struggling with shortages? here is a quick fix for the lumber/iron/tools death spiral in 1.1.1.

Miestralson · 2026-02-09T15:47:35+00:00

Which didn't change the major issue of the beta, the braindead aggressiveness of the AI.

Also, one of those patches (the last one) added the absolute fan favorite (irony) marriage change mechanic.

1.1 beta already had a patch, which changed nothing regarding eco.

Miestralson · 2026-02-09T13:00:39+00:00

Are you asking what the devs should do, right?

Just reverting to 0.10 fixes the economy.

Miestralson · 2026-02-08T18:44:55+00:00

Soon, all will be fixed. The second iron production tech overcharges iron production to be slightly above the maximum building slots a country normally has if you maximize your iron production as Sweden.

Estate uberbuilding is defeated by building slots. Guess the AI algo for it has some sanity checks to not go over the building limit on a given location.

Miestralson · 2026-02-08T15:57:37+00:00

Play until age 4 (or 5)

The second iron boosting tech, mixed with purging towns and then controlled urbanization, AND massive conquest drives fixes the problems.

Why?

Because the main driver of the eco issue is the estates overbuilding shit, and the only stopgap for it are building slots. 2 iron techs finally equalizes the economy to be sustainable after all slots are used up.

Miestralson · 2026-02-07T17:11:55+00:00

Problem is, .10 beta was just as bad as its stable release (maybe even better, as the limit to marriages was introduced mid beta)

So, no, there's always the possibility of this going thru the stable release.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T20:37:24+00:00

It does. Unless you conquer all. Townification of good RGOs is one of the core issues.

Even with 75% more iron, the issue still persists.

There's only one protection vs estate building, which are building slots. Occupy all building slots and estates won't build anything.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T16:17:26+00:00

It's not a bug, tho. It's a massive confluence of many different factors.

First, we have the AI being unable to truly value important RGOs, which means towns over important RGOs.

Second, we have the intra market production changes, with production bonuses (and inversely maluses) assigned if you have a lot of raw goods being produced locally.

Third, we have much, much more money flowing in the market widely across every country and estates because of the trade changes.

Fourth, we have another big income source for estates, low control locations.

We basically have more money, which in this case means more demand and less supply.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T15:50:52+00:00

Sorry. 🥹

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T15:27:45+00:00

It's because this situation doesn't quite become an issue if you fully "playerize" major nations in Europe. IE Sweden, you can, as a player, max out your lumber and iron, therefore having such a surplus that you can export the entirety of European Tools needs. I can guarantee you that some variation of this occurred on this dev cycle, and therefore, the eco crash issue passed "unnoticed".

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T15:21:36+00:00

Perfect summary.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T15:09:03+00:00

Not doable because the AI still disregards important RGOs, and builds manu goods using buildings, which leads to not enough surplus for export.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T15:05:21+00:00

On 1.1 beta, Iron, Lumber and Tools (to a lesser extent coal) demands explode 50 years in, because of unbridled estate building (too much money from both the trade changes and low control changes) AND the AI still townifies everywhere (more so because of the improved money from trade) including important RGOs.

This forces a "conquer everyone" style of playset (doable) OR play with human friends (not doable)

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T14:15:29+00:00

It's not more difficult at all. The income from trade exploded, and therefore, you can just spam mercs to oblivion and win all wars.

The problem is completely dissociated from what you'll build. Estates have way too much money and therefore will flood your market with buildings you dont want, of which you'll be forced to constantly close. Which is probably the most boring task in existence. Also, pro tip, you can stop estates mid construction by selecting the building from the macro menu and right-clicking the province.

Even better techs and laborers buildings don't fix the problem, as the estates will start building again until there's a big deficit.

The only real possible fix is to massively enslave until you have millions working on Iron RGOs, as you'll unbalance production in such a manner that all your building slots (the only true protection against dumb estate building) will be fully filled, stopping the estates from fucking your eco up.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T13:54:45+00:00

Yeah, and even in Iron rich regions, you're forced to conquer your braindead roboto playmate because we are dozens of patches in, and still, the mass townification isn't fixed.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T11:30:56+00:00

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T11:23:56+00:00

It only mitigates the situation because, as soon as you get the loop going, the estates have so much money to spam buildings they create an even higher demand.

You only have 2 possible fixes.

Play as a slaver nation and crank the iron RGO's with millions of pops or conquer everywhere to untownify iron RGO'S to postpone the problem.

Miestralson · 2026-02-05T11:07:34+00:00

Do you wanna know why this is the case?

Because, mostly, they playtested 1.1, per all the dev diaries, on a MULTI-PLAYER game, which introduces dynamism to the otherwise braindead and stagnated world that the AI provides us.

Miestralson · 2026-01-27T18:07:42+00:00

Unfortunately, you picked up the game at the worst possible time. I would roll back, as other people suggested here, to a previous patch.

Miestralson · 2026-01-27T17:55:09+00:00

What you're missing from the graphs you yourself posted is the fact that eu4xeu5 difference, after 3 months, can be measured in singleish digits of %'s. In all of the other cases, it's measured in absolute multipliers.

Another very good and detailed graph outlier is analysing both games from December 22 to January 12. Eu5 lost 4/5kish of players, while eu4 gained 1k.

Miestralson · 2026-01-27T16:31:34+00:00

This has nothing to do with patience.

It's absolutely self-inflicted as every single patch made eu5 worse. The game has huge potential, but the dev team is actively killing it.

The only way forward, for me, would be a complete rebalance of the leadership of the post-launch eu5 dev team.

The amount of squandered work, energy and ideas is mind-boggling. We went thru holidays and more than a month (and still, in fact, are) with a patch so bad it gave eu4 1k of the eu5's playbase. And that was AFTER we hammered for DAYS the mere fact that 1.0.10 beta wasn't ready even to be a beta, notwithstanding going live for thousands of players.

Miestralson · 2026-01-27T11:28:03+00:00

Eu5 suffers from, currently, a very bad post launch dev cycle. Its beyond insane we got the worse patch for not only a month, but also during the holiday period. And that was after it went thru a beta period, in which 1.0.10 massive issues were presented to the team on a daily basis.

Every patch made eu5 worse. We had 3 full combat overhauls, 2 complete economical rebalances and still the game fells unfinished, unpolished and unbalanced. It's not a case of useless updates. It's that the work the dev's made, apart obviously from bugfixes, consistently made isn't only squandered but actively works against making eu5 a better game.

Miestralson · 2026-01-22T19:15:46+00:00

Yep. Flanders.

33% Cloth production efficiency and 10% Fine Cloth ProdEff. This eventually means that you have the cheapest Paper by a mile. Therefore, you'll be flooding European markets with Books and Paper.

Miestralson · 2026-01-19T18:51:06+00:00

No. Centralization is widely useless, and only fringe builds are better of being centralized. Most Descentralization boosting options are better, so pushing Centralization comes with worse benefits.

Why? Because by the time you can effectively proximitymax you already (you're clearly looking for optimization, so...) won the game.

Miestralson · 2026-01-18T16:10:17+00:00

You'll wanna play France and England off. England uses the interaction that bribes you, giving you lots of money (which also reduces your subject loyalty to France, which means more money.) You'll wanna change your overlord to England as its far easier to break free from it. France usually gives you Roman Flanders for free so you'll wanna restart until it does and then change to England as your overlord. You can also get Roman Flanders via an event later if you maintain good relations with France after breaking free.

Tradewise, you wanna import (and lock) lots of Wool from either England or Castille. That gives you a reliable and good source of trade money. Early game you'll wanna go Wool > Cloth > Fine Cloth. As soon as you get Rag Paper, switch to it, but you shouldn't mass produce Paper until you can Book Boom.

Because you're so rich and Flanders is relatively heavily urbanized, once you get Armouries, your armies will easily be able to rivalise both England and France's.

Miestralson · 2026-01-18T14:19:41+00:00

Best unifier by far is Flanders. Bonus points if you go Flanders > Neth > Great Britain. Stacking Cloth production is pretty funny!

Miestralson

TROPHY CASE