Since England and France no longer start at war it is ridiculously easy to win the "hundred years war" as England. You can just ally Castille + Austria then DOW France when your diplomat gets back. France also doesn't have it's vassal swarm so it gets butchered by almost everyone.
In all the games I have started France hasn't survived in any meaningful fashion into the 1500's. Either England + Castille fucks them or Burgundy fucks them with their new vassal swarm.
Remember that DDRJake is an actual Paradox playtester now. I wonder if he's a bit embarrassed that one got by him, since that's sorta his whole thing. There were a number of beta testers involved actually (including Arumba), so that's a pretty notable thing to get through all those people and then get found so fast.
So far I'm enjoying this expansion. I started my first game as Genoa; this has kept me from really making too much use of the expansion content so far. The early game is still a rush for easy territory and the first idea group, so there is exactly zero free MP available for developing your provinces. Genoa isn't well positioned for that anyway; most of its starting provinces have build cost penalties, and Genoa gets no build cost bonuses.
I may have to go tall anyway, though. After taking Theodoro, Trebizond, a province from Circassia, and a lucky grab of Sardinia (Aragon allied England and promptly got stomped by France, forced to release Sardinia and break the PU with Naples), I'm almost out of good expansion options. The Ottomans are being super-aggressive; it's 1460 and they've already taken Byzantium, Albania, and Candar. France is expanding fast as well. I don't want to take Italy until the new event fires that removes it from the HRE (I allied Venice to help ensure that this happens; Milan had rivaled me anyway). The Muslim nations have formed powerful alliances, mostly revolving around the Ottomans (Tunis and Crimea are both protected in this manner).
My alliances with Savoy, Venice, and Hungary have kept me safe so far. But I think it's time to hunker down, tech up, and develop some provinces. Theodoro at least is pretty prime for upgrading. You can force convert and full annex at the same time, so Theodoro is already Catholic. Just need to culture-convert it and start laying down the development. War with the Ottomans looms; they have a mission to take Crete and claims on a couple of my northeastern provinces.
It's interesting to note that my expansion has not actually yielded any notable economic benefits thus far. I think this is because Trebizond came with a fort, and the cost of that is pretty close to the income I'm getting from these new provinces.
This is definitely not the same game.
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You can't, just as you couldn't increase Base Tax or Manpower directly before either.
There are far, far fewer building slots than there used to be because individual buildings are much more powerful. Using the development system to get more building slots is generally ineffective because it's just too expensive to pump that much development into a province.
If you need to group a bunch of buildings together, look for a Farmlands province to take. They get +2 building slots.
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Improving development isn't really necessary. It's still a worse alternative to expansion (as much as five times as expensive, though of course it varies based on ideas and such).
Most of the rest of the DLC deals with certain governments and religions, which is just new content. Some HRE stuff and new vassal options; nothing critical.
Literally the most useful thing in this DLC for the player is getting National Focus, which you can also get from the (cheaper) Res Publica instead.
Really this DLC only makes playing certain types of nations more fun / possible (going tall is possible, though suboptimal, and playing Theocracies or Buddhists is a lot more interesting). You're not at any real disadvantage if you don't have it.
In fact, without it you have several notable advantages. The AI won't develop, which means you don't have to worry about coring or diplo-annexing costs increasing over time. Plus, all the bonuses that would have given -Development Cost instead give +Goods Produced, which is a whole lot stronger in most circumstances.
It's a well-crafted DLC.
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Improving development isn't really necessary. It's still a worse alternative to expansion (as much as five times as expensive, though of course it varies based on ideas and such).
Most of the rest of the DLC deals with certain governments and religions, which is just new content. Some HRE stuff and new vassal options; nothing critical.
Literally the most useful thing in this DLC for the player is getting National Focus, which you can also get from the (cheaper) Res Publica instead.
Really this DLC only makes playing certain types of nations more fun / possible (going tall is possible, though suboptimal, and playing Theocracies or Buddhists is a lot more interesting). You're not at any real disadvantage if you don't have it.
In fact, without it you have several notable advantages. The AI won't develop, which means you don't have to worry about coring or diplo-annexing costs increasing over time. Plus, all the bonuses that would have given -Development Cost instead give +Goods Produced, which is a whole lot stronger in most circumstances.
It's a well-crafted DLC.
Uh huh.
Turn it off and go play Sweden or another low base tax country. I'll wait.
It's precisely the same experience as playing it in 1.11 (from this perspective anyway).
The optimal strategy if you played in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.11 was to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 without CS is to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 with CS is to... conquer richer lands.
The only time development becomes anywhere close to an optimal strategy in CS is if the following are true:
1. You have provinces with good terrain (grasslands and farmland, specifically).
2. You stacked bonuses to development costs (national ideas, Economics finisher, others situational depending on religion and such).
3. Expansion around you is extremely difficult or expensive.
This narrows the list down to maybe five nations without using the Nation Designer. Milan and Wallachia top the list, I think (Wallachia because it's all farmlands and is surrounded by dangerous nations and/or poorer land).
The biggest change is the loss of early/cheap Temples, but that's made up for by the +1 ducat income that all nations get. And that's in the free patch.
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It's precisely the same experience as playing it in 1.11 (from this perspective anyway).
The optimal strategy if you played in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.11 was to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 without CS is to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 with CS is to... conquer richer lands.
The only time development becomes anywhere close to an optimal strategy in CS is if the following are true:
1. You have provinces with good terrain (grasslands and farmland, specifically).
2. You stacked bonuses to development costs (national ideas, Economics finisher, others situational depending on religion and such).
3. Expansion around you is extremely difficult or expensive.
This narrows the list down to maybe five nations without using the Nation Designer. Milan and Wallachia top the list, I think (Wallachia because it's all farmlands and is surrounded by dangerous nations and/or poorer land).
The biggest change is the loss of early/cheap Temples, but that's made up for by the +1 ducat income that all nations get. And that's in the free patch.
I'd have to go back and look at the buildings data for that (too soon after the patch to readily find the details online, everything's still out of date). I usually start as low-manpower minors, and my strategy was always to use mercs & loans until I conquered enough land to fix the manpower problem. I think that's still probably better than developing early on, since dumping your military power into developing manpower is going to slow acquisition of those crucial early-game military techs. And you need the techs for the manpower buildings anyway (developing without the corresponding building is extra-bad, substantially less return for your points).
So far I'm finding manpower to be less of a problem due to the new fort system. You don't have to siege as much to win early-game wars, so you lose fewer troops to attrition. Of course a stack wipe is still going to cost you horribly.
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I'd have to go back and look at the buildings data for that (too soon after the patch to readily find the details online, everything's still out of date). I usually start as low-manpower minors, and my strategy was always to use mercs & loans until I conquered enough land to fix the manpower problem. I think that's still probably better than developing early on, since dumping your military power into developing manpower is going to slow acquisition of those crucial early-game military techs. And you need the techs for the manpower buildings anyway (developing without the corresponding building is extra-bad, substantially less return for your points).
So far I'm finding manpower to be less of a problem due to the new fort system. You don't have to siege as much to win early-game wars, so you lose fewer troops to attrition. Of course a stack wipe is still going to cost you horribly.
What Common Sense essentially does is replace base tax with development as the driver for things like manpower. Concurrently they greatly reduced manpower and the rate at which it recovers. Which is free with the patch.
Being able to increase your manpower in a province requires you to buy the DLC.
Manpower was always a separate number in the province file from Base Tax. They have never been connected. Now, they combine to form Development, which is used for war score / core / annex costs. But they are still disconnected in terms of their raw values; this hasn't changed at all.
There were sweeping adjustments to province values in base tax, manpower, and production, but they're the same whether you have 1.12 or CS, and they're not set under the assumption that you'll use CS to develop them further. Many areas have actually had their base values boosted, such as the Balkans.
In general, "weaker" powers are now notably stronger. OPM Ragusa is rocking 8,000 troops right out the gate in my game.
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Manpower was always a separate number in the province file from Base Tax. They have never been connected. Now, they combine to form Development, which is used for war score / core / annex costs. But they are still disconnected in terms of their raw values; this hasn't changed at all.
There were sweeping adjustments to province values in base tax, manpower, and production, but they're the same whether you have 1.12 or CS, and they're not set under the assumption that you'll use CS to develop them further. Many areas have actually had their base values boosted, such as the Balkans.
In general, "weaker" powers are now notably stronger. OPM Ragusa is rocking 8,000 troops right out the gate in my game.
That's because of the troop bonuses given to independent nations. Not anything else. They still couldn't siege a fort though.
You can siege any fort in 1444 with 7000 troops. The garrisons were scaled back to 2x fort level, and the largest forts at game start are level 3 (capital + castle). This even includes Rhodes, Constantinople, and Granada for some reason (they should really be level 5, especially Granada with its world wonder of a castle).
Many nations don't have forts in their capitals yet, so those only require 2000 troops.
I typically merc up to 10k troops minimum before going to war, which is achievable by almost any minor in 1444. Maybe less if I'm playing in the Americas.
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If you don't have Common Sense, enjoy playing the game with no province ever going above the base level for tax, production, and manpower and being limited in the number of buildings that you can build; natives will only ever get one building per-province regardless of tech level because of development being tied to number of buildings and not tech level.
It is the nearest thing to a paywall I've seen from Paradox.
Kids these days have it so easy. Back in my day we didn't get muslim tech group. And we didn't get nearly so many provinces to fight the inevitable Ottoman death machine.
If you don't have Common Sense, enjoy playing the game with no province ever going above the base level for tax, production, and manpower and being limited in the number of buildings that you can build; natives will only ever get one building per-province regardless of tech level because of development being tied to number of buildings and not tech level.
It is the nearest thing to a paywall I've seen from Paradox.
Christ on a popsicle stick. I'm telling you, that's wrong.
The amount of monarch points you have to spend to get to the next building slot is astronomical, much less if you want to add more than one. You're not supposed to have a lot of building slots, whether you have CS or not. The norm is 2 slots. You get 3 if you're in Grasslands and 4 if you're in Farmlands. Less if your terrain is bad (Desert or Arctic). That's the main limiting factor.
Development can give you more slots; the richest provinces in the game have this at game start. But taking a weak province and developing it to that level -- one single province, mind you -- costs more Monarch Points than annexing the entirety of France both diplomatically and conquest -> coring combined.
It's not a viable option in most cases. The only time you'd consider it is if you have a province that's just on the edge of the development step and it doesn't require much to boost it over.
The only reasonable method to get more building slots, regardless of whether or not you own CS, is to conquer more provinces to build them in.
And don't forget: before CS, before 1.12, you still couldn't increase your base tax, production, or manpower province values through any method other than the occasional decision (like when Ottomans conquer Constantinople, which I'm pretty sure are still there).
You have misunderstood how this works. CS is far less of a "paywall" than even Res Publica.
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If you don't have Common Sense, enjoy playing the game with no province ever going above the base level for tax, production, and manpower and being limited in the number of buildings that you can build; natives will only ever get one building per-province regardless of tech level because of development being tied to number of buildings and not tech level.
It is the nearest thing to a paywall I've seen from Paradox.
Christ on a popsicle stick. I'm telling you, that's wrong.
The amount of monarch points you have to spend to get to the next building slot is astronomical, much less if you want to add more than one. You're not supposed to have a lot of building slots, whether you have CS or not. The norm is 2 slots. You get 3 if you're in Grasslands and 4 if you're in Farmlands. Less if your terrain is bad (Desert or Arctic). That's the main limiting factor.
Development can give you more slots; the richest provinces in the game have this at game start. But taking a weak province and developing it to that level -- one single province, mind you -- costs more Monarch Points than annexing the entirety of France both diplomatically and conquest -> coring combined.
It's not a viable option in most cases. The only time you'd consider it is if you have a province that's just on the edge of the development step and it doesn't require much to boost it over.
The only reasonable method to get more building slots, regardless of whether or not you own CS, is to conquer more provinces to build them in.
And don't forget: before CS, before 1.12, you still couldn't increase your base tax, production, or manpower province values through any method other than the occasional decision (like when Ottomans conquer Constantinople, which I'm pretty sure are still there).
You have misunderstood how this works. CS is far less of a "paywall" than even Res Publica.
Yup, conquer more provinces with a 200% increase to coring cost.
manpower was tied to basetax in earlier versions of the game. You could change it by acquiring more territory.
Manpower is now tied to 'development' in both 1.12 and the DLC.
You can't raise manpower in any way shape or form outside of purchasing the DLC or conquering more territory, which outside of Western/Central Europe isn't going to raise your manpower all that much.
If you don't have Common Sense, enjoy playing the game with no province ever going above the base level for tax, production, and manpower and being limited in the number of buildings that you can build; natives will only ever get one building per-province regardless of tech level because of development being tied to number of buildings and not tech level.
It is the nearest thing to a paywall I've seen from Paradox.
Christ on a popsicle stick. I'm telling you, that's wrong.
The amount of monarch points you have to spend to get to the next building slot is astronomical, much less if you want to add more than one. You're not supposed to have a lot of building slots, whether you have CS or not. The norm is 2 slots. You get 3 if you're in Grasslands and 4 if you're in Farmlands. Less if your terrain is bad (Desert or Arctic). That's the main limiting factor.
Development can give you more slots; the richest provinces in the game have this at game start. But taking a weak province and developing it to that level -- one single province, mind you -- costs more Monarch Points than annexing the entirety of France both diplomatically and conquest -> coring combined.
It's not a viable option in most cases. The only time you'd consider it is if you have a province that's just on the edge of the development step and it doesn't require much to boost it over.
The only reasonable method to get more building slots, regardless of whether or not you own CS, is to conquer more provinces to build them in.
And don't forget: before CS, before 1.12, you still couldn't increase your base tax, production, or manpower province values through any method other than the occasional decision (like when Ottomans conquer Constantinople, which I'm pretty sure are still there).
You have misunderstood how this works. CS is far less of a "paywall" than even Res Publica.
Yup, conquer more provinces with a 200% increase to coring cost.
manpower was tied to basetax in earlier versions of the game. You could change it by acquiring more territory.
Manpower is now tied to 'development' in both 1.12 and the DLC.
You can't raise manpower in any way shape or form outside of purchasing the DLC or conquering more territory, which outside of Western/Central Europe isn't going to raise your manpower all that much.
Didn't you read my post on manpower already? Manpower was not tied to base tax in at least 1.11 (not sure if it ever was).
Here is the wiki info on it, which as of this posting was last updated for 1.11. You can see the manpower formula right there. Base tax doesn't factor into it anywhere. It's your military tech that's increasing it (and declining autonomy), not your tax.
The "development" you see there now hasn't actually changed how this works except that manpower is now factored into province cost when going to war and annexing. That's it; that's the only change. National manpower calculations haven't changed in 1.12 / CS.
You raise your manpower in 1.12 exactly the same way you always have: by building the appropriate building in your high-manpower provinces or by conquering more provinces and gaining their manpower. Except, in 1.12 you only need 1 building, not 6 in a chain (you upgrade it at later tech but it doesn't take a second slot to do so).
To repeat: there is absolutely no assumption in the game that you will use the development system to boost provincial base manpower.
Yep, coring costs are more expensive basically across the board now. That's the same whether you have CS or not, and nothing in CS helps with this. If anything having CS makes conquest harder, because the AI will occasionally develop (boosting conquest costs), and if you develop any yourself, that's MP you're out that you can't spend on coring new land. Even with the increased coring costs, it's still several times more expensive to develop your values internally than to conquer them.
Note that buildings no longer cost any Monarch Points to build.
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You're right. Apparently manpower was changed in 1.7
Don't know what I was thinking there.
Still not happy with Common Sense but I'm not going to sit here and argue about it.
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edited June 2015
I would like to make one note now though that I just realized.
Buildings are no longer absolute bonuses anymore.
They are relative. Percentage bonuses.
That makes a very big change in a place like Norway. Where all but 1 provinces have one slot and you will be forced to choose between a fort and manpower building if you don't own this expansion.
That's accurate. However, you aren't supposed to have forts in very many provinces. They cost upkeep now, and they function to protect adjacent provinces. So you only need one per cluster, and even that only in your important border areas (YMMV depending on what kind of defensive strategy you want to employ of course).
The patch is still very new so I'm not fully up on the fort game yet. I can say that three forts cost the same upkeep as around 10k troops at game start, just for a point of comparison.
I think the new fort system is going to allow for a lot of really interesting playstyles. Where you build them really matters.
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That's accurate. However, you aren't supposed to have forts in very many provinces. They cost upkeep now, and they function to protect adjacent provinces. So you only need one per cluster, and even that only in your important border areas (YMMV depending on what kind of defensive strategy you want to employ of course).
The patch is still very new so I'm not fully up on the fort game yet. I can say that three forts cost the same upkeep as around 10k troops at game start, just for a point of comparison.
I think the new fort system is going to allow for a lot of really interesting playstyles. Where you build them really matters.
Norway's border basically requires more than two forts to defend. Yeah you can mothball them but that's not the point.
Locking the number of buildings you can have in a province behind DLC is. If you don't have the DLC, you should be able to spend MP's to still unlock more building slots.
I think that's the most basic way I can put my gripe regarding that.
edit: it's such a basic gameplay feature, even if it's new, that locking it behind DLC is -really- shitty in my eyes.
One building provinces have a terrain penalty, which means development is even more expensive. It's something you only ever do if province development is right on the cusp of a new building level already.
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Re: The Ethopia post that was quoted, I got the Prestor John achievement the day before 1.12 dropped. (Left it for a few weeks because I got tired of conquest.)
So we've been talking around each other a lot with this whole development thing, largely due to a lack of solid numbers to use for comparison. For those who don't have the expansion, here is a look at what it actually costs to develop a province.
In short, the formula is 50 * (5 * (# previous developments * (1 - (dev efficiency))) * (1 + (terrain modifier) + (climate modifier) + (current development level) - (misc bonuses))
Base cost is 50. It goes up by a base of 5 per previous development in the beginning, reduced twice at ADM tech 24 and 28 (not very relevant since doing development that late is pretty weird). Terrain modifiers and climate modifiers are only negative; there are no bonuses here for good terrain. So, arctic mountains are twice as expensive to develop. Anything other than temperate grasslands and temperate farmlands are more expensive to develop.
You get an additional penalty based on current development level, which is separate from the penalty from previous development (previous development means a manually developed province after game start). That's an extra 1% per development on the cost. So a province with 10 development is 10% more expensive to get to 11. You get small bonuses for the Capital, for Centers of Trade, Imperial Free Cities (HRE thing in CS), a bit from natives when colonizing (replaces base tax boost), and notable bonuses of -20% from the University building (replaces tax boost you get without CS) and Economics idea finisher.
I will note that total development does factor into more than I originally thought; it's not just war score. It boosts caravan power, force limits, supply limits, and trade power while penalizing core costs, missionary strength, and overextension.
Building slots unlock every 10 development points. This has been the key point of contention for those without the expansion. Let's consider a theoretical poor province and what you'd have to spend to unlock the building slot.
Let's consider a Temperate Highlands province that's not a capital or center of trade, like you often find on the coasts of both poor and rich nations alike. Let's say it starts with a mere 6 development, 2 in each. Currently this province would have 2 building slots. We want to boost it to 3; that means we need to increase development four times. MP costs are the same regardless of which we spend to boost, so we won't worry about how we're developing it; just the total points required.
The first increase cost should be: (50 * (1 + 0.2 + 0.06)) = 63
The second will cost ((50 + 5) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.07)) = 70
The third will cost ((50 + 10) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.08)) = 77
The fourth and final will cost ((50 + 15) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.08)) = 83
63 + 70 + 77 + 83 = 293 total monarch points. Actual value may be a bit more or less depending on exactly how they stack the percentages and how they round, but this should be pretty close.
So for nearly 300 monarch points you can get a single building slot in this theoretical province and a few minor boosts to the province's values. What kind of boost? Well, you'll get +1 caravan power, +1.6 trade power, +0.4 force limits, and +8% supply limit, along with some combination of other boosts (+4 ducats per year, +1000 manpower, +0.8 goods produced, or some combination of those, with some minor secondaries like spy defense and recruitment time potentially increased as well).
If you want to boost just 4 provinces in this manner, you're looking at approximately 1,200 monarch points to do so.
Now, what's the opportunity cost of that? For one, as of the upcoming 1.12.1 hotfix, diplo-annexation will have a base cost of 8 per point of development (modified only by potential hostile core creation modifiers). In other words, for the same MP that you spent to get a mere 16 points of total development and four building slots, you could have diplo-annexed a vassal that has a whopping 150 total points of development. That is different by an entire order of magnitude.
And this isn't even a bad case. If you're talking about Norway's Arctic provinces, several of which are mountains, you're looking at 50-80% more MPs to develop these lands. Even if you consider a province with 9 development, so you only need 1 more to unlock a building slot, the total MPs are still comparable to what you'd need to diplo-annex an entire new province of similar value from a vassal.
And of course, conquering and coring directly is even more efficient than this.
Province development is not a core system. It is not a paywall. It usually isn't even a good idea to use it. It's a specialized mode of play at best.
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So I just started playing again. How do I increase development? Like, where do I click? I hear people say you can increase it with monarch points but I can't figure out how. Is there some certain DLC I need to do it?
To clarify in case that seems flippant -- yes, you need the DLC, and it's the one called Common Sense
Note that if you want to go down that path, you'll need to play a very specialized way to get any use out of it. I recommend using the Nation Designer (El Dorado DLC) to make a custom nation on some temperate farmlands with a maximized -Dev Cost tradition (and probably -Tech Cost too). If you don't have El Dorado and all that sounds too messy... just ignore improving development. You don't need it to play normally.
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There are like 3 countries in the base game it makes sense to develop heavily: Tuscany, Milan, and Hamburg
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
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Development isn't meant as a "whole country bonus" if you're playing wide.
as an example, if I'm Byzantium, I'm not going to develop Morea.
I'm going to develop Constantinople over the course of the game.
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Also Merchant Republics have been nerfed hard this go around. It's nearly impossible to build anything approaching an actual fleet and ships are even more of an investment this go around so if they get sunk you're screwed big time.
Remember that every time you develop an individual province the base cost increases by 5. If the costs weren't too high when you started, they will be after 5-10 improvements.
Merchant Republics are definitely screwed, as are native Americans if you don't have the DLC. If you do have it, they can actually play tall better than anyone else because they can ignore tech until the free switchover when colonizers arrive. It's weird. Hoping for some 1.12.2 fixes for both of those.
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So I just noticed the decision that lets you westernize if own one of a couple provinces in central Europe. Oh ho... that makes so many country's games so much easier.
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So after playing for a few days. The map changes and new provinces are nice. The movement changes are nice.
The rest of it could go away. Including the new fort system. I'm probably in the minority but whatever.
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In all the games I have started France hasn't survived in any meaningful fashion into the 1500's. Either England + Castille fucks them or Burgundy fucks them with their new vassal swarm.
So far I'm enjoying this expansion. I started my first game as Genoa; this has kept me from really making too much use of the expansion content so far. The early game is still a rush for easy territory and the first idea group, so there is exactly zero free MP available for developing your provinces. Genoa isn't well positioned for that anyway; most of its starting provinces have build cost penalties, and Genoa gets no build cost bonuses.
I may have to go tall anyway, though. After taking Theodoro, Trebizond, a province from Circassia, and a lucky grab of Sardinia (Aragon allied England and promptly got stomped by France, forced to release Sardinia and break the PU with Naples), I'm almost out of good expansion options. The Ottomans are being super-aggressive; it's 1460 and they've already taken Byzantium, Albania, and Candar. France is expanding fast as well. I don't want to take Italy until the new event fires that removes it from the HRE (I allied Venice to help ensure that this happens; Milan had rivaled me anyway). The Muslim nations have formed powerful alliances, mostly revolving around the Ottomans (Tunis and Crimea are both protected in this manner).
My alliances with Savoy, Venice, and Hungary have kept me safe so far. But I think it's time to hunker down, tech up, and develop some provinces. Theodoro at least is pretty prime for upgrading. You can force convert and full annex at the same time, so Theodoro is already Catholic. Just need to culture-convert it and start laying down the development. War with the Ottomans looms; they have a mission to take Crete and claims on a couple of my northeastern provinces.
It's interesting to note that my expansion has not actually yielded any notable economic benefits thus far. I think this is because Trebizond came with a fort, and the cost of that is pretty close to the income I'm getting from these new provinces.
This is definitely not the same game.
There are far, far fewer building slots than there used to be because individual buildings are much more powerful. Using the development system to get more building slots is generally ineffective because it's just too expensive to pump that much development into a province.
If you need to group a bunch of buildings together, look for a Farmlands province to take. They get +2 building slots.
of all Paradox expansions for EU IV so far.
This one fucks you if you don't buy it because of some of the changes.
Improving development isn't really necessary. It's still a worse alternative to expansion (as much as five times as expensive, though of course it varies based on ideas and such).
Most of the rest of the DLC deals with certain governments and religions, which is just new content. Some HRE stuff and new vassal options; nothing critical.
Literally the most useful thing in this DLC for the player is getting National Focus, which you can also get from the (cheaper) Res Publica instead.
Really this DLC only makes playing certain types of nations more fun / possible (going tall is possible, though suboptimal, and playing Theocracies or Buddhists is a lot more interesting). You're not at any real disadvantage if you don't have it.
In fact, without it you have several notable advantages. The AI won't develop, which means you don't have to worry about coring or diplo-annexing costs increasing over time. Plus, all the bonuses that would have given -Development Cost instead give +Goods Produced, which is a whole lot stronger in most circumstances.
It's a well-crafted DLC.
Uh huh.
Turn it off and go play Sweden or another low base tax country. I'll wait.
The optimal strategy if you played in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.11 was to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 without CS is to conquer richer lands.
The optimal strategy if you play in a low base tax nation like Sweden in 1.12 with CS is to... conquer richer lands.
The only time development becomes anywhere close to an optimal strategy in CS is if the following are true:
1. You have provinces with good terrain (grasslands and farmland, specifically).
2. You stacked bonuses to development costs (national ideas, Economics finisher, others situational depending on religion and such).
3. Expansion around you is extremely difficult or expensive.
This narrows the list down to maybe five nations without using the Nation Designer. Milan and Wallachia top the list, I think (Wallachia because it's all farmlands and is surrounded by dangerous nations and/or poorer land).
The biggest change is the loss of early/cheap Temples, but that's made up for by the +1 ducat income that all nations get. And that's in the free patch.
what about your manpower?
So far I'm finding manpower to be less of a problem due to the new fort system. You don't have to siege as much to win early-game wars, so you lose fewer troops to attrition. Of course a stack wipe is still going to cost you horribly.
What Common Sense essentially does is replace base tax with development as the driver for things like manpower. Concurrently they greatly reduced manpower and the rate at which it recovers. Which is free with the patch.
Being able to increase your manpower in a province requires you to buy the DLC.
There were sweeping adjustments to province values in base tax, manpower, and production, but they're the same whether you have 1.12 or CS, and they're not set under the assumption that you'll use CS to develop them further. Many areas have actually had their base values boosted, such as the Balkans.
In general, "weaker" powers are now notably stronger. OPM Ragusa is rocking 8,000 troops right out the gate in my game.
That's because of the troop bonuses given to independent nations. Not anything else. They still couldn't siege a fort though.
Many nations don't have forts in their capitals yet, so those only require 2000 troops.
I typically merc up to 10k troops minimum before going to war, which is achievable by almost any minor in 1444. Maybe less if I'm playing in the Americas.
It is the nearest thing to a paywall I've seen from Paradox.
The amount of monarch points you have to spend to get to the next building slot is astronomical, much less if you want to add more than one. You're not supposed to have a lot of building slots, whether you have CS or not. The norm is 2 slots. You get 3 if you're in Grasslands and 4 if you're in Farmlands. Less if your terrain is bad (Desert or Arctic). That's the main limiting factor.
Development can give you more slots; the richest provinces in the game have this at game start. But taking a weak province and developing it to that level -- one single province, mind you -- costs more Monarch Points than annexing the entirety of France both diplomatically and conquest -> coring combined.
It's not a viable option in most cases. The only time you'd consider it is if you have a province that's just on the edge of the development step and it doesn't require much to boost it over.
The only reasonable method to get more building slots, regardless of whether or not you own CS, is to conquer more provinces to build them in.
And don't forget: before CS, before 1.12, you still couldn't increase your base tax, production, or manpower province values through any method other than the occasional decision (like when Ottomans conquer Constantinople, which I'm pretty sure are still there).
You have misunderstood how this works. CS is far less of a "paywall" than even Res Publica.
Yup, conquer more provinces with a 200% increase to coring cost.
manpower was tied to basetax in earlier versions of the game. You could change it by acquiring more territory.
Manpower is now tied to 'development' in both 1.12 and the DLC.
You can't raise manpower in any way shape or form outside of purchasing the DLC or conquering more territory, which outside of Western/Central Europe isn't going to raise your manpower all that much.
Notice how your manpower would increase over time as your total base tax went up? That's what I'm talking about. That's how manpower used to work.
Here is the wiki info on it, which as of this posting was last updated for 1.11. You can see the manpower formula right there. Base tax doesn't factor into it anywhere. It's your military tech that's increasing it (and declining autonomy), not your tax.
The "development" you see there now hasn't actually changed how this works except that manpower is now factored into province cost when going to war and annexing. That's it; that's the only change. National manpower calculations haven't changed in 1.12 / CS.
You raise your manpower in 1.12 exactly the same way you always have: by building the appropriate building in your high-manpower provinces or by conquering more provinces and gaining their manpower. Except, in 1.12 you only need 1 building, not 6 in a chain (you upgrade it at later tech but it doesn't take a second slot to do so).
To repeat: there is absolutely no assumption in the game that you will use the development system to boost provincial base manpower.
Yep, coring costs are more expensive basically across the board now. That's the same whether you have CS or not, and nothing in CS helps with this. If anything having CS makes conquest harder, because the AI will occasionally develop (boosting conquest costs), and if you develop any yourself, that's MP you're out that you can't spend on coring new land. Even with the increased coring costs, it's still several times more expensive to develop your values internally than to conquer them.
Note that buildings no longer cost any Monarch Points to build.
Don't know what I was thinking there.
Still not happy with Common Sense but I'm not going to sit here and argue about it.
Buildings are no longer absolute bonuses anymore.
They are relative. Percentage bonuses.
That makes a very big change in a place like Norway. Where all but 1 provinces have one slot and you will be forced to choose between a fort and manpower building if you don't own this expansion.
The patch is still very new so I'm not fully up on the fort game yet. I can say that three forts cost the same upkeep as around 10k troops at game start, just for a point of comparison.
I think the new fort system is going to allow for a lot of really interesting playstyles. Where you build them really matters.
Norway's border basically requires more than two forts to defend. Yeah you can mothball them but that's not the point.
Locking the number of buildings you can have in a province behind DLC is. If you don't have the DLC, you should be able to spend MP's to still unlock more building slots.
I think that's the most basic way I can put my gripe regarding that.
edit: it's such a basic gameplay feature, even if it's new, that locking it behind DLC is -really- shitty in my eyes.
most of those provinces are also one building provinces.
There are a few obvious ones and strangely enough most of Finland is more developed than Sweden.
It's a serious limitation.
In short, the formula is 50 * (5 * (# previous developments * (1 - (dev efficiency))) * (1 + (terrain modifier) + (climate modifier) + (current development level) - (misc bonuses))
Base cost is 50. It goes up by a base of 5 per previous development in the beginning, reduced twice at ADM tech 24 and 28 (not very relevant since doing development that late is pretty weird). Terrain modifiers and climate modifiers are only negative; there are no bonuses here for good terrain. So, arctic mountains are twice as expensive to develop. Anything other than temperate grasslands and temperate farmlands are more expensive to develop.
You get an additional penalty based on current development level, which is separate from the penalty from previous development (previous development means a manually developed province after game start). That's an extra 1% per development on the cost. So a province with 10 development is 10% more expensive to get to 11. You get small bonuses for the Capital, for Centers of Trade, Imperial Free Cities (HRE thing in CS), a bit from natives when colonizing (replaces base tax boost), and notable bonuses of -20% from the University building (replaces tax boost you get without CS) and Economics idea finisher.
I will note that total development does factor into more than I originally thought; it's not just war score. It boosts caravan power, force limits, supply limits, and trade power while penalizing core costs, missionary strength, and overextension.
Building slots unlock every 10 development points. This has been the key point of contention for those without the expansion. Let's consider a theoretical poor province and what you'd have to spend to unlock the building slot.
Let's consider a Temperate Highlands province that's not a capital or center of trade, like you often find on the coasts of both poor and rich nations alike. Let's say it starts with a mere 6 development, 2 in each. Currently this province would have 2 building slots. We want to boost it to 3; that means we need to increase development four times. MP costs are the same regardless of which we spend to boost, so we won't worry about how we're developing it; just the total points required.
The first increase cost should be: (50 * (1 + 0.2 + 0.06)) = 63
The second will cost ((50 + 5) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.07)) = 70
The third will cost ((50 + 10) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.08)) = 77
The fourth and final will cost ((50 + 15) * (1 + 0.2 + 0.08)) = 83
63 + 70 + 77 + 83 = 293 total monarch points. Actual value may be a bit more or less depending on exactly how they stack the percentages and how they round, but this should be pretty close.
So for nearly 300 monarch points you can get a single building slot in this theoretical province and a few minor boosts to the province's values. What kind of boost? Well, you'll get +1 caravan power, +1.6 trade power, +0.4 force limits, and +8% supply limit, along with some combination of other boosts (+4 ducats per year, +1000 manpower, +0.8 goods produced, or some combination of those, with some minor secondaries like spy defense and recruitment time potentially increased as well).
If you want to boost just 4 provinces in this manner, you're looking at approximately 1,200 monarch points to do so.
Now, what's the opportunity cost of that? For one, as of the upcoming 1.12.1 hotfix, diplo-annexation will have a base cost of 8 per point of development (modified only by potential hostile core creation modifiers). In other words, for the same MP that you spent to get a mere 16 points of total development and four building slots, you could have diplo-annexed a vassal that has a whopping 150 total points of development. That is different by an entire order of magnitude.
And this isn't even a bad case. If you're talking about Norway's Arctic provinces, several of which are mountains, you're looking at 50-80% more MPs to develop these lands. Even if you consider a province with 9 development, so you only need 1 more to unlock a building slot, the total MPs are still comparable to what you'd need to diplo-annex an entire new province of similar value from a vassal.
And of course, conquering and coring directly is even more efficient than this.
Province development is not a core system. It is not a paywall. It usually isn't even a good idea to use it. It's a specialized mode of play at best.
Note that if you want to go down that path, you'll need to play a very specialized way to get any use out of it. I recommend using the Nation Designer (El Dorado DLC) to make a custom nation on some temperate farmlands with a maximized -Dev Cost tradition (and probably -Tech Cost too). If you don't have El Dorado and all that sounds too messy... just ignore improving development. You don't need it to play normally.
as an example, if I'm Byzantium, I'm not going to develop Morea.
I'm going to develop Constantinople over the course of the game.
Merchant Republics are definitely screwed, as are native Americans if you don't have the DLC. If you do have it, they can actually play tall better than anyone else because they can ignore tech until the free switchover when colonizers arrive. It's weird. Hoping for some 1.12.2 fixes for both of those.
The rest of it could go away. Including the new fort system. I'm probably in the minority but whatever.
Most of the changes aren't for me apparently.