Why is this game so stressful? Am I playing it wrong?

[toegut]

So I am wondering why the politics in this game is so stressful? I am at my wits end trying to manipulate the politics and my characters. I am always trying to elect as my ruler and co-ruler characters with high attributes and good traits. This means that I need to keep track of prominence, popularity, loyalty, random traits and schemes of 20 characters (14 jobs+6governors/generals/admirals). I spend hours obsessing over which character to appoint to which job so that their prominence grows or their popularity stays up so that they progress and become candidates for consuls. And then all this work vanishes because the character I chose joins the wrong party and then I have to spend another hour redistributing jobs so that party becomes more influential in the senate or he gets dementia or something else untreatable and his health goes down or that character gets a bad trait. I mean, I figured out that I can rotate the jobs of consul and co-consul between three pairs of characters which nicely complement each other (three because you can't re-elect until 10 years pass but you can appoint a dictator for 1 year so then the cycle can be complete). But still getting these three pairs into positions is incredibly stressful and requires constant keeping track of everybody else so that they don't become more prominent/popular/disloyal etc. Or another time I assassinated a party leader so that my chosen guy with great attributes would become the party head (this was a long play, I got a consul to mark him as a rival, and then waited until I got a new consul, and then the ex-consul schemed to assassinate the guy and I as a current consul helped with his scheme so that this way I didn't have to pay tyranny and AE costs) and get all its votes and then the game chose some 20 year old idiot as a new party leader instead.

Do you also have to spend this much time managing the characters? Am I playing this game wrong? In EU4 you get your heir and that's it, maybe if it's 0/0/0 you disinherit him but that's about it. But here there's just too many moving parts and it's nice and realistic but very hard to manage. Even the fact that sacking can only be done by my consul is annoying, because my generals are my next pair of consuls so that they get more prominent and popular from battles and sieging settlements but everytime there's a city I need to bring over my current consul so that I can get the money from sacking. This game is just too much micro (don't even mention keeping track of the economy, making sure that slaves don't promote and moving slaves one by one to get surplus goods).

 

[IsaacCAT]

IMHO in this game you play as the nation, you shouldn't micromanage the characters.

I will post a suggestion next week about this on the Senatus Populusque so the characters and families are 100% simulation and the player only shall care about managing the nation.

For what is worth, I do not pay attention to the characters's care, and I enjoy/suffer they as they show up on my nation key roles.

 

[toegut]

IMHO in this game you play as the nation, you shouldn't micromanage the characters.

I will post a suggestion next week about this on the Senatus Populusque so the characters and families are 100% simulation and the player only shall care about managing the nation.

For what is worth, I do not pay attention to the characters's care, and I enjoy/suffer they as they show up on my nation key roles.

So you just appoint the guys with the best attributes at the time to the job/general and don't try to manage their careers? And with the consuls you just take the ones the game gives you?

 

[IsaacCAT]

So you just appoint the guys with the best attributes at the time to the job/general and don't try to manage their careers? And with the consuls you just take the ones the game gives you?

Usually for the government I give in to the scorned family mechanic first and second I choose the best stats with best loyalty (more loyalty more Political Influence generated). Last, If I get to choose, I prefer characters with low corruption to avoid high wages.

On governors I look first the stats and then corruption, as more corruption leads to more unrest. Sometimes I look also for culture and religion, depending on the region (it also helps reducing unrest for the majority of culture and religion to appoint a Governor of the same type). Lately, I have been using provincial armies to reduce unrest, for this reason culture and religion are less important and I look on the martial stat, thinking ahead for 2.0 levy system!

For generals, it is all about stats and traits. At least for your key armies. You need all you can to win battles and save manpower.

For researchers, I use those positions to fill in scorned families.

Beware with Head of families, with those you always have to choose carefully:

Characters - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

 

[toegut]

Usually for the government I give in to the scorned family mechanic first and second I choose the best stats with best loyalty (more loyalty more Political Influence generated). Last, If I get to choose, I prefer characters with low corruption to avoid high wages.

On governors I look first the stats and then corruption, as more corruption leads to more unrest. Sometimes I look also for culture and religion, depending on the region.

For generals, it is all about stats and traits. At least for your key armies. You need all you can to win battles and save manpower.

I sidelined one family so that I would have two grateful families. The characters from grateful families get a loyalty bonus (for PI) plus wage reduction plus extra statesmanship growth. But yes, I generally follow the same principles. To deal with corruption, I will sometimes run high wages budget, I have plenty of money from all the sacking anyway.

 

[Bovrick]

All those things are optional optimizations. You can do the vast majority of what you want to do by just accepting the consuls you are given. Though I do like to dabble in politics to shoo away terrible upcoming candidates, and make sure exceptional talents rise to the top.

You dont need to have every single aspect of the game going perfectly, it is just an option if you enjoy it. If you arent enjoying it, I suggest letting things go for the most part and focusing on the big picture things you want to achieve.

 

[toegut]

. Lately, I have been using provincial armies to reduce unrest, for this reason culture and religion are less important and I look on the martial stat, thinking ahead for 2.0 levy system!

Yes, I am doing this also. It's actually a bit of an exploit, you can use multiple provincial armies so you will have the same general commanding 3 armies which can be in 3 places simultaneously. For example, I have my consul leading my main conquest army somewhere in Africa and then when the enemy landed some troops in my
capital region I have assigned some units I had there to the provincial governor which is my consul for the capital so he commanded them also. So he was sieging Carthage in Africa and beating back their hispanic allies in Sardinia at the same time.

 

[IsaacCAT]

making sure that slaves don't promote and moving slaves one by one to get surplus goods).

Are you sure that is what you want? I did this on one Egypt Run and ended up with a lot of unrest in my provinces. Have you thought about upgrading your society to freeman/citizens and nobles aka build cities?

Production will increase, you will build your nation, your people will be happier. Win win situation.

Here what I suggested for what I would like the game to allow the players to do:

Slaves Taxation & Scarcity. Economics!

Treasury comes from taxes + commerce + tributes. Taxes: come from Freeman and slaves, but mostly from slaves. The base tax is influenced by the output efficiency but because slaves are always considered 100.00% happiness when calculating output...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Bovrick]

For scorned families and the like, there are plenty of mandatory positions where you wont be using the primary effect of the job. Often 2+ court positions will be irrelevant to your play style, because they're dealing with Character Health, or Mercenary maintenance, and so on. Researchers fall in to this category too once you generate enough research from Pops. Use those positions to keep families happy/generate PI. You dont really need to care about the Statesmanship or key Attribute for those characters, as bar a few negative events their efficacy doesnt matter.

Yes, I am doing this also. It's actually a bit of an exploit, you can use multiple provincial armies so you will have the same general commanding 3 armies which can be in 3 places simultaneously. For example, I have my consul leading my main conquest army somewhere in Africa and then when the enemy landed some troops in my
capital region I have assigned some units I had there to the provincial governor which is my consul for the capital so he commanded them also. So he was sieging Carthage in Africa and beating back their hispanic allies in Sardinia at the same time.

Yeah this will be changing. I assume you were using your leader as a General of your army in Sardinia? Bear in mind in the current game that armies assigned to Governors cannot leave their Region, so the use case is limited.

 

[toegut]

All those things are optional optimizations. You can do the vast majority of what you want to do by just accepting the consuls you are given. Though I do like to dabble in politics to shoo away terrible upcoming candidates, and make sure exceptional talents rise to the top.

You dont need to have every single aspect of the game going perfectly, it is just an option if you enjoy it. If you arent enjoying it, I suggest letting things go for the most part and focusing on the big picture things you want to achieve.

Yes, I am thinking I will give up on this part of the game, it's too much work and randomness. It's incredibly annoying spending hours shepherding your top characters to build up their popularity and prominence only for them to get an untreatable disease and die.

 

[toegut]

Are you sure that is what you want? I did this on one Egypt Run and ended up with a lot of unrest in my provinces. Have you thought about upgrading your society to freeman/citizens and nobles aka build cities?

Production will increase, you will build your nation, your people will be happier. Win win situation.

Here what I suggested for what I would like the game to allow the players to do:

Slaves Taxation & Scarcity. Economics!

Treasury comes from taxes + commerce + tributes. Taxes: come from Freeman and slaves, but mostly from slaves. The base tax is influenced by the output efficiency but because slaves are always considered 100.00% happiness when calculating output...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

this is a bit offtopic, but trade income is much more important than taxes in this game (this is similar to EU4 where trade brings also much more money than taxes). The only way to get trade income is by exporting surplus goods, this doesn't depend on nobles/citizens, only on slaves. For imports, the nobles/citizens *are* important but imports earn you much less money than exports. Taxes are also mostly generated by slaves, and their happiness doesn't matter unlike for other pops. So I'm thinking as long as you have your baseline research production from enough nobles in the capital province/region the rest should be based on slaves.

 

[toegut]

Yeah this will be changing. I assume you were using your leader as a General of your army in Sardinia? Bear in mind in the current game that armies assigned to Governors cannot leave their Region, so the use case is limited.

Yes, the point is you can always unassign units from governors without a cooldown. So I had my army under my consul in Africa sieging Carthage. I split out from it a stack without a general and put it on ships and moved to Sardinia. Once they landed in Sardinia, this leaderless stack was assigned as a provincial army. So my leader, still at the siege in Carthage, also took over this stack in Sardinia as the governor of the capital region. Once they mopped up the enemy in Sardinia, they got unassigned from the region so they could board a ship and go back to Africa.

 

[Bovrick]

Depending on the pace of any expansion you're doing, I would suggest only really looking into internal management during any downtime between wars. It gives me a nice rhythm to the game; you end up reviewing young people growing into court every few years, picking a Province to reorganise slaves/cities/buildings; filling out all imports, before moving on again.

Short term solutions to character deaths or starvation issues are usually adequate to use until I actually want to sit down and reorganise my court/territories. Then I'll just stick with it until the next election or in a few years time after another war.

 

[IsaacCAT]

this is a bit offtopic, but trade income is much more important than taxes in this game (this is similar to EU4 where trade brings also much more money than taxes). The only way to get trade income is by exporting surplus goods, this doesn't depend on nobles/citizens, only on slaves. For imports, the nobles/citizens *are* important but imports earn you much less money than exports. Taxes are also mostly generated by slaves, and their happiness doesn't matter unlike for other pops. So I'm thinking as long as you have your baseline research production from enough nobles in the capital province/region the rest should be based on slaves.

You are right is a little bit off-topic, but micromanaging and the hassle to manage your empires, I will argue that a small empire is equal or more efficient than larger empires without all the micromanaging that large empires demand (governors, etc...).

Here you have a comparison on a tall versus wide empire. Your tall highly developed empire generates more income from taxes than commerce as you say and the wide empire gets more income from commerce. EDITED: In egypt I already was transforming my economy from slaving powerhouse to cities, thus the taxes > commerce income. Of course the wide empire has more margin than the tall empire, but on percentage on revenues? Not so much. Thus you can play efficiently with the small empire without the myriad of jobs and provinces to micro manage. And the PI surplus!!! much more rewarding.

Large empire balance: +63.78 that is 25.85% on revenues (63.78/243.71)
Small empire balance: +12.71 that is 26.70% on revenues (12.71/47.6)

 

[toegut]

Depending on the pace of any expansion you're doing, I would suggest only really looking into internal management during any downtime between wars. It gives me a nice rhythm to the game; you end up reviewing young people growing into court every few years, picking a Province to reorganise slaves/cities/buildings; filling out all imports, before moving on again.

Short term solutions to character deaths or starvation issues are usually adequate to use until I actually want to sit down and reorganise my court/territories. Then I'll just stick with it until the next election or in a few years time after another war.

I also only review at the election time, but when I have a change in ruler, I choose who should be my next pair and arrange everything. If you don't pay attention, it can come back to haunt you. For example, I once appointed a young guy with terrible attributes as my censor just for grateful family and PI generation (I didn't care about his party approval, it was at 100 already) and then after 10 years he became so prominent that the game kept suggesting him as the next consul. It took me some work to sideline him and avoid his terrible stats.

 

[Marcus Pica]

I respect you for such micromanagement, you are doing nothing wrong, to the contrary you are playing the game better than most. However you dont need to be such a perfectionist as you will not be able to be in control all the time. If you dont find it fun, just leave it be.

As a first time player I also tried to manage all aspects of the simulation and it was all novel and fun, but after I logged in hundreds of hours in the game I left the more annoying parts to the simulation and focused on what I enjoy.

 

[toegut]

I respect you for such micromanagement, you are doing nothing wrong, to the contrary you are playing the game better than most. However you dont need to be such a perfectionist as you will not be able to be in control all the time. If you dont find it fun, just leave it be.

As a first time player I also tried to manage all aspects of the simulation and it was all novel and fun, but after I logged in hundreds of hours in the game I left the more annoying parts to the simulation and focused on what I enjoy.

Yes, coming from EU4 where the micro is limited to keep your diplomats busy/split your siege stack to minimise attrition/run encourage dev edict before dumping mana into dev, I was interested to manage all these aspects of politics in this game. And I have to say that it's impressive that the game gives you all these tools to manage politics but they're incredibly annoying to use. Maybe I will focus more on the economy/city building part, that at least seems to be less random.

 

[Herennius]

For scorned families and the like, there are plenty of mandatory positions where you wont be using the primary effect of the job. Often 2+ court positions will be irrelevant to your play style, because they're dealing with Character Health, or Mercenary maintenance, and so on.

Indeed. Not long ago I summed up my thoughts on potentially "expendable" positions here:

Jobs and family satisfaction

Hello all, I have trouble with my main families, it seems since I designated my ruler as general 2 families aren't satisfied anymore : 2 jobs and officies were enough before, and now they ask for 3 and they feel scorned. Many characters have...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[Limbojack]

Do you also have to spend this much time managing the characters? Am I playing this game wrong?

It depends on what you mean by "wrong".

Ideally, in order to maximize your nation's output, heavily micro-managing your characters is a great move, and therefore "right" in terms of effectiveness. But a game is meant to be enjoyed, and it sounds like all of this micro-managing makes you enjoy the game less, so maybe you're playing it "wrong". It's all about striking that balance between efficiency and enjoyment, so maybe you should try a more casual approach to characters.

 

[toegut]

Indeed. Not long ago I summed up my thoughts on potentially "expendable" positions here:

Jobs and family satisfaction

Hello all, I have trouble with my main families, it seems since I designated my ruler as general 2 families aren't satisfied anymore : 2 jobs and officies were enough before, and now they ask for 3 and they feel scorned. Many characters have...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

The problem with such expendable positions is that they still give their holders prominence/popularity. Even researchers will be getting more prominent/popular with time (in fact, researchers get more prominence/popularity than many other jobs which I find unrealistic, it's not like all ancient researchers were top politicians). So if you appoint a guy with terrible stats and traits as a researcher because you want to keep a family happy, the game will after a while nominate him as your next consul. That is why I have to evaluate who should fill each job so that I don't accidentally make some idiot a prominent politician.