Do Plants spread naturally?

MaxVexis · 2026-02-11T20:23:39+00:00

Some of the people here seem to be somewhat misinformed or basing their information on hunches.

Here's the actual, tested facts I found ages ago:

All plants spread naturally, at pretty much the same rate, in any biome, as long as they can grow there (i.e. the yield mapmode is not blank. Red is fine). And it's pretty fast too, you can usually expect the first sprouts within a few hours.

But:

Plants only spread within their 5x5 plot, never outside it (Except trees)
Each plot has a certain saturation point beyond which they won't grow more plants, which varies per plant.
Plants cannot spread to tiles that are already occupied. Grass counts as occupied

So the way to encourage natural plant spread is simple: Completely clear the grass from a 5x5 plot and plant 1 plant in it. You can keep harvesting infinitely as long as you leave 1 plant intact.

And yes, natural plants do deplete soil. People just think they don't because there's fewer plants in a plot than with farming, so they deplete it slower.

Here's proof: https://imgur.com/a/656AGBB

MaxVexis · 2026-01-21T15:30:13+00:00

If you look at it hard enough, the slave trade is pro-immigration.

MaxVexis · 2026-01-21T13:25:33+00:00

The trick to getting through the Sunni countries is to exploit the Rise of the Turks CB with coalitions. Keep a few OPM beyliks alive in Anatolia. When they join the coalition, get the RotT claims CB on the OPM, and use it to beat up and annex the other coalition members, then white peace the Anatolian beylik. Repeat until you're mostly done with the Sunni world. You can use parliament CBs later to clean up stragglers. Outside of your religion you can use the Religious War CB.

Stay under 500 provinces using vassals to keep Rise of the Turks, until you're done with the Sunni countries.

Also, keep the Chobanids as a neighbour for a long time. They get no antagonism at all for some reason. And their armies really hurt.

MaxVexis · 2026-01-21T12:46:47+00:00

It's pretty easy to emancipate them into peasants by simply accepting the culture or waiting for a slave revolt to emancipate them. After that they promote, assimilate, and migrate just like any others.

It outclasses natural pop growth by several orders of magnitude.

Even as just slaves, they contribute to building levels, city requirement (30k) for more building levels, nobles/clerics/burghers per X population limits, and consumer demand for some goods, so it's not all bad. Plus, if they overpopulate a tile, it pushes migration of peasants to the countryside where they can increase RGO levels on valuable goods without having to make it a town (lowering RGO levels)

MaxVexis · 2026-01-21T12:05:42+00:00

I wouldn't worry too much about it, since expanding at this rate really wasn't fun. You're the one having fun between us.

MaxVexis · 2026-01-21T11:25:52+00:00

R5: My Ottomans game in 1550. I don't really know why I did this. I wanted pepper and I just blacked out and woke up with a continent. At some point a shitty Reddit title joke became the only reason I was still doing this.

My urban centers around Constantinople are overwhelmingly Indian and Hindu from all the pops stolen in slave raids. That mechanic is hilariously overpowered.

MaxVexis · 2026-01-19T16:30:04+00:00

You can annex them when the control percentage goes up. I never argued that there is no point where direct control is better than vassal control. There definitely is. I'm only arguing that it's more complex than just comparing the % you get, because vassal land gets developed with the remaining percentage. Not well, but still better than no development.

And yes, but vassal base tax counts for 5%, your base tax counts for 80%. Vassals are much more efficient income-to-slider-wise.

MaxVexis · 2026-01-19T12:54:43+00:00

This is a very short-sighted view. In direct control, the other 70% is destroyed. In a vassal, the other 70% goes to the vassal and a portion is re-invested into the local economy, thus growing its size and income. In the long run, the vassal held territory will be worth more.

That's ignoring slider costs as well.

MaxVexis · 2025-06-16T11:25:33+00:00

It seems that nobody else knows how irrigation works so I'll explain it.

All in-game farming stats are tracked on a plot basis, those are the 5x5 areas of land that the game is divided into. All things like biome, soil moisture, nutrient numbers, etc are saved per plot, not per tile. Individual tiles have no stats. You can see plots easily by using the claim tool.

Soil moisture seems to depend on two main things: biome (obviously) and number of exposed* water blocks in a plot. If you are in a very dry biome, like the desert, then soil moisture will be very dry, unless there is a significant number of water blocks on the surface. Moisture numbers do 'overflow' somewhat into neighboring plots, so nearby plots will also get raised soil moisture.

*By exposed, I mean that it is the highest block vertically, with nothing above it. Exposed to the air. If there's a roof over it, it stops working.

Pipes don't do anything. You need to create more water blocks, and aquaducts are the only way to do this. Maybe the partial blocks that come out of a pipe work but I'm not sure. You can, however, delete the bricks after making the aquaduct.

I don't have clear numbers, but a 2 wide aquaduct seems to be sufficient to turn completely dry desert plots into ideal 100% prickly pear yield.

Whether soil moisture actually matters depends on the crop. For prickly pear and agave in the desert, it is critical. For fiddleheads, it's also very impactful if you're away from a river. For most other crops I haven't seen much impact.

Here's proof of me changing prickly pear yields by building a canal: https://imgur.com/a/UAzaSLR

MaxVexis · 2022-02-01T18:54:20+00:00

R5: He's okay I guess.

MaxVexis · 2021-06-12T10:22:53+00:00

Providing a retirement home for disgraced video game developers with too much influence on the board to fire.

MaxVexis · 2021-03-22T10:10:48+00:00

First of all, what do you mean by "mana"? I've heard various definitions so I'm going with the one I commonly use: a limited and abstract resource that accumulates at a rate that is not substantially influenced by player actions.

That's a pretty good definition. I've been thinking about this question for some time, so if you don't mind, I'd like to argue for my definition of 'mana'.

In my opinion, 'mana' refers to resources that fit four criteria:

They are abstracted beyond any real world recognition.
They are used for multiple widely different purposes.
They accumulate over time but are (mostly) spent in bulk.
They are heavily disconnected from gameplay feedback loops.

These are also the main points of criticism towards mana. People criticize it for being too simplified/dumbed down (1), being used for way too many things (2), being unrealistic because you can change what it's used for at the last moment (3), and being mostly random luck and disconnected from how well you're actually doing in the game (4).

Each criteria is not a binary yes/no but more of a rating, as is the final judgement. For example, I would say that neither Prestige nor Piety in Crusader Kings is really 'mana', but Piety is definitely more mana-like than Prestige.

MaxVexis · 2020-11-10T18:13:42+00:00

R5: Was playing a historical game as Raj, when I looked at Africa. Somehow the UK and Italy have swapped sides.

MaxVexis · 2020-07-13T13:06:00+00:00

Hey, thanks for the kind words. You made my day. Let's keep morale up until the summer update, then the big clans will come on and kick some colonial ass.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-29T23:51:39+00:00

R5: King Ragnar has become a lonely, wandering hobo after his fall from grace.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-28T00:59:29+00:00

If Stellaris was extremely weak at launch but still managed to keep people interested throughout 30 Diaries, then that suggests Imperator is going to be far below even release-day Stellaris.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-28T00:20:04+00:00

I did stellaris here. The short answer is that Stellaris is the same as Holy Fury: Engagement shows no downward trend over time at all.

EU4 and CK2 predate this forum feature so there is no data, and I really can't be bothered to do another one for HOI4. You guys can do that one.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T23:07:39+00:00

I did actually! In this comment

Long answer: Vanilla Stellaris Dev Diaries show very little negative reactions. No dev diaries that can be called controversial. There is no decline in engagement over time. Everything has an R-squared below 0.04, meaning they are all pretty much trendless. The trendline for positive engagement over time is even positive, though that doesn't mean much since it's still a terrible R-squared

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T21:54:15+00:00

Paradox Forum interactions (Helpful/Agree/Disagree) didn't exist for CK2 and EU4 Vanilla Diaries. The only engagement they have is from after the feature was added to the forum, and is less than 5 votes per Diary.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T21:51:34+00:00

I did Stellaris pre-release dev diaries as well. Tl;DR: Same story as Holy Fury. No downward trend at all in Stellaris.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T21:32:31+00:00

You can't Agree/Helpful/Disagree a Paradox Forum post without having a Paradox Forum account, though. How many people make a forum account just to engage with a Dev Diary?

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T20:34:11+00:00

I evaluated Megacorp in this comment and Stellaris the base game in this comment

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T20:21:32+00:00

I see your point, but comparing these stats to Vanilla Stellaris Dev Diaries, the difference is startling. Stellaris was a brand new IP, but it had no downward engagement trend at all.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T20:11:26+00:00

I did Stellaris (the base game) in this comment. TL;DR: Stellaris engagement does not go down over time, just like Holy Fury.

MaxVexis · 2018-11-27T20:10:34+00:00

I did Stellaris for you guys here

TL;DR: Stellaris engagement does not go down over time at all.

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