Why can I not generate much income?

[The-King]

Pewt,
Are you related to Simon Cowl? Boy, you don't mince words, do you? And I thought 66% was pretty good. :sad:

Well, this is my first real run through as a 'not easy' Nation and I have not found a good resource describing all the things you all seem to know. I grabbed the Balkans, well, because I could. I tried knocking out Milan, but WE started causing riots all over and all I got was 1 province and a lot of resentment. And the sliders? It seems every time I move one, some drastic event occurs to cause -3 stability or decentralize or something. The only slider that's really stayed put has been quality vs. quantity. It seems I keep moving sliders back after a 'correction' so I can never keep a continual movement going.

And I still don't quite understand how claiming the throne, PUs, inheritance and all that works. Too many years with no brainer games, I guess.

Thanks for all the input. I hope, perhaps, it has helped someone else as well as it has me.

Moving sliders give you events after you move them, they can either be good or bad, its based on chance. However when you move to centralisation you will always get a bad event(because going centralisation is always a good move). No slider move will ever give you a -3 stability or decentralisation event. Also, during the game, there are events which can give you slider moves but most of those are just random chance.

Claiming thrones are quite simple. If you move your mouse over the top part of the screen where the disputed successions are, you will see countries that you could potentially form personal unions with. All you need to do is form a royal marriage and claim their throne. This will give you a casus belli against them to form a personal union, however your relations with every other royal marriage will go down and your prestige will drop. Once you go to war with the country you put a claim to their throne and defeat them, you will have a peace offer which will be "form personal union," and once the war is over(with you winning of course) you will have a personal union with this country. Alternatively, another way to create the claim throne casus belli is the spy option 'fabricate claims' that you can see if you check spy options on an enemy capital, it has its own requirements.

In terms of inheritance, there are two ways to do it. The first option is to wait for inheritance, if you inherit naturally after your King dies, you will get cores on all of that nation's provinces that they have a core on and are either:
-In the same culture group as you; or
-Apart of the Holy Roman empire.
(This means that you should try to PU countries that are in your culture group or the empire)
The other way to inherit is to 'integrate' which can be done after 50 years of being apart of a union. However this is the bad option because you'll never get any cores. Integrating is probably best done on countries that are not part of the empire and not part of your cultural group. And it might not be a bad idea to integrate a country so you can release it as a vassal.

To maintain personal unions you must always have positive prestige and over 0 relations with your juniors. If your ruler dies and either of those requires are not met then the PU will break, but you will get a casus belli to reunite the union.

Hope that helped!!

 

[Pewt]

Pewt,
Are you related to Simon Cowl? Boy, you don't mince words, do you? And I thought 66% was pretty good. :sad:

There are lots of modifiers that affect trade efficiency, so it's pretty hard to list them all. Rather than try to list them all, here's a multiplayer save game in which I have 130% Trade Efficiency about 10 years before your game (as Venice). I could have 138% if I had remembered to enact the Navigation Act early (+6%) and had a better advisor (+6% instead of +4%). Tech plays a part, Adm. Republic gives +10%, Reformed gives +10%, the NI gives 10%, Plutocracy and Free Trade give a bit, advisors give up to +12% compete chance and +6% TE, and the rest is from a ton of National Decisions (look through my National Decision list and then look up any TE or Compete Chance-giving ones on the wiki to see how to enact them).

(P.S. ignore National Trade Income Modifier. It's good, but it's not as related to trade as the name might have you think)

If you look at the economy page it should also give you a good idea of how absurdly powerful trade can be.

Well, this is my first real run through as a 'not easy' Nation and I have not found a good resource describing all the things you all seem to know. I grabbed the Balkans, well, because I could.

Aye, you learn as you go. Better targets would be Cyprus, Fez+Ceuta+Tangiers (for the forcelimit, not the income), the rest of the non-HRE Italian stuff, any HRE territory you can get your hands on as a side effect of wars started against non-HRE members, anything in France or Aragon, etc. Basically look for high base tax, and try to find Trade Goods which aren't Grain, Fish, Naval Supplies, or Wool (and Salt is ok but not great).

I tried knocking out Milan, but WE started causing riots all over and all I got was 1 province and a lot of resentment. And the sliders? It seems every time I move one, some drastic event occurs to cause -3 stability or decentralize or something. The only slider that's really stayed put has been quality vs. quantity. It seems I keep moving sliders back after a 'correction' so I can never keep a continual movement going.

The only event that comes to mind which actually forces a potentially bad slider move is "Sickness of King", which gives -1 stab and -1 aristocracy or +1 decentralization. I generally always go for the aristocracy in that case, even if I'm a plutocratic nation. Any other slider changing events should either have a non-slider changing option (-1 stab, +RR, etc) which you should take if you don't want the slider move, or have a slider move in either direction on the same slider (so they're always helpful, even if they incur other penalties such as a stabhit).

 

[BlitzMartinDK]

Well, to be honest 2 % inflation is actually excellent! It is MUCH lower than I have in any of my games!

Also, I am not sure if you are behind in tech.. Could you show the page where every nations tech is? (its in The Ledger -bottom right on main screen)

Slider ARE very important, though. There will always be some event when you move a slider. Thats just something you accept for a benefit for (hopefully) the rest of the game.
Also, stab-hits are just temporary. Build many churces, and it will be cheaper to get back up again.

When you are presented with a multi-choice bad event (or good one, by the way), priority thinking should be : What choice has longest lasting effect? Do I want that effect?


And Pewt : Doesn't venice start out as a Merchant Republic? ..way easier to make money on trade, then.. And Venice goes as an easier choice in the Campaign than Naples..What options are you playing with, both of you, IF you really want to compare Pewts Normal with Snaps Difficult game?

 

[Pewt]

Well, to be honest 2 % inflation is actually excellent! It is MUCH lower than I have in any of my games!

Well then you just need to work on that even more than he does.

Also, I am not sure if you are behind in tech.. Could you show the page where every nations tech is? (its in The Ledger -bottom right on main screen)

He is, click the tech mapmode and compare it to, say, the save I provided.

And Pewt : Doesn't venice start out as a Merchant Republic? ..way easier to make money on trade, then.. And Venice goes as an easier choice in the Campaign than Naples..What options are you playing with, both of you, IF you really want to compare Pewts Normal with Snaps Difficult game?

Merchant Republics start very mercantilistic, so it's just as hard if not harder to be a free trader.

My game is multiplayer, so it's a lot harder than any SP difficulty. Not that it matters, because last I checked difficulty doesn't affect trade efficiency.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

@OP, your head is swimming? Here are a couple simplifications. You can learn why later.
1. policy sliders for good income should be centralization far as you can go, plutocracy far as you can go, free trade far as you can go. Don't get too scared by the risk of bad events. The policy sliders are long term changes for long term benefits, the bad events are short term issues you can deal with. I do centralization first just because it's on top.
2. You want to increase your sphere of influence for better diplomacy and extra magistrates. More magistrates means more buildings and more cultural tradition. Higher cultural tradition means better advisors. And because you expanded your sphere, you now have enough magistrates to build...
3. Buildings:
- Dock, counting house, and most of the trade line buildings stack for increasing production income. It sounds confusing but production is based on the trade value of your provinces times # of trade units times production efficiency.
- The tax buildings are self evident.
- Otherwise just add buildings everywhere.
4. Advisors: If you are running a smaller empire, like your game on the first post, the advisors that give you plus percent income will cost more than they provide in benefit. The advisors that give a flat +3 ducat improvement to tech investment for each star are far superior early in the game.

 

[BlitzMartinDK]

Pewt : And since you are in a multiplayer -game, you REALLY cannot compare that to a Single-player game...Do you have allies ingame? out of game? Friends you can trust to help you when in need?..or a you having to look over your shoulder all the time, because some AI-country might get a mission that will bother you? ..I am not saying that a MP-game is easier, not at all...it is just VERY different...


Oh.. And sometimes a little inflation is worth it, for example to get those Constables early on, instead of dribling in one every second or third year. Economy is all a question of whether the benefits outweighs the cost..

..As you can see, I am used to play small nations with much lower base income..

 

[Pewt]

Pewt : And since you are in a multiplayer -game, you REALLY cannot compare that to a Single-player game...Do you have allies ingame? out of game? Friends you can trust to help you when in need?..or a you having to look over your shoulder all the time, because some AI-country might get a mission that will bother you? ..I am not saying that a MP-game is easier, not at all...it is just VERY different...


Oh.. And sometimes a little inflation is worth it, for example to get those Constables early on, instead of dribling in one every second or third year. Economy is all a question of whether the benefits outweighs the cost..

..As you can see, I am used to play small nations with much lower base income..

MP means I actually have competition in trade rather than just monopolizing every CoT on the face of the earth. It is strictly harder to trade in MP.

I think this screenshot adequately shows why SP's difficulty is irrelevantly low:

GG, may 1407 and the game is already over. Try pulling that in MP.

(PS. First, my save was only meant to give an idea of how to get trade efficiency, so I don't even see what you're trying to argue. Second, it was from a real MP game, not a let's-hold-hands-and-gank-the-AI MP game).