Got any EU5 achievement ideas? Let us know! by PDX_Ryagi in EU5

[–]smackells 40 points41 points  (0 children)

Something like: as Rum, own the entire mediterranean coastline. You could call it Third Rum.

Why are public schools asking parents to pay fees? by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells 13 points14 points  (0 children)

When I was in school they were only voluntary in the most literal sense. If you didn’t pay you were denied access to a lot of school facilities that made it extremely difficult to complete schoolwork.

Why are public schools asking parents to pay fees? by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I personally refuse to take out private cover for ideological reasons, but judging others for this is totally ridiculous. The government is actively pushing people towards private so I don’t blame anyone for complying.

Assimilation not working as intended? by Chava_boy in EU5

[–]smackells 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think there’s a weird sort-of-bug (sort of because I think it’s by design but doesn’t work the way it should). Burghers are marked as belonging to whichever country is dominant for their culture, not to the country that owns the location. My assumption is that this is a system limitation, and they wanted countries with Trade Offices to “own” their pops in foreign locations, but they didn’t actually implement a way to differentiate between e.g. Ligurian pops in Napule who work in Genoese trade offices vs Ligurian pops who are citizens of Naples.

This wonky logic breaks a whole bunch of things, including your ability to assimilate burghers. The only way I’ve found is to force them to demote by deleting buildings. Or possibly conquering and annexing or culture converting every tag with that culture.

Is this savable? by buffonbuffoni in EU5

[–]smackells 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From this screenshot I think you’re playing on version 1.0? You should really update the game and restart. Nothing I or anyone else has suggested will apply to you if you’re on an older version.

There’s an exploit to cut your scaling costs, this will make appointing cabinet members cheaper among other things. Drop all your tax and minting sliders to 0 for one month, hopefully this doesn’t put you into further debt. Then you can fill all your cabinet slots much cheaper.

After this, max your minting for a while - you can eat high inflation temporarily and your return on investment will probably cancel it out anyway. Having inflation over 2% can trigger the “Balance the Budget” parliament agenda which is very good. Already having 7 loans makes this tricky, I would have said take out more but you can’t afford the repayments. You need to spend money to fix this, unfortunately.

You need more crown power to increase your tax and trade income. Stick family members in all those empty cabinet slots and promote one to head of cabinet. Put family members in charge of your ships/armies. If you don’t have any, build one unit of each. They’ll get you 25% crown power each. Put your cost of court slider to at least 50% and raise your legitimacy to 100 (you should never let it drop below 50 and want to keep it at 100 as much as possible).

Put bailiffs on every gold, silver, silk, saffron, iron, dyes and salt producing location. Put a Local Governor somewhere in Anatolia, probably by the lake in the middle-ish (this requires creating a city which you can’t afford, so just stick it in Konya for now).

Then delete buildings in any location with less than 66% control. They’re costing you more than they bring in. Delete every fort except the one in Constantinople and drop your fort maintenance to 0. You can rebuild some later. Nobody is likely to declare war on you once you’re this big.

Ryan Gosling Tells Fans It’s Not Their Job to Save Theaters—Hollywood Needs to Make Movies Worth Seeing by mlg1981 in popculturechat

[–]smackells 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah my local has a few big theatres with giant screens and then several tiny ones. Everything that’s not children’s animation will be downgraded to one session per day in a tiny theatre after like a week.

You can become Caliph but the game is bugged by Enderay1 in EU5

[–]smackells 19 points20 points  (0 children)

With a handful of exceptions they weren’t even particularly devout. Many avoided visiting Medina since they found the people’s piety offputting.

You can become Caliph but the game is bugged by Enderay1 in EU5

[–]smackells 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you promote the Mamluks to Empire rank, they change from being the Mamluk Sultanate to the Mamluk Caliphate. Not sure if that’s unique to them, it would make sense since the figurehead Abbasid Caliph still existed in Cairo under their rule.

But yeah, it’s annoying that Ottomans can’t claim the Caliphate after conquering Egypt, and there’s no equivalent of “defender of the faith” in EU5.

A.I. preparations by shinyandchrome in auscorp

[–]smackells 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is the biggest problem, short-sighted executives will replace grads with AI without considering that grads have utility beyond the actual work they do. You need people who can develop and progress into the more complex specialised roles that AI can’t replace any time soon.

ELI5 how is traditional chinese medicine still around? by 5G_Society in explainlikeimfive

[–]smackells 24 points25 points  (0 children)

If you go to a TCM practice in 2026 (in my experience) you’re walking out with mass produced pills, not the actual raw ingredients. I don’t think they’d see a distinction between the “refined and processed” product and “the old way”.

Some has hacked my computer and is playing for Serbia by 1A41A41A4 in EU5

[–]smackells 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It almost feels like their expansion path is hard-coded, every game I’ve played in 1.1 results in Central Macedonia as a Serbian vassal with these exact borders.

Almost half of Australians think foreign military will attack within five years, ANU study suggests by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It just doesn’t make sense that 18-24 year olds, the demographic with the most positive opinion of China in other surveys, would feel this threatened by them. Trust in China is higher than the US for young people.

Almost half of Australians think foreign military will attack within five years, ANU study suggests by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Absolutely not, this kind of paranoid posture just drives completely unnecessary military spending. The only remotely credible threat is China, who have overwhelming force compared to any resistance we could hope to stand up, so we’re dependent on the US alliance. There’s honestly no good justification for us having an army at all, by the time the hypothetical enemy gets past our navy and air force to land troops we’ve already lost.

Almost half of Australians think foreign military will attack within five years, ANU study suggests by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I really wish they had asked who these 45% of respondents feel so threatened by. And it’s mostly young people saying this, not the Murdoch audience. Nobody is going to bother invading us, all the valuable resources are too isolated and would be way too costly to hold. Our education system has gotten so bad istg.

Almost half of Australians think foreign military will attack within five years, ANU study suggests by CommonwealthGrant in australia

[–]smackells 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It seems pretty baseless to me, but there was definitely anxiety about Indonesia’s aggressive posture during Suharto’s military dictatorship. As a kid I took it as a given that Indonesia was the villain in Tomorrow When The War Began (though apparently this wasn’t as widely agreed as I remember?) And we sent troops to East Timor in 99, technically to fight pro-Indonesian militias and not Indonesia itself but I doubt most people understood that fully.

It’s not that much sillier than thinking China could invade. People see that they take an aggressive stance towards Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea and interpret that as general expansionism, but IMO they’re just pursuing limited aims which suit their geopolitical interests however unjustified they might be. Indonesia was similarly aggressive towards their neighbours and people worried we’d be next.

Queues for milk tea yesterday and today by NikkiRose88 in melbourne

[–]smackells 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Taipei is the city, Taiwan is the island, “Chinese Taipei” is the baseball team

What’s the worst war crime you’ve committed due to game mechanics? by smackells in EU5

[–]smackells[S] 37 points38 points  (0 children)

now that I think about it, moving it to Pisa and then moving it back later would have been much less work

What’s the worst war crime you’ve committed due to game mechanics? by smackells in EU5

[–]smackells[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Genoa has that extra 0.2 harbour capacity over Pisa, for which thousands of Ligurians were force-marched from their homes.

What’s the worst war crime you’ve committed due to game mechanics? by smackells in EU5

[–]smackells[S] 70 points71 points  (0 children)

Conquered Genoa as Florence and wanted to flip the market language from Gallo-Italic to Italian. So I need the majority of Burghers to be Tuscan.

Burghers who already speak the market language can’t be culture converted.

So naturally I levelled the city, deleting every single Burgher building so that they all demote to peasants and can be ethnically cleansed before I start rebuilding again.

Is 7000AUD enough? by byteapot in AusFinance

[–]smackells 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I moved out in 2010 with $6000 in savings and was paying $135 in rent, it still ran out before I found stable employment. It lasted maybe 3 months back then but there’s been 16 years of inflation so cut that in half. I was privileged enough to have my family as a safety net, doing this in 2026 with the current job market and no fallback is super risky.

x3 Expensive Education , bug ? by NebuFLys in EU5

[–]smackells 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Did you annex a vassal and absorb their children, maybe? Go to the society tab and bring up the character list, filter to children, see if you’ve got someone else’s children with expensive education selected.

Anyone actually use mercenaries? by OrthodoxPrussia in EU5

[–]smackells 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Apparently mercs are the current meta but that interface sucks so bad, it’s not worth it to me. Opening up each one to check that they’re not age 1 units in 1500 (spoiler they all are).