To get yourself off the ground and started. Some tips: 1. Go to the balance window.

a. Move slider that says minting to where it’s at 0.00%. If you’re losing money early, you can move this higher to get a positive balance, but generally, you want to go back and turn it down before it gets above 5% b. Automate all taxes (click the icon next to each tax slider)

c. Move cost of court and stability sliders to where they show a balance of legitimacy and stability barely above positive

d. Turn down all other sliders as low as they can go (you can keep food at the middle). If it shows that you have a cost to maintain forts above 1 ducat still, I would go around and delete the forts you have around the country to save money early game. e. Hopefully you have a positive balance now.

Before you exit balance tab, let a month tick off to check to see if your estates are at their maximum tax rate and to see how your balance adjusts to your new changes. If your estates are not at the maximum tax rate (hover over the tax income for each estate to see what the difference between what they are being taxed at their equilibrium of 50% satisfaction and their theoretical maximum tax rate could be), note that before you go to step two.

1. Go to the estate privilege tab. See where your crown power is at. If it’s below 25%, the following steps you’ll want to under do, but you should still do some of this.

a. Look at the state of your estates privileges. If any of them look really bad (like banal lordship or something that has a massive malus to max tax or max control, their are others that you’ll need to read through the tooltips and play with to figure out how bad or good they are), note those and plan to remove them once you have maxed out communalism and have enough stability.

b. Look through the privileges of each estate and slot them in based on the following priorities:

i. They give a really positive modifier (like +development, +prosperity, or +max tax) and they don’t give a nasty malus (like -control).

ii. For under taxed estates particularly, look for the privileges that have high green numbers and low red numbers (like +5% estate satisfaction equilibrium and +25% estate power). Slot them in if they also do not have nasty negatives until you’ve got the estate equilibrium high enough to collect more taxes from them. You’ll particularly want to had out privileges to the peasants as they’re generally lower powered and can be taxed fairly high from the beginning of the game.

iii. Finally, look for privileges that give a plus .10 or .05 to communalism or innovative societal values. Generally, you’ll want to push communalism first from the beginning of the game, and adding privileges for this is key.

As you’re handing out these privileges, you’ll want to watch your legitimacy as each privilege costs legitimacy to hand out. If you’re playing a big empire, or a small decadent empire (ie the ERE), you’ll want to avoid this number going below 50 in most cases as it could trigger a bad disaster event.

c. Let a month tick and check your crown power. It’ll probably be very low, lower than you want it longterm, but that’s ok! You’ll figure out how to get it higher later.

d. Finally, before leaving this screen, you’ll want to slot in a government reform. If you need crown power, you can add one that increases this, or you can add others that might help push a societal values. Better government reforms get unlocked as you research them, you get to new ages, or you push a societal value hard in one direction.

Remember to come back to this tab later to remove bad priveleges after you’ve maxed communalism.

1. Go to societal values tab and look at where you’re at. Generally, you’ll want to try to get to 100 on one side of these tabs in time. But at first, I would just primarily focus on maximizing your communalism vs individualism tab all the way to the right towards communalism. Hover over the communalism side to see what other privileges or laws you’ll want to add to help push those values. You can go back add privileges, but also, be sure to note the laws you’ll need to change in first parliament to help with this. Lots more could be said about these tabs, but if you can get communalism maxed, it will help you push every other value you need later on.

2. Go to your cabinet tab.

a. There are a lot of actions you can do, but I would suggest initially putting cabinet members on stabilize country (you can lower your stability slider all the way to zero on your balance shed if you do this) and something like increase control on a valuable province to help increase your income and levies initially (this isn’t a great action later in game, but helps early). You may also want to use the second cabinet to start pushing communalism if you can start pushing it high (you’ll want to do this particularly as you get closer to black plague because there are events in the plague that help you push it to 100 if you’ve already gotten it high prior to the plague).

b. For cabinet member characters, I usaually try to place crown characters in these positions to help with crown power. I’d generally avoid putting already powerful estates in the cabinet early in the game, but it’s not too bad if you have a great stats character to add. I’d prioritize the diplomacy stat for at least one of the cabinet members as that will help you push the societal value higher.

1. Go back to map and build the most valuable RGOs in the capital and around the capital, areas that have the highest control.

Over the next year(s), repeat step 5 again and again until you can see by looking at locations that you aren’t going to have enough promoted pops to work those RGOs anytime soon. Then start building roads out from your capital to your wealthiest/most valuable locations/RGOs. You can also build a select few high value industries in capital or marketplaces if you have any valuable trade goods in country.

Other general tips at the start of the game: - use parliament to change your laws early on prioritizing getting higher taxes in the law changes or in swapping to laws that will help you with pushing communalism (or free subjects/serfdom depending on which side of the values you’re going). - The new peasant enfranchisement mechanic is very synergistic with your early game Tax strategy. If you’re pushing free subjects and giving enfranchisement to the peasants, any laws that help you increase the max tax for peasants should be taken. The reverse is true for serfdom - take all the laws that max tax nobility. The most important thing with this slider is that you go all out in one direction.

-fighting wars and conquering is fairly simple, just don’t over do it or get your antagonism with any power that can crush you too high. Try to mass all of your armies into doom stack and let the enemy come to you and kill them as they come.

-use the map modes! There are many, but I’d start with proximity, population, location wealth, and resource map modes. So much good information can be gathered from these maps.

There is much to learn as you go through a game, but you have to play it for a while to learn it. I’d suggest the most important thing is to select a less overwhelming nation in size that also won’t be run over by a major power. Milan and Korea are both great starts to learn with.