How is your EU3 Game going?

[Arrow Gamer]

Great news! I go into a war with Austria, and thoroughly thrashed them! I killed over 50,000 of their men, while only losing about ten thousand.

 

[Angst]

Oh, well just started a brief war with Naples again. Declared war as soon as the truce expired and i got a random event cassus belli. But they are allied with just some small italian states that didn't bother defending them and no major allies this time. They have almost no army and will be annexed in 1 year tops. Portugal was allied with them but didn't honor their alliance. After Naples i will quiet down, but at some point in the future, Portugal is to be put down.

Well, if your infamy doesn't rise too much from this, it might actually help provide your economy some bonuses.

My infamy is 27 now. I think the highest i had was at 40 i think. At that point i hired some advisor that decreases it (don't remember what he was called). How much infamy is too much ? It doesn't say anywhere.

27 is pretty high, but not insurmountable. I think 40 is too high, but don't remember the limit at Easy or Very Easy. If you mouseover your infamy, you can see your infamy limit. Don't go above it. You will get rebels, stability hits, manpower losses, merchant losses... And everyone and their mom can declare war on you without penalty while your provinces are basically infamy free to take for them (iirc).

My inflation is at 0 !!! Throughout my reign it never increased too much, but even so, i had 2 random events that eliminated it twice.

All the loans have been paid back except for the last one, which will be due in 2-3 years IIRC. I have 300 gold currently with my monthly income at -11 at the yearly income at +18.

Your economy's technically doing great, but your army is too big. I think you should mint a bit. Read more below.

The year is 1423 and here's the pic:

Spoiler :

How do i take ingame screenshots tho ?

That's pretty cool. You are indeed using your possibilities in Italy.

Damn, i thought i should build marketplaces first and then Constables. Will start doing that with my next magistrates.

Err, is "Minting" the Treasury slider in the technologies tab ? If so then it's at 0.5 but it was at 2 during the war.

Yes it is. Increase it to get more gold per month and year. Having inflation is bad, but we don't want to you pay loans and go bankrupt, then inflation is better. Especially if your inflation is 0, then you can afford to mint a bit more.

My interest is at 1.8 but i have a 2 start advisor that decreases it.

France has "Is threatened by Castille" thing on it's profile. Should i be worried ? Was that thing there at the start of the game ?

I'm honestly not sure what that modifier means. Even oldies discover new things every once in a while.

Dodged a bullet with the pope, i was going to push for annexation but the war already dragged on for too long and war weariness was high. My papal standing is at 0 and decreasing due to infamy, how much will be too low ? I only have 1 missionary in use in Granada (which still hasn't converted), so i can afford to send some to the pope to increase my standing.

The increase will only be temporary though. Your infamy is so high it will drop pretty quickly.

Thanks for all the help guys

Don't mention it. You are doing surprisingly well for your first game. I hope you keep up your mojo. Fighting off England, Portugal and Italy in your first game without suffering too much is pretty impressive.

 

[Arrow Gamer]

Aha, yet another update. I just got seven provinces from Austria, all of them cores. Also, Holland DOWed and I got Holland, Gelre and Friesland, which are all over 40 ducats of worth.

 

[Nintz]

Aha, yet another update. I just got seven provinces from Austria, all of them cores. Also, Holland DOWed and I got Holland, Gelre and Friesland, which are all over 40 ducats of worth.

Well. That should be useful. Be careful of infamy at this rate, but if Austria was destroyed you should be doing good. Come to think of it, tech may be a factor in a Germany vs Austria game.

 

[Arrow Gamer]

Well, I used reconquest on Austria, so I got no infamy from it. And I was the defender vs Holland, so I only got 9 infamy.

 

[Quintillus]

My Golden Horde was once again happily expanding, threatening the very existence of the Holy Roman Empire, taming the Alps, and expanding into northern Italy. The old Novgorodian provinces were annexed from Smolensk, and missionaries were converting provinces and reducing revolt risk. It was being debated how soon Burgundy should be targeted. Then, in August 1443, the great Khan died young, and a Tribal Succession Crisis occurred with about 85% of my provinces being non-core.



Worse, his heir is still 10 years old, so there will be another crisis in 5 years. At which point I still won't have any new cores.

Needless to say, this is a Very Bad Thing. I am better prepared than last time, with tens of thousands more troops and 873 ducats to spend if need be. But Western Europe has a reprieve for a few years time.

Well, I used reconquest on Austria, so I got no infamy from it. And I was the defender vs Holland, so I only got 9 infamy.

Does the Holy Roman Empire still exist? It sounds like the only infamy danger is Unlawful Province infamy.

Also, just curious, are you Protestant? You have quite the mix of religions going on.

Oh, well just started a brief war with Naples again. Declared war as soon as the truce expired and i got a random event cassus belli. But they are allied with just some small italian states that didn't bother defending them and no major allies this time. They have almost no army and will be annexed in 1 year tops. Portugal was allied with them but didn't honor their alliance. After Naples i will quiet down, but at some point in the future, Portugal is to be put down.

My infamy is 27 now. I think the highest i had was at 40 i think. At that point i hired some advisor that decreases it (don't remember what he was called). How much infamy is too much ? It doesn't say anywhere.

My inflation is at 0 !!! Throughout my reign it never increased too much, but even so, i had 2 random events that eliminated it twice.

All the loans have been paid back except for the last one, which will be due in 2-3 years IIRC. I have 300 gold currently with my monthly income at -11 at the yearly income at +18.

The year is 1423 and here's the pic:

Spoiler :

How do i take ingame screenshots tho ?


Damn, i thought i should build marketplaces first and then Constables. Will start doing that with my next magistrates.

Err, is "Minting" the Treasury slider in the technologies tab ? If so then it's at 0.5 but it was at 2 during the war.

My interest is at 1.8 but i have a 2 start advisor that decreases it.

France has "Is threatened by Castille" thing on it's profile. Should i be worried ? Was that thing there at the start of the game ?

Dodged a bullet with the pope, i was going to push for annexation but the war already dragged on for too long and war weariness was high. My papal standing is at 0 and decreasing due to infamy, how much will be too low ? I only have 1 missionary in use in Granada (which still hasn't converted), so i can afford to send some to the pope to increase my standing.

Thanks for all the help guys

It depends on what your playstyle is as to how much infamy is too much. You always want it to be below your infamy limit - if it goes a little over, you'll notice the bad effects, and if it goes significantly over, you'll be in for a world of hurt (not quite as bad as my Horde situation, but quite possibly longer-lasting). Don't forget to build in some wiggle room if you have a good Diplomatic monarch but your heir is not as good - if they croak, you might find yourself above the limit with it decreasing slowly.

The other factor, as you've noticed, is that people tend to hate you if you have lots of infamy. Your relations with other countries is likely decreasing nearly everywhere, and it does indeed kill papal influence to be infamous. If you're already the biggest, baddest country on the block, this might not matter. But if you want to have lots of allies, low infamy over the long term helps. Same with if you're hankering to be Papal Controller so you can excommunicate someone. Low infamy also makes it more likely that you get cardinals, which in turn lowers your infamy. If you want these benefits, try to keep it in the single digits at most, preferably low enough that it would hit zero in five years if you didn't fight anyone. But if you're pursuing a more militaristic strategy, just make sure it isn't so close to your infamy limit that you might go over.

"Minting" is the treasury slider, but the way to measure it is to hover over it and see how much is says your inflation is increasing by per year (it will be somewhere in the range of 0.00 to 1.00, or possibly slightly below zero if you have deflation). The ducat amount varies heavily by the size of your economy, so 2.0 ducats/month might not be too bad with Castille's economy, but if you were, say, one of the Greek minor states, you'd be racking up inflation pretty quickly at that rate. Either way, you have nothing to worry about inflation-wise at this point. You won't always get lucky with events, but for now, it sounds like your economy is doing OK. I wish my Horde had 0% inflation instead of 15.8%.

It's only worth sending missionaries to the Pope if your influence isn't decreasing so quickly that the +2 gain won't be wiped out before you can send another. I thought 0% was the lowest papal influence? (I've been playing Sunni countries lately)

I wouldn't be too worried about France feeling threatened by you. Countries usually feel threatened by the nearby countries who are powerful militarily, so they probably feel threatened by you, England, Burgundy, and Austria. I don't know what this actually does, but it doesn't mean they're going to declare war on you.

As lord_joakim said, you're actually doing quite well. I predict a very successful Castillian Empire!

(Also, I'm impressed by how bad the hordes are doing in your game. They're all pitiful except the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. Looks like a decently normal game so far otherwise)

 

[Arrow Gamer]

The HRE does exist, but with only about ten nations in it. And I have a Dip 9 ruler, so I'm safe.

 

[Yeekim]

Here are my tech sliders:

Spoiler :

It makes sense to focus on a single tech group at a time, rather then spread your budget among all of them.
Stability, being really important (and increasing your cashflow) should usually be first priority, government and army techs second (you want to get the next NI and new troop types ASAP).
You can safely fall behind a bit on production and trade (while making use of "from neighbors" bonus). I usually research these only when I start getting "ahead of time" penalties on other areas...

 

[Arakhor]

If you use Paint.net to crop your photos, you can also reduce the resolution to 80-90% of the original and massacre the file size.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Well, if your infamy doesn't rise too much from this, it might actually help provide your economy some bonuses.

Didn't manage to annex Naples (it's 1445 aprox now) because a muslim coalition of states screwed me over and i had to make half of europe declare war on them before i was left alone (didn't loose any provices but was quite close to it). After that had an "Alliance" cassus belli against Portugal who declared war on France. After i conquered all the Portuguese provinces, i got F'ed in the A because they made a white peace with France and got ALL their provinces back. But, just then, GOD interviened and excomunicated Aragorn - war was immediately declared and am currently busy with that.

27 is pretty high, but not insurmountable. I think 40 is too high, but don't remember the limit at Easy or Very Easy. If you mouseover your infamy, you can see your infamy limit. Don't go above it. You will get rebels, stability hits, manpower losses, merchant losses... And everyone and their mom can declare war on you without penalty while your provinces are basically infamy free to take for them (iirc).

I just checked, my infamy limit is 60 ! (mostly due to difficulty from what i can tell)
My current infamy is 18, it was on decline because i was in peace for a while.

Yes it is. Increase it to get more gold per month and year. Having inflation is bad, but we don't want to you pay loans and go bankrupt, then inflation is better. Especially if your inflation is 0, then you can afford to mint a bit more.

Having a constantly decreasing deflation i minted about +20 gold for 2 years to be free of all loan debts. It worked wonders and then i turned the minting back to +2 or smthing. In 10-15 years, my inflation was back at 0.
I have 300+ gold now, a monthly deficit of -5 but a yearly profit of +125 ! So my gold is finnaly rising ! Thanks to the relative peace times and the Constables.

The increase will only be temporary though. Your infamy is so high it will drop pretty quickly.

My standing with the pope is basically in ruins, it is constantly at 0 and there is no hope of it ever going further because i keep going away from Narrowmindedness and produce 1 priest every 5 years ... Does this mean that sooner or later i will get excomunicated ? The Papal States are my vassal and the diplomatic relations with them is at 150+.

Don't mention it. You are doing surprisingly well for your first game. I hope you keep up your mojo. Fighting off England, Portugal and Italy in your first game without suffering too much is pretty impressive.

To be fair i was VERY cautious about doing anything, the first few years of the game went on veeery sloooowly for me.

It depends on what your playstyle is as to how much infamy is too much. You always want it to be below your infamy limit - if it goes a little over, you'll notice the bad effects, and if it goes significantly over, you'll be in for a world of hurt (not quite as bad as my Horde situation, but quite possibly longer-lasting). Don't forget to build in some wiggle room if you have a good Diplomatic monarch but your heir is not as good - if they croak, you might find yourself above the limit with it decreasing slowly.

The other factor, as you've noticed, is that people tend to hate you if you have lots of infamy. Your relations with other countries is likely decreasing nearly everywhere, and it does indeed kill papal influence to be infamous. If you're already the biggest, baddest country on the block, this might not matter. But if you want to have lots of allies, low infamy over the long term helps. Same with if you're hankering to be Papal Controller so you can excommunicate someone. Low infamy also makes it more likely that you get cardinals, which in turn lowers your infamy. If you want these benefits, try to keep it in the single digits at most, preferably low enough that it would hit zero in five years if you didn't fight anyone. But if you're pursuing a more militaristic strategy, just make sure it isn't so close to your infamy limit that you might go over.

I'm not very close to being the best guy in Europe, a large alliance could bring me down easily i think. I'm not pursuing a TOO militaristic strategy, i mostly want to conquer Naples (because i hate them), maybe Sicily, Portugal (i hate them too), and Aragorn. That is what i want in europe, and i'm gunning for Quest for the New World in about 5 years time, after that my attention will focus toward the west.

"Minting" is the treasury slider, but the way to measure it is to hover over it and see how much is says your inflation is increasing by per year (it will be somewhere in the range of 0.00 to 1.00, or possibly slightly below zero if you have deflation). The ducat amount varies heavily by the size of your economy, so 2.0 ducats/month might not be too bad with Castille's economy, but if you were, say, one of the Greek minor states, you'd be racking up inflation pretty quickly at that rate. Either way, you have nothing to worry about inflation-wise at this point. You won't always get lucky with events, but for now, it sounds like your economy is doing OK. I wish my Horde had 0% inflation instead of 15.8%.

See my reply to joakim above about my awsome deflation. IIRC difficulty plays a lot in this. (i'm playing on very easy obviously)

It's only worth sending missionaries to the Pope if your influence isn't decreasing so quickly that the +2 gain won't be wiped out before you can send another. I thought 0% was the lowest papal influence? (I've been playing Sunni countries lately)

Yea i sent 2 missionaries and i think the papal standing went back to 0 in 1 or 2 years ... Like i said to joakim above, i think it's a lost cause for me. I am intrested in how bad it can get tho ...

It makes sense to focus on a single tech group at a time, rather then spread your budget among all of them.
Stability, being really important (and increasing your cashflow) should usually be first priority, government and army techs second (you want to get the next NI and new troop types ASAP).
You can safely fall behind a bit on production and trade (while making use of "from neighbors" bonus). I usually research these only when I start getting "ahead of time" penalties on other areas...

I was going for Quest for the new world from about 1425 and focused mainly on gov techs and trade techs just for that. When i get that idea i should focus on the neglected categories ...

If you use Paint.net to crop your photos, you can also reduce the resolution to 80-90% of the original and massacre the file size.

I have already edited them in irfanview. Even tho they are HUGE in resolution, they are only 300kb each. (same file size as Arrow Gamer's pics !) They are not the 40MB files that the game creates !

 

[alpav]

FYI It isn't Aragorn, it's Aragon.

This is Aragorn

This is Aragon

 

[Quintillus]

Didn't manage to annex Naples (it's 1445 aprox now) because a muslim coalition of states screwed me over and i had to make half of europe declare war on them before i was left alone (didn't loose any provices but was quite close to it). After that had an "Alliance" cassus belli against Portugal who declared war on France. After i conquered all the Portuguese provinces, i got F'ed in the A because they made a white peace with France and got ALL their provinces back. But, just then, GOD interviened and excomunicated Aragorn - war was immediately declared and am currently busy with that.

I just checked, my infamy limit is 60 ! (mostly due to difficulty from what i can tell)
My current infamy is 18, it was on decline because i was in peace for a while.

Having a constantly decreasing deflation i minted about +20 gold for 2 years to be free of all loan debts. It worked wonders and then i turned the minting back to +2 or smthing. In 10-15 years, my inflation was back at 0.
I have 300+ gold now, a monthly deficit of -5 but a yearly profit of +125 ! So my gold is finnaly rising ! Thanks to the relative peace times and the Constables.

My standing with the pope is basically in ruins, it is constantly at 0 and there is no hope of it ever going further because i keep going away from Narrowmindedness and produce 1 priest every 5 years ... Does this mean that sooner or later i will get excomunicated ? The Papal States are my vassal and the diplomatic relations with them is at 150+.

To be fair i was VERY cautious about doing anything, the first few years of the game went on veeery sloooowly for me.

I'm not very close to being the best guy in Europe, a large alliance could bring me down easily i think. I'm not pursuing a TOO militaristic strategy, i mostly want to conquer Naples (because i hate them), maybe Sicily, Portugal (i hate them too), and Aragorn. That is what i want in europe, and i'm gunning for Quest for the New World in about 5 years time, after that my attention will focus toward the west.

See my reply to joakim above about my awsome deflation. IIRC difficulty plays a lot in this. (i'm playing on very easy obviously)

Yea i sent 2 missionaries and i think the papal standing went back to 0 in 1 or 2 years ... Like i said to joakim above, i think it's a lost cause for me. I am intrested in how bad it can get tho ...

I was going for Quest for the new world from about 1425 and focused mainly on gov techs and trade techs just for that. When i get that idea i should focus on the neglected categories ...

I have already edited them in irfanview. Even tho they are HUGE in resolution, they are only 300kb each. (same file size as Arrow Gamer's pics !) They are not the 40MB files that the game creates !

You can't be excommunicated as long as your diplomatic relations with the Pope are at least 100. Papal relations of zero just means you can never have a cardinal, or any of those benefits.

If you get rid of your infamy, you might regain positive papal relations. Some ideas also give +5 annually to Papal relations - I believe Church Attendance Duty, Unam Sanctum, and Divine Supremacy. I wouldn't choose them just for that, but it might be a nice bonus.

 

[madviking]

I think prestige also gives you papal influence.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Btw, is colonising worth it ? On the short term, with their population rapidly decreasing, it seems rather costly just to have 1. I colonised Madeira and some brazilian land. With very docile barbarians, the brazilian land seems to require sending colonists every year just to counter the decrease in population.

FYI It isn't Aragorn, it's Aragon.

This is Aragorn:
<snip>
This is Aragon:

Whops

 

[sophie]

My standing with the pope is basically in ruins, it is constantly at 0 and there is no hope of it ever going further because i keep going away from Narrowmindedness and produce 1 priest every 5 years ... Does this mean that sooner or later i will get excomunicated ? The Papal States are my vassal and the diplomatic relations with them is at 150+.

Nope. As long as your relations with the pope are above a certain level it is impossible for you to be excommunicated.

God damned autopager-related x-posts.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Oh crap i think i did something bad. I changed my government to Empire (apparently ?!?!?) and now my Free Subjects slider is beyond the red marker and i can only change it back in 10 years from now. This can't be good.
What happens now ? And even if i could, i don't want to change it back, i want my subjects to be free !!!

Nope. As long as your relations with the pope are above a certain level it is impossible for you to be excommunicated.

So as long as the pope state is my vassal that won't happen. Btw, i can ask them for annexation (no idea that can be asked nicely). Should i push for that ? Or is it better to leave the pope a vassal ?


Also, btw, here is my progress map:

Spoiler :

Lost the alliance with France and i'm not sure why. Allied only with Sweden at the moment.

 

[Tee Kay]

Having a slider beyond the red marker increases revolt risk a bit. Nothing you can't manage, if it's not excessive.

I'd leave the Pope a vassal. If you annex the Papal State it will respawn somewhere else if there's a Catholic archbishopric around.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Having a slider beyond the red marker increases revolt risk a bit. Nothing you can't manage, if it's not excessive.

That doesn't seem so bad. The bar is only 1 position over the limit tho, so it prolly won't increase too much.

I'd leave the Pope a vassal. If you annex the Papal State it will respawn somewhere else if there's a Catholic archbishopric around.

There's 2-3 around, so i guess they'll stay a vassal.

 

[Angst]

Current EU3 game (Death & Taxes mod), playing as Denmark -> Scandinavia -> Holy Roman Empire. First time I managed to form the HRE. It's 1637. Wars were easy with the number of high land tech vassals I had before formation, now it will probably be less so. I'll just try cleaning up the borders again in Europe (Bye Austrian lowlands) and then focus on claiming all of Africa before conquering the lands that used to be Rome. Also, I plan on a World War about 1900 AD, don't know how to machinate it, though...

Spoiler :

EDIT: Yeah, that's The Knights owning Anatolia.

 

[SamSniped]

The AI makes me sometimes, especially when things like that happen.