well. You spend adm points to core these undigested provinces. Then you wait for them to be digested. Usually a few years. The overextension stays as a drag on you until the provinces are cored. As they are cored, the overextension drops away. It’s steps, not a slope. So if Arezzo causes you to have 8% overextension, you stay at 8% overextension until it is cored ( what I referred to as digested). Overextension affects you internally and operates independently of the bad effect that aggressive expansion has on your external relations. And both of them operate independently of unrest, which is the likelyhood that your newly acquired provinces will revolt until their separatism burns off (note however that overextension also has an unrest effect, so that newly pacified provinces may start plotting a revolt because your overextension has added to their unrest.

Everyone has his or her own tolerance for overextension. I try to keep it under 50% unless I am finishing off a rival who has important provinces that I covet. Even at that, I try to stay under 90%. For me that means that I fight a war of conquest every three to five years unless something essential drops into my lap.

Hope this helps and that I haven’t put you to sleep or, worse, insulted your intelligence.

Happy gaming.

 

[ProfCC]

drill requires Cradle of Civilization DLC. Your Army has a professionalism value that is gained by drilling an army. Drill requires that a leader be attached. drill reduces morale, so that you need to conduct drill when you don’t expect to need an army. morale takes three or four months to recover. Drill improves your regiments ‘ combat abilities and reduces damage suffered in combat. It also gives special bonuses at certain levels of professionalism. Wiki article Army discusses near the end of the article. It’s time consuming on a scale from 0% to 100%, you gain 1% every time you hire a leader, a fraction of a percent per year for drilling (based on how much of your Army is drilling) and lose 5% when you hire a Mercenary force.

Agree with your second point. Every DLC changes the flavor of the game. Some slightly and some in major ways. My approach is to go back and play a major after every DLC, just to get my feet under me.

Development is complicated. You probably already know most of this, but it’s easier to explain if I start at the beginning. In EU4 parlance, development is different than building economic buildings, so it is important not to conflate them. Every province has an administrative value (the quill and paper symbol), a diplomatic value (the dove symbol), and a manpower value. You can see them near the top of the province screen. Adm corresponds to tax revenue. Diplo corresponds to production and manpower corresponds to manpower. Your ruler has corresponding values which give you monthly accumulated admin, diplo and military points to spend. One of the ways you can spend these points is to increase the corresponding values in a province. This is what people mean by development. Why would you spend these precious resources this way? Several reasons. If you are playing with Mandate of Heaven DLC, you earn splendor from having a capital with 30 development, and later for having one with 50 development. Institutions (iirc are in the vanilla game) can be forced to spawn in a province by adding development once the institution has spawned somewhere in the world. It’s an expensive way to start the spread of an institution but, if you are playing a country that is far from the origination point, it’s painful, but worth it. Also, every additional adm development point increases your tax revenue, every additional diplo development point increases your production revenue and every additional military development point increases your manpower and force limit. In the early game, it’s prohibitively expensive to spend mana this way. Later in the game, if you are way ahead in technology and ideas, and if you are bumping up against the ceiling for accumulated mana, it’s another way to spend them.

Overextension is a function of how many development provinces you are trying to digest. On the stability tab, you will see the percentage of your overextension. Hold the tooltip over it and you will see all the bad things overextension does to you. It really depresses your trade revenues and amps up unrest across your country. Plus other bad things as well. You spend adm points to core these undigested provinces. Then you wait for them to be digested. Usually a few years. The overextension stays as a drag on you until the provinces are cored. As they are cored, the overextension drops away. It’s steps, not a slope. So if Arezzo causes you to have 8% overextension, you stay at 8% overextension until it is cored ( what I referred to as digested). Overextension affects you internally and operates independently of the bad effect that aggressive expansion has on your external relations. And both of them operate independently of unrest, which is the likelyhood that your newly acquired provinces will revolt until their separatism burns off (note however that overextension also has an unrest effect, so that newly pacified provinces may start plotting a revolt because your overextension has added to their unrest.

Everyone has his or her own tolerance for overextension. I try to keep it under 50% unless I am finishing off a rival who has important provinces that I covet. Even at that, I try to stay under 90%. For me that means that I fight a war of conquest every three to five years unless something essential drops into my lap.

Hope this helps and that I haven’t put you to sleep or, worse, insulted your intelligence.

Happy gaming.

I believe strongly in “always keep learning,” so, in no way would you insult my intelligence by offering me the gift of your time (to write such a thorough post) and experience!! The paragraph on development was worth the price of admission! Wish I had seen that somewhere long ago, though perhaps it wasn’t as big a deal in vanilla or I might not have understood it. I had seen the choices in the “calling the Diet” option with the estates, but usually thought the cost was too high…and that only connected to my limited understanding so that I assumed I should always keep those monarch points for tech. But in the Castile play, there were a few times when I was further ahead of others to a significant degree (like, 120%+ cost to next level) so I thought it a good thing to invest either in my current idea or province development.

But is there some guide to that choice? I mean, as Florence, you only have three choices at the start, but as Castile it was like 30-40. As I would click around, either comparing for the Diet option or just being curious, I couldn’t tell if there was any rule of thumb. I did notice some places where “cheaper” to do it, so as I was considering spending some points randomly, that caught my eye. I also noticed that the building slots grow by development. I assume a trade port or some of those major provinces like the capital might be a good choice. But even there, if my capital was already at, say 22 in total, and I had three other places at 8…is it better to raise those up to 10 or make the capital 30?

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

I believe strongly in “always keep learning,” so, in no way would you insult my intelligence by offering me the gift of your time (to write such a thorough post) and experience!! The paragraph on development was worth the price of admission! Wish I had seen that somewhere long ago, though perhaps it wasn’t as big a deal in vanilla or I might not have understood it. I had seen the choices in the “calling the Diet” option with the estates, but usually thought the cost was too high…and that only connected to my limited understanding so that I assumed I should always keep those monarch points for tech. But in the Castile play, there were a few times when I was further ahead of others to a significant degree (like, 120%+ cost to next level) so I thought it a good thing to invest either in my current idea or province development.

But is there some guide to that choice? I mean, as Florence, you only have three choices at the start, but as Castile it was like 30-40. As I would click around, either comparing for the Diet option or just being curious, I couldn’t tell if there was any rule of thumb. I did notice some places where “cheaper” to do it, so as I was considering spending some points randomly, that caught my eye. I also noticed that the building slots grow by development. I assume a trade port or some of those major provinces like the capital might be a good choice. But even there, if my capital was already at, say 22 in total, and I had three other places at 8…is it better to raise those up to 10 or make the capital 30?

As a rule of thumb don't spend extra monarch points on tech, especially not more than 20-30 % ahead of time. There are some cases where that 1 level of technology can give you such an important advantage that its worth the extra points. If you have too much monarch points, spend it on other things, especially development. For admin raising stability to 1 and reducing inflation if it is above 2 % should have priority over developing though.

The cost of increasing development is based on a number of province-based factors: it becomes more costly if the province has a lot of development already, the terrain plays a big role (farmland is the best, in mountains, deserts, tropical forest and so on it is much more costly). There are some additional modifiers such as centres of trade and your capital, also trade goods like cloth lower the cost.
Generally, you want to develop where its cheapest. There are also some other modifiers that you can influence to reduce cost: Loyal Burgher Estate can give you 10 % dev cost, there are some national ideas and the economic idea group that reduces the cost. Also you can use the state edict to reduce cost and state prosperity (DLC locked) to reduce cost. If you stack some of those modifiers you can increase development very cheaply.
Besides the cost you should also look at the benefits: the province where you do a lot of developing should be accepted culture and your religion. When developing with diplomatic points (base production), you should also take into account the value of the trade good of that province: The production of Gems or Silk is more valuable than just grain. If you own a Gold province (such as Castile) it is a good strategic to raise the production in that gold province a couple of times to boost your early income.
A good idea to also do is to increase the development of provinces so you get additional buildings slots (10, 20, ...)

Spreading out or all in one province: Depends a bit on the situation, if that one province is very valuable than it can make sense to focus dev on this province. Capitals get a discount on dev cost depending ont he size of your country (so good idea to wait a bit). For the diet: Before making the choice check which option makes most sense, try to not pick am ission that requires you to spend admin points if you need admin points. Besides that I would go for the mission and spend the points, ideally with some modifiers so it is cheap.

An important consideration is force-spawning of institutions. This is not really an issue in Europe, but in the rest of the world you often need to wait many decades until an institution arrives. However, you can add some institution progress to a province by developing it and if you spend several 100s of monarch points you can even increase it to 100 %, the institution will then spread to neighboring provinces. You should look for good provinces and also to stack all possible modifiers to make this cheaper. In that case you wait with the best provinces for developing until after the institution appeared.

E.g. It is 1540 in India so the Printing Press will soon spawn (around 1550) I have a full monarch points and will spend it on developing. I avoid developing that Farmland province, with a level 2 Centre of Trade and cloth trade good because I will save that province up for getting the institution, instead I will spend some of the dev on other provinces, but make sure to save up enough points for force-spawning Printing Press after it appears.

 

[Livigy]

If you are looking at an Italian state I would highly recommend the Papal states/Kingdom of god.

The main reasons is the papal mechanics that can rapidly speed up your early expansion.

The first major advantage is more control of the curia which gives

Of particular interest is the -20% AE which if applied to every conquest of note will save you from many coalitions.

The second major advantage is also tied to the curia controller which is excommunication.

Excommunication if used correctly is 50% AE wars. Combined with Curia controller, high prestige, and the age of discovery justified wars.. you can fully annex say Florence for 18 AE.

Excommunication is very difficult to actually use though so be warned that it is highly situational and you will need to monitor your targets and manage your relations appropriately. Just setting them as a rival will not guarantee success.

For example, if I was to target a specific nation for excommunication you need to ensure a few things. Firstly you do not get the Excommunication cb unless you have a direct land border with the target nation. Using Florence as a target example you do not share a border initially as the Papal state. You need to either eat Seina/Lucca, reconquest Ravenna or annex your starting vassals.

The other issue you need to control is your own nations opinion of the target. This can actually be significantly challenging as you can't exactly force nations to insult you etc. However there are some steps you can take to reduce your own relations aside from rivalling. For example; Send an alliance request that they reject outright is -25 relations, -10 relations for rejecting military access. If the target is a valid rival you can also ally the target, ask for military access, then rival them. This will give a -50 relations for the target breaking the alliance and another 10 for revoking military access (this stacks with deny military access). There is also allying their rivals as well as getting rivalled and embargoed in return.

The third major advantage is the event with the succession of Naples. If Naples doesn't pay its dues you can get a 50 year subjugation cb on Naples. As they are also newly released they don't have any allies and are highly vulnerable to attack. However I STRONGLY RECCOMEND YOU DO NOT IMMEDIATELY SUBJEGATE THEM.

The argument for not subjugating is the fact that you will get a major power spike which will mean you can no longer rival some other significant excommunication targets such as Florence and Genoa. You also may not have the justified wars and as it is the early game you still may not even have the full 100 prestige so even with the curia controller you are looking at 70 AE in the region which will make you unable to expand for a while. On top of all that .. Naples will likely be disloyal so you did all that for a vassal that won't even support your wars or pay the vassalage fee. However the subjugation cb does have a long timer you got 50 years to consolidate the other targets in Italy so you don't have to vassal them in the first war or even second war.

What I do recommend though is keeping a rival slot open for when they are released, rival them, excommunicate them, take Napoli and Abruzzi and humiliate them. This will significantly lower the Ae from the future subjugation war and Abruzzi can help with your Papal mission tree for the permanent claims in Italy. Salento may also be a good province to take if you plan to get involved with subjugating the Byzantines/Albania or Epirus before the Ottomans eat through the area.

Anyways I turned this into a guide apologies. But it is possible to unite all of Italy before 1500 if that is a challenge you are up for.

 

[hayseed]

Manwe Sulimo’s advice is top notch. The only thing I’d add is that there is a development tab in the pull down menu on the left side of the UI. It’s the one you use to build soldiers, ships, buildings, among other things. Near the bottom are two tabs for development. The upper one lets you look at all of your provinces to see how much development they have, what the next increment of development will cost in mana and some other useful info. You can sort as well. It’s a good place to identify where to spend mana for development. BTW, the lower development tab is for exploiting (cashing in) development. I don’t use it much so I can’t give you much info. I’ve only used it to cash in a manpower point when my manpower reserves got dangerously low.