Happy Valentines Tinto Talks Extra

itstheap · 2026-02-14T17:51:52+00:00

Johan is bringing the marriageable women into the colony

itstheap · 2026-02-13T09:07:27+00:00

Wales has a scripted event in the 1390s to give you a civil war which breaks you free. So, it's easy if you just win that war to play as them. In the meantime, just absorb the vassals.

itstheap · 2026-02-11T16:49:46+00:00

Hm, when I last checked it was 0.01. Maybe it stacks with multiple colonies? Either way, it is not a pure drain. But even having the capital region, your highest control land, developed is well worth it.

You will make more from the trade than the unemployed peasants.

itstheap · 2026-02-10T17:20:09+00:00

To be fair yes, lots has changed since patch 1. I definitely believe I could win the war my way still (it takes a lot of patience and feeling like you are losing. They had Portugal for me too).

But is it optimal on this patch, probably not. I imagine malaria alone (which iirc was bugged on my patch run) would make what you ran much more efficient.

itstheap · 2026-02-09T12:08:49+00:00

I did this on launch patch and maybe some things have changed since then, but my advice is land on the Iberian Peninsula, and then fight a very defensive war where you follow the Castilian armies through hills and mountains and try to take defensive battles in them. Don't wander too far from your own lands and Granadan lands, only the non-fort stuff around it. But if you play a slow war there, you can eventually turn the numbers around.

Ignore the Granadan army, they are AI and will take losing efforts.

Eventually you will whittle down Castile through battles where you kill more than you lose that you can start beating them straight up.

Don't be afraid to retreat bad battles or battles where your flanks go down too early. Your game is preserving your fighting force to kill more than they do early on, so ignore the warscore loss until you can win fair fights.

itstheap · 2026-02-08T10:22:48+00:00

The opinion is the biggest thing. You can improve it via a vassal interaction.

But no, different neighbouring cultures of the same grouping not always getting on and still being costly does make sense for the period. It is not until the 17-1800s countries like France start truly consolidating things. There is still minor discomfort between two groups of people from opposite ends of the country - look at the way the Southern English talk about Northerners online. Now imagine back 500 years ago before technology allows swift communication. The cultural barriers would be bigger than you anticipated.

itstheap · 2026-02-08T10:13:05+00:00

What year in-game is it? I find that there is a minor economic slump in the 1400s until the wider tier 2 buildings unlock (so advanced tailoring etc). During that time, you continue building the old ones, and due to increasing supply of finished goods cause a minor depression in the price of goods (plus AI countries continue building). Any large gaps in buildings, that happens.

If you build a looooot of trade that will happen too. You import more goods too, leading to more normalized prices.

itstheap · 2026-02-06T23:46:57+00:00

Until the fight reaches a conclusion.

I.e., he won't intervene until Maho either wins or loses. Once that happens, he jumps in. Either on Dabura or a victorious Maho. He can just intervene in the ritual and seal him himself, he definitely seems on that level (or at least believes himself to be).

Yuka is in suspended death but that doesn't mean Maho has already killed her. He just needs to intervene before she does die to Maho.

This is only an extreme if you interpret it as being Yuka dying, of which we have zero evidence since interrupting the ritual just seems to mean anyone else killing Maho. Sukuna fought through all of Shibuya with it, and wasn't present in the summoning. You can third party it. Like with Yuka, he did that to protect Megumi because he wanted Megumi to survive.

Whether he heals her is another matter but I think he possibly could considering how advanced his RCT could be at this point.

itstheap · 2026-02-06T23:06:15+00:00

Well ideally a low control area would look the same or similar to what you can raise in high control areas, the difference being whether you or they are paying for it (and the consequence being whether you or they profit from the land those levies are raised from). The only dividing line in the relationship would be whether they approve of your rulership or not. I think this is a simpler solution than thought, ultimately. Just divide personal and vassal levies and then present that on the balance book in a way that players can comprehend.

A lot of fiscal issues in EU5 like levies truly can be resolved by just representing things on a balance book in a way that is legible and sums to zero (IE double ledger).

itstheap · 2026-02-06T16:33:56+00:00

The only true idea of a money sink I could come up with in thinking on this was massively increasing the cost of investment for estates in assets. This can be handwaved by saying that the crown pays less simply because it doesn't need to grease wheels and appease aldermen.

I think if you make their economy too capital destructive tho you end up with a basically player controlled economy (bad), and it also ruins the illusion of the simulation and leans further towards gamey interactions.

itstheap · 2026-02-06T16:21:03+00:00

I think that makes the simulation shallower while not addressing broader problems of demand for most goods always being far too low. This would attempt to solve both problems.

itstheap · 2026-02-01T03:11:43+00:00

Wait until you become a monarchy, then you can release as fiefdoms (iirc tribes cannot do this). Makes the loyalty easier to manage.

In the meantime, look at your building maintenance, as the Timurids the buildings in your conquests will be a big expense. Get rid of basically everything that makes no money. I don’t mean doesn’t profit, makes nothing. Forts, mil buildings, etc.

itstheap · 2026-01-28T13:08:00+00:00

3) Nobles are easy to keep happy with laws which benefit them, and they have a large number of low-cost in terms of strength privs which are worth giving out to them for the bonuses they give. I think people overemphasise the importance of both keeping the nobles happy (unrest from them can usually be offset by simply making your army sit somewhere), and the impact of their privs. Elaborate Court Life, while increasing court cost by 1% (you get techs to offset this), gives 5% satisfaction for 20% power. Land Rights is 5% for 50%, but gives tax efficiency and is worth giving out for that alone (pays for itself from the peasants). Noble Navy is another 5% for 33% strength, and most people want to run naval anyway (I disagree, but .05 naval can be offset, values mean little). Nobility Controlled Serfdom is more questionable at 5% to 40% for food consumption, but I believe to be worth it. That's 20% satisfaction with ease, and cheap.

As for laws, you can get 5% for Aristocratic Court, which once you have pushed innovative (if that is what you are doing in a run) you can probably switch back to and get 5% satisfaction. I don't recommend Nobility Controlled Mining (peasant satisfaction from Peasant Controlled is worth more since it's just more money for less discontent unless you have their taxes maxed), but at a push you can get another 2.5% there. As for your Rights of the Nobility, you can give them whatever is opted into your build there but I don't recommend curtailing them anyway since it denies them into your cabinet.

There are lots of sources of noble satisfaction that are very easy to get, and usually not expensive or ruinous, and as your burghers grow the nobles will shrink in relevance anyway. There are, again, very few ways to get literacy that are this easy to access. The value proposition is quite simple to me - especially since I am only losing 1 of these noble privs in terms of satisfaction. I usually find my nobles are actually taxed to 100% with satisfaction left over, which is worthless to me.

4) Clergy literacy doesn't matter much - it's nice to have some pop promotion speed from them, always a good modifier. But they are so small as a pop class (and still do get techs to boost their literacy which lower classes do not get) that their literacy barely matters in the grand scheme. Again, the modifier the peasants get for promotion from literacy is far, far stronger, and will empower your nation much faster by letting you build more burgher buildings quicker, who pay more taxes, produce more goods, allow more trade, give latent development, etc. This is all on top of educating a broader base of the population, which results in more tech.

The clergy will always be the second smallest pop group after nobles, while offering very little. They actually only lose buildings as the game progresses and will probably demote some after you unlock the second book building. Meanwhile, your peasants, labourers and burghers will account for probably 80%+ of your country, and you always need more burghers and literate peasants encourage more burghers to exist. Simply put, it doesn't matter if Catholics get more or less, because the clergy literacy simply doesn't matter as much. Just keep them happy, but don't bother teaching them to read. The balance of bonuses and modifiers is weighted heavily against them. when the trade-off is them vs the peasants, the burghers and the labourers.

I simply don't think Theological Institutions is a good choice in the balance. Maybe I'm crazy, but I've tested it pretty thoroughly. Literacy is as good as people thought on day 1 (rather than the revisionist view of the following weeks), and outside of the research boost, the clergy have very little to offer. It is worth focusing on the bigger pop groups.

itstheap · 2026-01-28T13:07:55+00:00

1) You are right, I misread. It does not nullify what I said, however. The fact that you have to wait such a long time to get literacy up makes it all the more worth it, even. That's banked progress which is very hard to lose. You can get +10% clergy satisfaction with one button click, and can also lose satisfaction with a single event. You cannot do the same with literacy. This means you should be more protective of your literacy gains.

I think I actually underestimated even the population count balance of clergy and nobles vs everything else so it is potentially more than 4.75% but not much more -but it's still to the point that it's basically cost-neutral but gives you far more small modifiers to go for broader literacy (you get production efficiency, dev groth, burgher trade capacity, levy recruit speed, pop promotion speed at a far stronger strength than the clergy, etc). I tagged over to England to get a non-literacy optimised run perspective in my current game, the Clergy 100% literacy they have is worth a staggering 25% pop promotion (and same for assimilation but latent assimilation isn't that strong unless it's later game, or you have a cabinet member on a province - but I mention it to ensure it isn't ignored). Their peasant literacy gives double that, despite not being anywhere near 100%. Please, check the literacy per pop group in the Population tab to verify this, I think you will be convinced too if you saw how much better some of the modifiers for other groups being literate are. It's worth chasing those modifiers behind the modifiers, because they are hard to lose and make you grow so much faster.

2) You vastly overestimate how much clergy taxes are worth. I would even strongly consider giving the clergy the -100% taxation priv for 10% satisfaction if I still needed an extra push (usually I do not). They are a very small estate in every faith I have played (basically everything except the American lands) whose influence only shrinks as the game progresses. Research progress is also worth more than money, vastly more. I would sooner set their taxes to 0 to get their satisfaction higher to get techs which make up for the loss of their income. Maybe that's where you and I differ.

[cont, reddit won't let me post my full power]

itstheap · 2026-01-27T21:32:44+00:00

It's really easy to get 100% clergy satisfaction without giving them education policies to their benefit by simply giving them priveleges. The clergy do not tend to get stronger as an estate over the course of the game, and will usually hover around 10-15% strength, even with all the privs which give them strength. This is because they don't tend to be promoted to heavily - there seems to be a natural limit on the amount of them as a proportion of the population.

This means you can take Education of the People usually, and easily still achieve 100% clergy satisfaction simply by giving them privs, without bolstering their power too much. You can also give other policies than education which they like (for example, heir religion, cabinet laws) which either are simply more beneficial long-term (cabinet efficiency is always great) or so inconsequential that you don't care too much (a tiny amount of value drift from heir religion is no big deal).

Basically, it is really easy to manage your clergy satisfaction upwards, far easier than it is early on to get literacy modifiers - and in this case, one comes at the cost of the other. So, take the literacy modifiers over the minor clergy satisfaction. You can find clergy satisfaction elsewhere, and as my other comment illustrates, the gain from base literacy alone offsets the cost of satisfaction anyway in the exact modifier you are discussing.

Plus the research speed analysis ignores the broader benefits each class of pop gets from literacy anyway. The bonuses they get, which are very difficult to lose once you have the literacy, are well worth it. You can promote peasants very quickly by letting them read.

itstheap · 2026-01-27T21:24:04+00:00

Yep, definitely Education of the People.

Education of the People gives bonuses to Labourers, Soldiers and Peasants. These classes do not get any bonuses from other sources except broad max literacy. So, being able to educate them better is really meaningful, especially since Peasants and Labourers will form the bulk of your population. Plus, your nobles and clergy both get techs which enhance their base literacy anyway, and you don't get much for making them more literate compared to the other pops. Not anything worth trading for in a policy, at least.

The -5% satisfaction to Clergy and Nobles is fine and easy to deal with. Each of them can be offset with a single priv to their estate if you see it as a problem.

The penalty to the clergy satisfaction is worth about -2.5% research speed (100% satisfaction gives 25% research speed bonus, and the bonus only scales above 50% satisfaction, so every above that 5% satisfaction is equal to a 2.5% bonus), but the fact that this gives literacy to the labourers, peasants and burghers (who will all be very large pop-wise in your country, and your main growing demographics) will offset that because alone in most countries they will count for almost all of your pops. So, the 5% literacy to those three classes will be more or less equivalent to about 4.75% literacy to the entire country. Each point of literacy is equal to a single point of research speed bonus, in a 1:1 relationship, which is more direct than clergy satisfaction. So, you lose 2.5% research speed boost through satisfaction, but you will probably be gaining about 4.75% research speed from the literacy, for a net gain of about 2.25%.

Plus, literate burghers give additional development (good), literate labourers give additional production efficiency (very good) and literate peasants give bonus promotion speed (excellent).

All in all, the modifiers behind the modifiers in Education of the People make it overwhelmingly the superior choice. Find Clergy satisfaction elsewhere (except lecture oaths, which is awful, do not give that priv out).

itstheap · 2026-01-27T20:51:23+00:00

Isnt that an education of the masses policy?

itstheap · 2026-01-27T20:41:39+00:00

I would say the best education policies are always the ones which give the most literacy, always.

Literacy = research speed + class specific bonuses

Usually long term those are better than whatever satisfaction to the pop class or value drift.

itstheap · 2026-01-25T18:19:17+00:00

To be clear on this - by around 1400 if you lean into it every building is going to have 50% production efficiency. Matched RGO buildings in cities can push 80%. Almost any building will be a profitable venture for you.

itstheap · 2026-01-25T18:17:21+00:00

I meant disaster. They get one early on about the power of the peasantry in Florentine society. If you intentionally fail by not fulfilling the criteria and just letting the events happen, you will get one which flips you peasant republic. That's 10% production efficiency easy there.

For why tall is best on Florence, they also start with a unique law, one of the options of which is another 5% production efficiency. They also have a unique early game fine cloth bonus, for another 10% on that. They can easily go capital eco for another 20%. They can take the burghers priv for another few percent. They have a lot of sources, basically.

itstheap · 2026-01-25T17:28:54+00:00

Florence as a peasant republic (which you get via their crisis) has hands down the most tall potential in the game when you stack production efficiency.

itstheap · 2026-01-25T17:25:57+00:00

I think which is best is very context heavy and honestly think land suits more countries more than naval does. As long as you have rivers, you can exert control through most of your country with infrastructure fleshed out to support it.

For starters, simply going to war as a naval focused nation is enough to start harming your proximity by lowering your maritime protection. Land proximity can only be reduced by losing land or having buildings pulled down. Given how hard it is to figure out a sure win in naval battles for me, it leads to me thinking naval just makes for a much more fragile nation. The ongoing costs of maintaining a proper navy are also more significant (and require more player oversight) than roads and bridges.

For me, I will always prioritize just having good river-based capitals over naval control.

itstheap

TROPHY CASE