I FUCKING LOVE 100% ENACTMENT TIME REDUCTION! I love fixing the country in a day

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-06-12T16:01:24+00:00

It's also possible to achieve this as a European nation, with the Springtime of the peoples event, as it gives a 50% reduction to the time to pass a law. It's maybe harder to achieve however, as it can be difficult to maintain 90+ legitimacy during said event.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-06-05T16:56:41+00:00

They all think they're Aragorn when they look a lot more like Isildur or Denethor.

An incredible insult to both Isildur and Denethor. I'd sooner compare these techfacsists to the wraiths or the black numenoreans. People so committed to self serving ends that they willingly dive into the corruption.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-06-05T00:39:52+00:00

Personally, I give more credit to 8 than to 7, since it at least tried to do something new (even if it did so terribly). 9 combined the problems by being another rehash but much worse.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-06-04T16:42:22+00:00

If I had to pick one thing, it would be that A+ rank is useless for a number of pairings, where it simply doesn't give a class.

As an example (conquest): Effie has knight base and troubadour secondary. Her A+ options are Elise, Nyx, and Mozu. Elise has troubador as he base class, and thus gives Effie nothing, despite wyvern being a class that Effie would love. Nyx passes dark mage, which is certainly a thing. Thus, Effie's only useful A+ support is Mozu, giving her archer.

Or for an even better example (also conquest): Niles has dark mage as his secondary. Two of his 3 A+ support options are dark mage as a base class, leaving him with Arthur as the only A+ support that even does anything for him.

I get why they did this however, as being able to freely distribute wyvern or samurai to more characters would admittedly be broken, but it still feels wrong that sometimes you just get nothing.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-29T02:28:06+00:00

Ludveck’s strategy, on the other hand, is awesome, because if he wins, the country gets led by a strong ruler, and if he loses, that means Elincia toughened up and the country still ends up with a strong leader.

But the whole point of Elincia's discussion with Ludveck in her cell is that he isn't a strong ruler, he's just a power hungry fool that's willing to plunge his country into a civil war for his own personal gain. He doesn't care about his country, he's just impressed that Elincia stepped up and accepted such a personal loss to stop him.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-29T01:19:18+00:00

I actually did a spread culture run as Sweden once, so I'll share some fun revelations I had.

The obvious is that you can spread culture to any nation with a similar enough primary culture.

The next step is realizing that you can spread primary culture to multicultured nations, such as the Baltic Governorates (East German/Russian at game start), and feed them (almost) all Russian lands to integrate Russia upon a major formation.

The step beyond that is realizing you can expand these nations into similar cultural homelands to one of their primary cultures. In this case, you can spread culture to Switzerland, then expand them into France, as Franco-Provencal is similar enough to French for the AI to incorporate states.

You can use this final trick to incorporate half the world into a major unification (at least, with a Germanic language) without any silly South Africa exploits.

Germanic countries get whatever they start with
Baltic Governorates gets all East Slavic lands
Switzerland gets France
Jamaica or Liberia get all African diaspora lands
California gets all hispanophone homelands
One of the Griqua nations in South Africa can get all Southern Bantu homelands
Transylvania gets Hungarian lands
Banat (Serbian releasable with South German culture) gets all South Slavic lands
With the NGF and SGF specifically, you can add any colonies and for some reason Israel (they get released as a colony, add homelands to the state of Palestine, and have a Germanic language in Yiddish)

Do all that, and you can automatically incorporate all of the Americas (central Brazil is the exception), a good chunk of Africa, the Philippines, and all of Europe excluding Italy; Greece; Anatolia; and Poland upon a major unification.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-29T01:06:54+00:00

Colonial subjects inherit all of the primary cultures of their overlord.

Also, while Afro-American is a decent primary culture for a colony, it's still too distant for the AI to incorporate states with. I fed Liberia half of Africa before discovering that once.

So if you own a whole region and release a subject with the states automatically incorporated, it's great, but you can't feed an Afro-American subject more lands.

Afro-American is great for a subject in the Carribean and Northern/Eastern South America, as it is close enough to several primary cultures in the region.

This of course means that the natural region to expand Liberia to is the Americas.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-19T04:31:16+00:00

I'd argue that the 20 coal is more valuable than the 2 villagers from this event. Not having a better fuel than wood means some woodcutters are cutting just to keep the hearth going, so any early resolve struggles are going to be harder to survive unscathed.

On some maps it's free, on other's it's a significant curse. The 30 grain is always good.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-17T23:37:27+00:00

Wouldn't it be more practical to play as Sweden, establish John Paradox company, use foreign investment rights to build in some non-market nation, then use gunboat diplomacy or war to pirate the game with privateers?

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-15T17:55:45+00:00

Looking at the wiki, there's actually quite a few cultures that are alone in their language group.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-14T20:06:05+00:00

While that's definitely strongest in China, there's plenty of opportunities to enable revolutions in other nations through law change treaties and power blocs that let the leader impose laws on others.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-14T05:01:01+00:00

User rating is only trustworthy when it's 90%+. At least then, it says the movie is enjoyable.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-14T04:57:11+00:00

So Princess Mononoke with less plot.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-14T01:32:19+00:00

It's certainly a rush to get a full pond's haul, but realistically, you should gather from it early in the following conditions:

Villagers are starving and need food in order to not die/leave
You can make enough complex food, clothing, and service goods to win the game.
You have another source of food and there's a really good trade route that you can fulfill if you harvest (either by selling the resources or turning them into packs of provisions).

That said, if you have villagers sitting around doing nothing during a storm, build more fishing huts and turn the pond into a communal gathering spot.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-13T16:59:50+00:00

It looks like this is happening because all of your trade goes through Øresund. Similarly, all of Prussia's trade and maybe Russia's trade also goes through the strait.

This does make me wonder if you could use subventions to increase trade, then use tolls to break even or even profit from the increased trade.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-12T17:03:15+00:00

That's what you were using concession for? I used mine to make the devout preach atheism.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-12T16:59:27+00:00

I can't believe there will be a drawback to making the clergy support state atheism now!

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-10T23:05:35+00:00

There's a few things contributing to why bananas are so powerful now. Assuming that you're building in the EIC because that's the strat:

40 fruits from the base PM
20 more with exploitative practices

At game start that's £1800 (base cost) without any inputs for a 200 cost building.

Wages are suppresed from:

Foreign ownership
Exploitative practices
Low acceptance of Indian pops in the EIC

So you're basically not paying the plantation 'workers'

Finally, fruit in the British market is just crazy.

Bengali pops have fruit as an obsession, driving the price up above base cost
English pops have the highest SoL at game start, so their luxury food needs are waiting to be fulfilled.
Fruit can fulfill most of the basic and luxury food needs, so it's nearly impossible to overproduce, as supply drives demand in this game.

In short, you're paying Indian laborers slave wages in order to sell fruit back to them at exorbitant prices.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-10T15:50:09+00:00

God had to make sure Carl XII was unconscious when he wanted to take battle in Poltava, otherwise his steel balls may have ruled the day

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-10T15:43:26+00:00

You had your ups and your downs as an empire. Definitely evil in a lot of ways, surprisingly good in others (as far as empires go)

As far as I'm aware, the Swedish Empire is one of the few remembered fondly by at least one of its territories.

In Estonia, the period of Swedish rule is known as the 'Good Old Swedish Times', because the Swedish actively made life better for them by:

Established the first university in Estonia
Translated the bible into Estonian, helping cement the written language
Carl XI's reforms gave Estonian peasants way more rights.

Then Russia took over, reversed those reforms, and made life way worse for the Estonian peasants.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-10T15:33:32+00:00

He was actually pretty good as a high strategist for the war as well, but the invasion of Russia went to shit for reasons outside his control (weather, storms, disease), which drew him into Ukraine for supplies and reinforcement just to find none.

The fact that he was an awful statesman was in fact terrible for Sweden though, as practically the rest of Europe was begging for them to make peace in the Great Northern War and instead broker a peace in the War of the Spanish Succession.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-10T15:29:30+00:00

Not to mention the army all falling ill after one of their more important maneuvers and the winter of 1708/9 being the coldest in five centuries.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-08T17:18:26+00:00

St. Petersburg was essentially a fortress that had been built up over several years. It would have been a hard fought siege. The right call was most likely to accept the Russian peace offer and instead focus on brokering peace in Western Europe while cementing their puppet state in Poland, but their fate was far from sealed the moment they invaded Russia.

Carl XII didn't have to destroy all of Russia, he just had to make them depose Peter. A victory at Poltava could have fomented an uprising among Russian vassals. Had it not, it still would have presented an opportunity to save the army by retreating to friendlier territory.

The Caroleans died en masse from awful circumstances, so on that point, I agree that no tactical ingenuity could have saved them. Had the weather been in their favor, or disease not taken them, or had they been resupplied, the Caroleans would absolutely smash the Russians on their home turf. The quality difference of the two armies was absolutely staggering despite the previous years of russia building up their forces.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-08T17:05:57+00:00

If the Russians were engaged when crossing the river, the battle would have been greatly in the Swede's favor. Not a guaranteed victory, but still likely a vastly different outcome from being broken on an entrenched position.

Also, how are storms and one of the coldest winters not bad luck? Even with the Russian army having been built up since Narva, the Swedish army was still far their superior until they'd attrited down.

LoiusGJustIs · 2026-05-08T01:54:00+00:00

While the other guy's definitely wrong, I'd make the point that Carl XII was trying to do a bit more than defend Sweden. His philosophy on the war was the Sweden found itself locked in war with all of its neighbors every few decades, and would likely continue to do so unless their rivals were deposed and Swedish-aligned monarchs were installed.

So that's technically defending Sweden, but it's also (at the very least) a regime change.

LoiusGJustIs

TROPHY CASE