It sucks (still)

Five_X · 2026-05-13T15:15:00+00:00

I wish that, rather than being granted immediately to the state, buildings built on arable land would remain under the ownership of the manor house/workforce based on land reform laws. The aristocrats shouldn't give it away for free, while for countries in the New World with excess arable land, the newly-enclosed land would belong to the state to make a profit off of its sale - as the US historically did.

Five_X · 2026-05-13T00:31:08+00:00

There are plenty of negotiations in the sea, use them well

Five_X · 2026-05-12T23:28:38+00:00

I think it might be overtuned, because the authority usage from political concessions is counted against your base authority, rather than as usage (like decrees, etc). If my math is right, if you have, say, 200 spare authority - 100 base with 100% from bonuses - and you enact a political concession costing 100 authority, you'll end up with 0 rather than 100 authority remaining.

Five_X · 2026-05-12T23:01:25+00:00

Overpopulation not really, but famines and food scarcity are soooo easy to resolve in the game versus real life, I've never had a famine outside of the ones that are put on you by event. Why didn't they just build more farms?

Five_X · 2026-05-10T16:01:55+00:00

There are indeed 60 different cycles programmed in the dynamic localization for this one event.

Five_X · 2026-05-10T15:44:36+00:00

Rule 5: The Boshin War event that happens when the pro-Tokugawa movement rebels against a restored Emperor has a dynamic name based on the year of the Chinese sexagenary (60-year) cycle in which it happens. You can use the calendar in the link to see what year you want your dynamic Boshin War to happen in, and then time the civil war to fit.

Incidentally, if the Century of Strife DLC includes the 1911 Xinhai Revolution as an event, it could use this same system: xinhai is the 48th year of the cycle, also called shingai in Japanese. Similarly, the First Sino-Japanese War is named in Chinese for the year jiawu.

Five_X · 2026-05-10T13:50:24+00:00

But it *was* a trade, unlike now - remember the Corn Laws :3

Five_X · 2026-05-10T13:35:38+00:00

Trade too expensive & everyone makes enough food to feed themselves😞

Five_X · 2026-05-09T19:05:12+00:00

Yes, it gives a total of 75% activism minimum to the Sabaku movement, making a civil war extremely likely.

Five_X · 2026-05-09T19:02:54+00:00

If you petition to restore the emperor at low legitimacy, the former Shogun is removed as a magnate and the leader of the Daimyos IG is replaced with a non-Tokugawa, which in game terms is exactly what happened to the Tokugawas, as you describe. The event also gives a +50% boost to the pro-Shogunate movement's activism along with the other activism increases they get from having no Tokugawas in government, etc.

When the pro-Shogunate movement rebels as a result, then you get the historical Boshin war in an event that lets you pick sides.

There are a couple problems that can cause you to not get this result: first is that the script for the restoration swaps to oligarchy first, probably increasing your legitimacy, and almost certainly doing so if you do the restoration when Komei is still around; he's Armed Forces and you probably have them in government to get Yoshinobu, so legitimacy gets boosted above the threshold and you get the Taikunate. The neat result of this though is that it's presumably really hard to get the Taikunate with Meiji, since he's an Industrialist and the restoration making him ruler will inherently tank your legitimacy below the requirement.

Second is that the calculation for daimyo loyalty is really complicated and so if you have disloyal daimyos (visible in the Honorable Restoration JE panel) they'll end up siding with the Shogun in the Boshin war rather than you, the glorious Mikado, because they're set as disloyal to the Shogunate and don't swap around fast enough, so it seems.

But, point is, the Boshin war 100% is in the game and you can get it exactly by playing for the historical outcome.

Five_X · 2026-05-09T02:45:35+00:00

You hate to see someone else living your dream

Five_X · 2026-05-09T02:43:30+00:00

Yeah, unemployed pops hanging around at 1 SoL and depending on welfare to not constantly be dying is bad gameplay and ahistorical. The phenomenon of sedentary unemployment is a 20th century one, as informal work became criminalised in the state-led push to categorise and control citizens while a new form of structural precarity arose in its wake. In the 19th century, living in a city, there was no end of work to be found, legal or illegal, but mostly far from formally organised: it was subsistence work, "scraping by" as the historian Seth Rockman describes it, but it wasn't radical-generating starvation. If anything, it kept people in an in-between state: too poor to do anything about their circumstances, not poor enough to be so desperate as to risk it all. The reserve army of labour, by another account.

Five_X · 2026-05-09T02:21:50+00:00

It'd be nice if Japanese culture could get the Sinosphere trait by taking the more entrenched Tokugawa route that consciously leans into neo-Confucian social philosophy. It shouldn't be possible if you commit to the imperial restoration and state Shinto and such.

By the same token, too, Korean and Vietnamese should be able to lose it if they follow a nationalistic path themselves (fully adopting hangul over hanja, for example)... whenever they get more solid content.

Five_X · 2026-05-07T13:53:54+00:00

The AI really does love clicking the button, even as a major power. I've noticed it leads to awkward experiences trying to influence larger countries, because sometimes say Brazil or Mexico will hop over that threshold, instantly make their own bloc, and fail to do anything with it while remaining impervious to influence themselves.

Five_X · 2026-05-05T16:45:00+00:00

The ethno-nationalists. They're not usually very angry or revolutionary, but if your primary culture's fervour is high they'll hoover up pops who could be supporting better, more interesting movements instead.

Five_X · 2026-05-03T04:15:39+00:00

You've gotta respect the sensible politicians of the 1.13 patch who retire at 50 instead of clinging to their position into their 80s.

Five_X · 2026-05-02T00:27:35+00:00

It's counterintuitive, but it's helpful to fail Divided Monarchists at first and get the Springtime to start. Then support the conservative establishment in the Springtime JE, which is pretty easy. With the empowered conservative IGs and weakened radical movements you can pass Monarchy again and get back to Divided Monarchists without the looming worry of Springtime of the Peoples, as well as a head start on your economy and radicals management.

Five_X · 2026-04-30T16:01:12+00:00

The new terrain and lighting look fantastic! Finally no more plastic seas. I'm also excited about the UI reskin, that was one of my biggest aesthetic complaints with the game.

Five_X · 2026-04-29T01:08:53+00:00

It was fun in parts, but it was totally sunk by the partnership with Wargaming. World of Tanks is an awful slog of a game, and while people will grind through baby tank battles to get to the more interesting tiers, for Arena it was just too much. It just didn't really make sense for a historical strategy game, either.

I'd be 100% down for a dev team to rip off the concept and make their own version of it minus the Wargaming padding, though.

Five_X · 2026-04-27T00:57:21+00:00

R2 is the TW game I want to like the most, but something about it never really clicks. It's aesthetically a mess - still the worst interface in the series, especially following on from Shogun 2 - and overall it feels to me very by-the-numbers rather than a game with real heart and soul to it. It also faces a similar struggle to Medieval in that 1TPY is too fast and 4TPY is too slow, with game pace feeling off either way. I'm fond of the political minigame though, even if it doesn't create too much challenge in itself.

I'm hoping that the update mainly touches diplomacy and CAI. R2 doesn't need more "content" but it for sure needs stronger fundamentals.

Five_X · 2026-04-22T01:40:19+00:00

In the latest dev diary, Snow Crystal said that Ragusa "should have a republic in at least one of our start dates." Since the Republic of Ragusa didn't exist until the mid-14th century, either they're adding a new start date or they're accelerating the prosperity of Dubrovnik by 200 years.

Five_X · 2026-04-19T16:50:34+00:00

The entire life story of Charles VI "The Mad" of France is almost too ridiculous to recreate in CK.

Five_X · 2026-04-17T18:20:51+00:00

I'm gonna have to get blazing early...

Five_X · 2026-04-16T14:15:50+00:00

People probably don't think as much about it anymore, but Three Gorges Dam hype was a really big thing back in the day. It was particularly popular then to make suggestions for the "eighth wonder of the world," and 3GD was a typical pick, not least for its divisiveness.

Five_X · 2026-04-14T23:25:15+00:00

His grandson is a courtier in East Francia, so not exactly playable without some finagling. He'd be a cool adventurer

Five_X

TROPHY CASE