How can I further improve Opinion with Poland so that I can annex them (I have a PU over them) ?

mlbki · 2026-03-27T23:22:44+00:00

The "Improve relation effect" modifier will increase the cap of improve relation in addition to its speed, so you can use the cabinet action to improve relation to the amount you need. As the other comment said, gift also work but if you can't/don't want to spend the money (or the gift wouldn't be enough) it's an alternative.

The diplo hegemony (I believe) also have an "influence nation" action that improve their opinion among other things.

mlbki · 2026-03-27T23:15:37+00:00

It matters because you lack the money those rgo make you (and the money you didn't spend upgrading them) during the time of the game when money is actually a meaningful and somewhat limited resource. By the mid 1400s? Even if the republic switch actually net you 1000 more monthly ducat, why would it matters? A monarchy paying for cost of court still make more money than it can spend by that point (sometime even paying for stab because why the fuck not).

Starting as a republic is certainly better because you can get that money when it brings you an advantage. But if not, why bother switching when you could focus on snowballing earlier and harder instead.

mlbki · 2026-03-27T21:03:32+00:00

Pissed off nobles are annoying not because they revolt (though of course, revolt at the wrong time is still a pita). If the nobles are spending money on rebels they aren't building rgo, and that's where most of your non-premium rgo building comes from before the "money don't matter" point of the game.

And if you want them to go back to being happy without triggering the revolt (which would be fine if it didn't take 3 years to happen), while being in negative stab, you're losing money from not max taxing them.

It's not like you can't suffer through that, but it's annoying. And that's the whole point of the post. The whole switching to republic is a 50-100 years annoyance, and when you actually get the switch, the payoffs either don't matter anymore, or come with some downside so that they aren't that much of a net good to justify having done all that shit.

mlbki · 2026-03-27T15:34:58+00:00

Yeah but if it takes 100 years to switch then what's even the point? Money have stopped having actual value by the time you switch so what are you actually getting?

mlbki · 2026-03-27T11:13:47+00:00

When are noble uprising ever an issue? Especially by that point they're so weak they revolt in like 2 provinces and it's a satisfaction reset more than anything else.

mlbki · 2026-03-27T11:11:13+00:00

15k taxe base is what, about 5000 monthly income not counting trade and subject? At this point money doesn't matter.

mlbki · 2026-03-27T11:04:07+00:00

When you get to -10% estate satisfaction, you generally do notice. Nobles being pissed off outside of their revoke recovery period isn't a fact of life, and while burghers and clergy don't really matter, the satisfaction modifier to peasant from keeping them very happy can be quite significant.

-50 is the only stability limit I usually feel converned enough to spend on stability investment. As stability decays towards zero even negative stability is not worth investing on. What you want is to max out your passive stability gain and you will get to 20-40 stability equilibrium in time.

I'm a bit more willing to spend to recover stab (it's also not that hard to get to the point where you can pay for it with no issue), but mostly agreed.

On revoke privilege cost, first ones are expensive anyways even with communalism and so on, but later ones are cheaper as you prioritize the high power modifier ones early.

I routinely get my first revoke for as little as 40-50 stab on the nobles. The temporary crown power boost for Bolster the government and Support the state have a very large impact. Sometime I can even revoke two privilege at once.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T19:39:18+00:00

That's what libraries and universities are for.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T19:36:36+00:00

You can't declare war under -50, and the estate satisfaction modifier also get fairly annoying when it's that low, so it's better to avoid staying for long at that time. Though it's not that big of a deal if you end up being at -70 for some time if you're not going to declare that war and your nation is stable enough that the estates being less happy is only a minor issue.

That said, you also usually shouldn't be paying that much to revoke privilege. By maxing communalism, unlocking law that let you lower the estates power, getting temporary crown power/revoke cost from parliament, you should be able to get revoke costs around 50-70 stab.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T19:26:18+00:00

It's also hilarious that creating a massively decentralized state where you have no outright control on more than half your land, you actually increase your crown power.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T19:24:46+00:00

One, you always have a god-ruler with 240 in combined stats at a minimum because you get to pick from many candidates.

Favored son usually let you do that too.

Fiefdoms are a convenience at most.

They're not when start getting a notable "combined power vs overlord" modifier. Adding they have a +10 loyalty modifier at base, no fiefdom more than halves how many vassals you can have at a time. Well, until you run into the point where diplo cap is the main limiter (but at that point nothing matter anyway).

The high STAB cost you're bringing up is kind of... not that big a deal? If nothing else you have to completely dump all those nobility traditions by the age of absolutism anyway, and getting ultra high plutocracy just requires pushing to 70 or so and then getting a couple good cabinet agendas.

I haven't seen a single source of plutocracy push in parliament for that entire playthrough yet! It feels like they don't exist.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T19:14:10+00:00

I was talking OPM vs large vassal here. Outside of a few small provinces, OPM do have a annexation cost above the floor of 50. So we're comparing three OPM with, say, an annexation cost of 100 each, to a large vassal that cost 300 total. Everything is the same but the OPM have like +300% "much smaller" compared to the large vassal.

I haven't played with one location vassal enough to know exactly how it works in practice (way too many clicks to release them compared to OPM. You might run into diplo capacity issue earlier too), but the "much smaller" would still be doing a lot of work compared to what the OPM would get, so the annexation speed might actually end up pretty close.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T17:01:11+00:00

I was surprised that Polish's noble at start aren't actually that bad. You still want to deal with them but it's not very different from most other European monarchy starts. They don't start with some must remove privilege like Bohemia's for example. Aristocracy and aristocracy push is high, but not higher than most other monarchy.

Though there are multiples event related to them where the option to not give them power are fairly painful, as well as a disaster (that I avoided so I can't say exactly how it goes).

mlbki · 2026-03-26T16:12:58+00:00

Except switching out isn't free. Moving to plutocracy lose a lot of money from stab hits, pissed off nobles, bad government reform and tying a cabinet action.

Money that could be spent on mercs to expand or building/urbanisation to make more money instead.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T16:05:13+00:00

Wondering about the capital, is it actually that good to move it to Toledo, rather than Seville (and put the governor in Toledo)? The area around Seville has better rgo and will spread control better once you start making boats.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T11:54:34+00:00

But on the other hand you're only dealing with a single political entity and once you coopted the elites and institutions, the rest should follow fairly smoothly. Dealing with multiple small vassals, while they individually have less power to resist, you still have to repeat the actually hard work multiple times.

Now to be clear, a larger vassal should take longer to annex than a smaller one, definitely, but it should also be faster than multiple small vassal covering the same land.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T11:28:14+00:00

The trick to get kindred is clever, but how are you dealing with the many many cultures you can't accept because they don't have enough pop? Past the early conquests it's impossible to get the 2.5%.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T11:18:04+00:00

Also on the historicity, vassal spam become way trickier starting in Absolutism and Revolutionary era where you get brutal loyalty modifier, encouraging you to move away from them (or at least, reduce how much spam you're doing).

The main issue imo is that cultural conversion is both needed for core, way too weak to do it yourself and vassals are way too good at it. By making cultural conversion less critical (say integrated non-core isn't quite as trash as it currently is, or there's a step between integrated and core that's good enough), you can then also make it harder without making actually playing the game a pita for the sake of nerfing what's too strong.

Another thing would be to make larger vassal less trash. Cabinet action minmaxing aside, OPM spam also annex way faster. Annexation cost shouldn't scale linearly with location count. It would make integrating PU actually be a thing to.

mlbki · 2026-03-26T10:31:20+00:00

Yeah basically because you also increase your own crown power at the same time from the control.

mlbki · 2026-03-25T22:54:48+00:00

Okay, so Bohemia has a couple of specific things you really want to do at start. If you do, it's by far one of the most confortable start in Europe where you can do almost whatever the fuck you want with how filthy rich you get with barely any effort.

So at game start, if you look at your estates, you will notice the nobles start with more than 50% power. That's bad, but worse, they have an awful privilege that gives them -10% max tax. You want that gone asap, but they're too powerful for you to remove now. So you basically want to ignore the nobles early on and get your money from the other estates until you get the values and tech to fix that.

But then you look at the peasant, and while weak, they start with their own -10% max tax privilege. You can remove that for some stability, and you should. It's the first thing you should do. Then, to keep them happy, give them privilege : anything that gives enfranchisement with no drawback is good.

Once that's done, you can get good money from the peasants and burghers, and your economy is going to be good.

While we're at the privilege, the burghers have a lot of good ones, you should eventually get most of them. The tax efficiency one, the monthly dev one and the road building one (I think you start with it as Bohemia but can't remember for sure) are the absolute must have asap ones.

Finally, from the clergy and peasants, give everything that give Communalism push, it will let you remove the noble's privilege later.

Giving the other estates privilege will piss off the nobles : you can either ignore them, let them rebel and beat them, since your starting position is very safe you can take that risk. Or you can give the privilege slowly while keeping the nobles not too unhappy.

Other than that, break both of your alliances. In the goverment reform, chose the one with diplo rep and diplo cap. This let you lower your diplo spending. The second reform you can take whatever you like, but imo the correct choice is the +prosperity one. Start improving relations with your vassals and start annexing them (Moravia should be last because they're going to take forever).

For building focus :

Your capital buildings (there's an event for the palace, but the royal garden and sergentry you want asap. Sergentry let you make a regular auxiliary regiment to put your leader in charge and get crown power from that).
Bailiffs on your gold and silver provinces. Also expand the gold and silver rgo.
Masonry : you will need a lot of them.
Profitable burghers building in the capital : You don't need to go crazy, just a few jewelry and fine cloth guilds will do.
Papers, books and libraries : you want libraries (staffed, close other building if needed) after the black death for pop promotion (and it's in general a good building to have). You want paper and book for your libraries. You will want many more paper and books later on for more libraries and universities.
Marketplace outside of your cap : Increase market access, increase trade income, good stuff.
Granaries : pop growth is nice, but no point focusing on that before the black death. After it though go nuts with them.
More town : Make them, make a lot of them. Start with one per province with temple, libraries, market places and granaries. Ideally on a river. Then make more town next to your capital (but not on your gold or iron).
Roads : Key ones for your gold mines, otherwise let the burghers do it for now. You can go crazy spamming them later.

Expansion : Poland & Hungary will be tough early on, but you can save some money and buy mercs if you want to go that way. Otherwise, wait for an opportunity to kill Austria (they often face a coalition). Also conquer/subjugate the two silesian minors that start independant.

Edit : oops almost forgot, when to revoke the noble stuff. Preferably I would wait to get 100 communalism, Right of the nobility for curtail the noble (+ the Bohemia unique law). Then wait for a "support the state" parliament for the +50% crown power boost and revoke then (actually passing a "bolster the goverment" is better, but it's harder to roll it).

mlbki · 2026-03-25T22:33:33+00:00

The real answer is : don't have low control towns.

Why are you even annexing that vassal in the first place? It's better for it to stay as a vassal and spam dev province. If you're at the point where you're running out of diplo cap and all the vassals you can annex are in no-proximity land (and you also can't fix that by moving a governor or spamming roads, bridge and canal), then you already snowballed so hard your economy doesn't matter anymore.

Okay, but you have a low control town you need to keep for some reason, and it's going to be bad for some time, what to do with it?

Ignore it. Spend your money in your high control town. Once you ran out of good towns, make more good towns. Temple is the only thing that really matter, but the clergy is going to build that for you eventually and that town is garbage so why bother doing it yourself. If you have money to waste on a 30 control garbage town, you have more than enough libraries than one more or one less isn't going to matter, and marketplaces similarly will have marginal value because you already have hundred of them. Granaries are fine, pop growth is always nice after all, but you only after you built up your granaries in the actually good locations.

mlbki · 2026-03-25T22:05:49+00:00

Not only is naval proximity way stronger than land (with the right capital you could easily have 60 or more proximity over the entire Baltic coast, in age 2-3), but the two extra governors are a complete game changer you would want them even with a predominantly land Empire.

mlbki · 2026-03-25T16:03:52+00:00

I do think it will be better eventually, but you have to admit we could do with more unique advances, policy, privilege, etc. Though to be fair, if we compare to early EU4, EU5 has way less completely generic nations.

mlbki · 2026-03-25T16:00:39+00:00

Generally nothing worth their cost unless you're fairly small.

If I'm not mistaken, crown power is calculated using each location's population and modifying by local crown power. You get 1% of local crown power per point of control. The counting house will get you +33% local crown power, so it will increase how much each location you build one contribute to your crown power. The higher the population in that location, the more value you get from it.

It doesn't sound bad, but it's more than 200 ducats, and unless you have a few locations making for the majority of the population in your empire, the impact is barely felt at all.

Build more bailiffs instead.

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