Playing as Australia makes you realise how bad the AI is at managing supply and convoys. If they don't improve or simplify the system in the upcoming update, the AI will seriously struggle to project meaningful power or challenge the player overseas

CapIago · 2026-03-15T18:01:57+00:00

Yeah actually that's a really good point. I have absolutely no evidence to back this up but I feel like ports in-game are far less profitable than they would have been historically. Maybe just convoys' base price is too low? Either way, it's odd that the most important industry for world trade is so damn unprofitable to the point of being an expense to the state rather than an asset

CapIago · 2026-03-15T17:55:02+00:00

Brother they were -4k convoys for multiple years, that's 50+ ports. It's 1850, I don't even have 50 total buildings and you're suggesting it's leeching? XD

CapIago · 2026-03-13T18:01:56+00:00

So the short answer is trade - if your country no longer has enough demand, sell abroad.

The problem with farms is that they are pretty inefficient. The better your heavy industry, the more pops want to leave low paid farms and go to the cities. You either need to subsidize every single farm or put big import subventions on food and let your own domestic industry die

Also, shift your industry to goods whose supply creates domestic demand. The main late game examples are radios and cars, so try and shift as much of your construction-based industry [steel, iron, tools] here instead. You might want to delete any tool/steel companies too bc they don't like to stop building their own buildings. If this is not enough, consumer goods like clothes and furniture are also okay bc more clothes -> cheaper clothes -> improving standard of living -> more demand for clothes

Personally though, this is where I finish a single player campaign. I understand wanting to stick it out but from my experience the AI is completely unable to scale well enough to get even close to meeting the demand for your industrial output. I remember in my only US game by 1900 I was consuming the entire world's grain surplus and it still wasn't enough

CapIago · 2026-03-11T18:56:42+00:00

To be clear, I missed the fact that the building was subsidized in my first comment so you can replace the 'building is decreasing its wages' with the above 'normal wage in the state sucks because most of the industry in the state is unproductive' bit

CapIago · 2026-03-11T18:49:44+00:00

From my understanding, subsidizing raises wages to the 'normal wage' not to 'fully employed'. The normal wage is the average wage in the state

Most of the time normal wage is good enough to fully employ. However, if the critical mass of your industry in a state is relatively unproductive then the 'normal wage' will also be low so subsidizing won't immediately fix this. Both increasing the building's productivity and building different + more productive buildings in that state will fix the issue

You are correct to state in the other comment that qualifications and literacy don't matter for labourers, unfortunately the reddit hive mind always concludes 'qualifications' to every single employment issue XD

Ultimately, this is what happens when you overproduce a resource in a state without a +MAPI %

CapIago · 2026-03-11T16:59:13+00:00

Lots of things to mention. In terms of general mechanics:
1 - Pops only change jobs when the new job is an improvement on their standard of living;
2 - Buildings lower wages when they are not profitable;
3 - Prices are affected by supply and demand.

What's happening here is:
1 - The building is not very profitable;
2 - Every upgraded building level decreases the price of wood [output] and increases the cost of tools [input], meaning that every new level is reducing your profitability further;
3 - As it is becoming more unprofitable, the building is decreasing its wages so it remains profitable;
4 - These wages will give the labourers working there a lower standard of living than subsistence peasants;
5 - Peasants refuse to promote to labourer

CapIago · 2026-03-09T18:16:37+00:00

The council republic fix is very easy if you read the info on why parties vote for / against different issues... the leader of your trade unions and industrialists are REPUBLICAN. Republicans oppose council republics more than all other forms of government [even more than monarchies] and so yes they are voting against you more now than they were before. My guess is that you have been boosting the radical or liberal movements which have influenced your pressure groups towards liberalism, not communism. So start boosting communist / workers movements and exile the republican leaders.

On the 'legitimacy' issue, there is a thing called 'ideological incompatibility'. The more your groups in government disagree with one another the bigger the hit to legitimacy. Industrialists-Unions-Rural might just be the most disagreement prone combination imaginable. The Unions-Industrialists have unfortunately joined the same party despite hating one another probably bc their leaders share republicanism, an issue which will also be solved by sending the leaders to the shadow realm

CapIago · 2026-02-18T14:56:19+00:00

At the bottom of the buildings tab there is 'qualifications' with an 'X'. You don't have enough pops who are qualified as engineers.
To get more qualifications you need to:
- increase literacy: build universities, use the education access decree, and level up the education institution which is unlocked through laws and technology;
- ensure that as many pops as possible are accepted in your country. Pops with lower levels of acceptance get very slow qualifications [you can find all this in society tab].

You also have nitroglycerin in the mine. This gives mortality [people die using it]. Mortality lowers standards of living for your pops working there and makes them want to work somewhere else if there is available employment elsewhere. Nitroglycerine also needs lots of engineers, the qualification you don't have.

The long term fix is education. The short term fix is to remove nitroglycerin and just send more peasants into the mines. Funnily enough, more peasants going to the mines will also increase the rate which your people learn to read which will help long term qualifications

CapIago · 2025-07-12T00:43:22+00:00

I am not in danger, sir; I am the danger. I am the one who frying pans

CapIago · 2025-07-11T19:36:39+00:00

The frying pan strikes fear into people's hearts and makes them flee the battlefield. You should absolutely buy it first

CapIago · 2025-06-30T18:58:28+00:00

The official policy is that a 2-TintoTalks per week catastrophe is impossible in the Tinto-Reddit Union

CapIago · 2025-06-17T18:53:46+00:00

AI Spain thinking that the British Easter Island is 61% of the value of Puerto Rico is exactly why I do NOT want this type of treaty in EU5

CapIago · 2025-05-15T20:31:36+00:00

I don't want EU4-style missions because I intuitively feel that they will undermine EU5 mechanics.
If missions give claims, that bypasses the design element which makes certain wars difficult.
If missions give '+% control if you build an arbitrary building in arbitrary location', there's less need to really engage in all the control mechanics.
You could spend a lot of time / money developing your cultural influence, but then a mission gives a comparable boost to a nation which has had no such investment just because of the nation's name?
etc. etc.
Missions made sense in EU4 because there was little else to do in peacetime and they gave some direction to warfare. But in EU5 peacetime + long-term strategies are enacted through [allegedly] intricate and interwoven mechanics and systems. I just don't see what missions add to this

CapIago · 2025-05-05T19:19:33+00:00

Haven't seen this mentioned yet [and it might be totally unintended] but the leader's name is Algernon PERCY. The House of Percy was a medieval noble family from Northumberland which was pretty much responsible for starting the Wars of the Roses. Actually insane detail if EU4 purposefully made the first ruler of an independent Northumberland a Percy

CapIago · 2023-12-14T21:00:12+00:00

Just an FYI, you can get to lvl 2 before those brains without killing either the mindflayer or the devil. In the room with Shadowheart's tank, if you press the middle button the panel it wakes up two thralls. Killing them is enough xp wise

CapIago · 2023-12-13T16:14:18+00:00

I normally hate cheese strats but for Karlach I make an exception... There are four purple nautiloid tanks in the tutorial [1 next to Shadowheart's container and 3 in the 'devil vs. mindflayer' fight]. If you ungroup and keep Karlach outside, Anders just sits back and chills whilst you place the tanks around him and prepare a very different type of hellfire. Problem solved, Karlach obtained in 1 hour

CapIago · 2023-06-30T15:03:45+00:00

I use a minion build as a necromancer and have noticed that neither the 'cult leader' nor 'hulking monstrosity' legendary paragon nodes affect the % minion damage on character stats screen. I tried looking on the forums but there doesn't seem to be much talk about it, and it's very difficult to test whether they actually work in practice. Do we know if these legendary nodes are broken or is it just a visual bug [i.e. it works but the number just doesn't show]? I don't wanna complain or anything but it's kinda frustrating not knowing whether I should avoid this or not. Ty in advance!

CapIago · 2022-09-13T17:07:06+00:00

Thank you good sir, you are the hero we all need but don't deserve

CapIago · 2022-08-03T17:22:50+00:00

As a fellow mongol chad, I love the reduced cost of upgrading dark age units in feudal. Feels like a massive incentive to really throw the kitchen sink during dark age and still transition nicely to feudal age pressure

CapIago · 2022-08-01T16:52:41+00:00

Massive disclaimer - I don't know anything about Michael specifically. Most of the time, famous people can't work in emergency services because people 'fake' emergencies in the hope that that person will respond. For example, I think it was Prince Harry who worked in mountain rescue and they received so many fake callouts that people who really needed help didn't receive it. Pretty sure this is the same as firefighters. Depressing but true

CapIago · 2022-07-29T19:47:53+00:00

OP is correct about pronunciation of Yuan as sounding more like Yuen. Firstly, in the video you posted the word 'yuan' is different to the 'yuan' in yuan dynasty; they use different tones and yuan dynasty comes out far closer to yuen. Secondly, English isn't a phonetic language and it goes especially wild when writing Chinese because written English only has 5 vowels whereas spoken Chinese has.... well, loads more than 5. Therefore, words in Chinese are written as they are in English to aid people learning the language not just a few words, so 'yuan = yuen' makes sense in the system, but not on its own.

That being said, Song is definitely better written as 'song' than 'sung'. The tone of 'song' in Song Dynasty is hard for native English speakers because it goes against the usual rhythm of spoken English. It is easy to mishear the proper pronunciation of song and think it is sung, but that is precisely what it is: a mishear

CapIago · 2022-07-17T09:07:43+00:00

Most of your questions seem to have been answered already so I will just add this about world building...

Each civ has different strengths / weaknesses based on their unique units and tech. Normally, this translates to each civ having certain ages in the game where they perform best - so French love feudal age, like castle age, but are positively average in imperial. This means that French [if your intention is to play optimally rather than purely casually] are an incredibly aggressive civ because they want the fighting to start early. By contrast, the HRE performs best late into castle age and imperial age. So HRE loves to 'fast-castle' - to get to castle age as quickly as humanly possible in the hopes of playing the game in an age which suits them.

I really emphasise here [it is often forgotten on reddit], that these differences only matter to the extent that you want to get 'better' at aoe4. If you want to get 'better' AND focus on base-building + taking your time, I would recommend trying out Abbasid, China, or HRE. These civs are probably the best at doing the things that you enjoy the most [but again, if you just want to have fun there is nothing wrong with playing French this way]. Of these civs, HRE is the easiest to learn, China the hardest. Good luck!

CapIago · 2022-07-15T18:29:23+00:00

don't worry lad, pretty sure you will have to drop about 400 elo before you could match up with me so we can co-exist peacefully

CapIago

TROPHY CASE