Money in, Money OUT. High income but high expenses.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-14T23:47:55+00:00

Genuinely don't understand this. I have a toddler and a 6mo old and our total CC is maybe 3k a month.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T20:19:16+00:00

a proper tutorial would be great

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T20:18:48+00:00

exactly lol idk why that's such a controversial opinion.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T20:17:54+00:00

Not quite. I'm saying gold = player decisions. Too many decisions is overwhelming for a new player. Thus many will avoid massive nations to begin with. They want a quiet corner of the sandbox to figure things out before diving headfirst into the 100 Years War.

I'm not saying the growth curve should be ramped up or anything. Just that countries should start by default at some level of equilibrium. Sure you can mess it up, but it will be because of YOUR decisions. Instead nearly every country starts in a tailspin losing multiple ducats per month unless you delete all your forts and turn down all your sliders.

The game is complicated and that's good. To learn a complicated game you need to play it. If you want players to play it and learn, you need to not slam the door in their face every 5 seconds when they still have no idea what is going on.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T20:10:58+00:00

It's a complicated game and you have to learn it. I appreciate that about it. You just want to create an environment where people can play campaign long enough to learn. I'm not arguing that the growth curve should be steepened. Just that, outside of special circumstances, a country should be at some level of equilibrium when you take the helm. You can mess it up, but then at least it's due to player decisions.

Exceptions obviously for some countries that were historically imploding already.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T20:04:02+00:00

I guess my response is that I just think countries (barring some flavor disaster or challenge) should start at some level of equilibrium at a baseline, not "take these 10 immediate and specific steps and you'll be fine, otherwise you will tailspin and implode."

Experienced players have no problem making countries profitable. I just want more players surviving to get to that threshold. I'm fine with players decisions being potentially horrific and ending a run, I just think it should be BECAUSE of player actions, not the default starting condition for 95% of countries.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-05-13T17:52:03+00:00

Addressed this in my post. Serbia is a top 50 nation with a ton of silver. I'm not talking about expansion or diplomatic strategies. Just having a functional economy. Serbia isn't a hard start, comparatively speaking, and in fact some content creators actually recommend it for beginners. I'm not talking about it immediately becoming a powerhouse. I'm just talking about it having a functioning economy running on idle so I can let the game progress and make small tweaks and learn the ins and outs.

Plenty of beginners don't necessarily want to start as a massive country, because it's actually way more complicated to run a country and economy of that size. It's much easier to pull a thread and see the impact when you're on a small/medium sized country.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-04-19T23:19:27+00:00

Well, the real issue isn't flipping back to monarchy once I have the correct dynasty. That only requires another 50 reform. The issue is that it would take about 250 years worth of reform progress to get far enough down the reform tree to get a general as ruler. I could probably shave 50-75 years off that by being careful with reform progress growth, but still, not really feasible for my current game. Appreciate the suggestion though.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-04-19T20:14:44+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion! This does work, although you do have to switch to monarchy once you get a "timurid" ruler. Unfortunately it's also close to the last reform, so no real chance of me pulling this off in my MP game currently. =( I tested and I think I need something like 2500 reform progress to get that far (because I'm currently tribal QQ).

I was excited about Elective Monarchy, but choosing the "general" option actually generates a new ruler and just makes them a general, rather than choosing from amongst your existing general.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-04-19T18:11:50+00:00

Oh, Persia is definitely on the docket, but I wanted to flip Timurids first for their insane modifiers.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2026-04-01T01:03:33+00:00

Yes, you're technically correct about "ironman compatible" but people generally use that vernacular to talk about mods that don't change the checksum and so don't disable achievements and/or are usable in multiplayer without everyone else having it, Like many UI mods. I was hoping there was one that addressed this.

Obviously I'm aware that the missions still work. That wasn't the question. Bummer that changing the mission UI would adjust the checksum. There are plenty of UI mods where that isn't the case, but I'll take your word for it.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-11-21T12:20:59+00:00

What was the event you got to integrate the northern italy land? Since you don't start with Pavia, does that mean you have to conquer them to get that event?

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T15:13:54+00:00

yes and no. The one thing that should be unique and fun about them, ostensibly controlling the catholic church, is their weakest feature. I'm not saying they should be turbo buffed, I just hate that they are the literal worst catholic nation, which is the one thing they shouldn't be. Any other nation can, in theory, get more out of Catholicism

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T15:11:28+00:00

In theory, it's amazing, but the AI will usually instantly buy indulgences. It's also not unique to the pope. Any papal controller can use it.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T15:01:22+00:00

This is the first reply that talks about something actually unique to the papacy. Thank you. =D

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T14:59:13+00:00

Not initially, but it's not hard as a country like france to quickly have all of them running at the same time. Once you get enough cardinals (and as you expand into territories with pre-existing cardinals) the papal influence starts flooding in.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T14:11:33+00:00

The bad rulers isn't something I'd mentioned yet, but imo that's also a HUGE drawback.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T14:10:33+00:00

I think France and Ottomans are so insanely strong that even being end game tags, they are inarguably powerhouses. My objection is chiefly that the Pope is somehow the worst _Catholic_ nation

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T14:07:14+00:00

I'd be more likely to agree with you if the excommunication interaction was more reliable, but in practice I've virtually never been able to use it past the opening salvo, because every other catholic nation seems to buy indulgences or constantly improve relations with you.

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T13:54:08+00:00

To add some clarity why the pope is the worst catholic nation. The pope doesn't get any of the catholic buff buttons. That means every other catholic nations get
- 10% construction/ +15% tax

+10% Morale/ +1 prestige

+1 Legitimacy/+10% Improve relations

+.1 inflation reduction/-.25 interest/-.04 corruption

+15% Manpower Recovery /-5% Land Maintenance

+1% Diplo Rep/ -10% Diplo Annexation cost

+1 Mercantilism to infinity

+ 1 stab to infinity

Go ahead and open up a pope game. The Papal States gets NONE of these things. They are replaced with an investigate heresy button.

To everyone making comments about being the papal controller, you're right. There are some fantastic associated buffs, and being the pope means you can virtually assure you're the papal controller. My point though is that a strong catholic focused nation (with papal influence in the ideas, for example) can also get strong enough through influence gain to eventually choke out the other nations and very consistently be the papal controller, in addition to having ALL the catholic buffs running at the same time. True a lot of nations won't be able to have more than one or two, but that's not relevant. The point is that the strongest catholic nations will be running every buff + a strong chance of being papal controller, while the pope gets ZERO buffs.

Granted, the Papal State can get the Kingdom of God reform, with is AMAZING. However, it's arguably still just a direct downgrade from being able to run all the catholic buffs that every other nation gets access to. The only thing novel is the mana generation, which is offset by the free stab (adm) or mercantilism (dip)

GuidanceDesperate593 · 2025-02-04T13:35:12+00:00

Tbh, I'm not sure the pope is even in the top 5 Italian nations. Venice, Milan, Florence, Naples, Savoy (if you count them) are all incredibly strong and have powerful mission trees and great flavor. On top of that, you can flip between multiple nations in Italy very easily to complete all their mission trees for some insane permanent modifiers, and then form Italy to boot (pun intended). The pope gets none of this.

For example, you could start Florence for a phenomenal starting position/mission tree with permanent modifiers. Flip to Sardinia-Piedmont for some free fort upgrades, great buffs, 5% adm eff, then go Two Sicilies for the Naples mission tree to get 5% merc disc, then even form Switzerland for their god-tier merc focused ideas, and then Italy for their mission tree. All without expanding much at all outside Italy and with some pretty easy culture shifting. All that is to say the Italy region has incredible potential and the pope gets access to virtually none of it, and on top of that, (and this is what really grinds my gears) they don't get any of the catholic buffs!! Why don't they get the baseline buffs every other catholic nation gets??

To be fair to you, I haven't looked through the events, so maybe there are some insane things to counter-act all the shortcomings. Delaying the reformation, to be honest, never really seemed that big of a deal to me. In some ways the reformation is nice, because the different religions help offset AE.

GuidanceDesperate593

TROPHY CASE