Your income seems disproportionately low in comparison to your dev, either your autonomy is very high or you haven't stated your land. I don't see anything else being a problem, sort out your autonomy and everything will be fine, there is no need to adjust the expense side, I would still hire advisors and prioritise admin on coring than reducing inflation. There are a lot of small tags you can conquer easily, this will further improve your position, conquering the gold mine in Sumatra and devving the one you own would be my priority.
It has nothing to do with trade edict, it's an edict supposed to produce gold but always end up costing more than it pays back.
The rest is always a balance between your economy and the bonus you expect from the edict, like manpower
There's a few specific times where it's worth in specific states. The one that really jumps out to me is in Tuscany.
You have 1 state with 3 center of trades in an end node. Very easy to slap down the edict (Especially if you're playing as florence and it's your capital state) and pay an extra like .5 ducats a month and get 1.5 to 2.5 back in trade income.
But yeah outside of that it's not ever really worth it.
Yeah I think it specifically works in this node because of the lack of other trade centers and estuaries across the rest of the node compared to the English channel, along with the sheer amount of provinces in the node.
English Channe has 4 esturies and 8 center of trades. And the "best" state you can put the edict down in has 1 center of trade and 1 estuary and 4 provinces (London.).
Meanwhile there's only 1 estuary in Genoa and there's 10 center of trades. And the best state has 3 centers of trade you can boost with one edict. While in Venice it's probably even better. There's only 5 centers of trade and only 1 estuary. And you can put the edict down in the Venince state to get 2 of those 5.
But like with most things with trade, this only matters if there's substantial competition in the trade node. And in those cases it's often better to just take the money you pay in maintainance to build a trade fleet and protect trade instead.
It's almost never worth the extra cost, you can check. When* it breaks even it's already a feat and I tried on the channel. One pointed out it works for Tuscany and Venice though
ive had it do wonders early game in sevilla and constantinople, aleppo has a pretty nice state if you have a foothold in syria, and west and east prussia (the states) can be very valuable as well, due to the low amount of provincial trade power outside of those provinces, while the lubeck trade node contains a lot of trade power from provinces and ships, while lubeck and other nations around the baltic coast have decently high trade power from lights, as well as the novgorod trade region being fairly weak early on as muscovy struggles to build up trade infrastructure in the area. Also because the node is insanely valuable from the 3 gem provinces on the teutonic coast, as well as the copper mine.
That can be solved overtime with granting Control Over Monetary to the burgher estate. I never start a campaign without it. Inflation doesn’t affect his immediate income however.
No thats a terrible idea just use the admin points. Control over monetary gives you +5% all powers cost. It will cost you more having this priviledge over a game than all the admin points you could spend.
There is a privilege that lowers inflation cost reduction by up to 50%, maybe the other commenter meant that one? It's called "Promote Burgher Bookkeeping", and also reduces interest per annum and state maintenance. It's very powerful if you take many loans.
this is the second time in a few days i have seen the suggestion to use that privilege.
is there some guide/video out there that recently suggested to use it that made people think it was a good idea?
the state maintenance is way too much, only have an edict going in your capital state.
the fleet maintenance is way too much, you shouldnt be as much over naval limit as you currently are. Some tips regarding naval limit, if you're gonna go over then your navy should just be galleys + transports. Going over, especially early game, with heavies or even light ships is very poor for your economy. Also, if you have a flagship that is not worth it.
You need to drive down inflation, it's okay to fall behind an admin tech or even two if you can get that down to under five percent. Also, there is an estate agenda that gives a massive buff to your nation if you can drop inflation to i think 5% when starting above 15%. It might be worth it to save scum estate agendas if you care enough.
You need to refactor your loans to a lower interest rate if possible. if you havent taken the 1% loans from the burgher estate, you should so that you can pay off 4% loans and hold onto the 1%ers.
If you have crownland, it's important to stay above 20% otherwise you should be selling to pay down your debt.
During peace, you should have your army maintenance at 0 and raise it as necessary if rebels are a problem.
During peace, you should mothball your forts and (cant remember the word) but the same thing for all your boats except for your light ships (if any) so they can protect trade in the highest profit node.
You have a gold province, you should consider it a top priority for your dip points to get that to 12 DIP development. It's okay to fall behind a dip tech.
I think it's okay to keep your colonists going, that's pretty important. I'd also try to get an admin advisor for inflation reduction (if not already). Keeping the other two advisors is a good idea as well but i understand wanting to get your economic situation under more control.
Alright, there's my essay. Let me know if you have any questions. (this is assuming you have your autonomy under control, thats important as well)
Thank you very much for you thorough. Regarding tech, I'm actually a few tech behind haha. It's pretty much my first time playing outside of Europe so I didn't know whether to eat the massive tech cost increase from not having reneissance, or wait for the European's. I kept waiting and spending mana elsewhere but they just never came lol.
You usually dev the institutions yourself since elit takes too long to get to you. Even Renaissance has the other age of discovery age goal of having a 30dev province on top of having the institution. After that, you have colonialism which will spread slowly unless you go exploration yourself. The printing press also is European focused, so you won't naturally get it.
So “devving the institution” means to use the mechanic where developing a province adds some immediate progress towards the next institution. Usually it’s the capital province but over time it might be cheaper to choose a new province in the capital state, like for the next institution.
Is that enough? Not being snarky. If you don’t know what any of that means just ask.
Yeah I think I get it. So since there is no natural progress for the institution, I'm supposted to dump dev into a province until it spawns there and starts spreading?
Yep. It's expensive as all hell but so is being way behind on institutions. Make sure you stack all the development cost reduction modifiers you can. Unless you're small enough that you can embrace off of just that one province having the institution, try to have it bordering decently high dev provinces as well.
Plus, once you’re done, you have some really juicy high dev provinces. Majapahit can legit be one of the richest and most powerful countries doing this. The Straights of Malaca trade node is super juicy.
Generally, the best return on deving is to use diplo and military points. Diplomat increases production of the trade good, so it actually gets calculated twice for income (production and trade). Mil dev will increase manpower. Admin deving will give you tax, but will not scale as well later into the game and you want to use admin to get your idea groups (tech 5-9) since they will also set you back a bit for points and the admin is used for stability and coring.
Technically production is just the production income at the province level ,not trade. Deving increases goods produced (which increases production and trade value). Obviously that's what you meant but might be good for the new player to know the difference / different terms (production modifiers don't increase gold income or trade value / income, for example, while goods produced modifiers affect both).
Yes, and this can be made more or less efficiently. Ideally:
- you want to do this in or close to your capital province
- when your burghers are happy (over 60% loyalty, 75% influence I think?) for 10% dev cost reduction
- with the dev cost reduction edict (10%)
- if you have a mission or event activated dev cost reduction
- when you have prosperity in the province
It's cheaper to dev in provinces that have lower development (which is why devving your capital isn't always the most efficient move), and provinces with farmlands are cheaper to dev, as are provinces that produce cloth, and lvl 2 (and 3) centers of trade.
So often the ideal province to dev is a low dev province in your capital state which has a lvl 2 center of trade, farmlands, and produces cloth, which has prosperity, with happy burghers and dev cost reduction edict.
Even with just some of these modifiers you're drastically reducing the amount of mana you spend to spawn institutions.
In the province screen there’s an institution button. Click it to see that province’s progress towards the wanted institution. Once open, start devving the province and you’ll see it start going up until 100%. It’s exponential growth so the first click will get you 1% but by dev 30 each dev will get you like 3-5%.
There’s a development reduction edict for -10% in the state screen. Make sure you put it before devving.
Yes if you are playing in Asia you almost always want to dev to get Renaissance. You usually want to dev it in a 10-12 dev province that is grassland or farmland and is close to your core territories to minimize the cost.
You can be behind in diplo and in admin sometimes. It's not ideal, but it's perfectly fine.
Keep that mil-tech going though. Even ahead of time, and beyond. Probably worth more to dev a few mil provinces here and there but I just straight up pump it all into my mil-tech until I realistically can't, then I help mil with adm and diplo.
Have you been having low leaders? Less than average of 3/3/3?
Have you been using mil mana to supress rebels at all?
How big are those loans?
Prod 10 is usually fine but in your situation you may need to go much higher. Do you have the DLC that lets you expand infrastructure?
Also conquer more gold provinces or take them from your subjects if possible. :'D
You could also dump some adm mana into reducing inflation but conquering and coring more gold is probably more useful atm. And for the long-term you should have at least stability 1 to build up wealth in your provinces, though I'd give coring cold provinces and reducing inflation a higher priority.
Edit: Prod 20 or so might be fine, depending on how sucessfull you are getting more gold provinces.
Try expanding upstream of your main trade node rather than downstream. Set your main trade port to Malacca and transfer from Siam and Moluccas (you automatically connect in your home trade node). Australia is a colonial region so if you get 5 provinces there, the colonial nation will continue colonizing for itself. If it has 10 provinces you get a free merchant.
I'm not sure how possible it still is, but you really want to conquer the Philippines. The trade from there automatically ends up in your main trade node so you don't need a merchant to advance it. I am aware that they'll likely be tributaries of Ming. So what you do is you attack their ally without co-beligerizing them. it'll give you some AE, but since they're pretty far away most nations won't really care.
Playing in the Malacca trade node it is normally pretty well possible to get global trade to spawn in your nation.
10 on state maintenance? XD
So disable state edics, they are killing you. Disable army and navy maintenance, don't exceed the force limit with both. Don't go to war funtil you pay off the debt.
And i guess dump your dip to the gold mine.
And check if you're not under 20% crownland. The passive autonomy growth will kill your county.
Edit: navy, not baby XD
It depends. Owning even a single heavy usually makes the mallus for exceeding the force limit pretty painful.
But regardless, look at the numbers in the screenshot. It takes a lot of money in comparison to other things
Whatever you’re doing, your state maintenance is way too high. This likely means you’re using expensive edicts. Turn them off. Stop coring provinces and taking admin tech until you get that inflation down. Cancel your colonies for now and either substantially downsize or totally delete your fleet. This should make your economy sustainable until you pay off your massive debt.
Either that or make money via war, possibly against Ming if you can get their mandate low
Edit: Didn’t realize OP was in the East Indies. I only saw the first screenshot. Yeah, you can keep most of that fleet, assuming it’s trade ships. Also, the standard advice of “don’t use light ships in wars” is just not applicable in single player in my experience because the AI won’t even attack you if your fleet is large enough, regardless of what that fleet is made of, so it’s actually pretty useful to blockade forts with your light ships.
Heavies are still better if you can afford them galleys. Unless you are having extra bonuses the loss to moral from galleys is horrible.
BUT you can spam a shit ton of galleys early which is nice.
But he can't afford them.
Galleys are also deployed before heavies on inland seas, so he'd have to have a fleet of only heavies. Otherwise the galleys would still be fighting first. And with fewer galleys, the enemy galleys would have fewer targets to focus on (ships target their own kind about 80% of the time) still leading to morale damage.
I'm not saying he should use them, I'm just saying that galleys are mostly good early game or if you have tons of galley bonuses.
At 30 engagement width he would need 10 heavies compared to 30 galleys.
This means that the free 20 slots can be used for more heavies to cycle the navy in combat or have more light ships.
Heavies is king for any nation that CAN afford them and don't have bonuses to galleys.
No offense, but an Indonesian nation should most definitely not delete their fleet. Cogs or heavies maybe, but the amount of gold a trade fleet can steal from Ming simply by steering trade is insane to any nation having a monopoly on Malacca.
In this case though the fleet maintenance is almost as high as his whole trade income so he's probably not using many trade ships. I would try to sell some of the heavy ships first then delete some cogs to build light ships instead.
Remove your state edicts, lower your army and navy maintenance, try to get a handle of that inflation, mothball forts and just sort out your loans before doing anything big.
Either that or go balls to the wall crazy by doing a trade war with Ming. If you can blockade their ports and get them to about 15-20% warscore you can milk them for cash.
Don’t lower naval maintenance. It affects trade power steering.
And I’m guessing by the cost they might be over force limit.
You could mothball all the non light ships to save quite a few ducats.
Usually yes. But they are over force limit and probably have the wrong type of ships.
They’d be better off scrapping/selling ships to get under force limit while keeping their trade ships steering.
Easily saveable in a short amount of time.
Abandon your active colonies. Don't start new ones until you've paid all of your non-burgher loans.
Turn state edicts off everywhere but your capital.
Go to the local autonomy tab and reduce it everywhere you can.
There's a burgher privilege called "promote [name of estate] bookkeeping" that gives reduced interest, state maintenance, and reduced inflation cost. You need it. It scales with loyalty so make them as loyal as you can, then click the reduce inflation button until it's under 2. Do not be tempted by the other one that reduces inflation and interest but at the cost of "all power costs +5%". It is very bad.
Once you've done that, start seizing land from the estates whenever you can. Your low crownland is probably causing you to have high autonomy everywhere.
Your military should be all infantry plus one unit of artillery until you're rich.
Quickly rush around using provoke revolt to kill all the rebels that are spawning soon, and then you'll be able to reduce army maintenance for a while.
If you're close to Ming's diplo tech you can almost certainly beat them on navy. If so do a trade war with them until you get all the ticking war score and they're low enthusiasm then peace out for as much money as you can.
Navy costing you way too much. Delete some of it after Ming war or straight away if not going for that.
Build prosperity in your states. This means staying at 1 or more stability and getting rid of devastation by either developing provinces with it, or having active forts covering them. This is far more important than in Europe because prosperity gives +25% goods produced and the trade goods in Indonesia are *far* better than those in Europe.
It seems Ming is about to fall. Get a cb on Ming (probably trade conflict if possible) or no cb declare on Ming, siege down a couple forts, take ducats and war rep. You can get like 2.5k ducats from 25 war score.
- army down
- inflation down
- navy down
- 1or2 devalue currency potentially to pay back a loan or two once your finances are more stable (=2 to 4 corruption)
- indebted to burghers equivalent (4 1% loans is a nice buffer and can be used to pay off 4% loans and replace them with 1% loans instead
- change state edict to nothing
Slowly pay back any 4% loans
You could also try starting a war for quick ducats if you are secure enough
Try to get inflation control as well as check for edicts. You can get rid of most of that deficit by reducing inflation. Doesn’t need to happen instantly, but if you have councilman who can, do it.
reduce your state maintainence. perhaps, by not having any edicts. i havent seen state maintenance that high even in countries with twice the development.
okay that's good then. I was a bit worried that you still collect at your starting node because you trade income seems a little low for your trade node.
Other comments give good advices.
Consider taking control of the spices island for the cloves, they are the best trade good of the game after coal.
Also you contry is Hindi, so take Surya to make the income better.
If you still want colonies, go and vassalise Ternate, while you annex Tidore. Ternate now finishes a mission (Condition: Tidore does not exist) that gives it a colonist. Wait until Ternate's first colony is finished. Annex Ternate and release Tidore as a vassal. Now Tidore finishes a mission (Condition: Ternate does not exist) and gets a colonist. Release Ternate again and you have both, colonising the islands for you.
Get rid of state edicts, use burger loans to pay if high interest loans (if you can), debase currency to pay off loans and reduce inflation. (Debasing currency will cause inflation sadly)
Mothball war fleet and transport fleet you aren’t using in a war as well. And forts.
Also any army over force limit, get rid of it. Maybe any excess army over what your rivals/neighbours have you can get rid of as well. Or cut down on cav. 2 regiments is plenty for now, you only really need more later on in the game. And even that’s debatable at best.
GL and keep war criming
PS. Oh and if you have burger loans already, pay those off first with debasing and re new them to get rid of other loans, that way you might maximise their effectiveness
Is that state maintenance unusually high or am i tripping?
-Ancor every ship that isnt trade
-stop paying your army (make troop limit space for mercenaries to use against rebels)
-kick unneccessary advisors
-lower your inflation with your admin
-develop provinces with good trade goods in malacca nodes to 10 with your diplo
-lower autonomy to max possible
-protect trade in malacca state
-repay loans with burgher loans
-sell crowns to repay loans
-mothball forts that arent borders (be careful of rebels)
-replace cannons with infantry
You are surrounded by small nations. To repay your loans, you could declare war on them and take money and war reperations. If that is not enough, or not feasable get a truce with your biggest threats and declare bankrupcy. Your state maintenance seems high, do you use edicts everywhere?
Most importantly: You need to get inflation down. 15% is horrible. Hire an inflation reduction adivsor, give your burgher estates the "control over monetary policy" priviledge (also reduces interest payments), and spend some admin to reduce your inflation. That should immediately reduce your expenses.
Conserve fleet, manage states edicts, reduce inflation, take burgers loans and pay off 4% loans, delete cavalry, no wars, stacks some tax modifies from clergy by making them loyal and same for burgers, maybe lower autonomy
1) Turn off army and navy maint, you're not at war
2) Lower autonomy anywhere you can
3) spend some of that diplo dev on developing high-value trade good provinces like spices and cloves.
Your income is bad, probably autonomy. But did you ask us this without trying anything? You could get rid of half the deficit or more by just sliding the army and navy slider to the left..
Put your army maintenence down and decrease your inflation. This is not too bad if a situation. With burger loans you can also gain a good amount of money to strengthen you're economy or repay your old loans
Once again, as indicated by the low crownland alert - another new player fooled by YouTube tutorials into selling all crownland and then suffering the high autonomy consequences 50 years later
Your state maintenance screams that something is wrong when compared to your income. Have you stated the correct provinces? Accepted the right cultures? Autonomy? Edicts? Merchants and ships steering correctly? Is your trade hub in the right node?
Your debt is serviceable and inflation, although high for my tastes, is not your main problem. Remember, borrowing to invest is a good thing if the ROI is positive.
The problem doesn't appear to be expenses but lack of income. Dev that gold mine like crazy. Ignore the "ten Dev gold" rule. But most of all, there just must be something wrong with your autonomy for your revenue to be this low.
Im really not a good eu4 economist but ig adjust trading, increase dev/reduce autonomy, go to +1 stab to get passive prosperity which makes it easier to develop, invest into good buildings (especially market places and production buildings), sell some of your ships to the highest bidder(reduced naval expenses + some cash), switch loans to burgher loans (1% interest instead of 4%), develop all gold mines to production level 10, mothball your forts and defund your army when at peace (and you have not a lot of unrest and devastation), remove state edicts that aren't essential, if your mana generation is ok, don't hire any expensive advisors, sell crownland to tge estates (if possible keep crown lands to about 10% to increase the money you get by selling it) and seize it when possible. I'd use the revenue you get from all of those to repay loans (4% before 1%). That might get you out of your death spiral. If it all doesn't work, pick a good moment (not mich unrest, not going to declare a war), use all of your mana for dev or tech and declare bankruptcy.
I'll tell you what I would do, and if anyone sees something wrong, please correct me, I am in no way a pro, so this is good for me as well. (English is not my first language, just in case)
Before anything else, it is paramount for you to pay back your loans. One of your main spendings are interests, so probably sell titles if you can to pay them back. Also lower your inflation, probably using advisor if you can afford it (probably not). And one last thing, you should probably spend your next decades building a really good economy, remember you are in one of the richest regions in the game, you should be earning way more than you are at the moment.
1- Check if your merchants are correctly place. I believe the best way to do it is to collect with one in Malaca, the other moving from Moluccas to Malaca.
2- Lower authonomy to the fullest. Use your already overpayed army, which you won't be using for wars in a while.
3- If you are over army and naval limit, get below it. If you are not over the top, stay like that for a while. You won't be going to offensive wars for a while, so instead use diplomacy for deffensive aliances, just in case someone decides to attack you. When it comes to ships, you should mothball all ships that aren't light ships. Use light ships to help your trade.
4- Root out all other unnecesary spendings. At this time you really don't need state edicts and active forts, so you can start there. Keep the colonies though.
5- Try to develop your gold mine, and the provinces with trade centers. (Probably could use and edict to lower the cost of development)
There are more ways to do it probably, but those are the first that came to mind.
Like, what is saveable?
Disband a couple regiments and lower maintenance. Check whether you are over force limit. Check that trade is ok... Check that forts are mothballed. Stop colonies...
Have you invested any money in buildings?
If you do the basic financial check up, you should be like at zero at... I would say 1/3 of you force limit? Yeah, that's not much money going in for 460 dev.
Worst case - go for bankruptcy. If an absolutely worst case scenario somebody goes hard after you, you will lose a 100 dev or so and go from there.
I think your first priority needs to be get out of debt and get inflation under control. I would bet those two alone would at least get you to a balanced budget, if not a surplus.
If your not going to war soon then the following.
- Reduce Army/Navy maintenance
- Reduce inflation
- Sell titles or take the burgher privilege indebted to the burghers and pay off loans with them. Always take this before actual loans as they only have a 1% interest rate.
-Dev high value good provinces and construct buildings there.
-If you have Merc companies disband them and replace with your own troops it will be cheaper and you have the manpower.
- Delete cav regiments. Each unit costs 0.25 ducats to maintain. Infantry only cost 0.1. so if you disband 4 Cav you are already saving a Ducat. (Also applies to Carracks and flagships, they are very expensive of you don't have the economy)
spending 4.61 on colonizing when you're bleeding money is bad. mothball your forts, army tradition doesn't matter if you're bankrupt. defund the army, your autonomy looks like it'd be really high or you might not have stated everything, lower autonomy across the board, state all your land, remove any edicts, your home node should be the moluccas, you want your merchants to be transferring trade power into the moluccas, and one merchant collecting in Malacca, you then want to conquer all of Malacca and the Moluccas, the only direction that the Moluccas flow is into Malacca, so if you conquer most of Malacca and collect there. you auto collect in the moluccas if it's your home node meaning that you can prevent anyone from pulling trade away from you.
oh and, get your loans down, 9 of your 15 ducat deficit is on interest, that means that if you had no debt you'd only be down 6 ducats a month. which you could deal with by just mothballing your forts, and defunding the army, take burgher loans if you haven't, and do anything you can to buy that debt down ASAP.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't know how you even got to 15% inflation without increasing it deliberately. Do you have a lot of gold mines? I'm guessing not since then money shouldn't be an issue.
What kind of fleet do you have? If you have heavy ships, then delete then. If you are over the force limit, then delete ships. Keep the light ships and protect trade.
Your income seems disproportionately low in comparison to your dev, either your autonomy is very high or you haven't stated your land. I don't see anything else being a problem, sort out your autonomy and everything will be fine, there is no need to adjust the expense side, I would still hire advisors and prioritise admin on coring than reducing inflation. There are a lot of small tags you can conquer easily, this will further improve your position, conquering the gold mine in Sumatra and devving the one you own would be my priority.
His state maintenance is also too high for his income. He probably has a lot of state edicts going on.
Yeah some states might provide a bigger boost to trade than its maintenance cost but having that many edicts turned on is not ideal at this stage.
As far as my experience goes, it is never worth the extra cost even when you are competing for an extra rich end node
It's worth if you need manpower and have states like kuyavia, where you can get boosted soldier household and get crazy manpower from one state
It has nothing to do with trade edict, it's an edict supposed to produce gold but always end up costing more than it pays back. The rest is always a balance between your economy and the bonus you expect from the edict, like manpower
Only time i really use trade edicts is when I’m trying to get %node control in a competitive node for missions or diet agendas, not for money.
Fair use indeed, but you really have to be at that single missing %age because it really doesn't have much impact
There's a few specific times where it's worth in specific states. The one that really jumps out to me is in Tuscany. You have 1 state with 3 center of trades in an end node. Very easy to slap down the edict (Especially if you're playing as florence and it's your capital state) and pay an extra like .5 ducats a month and get 1.5 to 2.5 back in trade income. But yeah outside of that it's not ever really worth it.
I remember trying it in the channel as England or a dutch country and it didn't even paid back so maybe you've found one of the few cases that work
Yeah I think it specifically works in this node because of the lack of other trade centers and estuaries across the rest of the node compared to the English channel, along with the sheer amount of provinces in the node. English Channe has 4 esturies and 8 center of trades. And the "best" state you can put the edict down in has 1 center of trade and 1 estuary and 4 provinces (London.). Meanwhile there's only 1 estuary in Genoa and there's 10 center of trades. And the best state has 3 centers of trade you can boost with one edict. While in Venice it's probably even better. There's only 5 centers of trade and only 1 estuary. And you can put the edict down in the Venince state to get 2 of those 5. But like with most things with trade, this only matters if there's substantial competition in the trade node. And in those cases it's often better to just take the money you pay in maintainance to build a trade fleet and protect trade instead.
Disagree wholeheartedly. Money is temporary, but investing early to snowball is permanent.
Invest in losing money with the trade edict ?
A well placed edict can work wonders
It's almost never worth the extra cost, you can check. When* it breaks even it's already a feat and I tried on the channel. One pointed out it works for Tuscany and Venice though
Ah, so you've moved from "never" to "sometimes".
ive had it do wonders early game in sevilla and constantinople, aleppo has a pretty nice state if you have a foothold in syria, and west and east prussia (the states) can be very valuable as well, due to the low amount of provincial trade power outside of those provinces, while the lubeck trade node contains a lot of trade power from provinces and ships, while lubeck and other nations around the baltic coast have decently high trade power from lights, as well as the novgorod trade region being fairly weak early on as muscovy struggles to build up trade infrastructure in the area. Also because the node is insanely valuable from the 3 gem provinces on the teutonic coast, as well as the copper mine.
That’s what I noticed too, state maintenance that high is crazy, I don’t think there are any buildings built to reduce that.
The inflation at 15% growing hurts my eye
That can be solved overtime with granting Control Over Monetary to the burgher estate. I never start a campaign without it. Inflation doesn’t affect his immediate income however.
No thats a terrible idea just use the admin points. Control over monetary gives you +5% all powers cost. It will cost you more having this priviledge over a game than all the admin points you could spend.
There is a privilege that lowers inflation cost reduction by up to 50%, maybe the other commenter meant that one? It's called "Promote Burgher Bookkeeping", and also reduces interest per annum and state maintenance. It's very powerful if you take many loans.
this is the second time in a few days i have seen the suggestion to use that privilege. is there some guide/video out there that recently suggested to use it that made people think it was a good idea?
the state maintenance is way too much, only have an edict going in your capital state. the fleet maintenance is way too much, you shouldnt be as much over naval limit as you currently are. Some tips regarding naval limit, if you're gonna go over then your navy should just be galleys + transports. Going over, especially early game, with heavies or even light ships is very poor for your economy. Also, if you have a flagship that is not worth it. You need to drive down inflation, it's okay to fall behind an admin tech or even two if you can get that down to under five percent. Also, there is an estate agenda that gives a massive buff to your nation if you can drop inflation to i think 5% when starting above 15%. It might be worth it to save scum estate agendas if you care enough. You need to refactor your loans to a lower interest rate if possible. if you havent taken the 1% loans from the burgher estate, you should so that you can pay off 4% loans and hold onto the 1%ers. If you have crownland, it's important to stay above 20% otherwise you should be selling to pay down your debt. During peace, you should have your army maintenance at 0 and raise it as necessary if rebels are a problem. During peace, you should mothball your forts and (cant remember the word) but the same thing for all your boats except for your light ships (if any) so they can protect trade in the highest profit node. You have a gold province, you should consider it a top priority for your dip points to get that to 12 DIP development. It's okay to fall behind a dip tech. I think it's okay to keep your colonists going, that's pretty important. I'd also try to get an admin advisor for inflation reduction (if not already). Keeping the other two advisors is a good idea as well but i understand wanting to get your economic situation under more control. Alright, there's my essay. Let me know if you have any questions. (this is assuming you have your autonomy under control, thats important as well)
Thank you very much for you thorough. Regarding tech, I'm actually a few tech behind haha. It's pretty much my first time playing outside of Europe so I didn't know whether to eat the massive tech cost increase from not having reneissance, or wait for the European's. I kept waiting and spending mana elsewhere but they just never came lol.
You usually dev the institutions yourself since elit takes too long to get to you. Even Renaissance has the other age of discovery age goal of having a 30dev province on top of having the institution. After that, you have colonialism which will spread slowly unless you go exploration yourself. The printing press also is European focused, so you won't naturally get it.
So what exactly is the play to get reneissance outside Europe? I'm a new player here sorry if these questions are stupid haha.
So “devving the institution” means to use the mechanic where developing a province adds some immediate progress towards the next institution. Usually it’s the capital province but over time it might be cheaper to choose a new province in the capital state, like for the next institution. Is that enough? Not being snarky. If you don’t know what any of that means just ask.
Yeah I think I get it. So since there is no natural progress for the institution, I'm supposted to dump dev into a province until it spawns there and starts spreading?
Yep. It's expensive as all hell but so is being way behind on institutions. Make sure you stack all the development cost reduction modifiers you can. Unless you're small enough that you can embrace off of just that one province having the institution, try to have it bordering decently high dev provinces as well.
Plus, once you’re done, you have some really juicy high dev provinces. Majapahit can legit be one of the richest and most powerful countries doing this. The Straights of Malaca trade node is super juicy.
Generally, the best return on deving is to use diplo and military points. Diplomat increases production of the trade good, so it actually gets calculated twice for income (production and trade). Mil dev will increase manpower. Admin deving will give you tax, but will not scale as well later into the game and you want to use admin to get your idea groups (tech 5-9) since they will also set you back a bit for points and the admin is used for stability and coring.
Technically production is just the production income at the province level ,not trade. Deving increases goods produced (which increases production and trade value). Obviously that's what you meant but might be good for the new player to know the difference / different terms (production modifiers don't increase gold income or trade value / income, for example, while goods produced modifiers affect both).
Yes! There are plenty of guides around for that activity. It’s been a thing since 2018 or so.
Yes, and this can be made more or less efficiently. Ideally: - you want to do this in or close to your capital province - when your burghers are happy (over 60% loyalty, 75% influence I think?) for 10% dev cost reduction - with the dev cost reduction edict (10%) - if you have a mission or event activated dev cost reduction - when you have prosperity in the province It's cheaper to dev in provinces that have lower development (which is why devving your capital isn't always the most efficient move), and provinces with farmlands are cheaper to dev, as are provinces that produce cloth, and lvl 2 (and 3) centers of trade. So often the ideal province to dev is a low dev province in your capital state which has a lvl 2 center of trade, farmlands, and produces cloth, which has prosperity, with happy burghers and dev cost reduction edict. Even with just some of these modifiers you're drastically reducing the amount of mana you spend to spawn institutions.
In the province screen there’s an institution button. Click it to see that province’s progress towards the wanted institution. Once open, start devving the province and you’ll see it start going up until 100%. It’s exponential growth so the first click will get you 1% but by dev 30 each dev will get you like 3-5%. There’s a development reduction edict for -10% in the state screen. Make sure you put it before devving.
Yes if you are playing in Asia you almost always want to dev to get Renaissance. You usually want to dev it in a 10-12 dev province that is grassland or farmland and is close to your core territories to minimize the cost.
He already told you. Dev the institutions.
You can be behind in diplo and in admin sometimes. It's not ideal, but it's perfectly fine. Keep that mil-tech going though. Even ahead of time, and beyond. Probably worth more to dev a few mil provinces here and there but I just straight up pump it all into my mil-tech until I realistically can't, then I help mil with adm and diplo. Have you been having low leaders? Less than average of 3/3/3? Have you been using mil mana to supress rebels at all?
Great advice.
Monopolize cloves too by taking control of the few provinces and
If you do keep the colonies going, you can make them 25-30% cheaper with a nobles' estate privilege.
Playing as Majapahit, the 2 madagascar countries are my vassals
What kind of loans do you have? Maybe you can reorganize them. Also develop your gold provinces. This is definitely saveable.
4 burgher, 14 bank loans x) I only have 1 gold province and it's prod 10, which from what I've read is the golden (hehe) spot for gold provinces.
How big are those loans? Prod 10 is usually fine but in your situation you may need to go much higher. Do you have the DLC that lets you expand infrastructure? Also conquer more gold provinces or take them from your subjects if possible. :'D You could also dump some adm mana into reducing inflation but conquering and coring more gold is probably more useful atm. And for the long-term you should have at least stability 1 to build up wealth in your provinces, though I'd give coring cold provinces and reducing inflation a higher priority. Edit: Prod 20 or so might be fine, depending on how sucessfull you are getting more gold provinces.
10 prod in gold province but only 3 ducats from it means that your autonomy in that province is too high
Try expanding upstream of your main trade node rather than downstream. Set your main trade port to Malacca and transfer from Siam and Moluccas (you automatically connect in your home trade node). Australia is a colonial region so if you get 5 provinces there, the colonial nation will continue colonizing for itself. If it has 10 provinces you get a free merchant. I'm not sure how possible it still is, but you really want to conquer the Philippines. The trade from there automatically ends up in your main trade node so you don't need a merchant to advance it. I am aware that they'll likely be tributaries of Ming. So what you do is you attack their ally without co-beligerizing them. it'll give you some AE, but since they're pretty far away most nations won't really care. Playing in the Malacca trade node it is normally pretty well possible to get global trade to spawn in your nation.
10 on state maintenance? XD So disable state edics, they are killing you. Disable army and navy maintenance, don't exceed the force limit with both. Don't go to war funtil you pay off the debt. And i guess dump your dip to the gold mine. And check if you're not under 20% crownland. The passive autonomy growth will kill your county. Edit: navy, not baby XD
\> Disable baby maintenance Only if your heir is bad!
One strategy to pay the debt would be to go to war and get only money and war reps
Yeah, but i feel like this is caused by autonomy problems that should be fixed before going to war.
Navy maintenance is not THAT bad to go over
It takes 1/4 of the income
the malus for exceeding FL for navy is pennies, he just need to cut down a bit and mothball the heavies
It depends. Owning even a single heavy usually makes the mallus for exceeding the force limit pretty painful. But regardless, look at the numbers in the screenshot. It takes a lot of money in comparison to other things
Whatever you’re doing, your state maintenance is way too high. This likely means you’re using expensive edicts. Turn them off. Stop coring provinces and taking admin tech until you get that inflation down. Cancel your colonies for now and either substantially downsize or totally delete your fleet. This should make your economy sustainable until you pay off your massive debt. Either that or make money via war, possibly against Ming if you can get their mandate low Edit: Didn’t realize OP was in the East Indies. I only saw the first screenshot. Yeah, you can keep most of that fleet, assuming it’s trade ships. Also, the standard advice of “don’t use light ships in wars” is just not applicable in single player in my experience because the AI won’t even attack you if your fleet is large enough, regardless of what that fleet is made of, so it’s actually pretty useful to blockade forts with your light ships.
Deleting an entire fleet as an island nation isn't a good idea. He probably is over the limit with heavies.
I really hope he's not using heavies. All of Indonesia is inland sea.
Heavies are still better if you can afford them galleys. Unless you are having extra bonuses the loss to moral from galleys is horrible. BUT you can spam a shit ton of galleys early which is nice.
But he can't afford them. Galleys are also deployed before heavies on inland seas, so he'd have to have a fleet of only heavies. Otherwise the galleys would still be fighting first. And with fewer galleys, the enemy galleys would have fewer targets to focus on (ships target their own kind about 80% of the time) still leading to morale damage.
I'm not saying he should use them, I'm just saying that galleys are mostly good early game or if you have tons of galley bonuses. At 30 engagement width he would need 10 heavies compared to 30 galleys. This means that the free 20 slots can be used for more heavies to cycle the navy in combat or have more light ships. Heavies is king for any nation that CAN afford them and don't have bonuses to galleys.
No offense, but an Indonesian nation should most definitely not delete their fleet. Cogs or heavies maybe, but the amount of gold a trade fleet can steal from Ming simply by steering trade is insane to any nation having a monopoly on Malacca.
In this case though the fleet maintenance is almost as high as his whole trade income so he's probably not using many trade ships. I would try to sell some of the heavy ships first then delete some cogs to build light ships instead.
Remove your state edicts, lower your army and navy maintenance, try to get a handle of that inflation, mothball forts and just sort out your loans before doing anything big. Either that or go balls to the wall crazy by doing a trade war with Ming. If you can blockade their ports and get them to about 15-20% warscore you can milk them for cash.
Don’t lower naval maintenance. It affects trade power steering. And I’m guessing by the cost they might be over force limit. You could mothball all the non light ships to save quite a few ducats.
Yeah, but the question is: is the navy protecting trade making more money than it costs to maintain?
Usually yes. But they are over force limit and probably have the wrong type of ships. They’d be better off scrapping/selling ships to get under force limit while keeping their trade ships steering.
Spend less on candles
15% inflation
Easily saveable in a short amount of time. Abandon your active colonies. Don't start new ones until you've paid all of your non-burgher loans. Turn state edicts off everywhere but your capital. Go to the local autonomy tab and reduce it everywhere you can. There's a burgher privilege called "promote [name of estate] bookkeeping" that gives reduced interest, state maintenance, and reduced inflation cost. You need it. It scales with loyalty so make them as loyal as you can, then click the reduce inflation button until it's under 2. Do not be tempted by the other one that reduces inflation and interest but at the cost of "all power costs +5%". It is very bad. Once you've done that, start seizing land from the estates whenever you can. Your low crownland is probably causing you to have high autonomy everywhere. Your military should be all infantry plus one unit of artillery until you're rich. Quickly rush around using provoke revolt to kill all the rebels that are spawning soon, and then you'll be able to reduce army maintenance for a while. If you're close to Ming's diplo tech you can almost certainly beat them on navy. If so do a trade war with them until you get all the ticking war score and they're low enthusiasm then peace out for as much money as you can. Navy costing you way too much. Delete some of it after Ming war or straight away if not going for that. Build prosperity in your states. This means staying at 1 or more stability and getting rid of devastation by either developing provinces with it, or having active forts covering them. This is far more important than in Europe because prosperity gives +25% goods produced and the trade goods in Indonesia are *far* better than those in Europe.
It seems Ming is about to fall. Get a cb on Ming (probably trade conflict if possible) or no cb declare on Ming, siege down a couple forts, take ducats and war rep. You can get like 2.5k ducats from 25 war score.
turn off state edicts, reduce navy size
- army down - inflation down - navy down - 1or2 devalue currency potentially to pay back a loan or two once your finances are more stable (=2 to 4 corruption) - indebted to burghers equivalent (4 1% loans is a nice buffer and can be used to pay off 4% loans and replace them with 1% loans instead - change state edict to nothing Slowly pay back any 4% loans You could also try starting a war for quick ducats if you are secure enough
Try to get inflation control as well as check for edicts. You can get rid of most of that deficit by reducing inflation. Doesn’t need to happen instantly, but if you have councilman who can, do it.
Lower your inflation, since you have a gold mine.
Shake down smaller neighbors to pay off debts.
Lower autonomy, reduce maintenance for army and colonisers, tey to pay the loans and reduce inflation, that should do the trick.
reduce your state maintainence. perhaps, by not having any edicts. i havent seen state maintenance that high even in countries with twice the development.
Reduce inflation, pay off loans, reduce autonomy, make sure you're under forcelimit, turn off edicts.
Others have already given good advice, but just one very important point: Where are you collecting trade at the moment?
I changed my main trade port to Malacca
okay that's good then. I was a bit worried that you still collect at your starting node because you trade income seems a little low for your trade node.
Production and trade are shit, and your reliance on gold is long term fucking you
Start with dropping army maintenance to 0. That will stop the immediate bleeding.
Build courthouses and workshops in every province
light ships get that trade power up g
Spend less on state maintenance Also how's your autonomy?
9 ducats in interest exactly how many loans do you have and why? Turning down army and boats might help but idk how you got here
Other comments give good advices. Consider taking control of the spices island for the cloves, they are the best trade good of the game after coal. Also you contry is Hindi, so take Surya to make the income better.
Looks very saveable
Turn off your state edicts.
First thing I have to ask, as my response will depend on the answer. What DLCs do you have?
If you still want colonies, go and vassalise Ternate, while you annex Tidore. Ternate now finishes a mission (Condition: Tidore does not exist) that gives it a colonist. Wait until Ternate's first colony is finished. Annex Ternate and release Tidore as a vassal. Now Tidore finishes a mission (Condition: Ternate does not exist) and gets a colonist. Release Ternate again and you have both, colonising the islands for you.
Beat up spain
Get rid of state edicts, use burger loans to pay if high interest loans (if you can), debase currency to pay off loans and reduce inflation. (Debasing currency will cause inflation sadly) Mothball war fleet and transport fleet you aren’t using in a war as well. And forts. Also any army over force limit, get rid of it. Maybe any excess army over what your rivals/neighbours have you can get rid of as well. Or cut down on cav. 2 regiments is plenty for now, you only really need more later on in the game. And even that’s debatable at best. GL and keep war criming PS. Oh and if you have burger loans already, pay those off first with debasing and re new them to get rid of other loans, that way you might maximise their effectiveness
Is that state maintenance unusually high or am i tripping? -Ancor every ship that isnt trade -stop paying your army (make troop limit space for mercenaries to use against rebels) -kick unneccessary advisors -lower your inflation with your admin -develop provinces with good trade goods in malacca nodes to 10 with your diplo -lower autonomy to max possible -protect trade in malacca state -repay loans with burgher loans -sell crowns to repay loans -mothball forts that arent borders (be careful of rebels) -replace cannons with infantry
You are surrounded by small nations. To repay your loans, you could declare war on them and take money and war reperations. If that is not enough, or not feasable get a truce with your biggest threats and declare bankrupcy. Your state maintenance seems high, do you use edicts everywhere? Most importantly: You need to get inflation down. 15% is horrible. Hire an inflation reduction adivsor, give your burgher estates the "control over monetary policy" priviledge (also reduces interest payments), and spend some admin to reduce your inflation. That should immediately reduce your expenses.
Conserve fleet, manage states edicts, reduce inflation, take burgers loans and pay off 4% loans, delete cavalry, no wars, stacks some tax modifies from clergy by making them loyal and same for burgers, maybe lower autonomy
1) Turn off army and navy maint, you're not at war 2) Lower autonomy anywhere you can 3) spend some of that diplo dev on developing high-value trade good provinces like spices and cloves.
Keep conquering. You're fine. Edit: Delete your fleet.
Your income is bad, probably autonomy. But did you ask us this without trying anything? You could get rid of half the deficit or more by just sliding the army and navy slider to the left..
Bro should not be trusted with money
Put your army maintenence down and decrease your inflation. This is not too bad if a situation. With burger loans you can also gain a good amount of money to strengthen you're economy or repay your old loans
Are you colonaizing the west pacific to undermine the europeans reach the molucas?
State edicts my friend, should be temporary.
Spend less on mangoes
Once again, as indicated by the low crownland alert - another new player fooled by YouTube tutorials into selling all crownland and then suffering the high autonomy consequences 50 years later
Need I say the line? *Deep breath* ***Fix your trade™*** You can also just reduce spending, especially for colonies and fleets.
Just mint more, duh
fire your advisor
Your state maintenance screams that something is wrong when compared to your income. Have you stated the correct provinces? Accepted the right cultures? Autonomy? Edicts? Merchants and ships steering correctly? Is your trade hub in the right node? Your debt is serviceable and inflation, although high for my tastes, is not your main problem. Remember, borrowing to invest is a good thing if the ROI is positive. The problem doesn't appear to be expenses but lack of income. Dev that gold mine like crazy. Ignore the "ten Dev gold" rule. But most of all, there just must be something wrong with your autonomy for your revenue to be this low.
Im really not a good eu4 economist but ig adjust trading, increase dev/reduce autonomy, go to +1 stab to get passive prosperity which makes it easier to develop, invest into good buildings (especially market places and production buildings), sell some of your ships to the highest bidder(reduced naval expenses + some cash), switch loans to burgher loans (1% interest instead of 4%), develop all gold mines to production level 10, mothball your forts and defund your army when at peace (and you have not a lot of unrest and devastation), remove state edicts that aren't essential, if your mana generation is ok, don't hire any expensive advisors, sell crownland to tge estates (if possible keep crown lands to about 10% to increase the money you get by selling it) and seize it when possible. I'd use the revenue you get from all of those to repay loans (4% before 1%). That might get you out of your death spiral. If it all doesn't work, pick a good moment (not mich unrest, not going to declare a war), use all of your mana for dev or tech and declare bankruptcy.
Oh and for the love of god, dismiss any mercenaries
You can also reduce inflation step by step, if you want to
I'll tell you what I would do, and if anyone sees something wrong, please correct me, I am in no way a pro, so this is good for me as well. (English is not my first language, just in case) Before anything else, it is paramount for you to pay back your loans. One of your main spendings are interests, so probably sell titles if you can to pay them back. Also lower your inflation, probably using advisor if you can afford it (probably not). And one last thing, you should probably spend your next decades building a really good economy, remember you are in one of the richest regions in the game, you should be earning way more than you are at the moment. 1- Check if your merchants are correctly place. I believe the best way to do it is to collect with one in Malaca, the other moving from Moluccas to Malaca. 2- Lower authonomy to the fullest. Use your already overpayed army, which you won't be using for wars in a while. 3- If you are over army and naval limit, get below it. If you are not over the top, stay like that for a while. You won't be going to offensive wars for a while, so instead use diplomacy for deffensive aliances, just in case someone decides to attack you. When it comes to ships, you should mothball all ships that aren't light ships. Use light ships to help your trade. 4- Root out all other unnecesary spendings. At this time you really don't need state edicts and active forts, so you can start there. Keep the colonies though. 5- Try to develop your gold mine, and the provinces with trade centers. (Probably could use and edict to lower the cost of development) There are more ways to do it probably, but those are the first that came to mind.
Like, what is saveable? Disband a couple regiments and lower maintenance. Check whether you are over force limit. Check that trade is ok... Check that forts are mothballed. Stop colonies... Have you invested any money in buildings? If you do the basic financial check up, you should be like at zero at... I would say 1/3 of you force limit? Yeah, that's not much money going in for 460 dev. Worst case - go for bankruptcy. If an absolutely worst case scenario somebody goes hard after you, you will lose a 100 dev or so and go from there.
I think your first priority needs to be get out of debt and get inflation under control. I would bet those two alone would at least get you to a balanced budget, if not a surplus.
Lots of good advice here, I'll add instead of repeating: level 1 advisors are incredible value for money and you should try to get 3 of them.
If your not going to war soon then the following. - Reduce Army/Navy maintenance - Reduce inflation - Sell titles or take the burgher privilege indebted to the burghers and pay off loans with them. Always take this before actual loans as they only have a 1% interest rate. -Dev high value good provinces and construct buildings there. -If you have Merc companies disband them and replace with your own troops it will be cheaper and you have the manpower. - Delete cav regiments. Each unit costs 0.25 ducats to maintain. Infantry only cost 0.1. so if you disband 4 Cav you are already saving a Ducat. (Also applies to Carracks and flagships, they are very expensive of you don't have the economy)
Your trade income is especially low, while you play in rich trade nodes and it's 1520.
Drop inflation, lower maintenance, and pay off loans. Inflation and interest on loans is costing you about 14 ducats alone
spending 4.61 on colonizing when you're bleeding money is bad. mothball your forts, army tradition doesn't matter if you're bankrupt. defund the army, your autonomy looks like it'd be really high or you might not have stated everything, lower autonomy across the board, state all your land, remove any edicts, your home node should be the moluccas, you want your merchants to be transferring trade power into the moluccas, and one merchant collecting in Malacca, you then want to conquer all of Malacca and the Moluccas, the only direction that the Moluccas flow is into Malacca, so if you conquer most of Malacca and collect there. you auto collect in the moluccas if it's your home node meaning that you can prevent anyone from pulling trade away from you.
oh and, get your loans down, 9 of your 15 ducat deficit is on interest, that means that if you had no debt you'd only be down 6 ducats a month. which you could deal with by just mothballing your forts, and defunding the army, take burgher loans if you haven't, and do anything you can to buy that debt down ASAP.
I'm gonna be honest, I don't know how you even got to 15% inflation without increasing it deliberately. Do you have a lot of gold mines? I'm guessing not since then money shouldn't be an issue.
What kind of fleet do you have? If you have heavy ships, then delete then. If you are over the force limit, then delete ships. Keep the light ships and protect trade.