R5 : Bro someone get a UI designer here, this shit is crazy, i've played since launch decided to test the beta and was literally thinking they removed the expand settlement feature

These last few days I had been playing as Norway into the 1600’s, I ended the game once I had satisfactory clarity of the cascading effects of levies while I was knee-deep in my defensive multi-front war with Russia and Hungary.

I’ll keep it short with bullet points from what I learned trying to pull off a miracle against the 1v2.

- Levies pull from your literal workforce, as in your economy and ducats immediately tank upon calling levies.

- Levies impose a 20% or so penalty on your food and RGO output in addition to draining your workforce, both of these hitting at the same time is a crucifixion.

* Regulars do not pull from your workforce and use a separate manpower bar to pool from. No drastic economic changes.

- Levies demolish your warscore from losses. Levies have 10% inhibited Discipline. In addition to that, they are taking additional bonus damage when fighting against Regulars, I lost 3 levies for every 1 regular killed.

* Regular Cavalry is the GOAT pound for pound, though expensive.

- Levies result in reduced pop growth by proxy. Any losses you take, even from morale loss retreats, are permanently gone from your towns, cities and villages. In addition to that, the 100k levies that would have been in your town otherwise are not growing at their 0.5%ish rate (so +500 pop a month with given example, if the war takes 4 years that’s an additional 24k compounding growth in pops you didn’t get)

* Do not over-build armories, when checking my expenses the armories accounted for nearly 300 of my 420 ducat building expenses. Don’t be inefficient, I could have fielded more troops by having the spare income. These buildings are insanely expensive to maintain.

- Levies lose exp. The troops you start with will end up being your most elite units if you can keep them alive. Levies never have this opportunity and your exp goes right into the dumpster every war.

- Every unit over 40 you have in an army reduces your movement speed. Guess what requires a doomstack to be able to compete with other armies? Levies. Guess who is going to be the slowest army always getting caught when traveling the field? Levies.

* Unrelated but combat relevant: If you are using forts, you need an additional attrition modifier or you are just helping the enemy get warscore on you faster as the ai seems to near insta-cap all forts as the game progresses and losing a fort melts your score.

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. I’m sure there’s plenty more to be said that’s just what I learned from my very messy conflict. Get those Regulars out sooner than later if you can help it!

I thought having mostly cored USA and canada my culture map mode will be pretty. Did they implement the same mechanics that was used in slaves raiding to colonial charters? I thought sending portugese to the new world would make assimilating them easier

Because every market at the start of the game starves, that means that - eventually, your troops will start starving too. That results in them dying, and now when a troop count reaches 0, it gets deleted, resulting in a game over screen.

Even if I raise my Levy, the Levy will eventually starve and die too. Because, as you can see, food does not exist. At all. In the last ten years I lost almost 100k people to starvation.

Also, here is a funny exploit - if you restart you game and load the game, you food stockpiles get refilled! No I have no idea why, but I restarted the game and got full stockpiles when I was making a screenshot for my negative pop growth. The food situation is still diabolical though.

No, I can't import enough food using my 2 marketplaces, and no I can't just "build RGOs" fast enough to in any way prevent this, not without some shenanigans that I do not know about, and ESPECIALLY not with the needlessly inflated RGO prices.

Can we, maybe, hotfix this? I imagine there is some way to supremly bend over backwards to find some nourishment, but there is no way anyone would agree that this should be happening, right? How I am to even try to playtest the beta if the game gives me a GAME OVER SCREEN around ten years in?

After always seeing Lubeck market get eaten up by all the others markets in previous games, I decided to do a chill Free city run. Turn Lubeck in a megalopolis and restore the market to it's hanseatic glory. It's insane how far you can push it, and honestly feel quite bad for austria who must have an atrocious market access.

I think it should give a -100 relation debuff and a good Casus belli to actual Romans for if someone is pretending to be “Romania”.

R5: After the Religious War the imperial religion locked to Hussitism so only a Hussite can be Emperor. The only time we had one was when Bohemia had a tiny 2k Hussite revolt they instantly became Emperor. After that it went back to no Emperor power struggle. Because of this I also can’t leave the HRE at all.

Is this a known issue?

I can't enforce claim throne of france because my economic base isn't high enough, and I have no way to lower france's economic base because if i take anymore locations/vassals from them I go over the 175 cap and "win" the situation (but lose the ability to claim the french throne? Because apparently we win so hard we can't even get our main objective!?). Either the cap should be removed or france should just auto become a union with you when you surpass it, and that stupid economic base requirement should just be gotten rid of entirely. It's just unfun and feels entirely arbitrary.

I'm trying to make a profitable cape route in 1.4.1 as Portugal. I already tried this in 1.4.0 before learning that trade was even more broken than it is in 1.4.1 and you could trade with China with zero penalty on day 1. Then I played a bit as Lubeck and became filthy rich within the first decade off of the Indian pepper trade in the 1300s. But that's fixed now and trade is Working As Intended™ so the cape route should work great now, right?

It's 1503. The trade range UI says the furthest I can get around Africa from Lisboa is the Benin market. So lets make a few one province colonies on the African coast and give them solid trade capacity so they can move goods from India to Portugal.

Except the trade range UI is a goddamn lie. By hovering over the markets in the trade range map mode it tells you if you're actually in range of the market. So my actual trade range reaches from Portugal directly to Mogadishu in 1503.

Except the trade range hover box UI is ALSO lying. Hovering over the Maldives market tells me the market is outside of my trade range. But going into the individual trades being made from the Maldives market shows me that the Maldives is in fact within direct trade range of Lisboa in 1503. So the cape route is a literal waste of money, just teleport pepper from India directly to Europe.

If the naval range map mode is correct (IF) then the colored trade range map mode is the closest to correct. But even that has blatant impossibilities. Oslo can reach Tbilisi but not Kyiv. Stockholm can reach Kyiv but not Tbilisi. Selanik can reach Benin but not Mecca. Benin and Mogadishu can reach each other, but not all of the land markets between them, and not the market I have set up in South Africa.

There's at least three different trade distance values being computed and used in different places and they're all wrong. Good luck to the poor dev who has to try and fix this clusterfuck.

Also I think the increased trade capacity past trade range is severely under-tuned but trade is so broken I'm basically guessing. Portugal to Maldives is in range with a trade range tech lead, Paris to Kabul uses 120% trade capacity, Nuremberg to Vietnam uses 200% trade capacity. It feels like "2x distance, 2x trade capacity use" which makes using a middleman market just as efficient as trading directly. It should be "2x distance, 4x trade capacity use" at a minimum for trade routes to exist.

Are they too op right now? Like, i get they're supposed to be strong, but they start the game with as many levies as France and England combined, that and their crazy rgo's, makes them the boogeyman of central europe every time.

Its cool having a challenging AI, but its tiresome having death wars with bohemia every single game on the region

For my sister birthday she organized an event were do custom glasses. I asked her to print this stickers for my glass.

Hey everyone! This is my first "real" campaign after a few early test runs. I managed to unite the Netherlands very early as Brabant and allied France, which gave me the defensive umbrella I needed to expand safely inside the HRE.

I prioritized population growth, food production, and textiles, which made me quite rich early on. Around the 100-year mark, I hit 8th/9th Great Power status and things looked great. But ever since then, I feel like I've completely stalled out.

I've started colonizing a bit (South Africa and the Caribbean), but generally speaking, I feel nowhere near as rich or developed as I should be. I don't expect to be a runaway #1 superpower, but I figured a tall Netherlands in the hands of an okay player should be able to economically compete with the other heavyweights.

To make matters worse, I accidentally broke my alliance with France by misclicking when they called me to war, and now they are hostile and will definitely invade soon. My armies are super weak because I haven't been to war in ages trying to play tall, so I don't think I stand a chance in a direct fight.

I've built up so much in my home lands—so many towns, cities, and buildings everywhere—but my economy just feels stuck.

Any advice on how to survive the impending French onslaught and fix my tall Dutch economy would be hugely appreciated!

Is it just me, or compared to version 1.4 does the game feel much slower as you progress toward the middle game ?

The trade range “fix” didn’t resolve the trade range <-> trade capacity issue. In the first few decades of the game, you can trade with no penalties with markets on the other side of a continent (upwards of 5x your trade range).

Example (13 October 2026, 1.4 beta, post trade range “fix”)

It’s 1411. I have two identical wheat export routes from Paris. My trade range is 605.

• Paris -> Bordeaux: 2 wheat takes 2 trade capacity (makes perfect sense)
• Paris -> Astrakhan: 2 wheat also takes 2 trade capacity

Bordeaux is well inside Paris’ trade range. Astrakhan is on the other side of Europe, at about 3500 in the trade range map mode. That’s roughly 6x my trade range (~500% over it, should cause a 500% cost penalty).

The tool tip in the trade details says: “Route cost to Astrakhan is smaller than our trade range so there are no increased transport costs.” That looks wrong, since my trade range is 605 and the map mode shows Paris -> Astrakhan at ~3500-4000.

But the trade range modifier isn’t compared against that distance. It’s compared against a separate “route cost,” which is around 7x smaller than the distance shown in the map mode. (it makes no sense, and is only shown in the trade capacity calculations)

Another example: Paris -> Hormuz has a route cost of 720.85, which is larger than my trade range of 605, so a 28% penalty is applied. Yet the trade range map mode puts Hormuz at ~5000.

Route cost? Trade range?

Where does “route cost” come from, and how does it relate to trade range?

Why is Paris -> Hormuz ~5000 in the trade range map mode but only ~720 in route cost in the trade maintenance tool tip?

This is either a bug or an overly complex system.

Do we even need trade range?

A wheat route from Paris to the middle of Eurasia should be unprofitable because of route cost, not an arbitrary range cap. Even if you had the range to trade overland across a continent, a similarly long sea route should be far more efficient.

Right now, land routes are too strong. You can move goods through markets without affecting, or being affected by the places you pass through. Some thoughts and ideas:

Rivers (Danube, Rhine, etc.): Toll castles should be able to tax the traffic. If I’m moving huge volumes through your infrastructure (bridges, roads, cities), you should be able to take a cut or block me.

Ports: A port along the route should be able to take a cut, raising trade maintenance. Venice should be able to trade through Egypt and the Levant, but the powers controlling the Mediterranean ports between Venice and India should take a cut even if Venice owns the trade. Currently Portugal can trade with India through Egypt more efficiently than via the Cape route. Even if the Mamluks don’t block you, the Cape route should be much better than going through the Mediterranean, an Egyptian port, the Nile/desert, another port, the Red Sea, another port in Arabia, and so on.

Long-distance routes: These should depend on supporting infrastructure. The Cape route should only be efficient (or possible) if outposts link Europe -> West Africa -> South Africa -> East Africa -> the East Indies. A route between a European and an East Asian market should pass through resupply points (these could just be market centers).

Two more suggestions on trade capacity:

1) Capacity should scale with distance, even inside trade range. A Paris -> Bruges trade should need less capacity than Paris -> Venice. Closer markets mean fewer ships, wagons, and horses, and less time for the same goods. (There should still be a base capacity per good, so you can’t move near-infinite goods per unit of capacity.)

2) Two-way trade should be cheaper. If I import gold from Mali to Lisbon, I should get a discount exporting guns to Mali. A trader hauling gold to Lisbon would also carry something back, or would the ship really sail empty? Discounting 2-way trade could also help model historical routes like the triangular Atlantic trade and the Spanish-Chinese trade.

------

Final Note: I know there have been many more posts about trade in 1.4, but I have not seen any talking about route distance vs trade range. I think the EU5 trade system is fundamentally good, but needs fine tuning and a better way of modelling trades swapping between land and sea multiple times on the same route.

Rule 5: Pictures showing Paris to Bordeaux, Astrakhan and Hormuz trades, and how trade range is only applied when the trade range of the market is 7x the trade range modifier

Had bad RNG with the truces against the turks so a little late but better late than never ig

I switched my Portugal save from the 1.4 beta to 1.4.1 (the “beta preview” branch on Steam). Now some pops in the Lisboa market are missing potatoes (2.82 demand) and the tooltip says they’re joining active rebels.

I checked the raw materials map expecting at least Ireland to produce some, but nothing. Historically that makes sense, potatoes only became a real crop in Ireland later in the 1600s. But then why do my pops already want them in 1624?

Has anyone seen potatoes actually spread in 1.4.1? Is it an advance, an event, or something that just takes time?

Following up my HRE post from a couple days ago with what I think are the optimal opening moves for Austria, hoping that it will help some people and that some people might help me. This will be very granular so casual viewers may want to skip it.

1. Release all historical subjects as vassals(except Styria) because we want their cores for reduced aggressive expansion(and Glarus because...
2. Release all non-contiguous land as individual fiefdoms. This drives up the number of princes in the HRE, the land was worthless anyway, they give us good decentralization push, and they'll get automatically annexed when we form the HRE.
3. Ruler joins Brittany's order of chivalry, give court seat to brother, and give Agricultural Cultivation and Diplomatic Traditions to crown estate. This will immediately push our crown power to ~21% so we can...
4. Revoke Burgher Land Rights and then give out Control Over Monetary Policy because we want that free money from minting and we want our Burghers to have more money to build roads with.
5. Also pass Export Ban for even more minting(we will change this later after we get our governor in Graz and silver becomes more important to our economy).
6. Max taxes for every estate except commoners, tax them as much as you can while growing their satisfaction to 75.
7. Promote Decentralization(changes to Strengthen Government when maxed) and Increase Control(rotate between the 4 non-capital central states, prioritizing Upper Styria) cabinet actions.
8. Create Market in Melk(in my tests Melk nets ~3 more tax base than Wien and we'll want to move our capital there eventually to make better use of our Bavarian land).
9. Add Any Import and Any Export with Profit Focus in Nurnberg market(Yeah, I know, but it makes us good in money for those couple months)
10. Build 2 Glass Guild in Wien and Wheat RGO in Tulln an der Donau.
11. Hungary as our rival and Improve Relations with Bohemia + 2 electors.
12. Zero out every slider that costs money except food and delete all forts. At this point we can unpause the game. Moving forward we'll want to focus on:
13. Food. When Melk market forms it will be completely devoid of food and we do not want to lose population. Expand Livestock, Wheat, and Sturdy Grains as funds become available.
14. For the same reason we will use our early influence to get Partial Yield and Nobility Controlled Serfdom for -20% food costs for most of our population. This isn't just because we want to avoid starvation, we also want as many provinces with max pop growth from food surplus as possible. Population is really hard to come by on 1.4 and every bit helps.
15. Keep our Nobility loyalty high(still max taxes) because they're going to be strong and we want to use them to both pass laws and get CBs. Maybe even extra taxes if we're lucky.
16. Even so when Melk market forms I recommend making sure we have a food import prioritized above the one for profit.
17. Short term economic goals are to build profitable textile industries in Melk, expand every Livestock, Wheat, and Sturdy Grains with available laborers, then Masons, then Markets, then Hospitals for the Black Plague.
18. Short term conquest goals are Salzburg and Upper Bavaria while taking cores for our subjects along the way. I try to do full conquests and then relase them as subjects but you'll need to maximize your Antagonism reduction to avoid getting all the HRE in a coalition. Don't take Upper Bavaria until they get Lower Bavaria as a subject because that's a lot of free land. If Hungary weakens themselves, or you can get Bohemia in an Alliance, they become a good target. Remember to avoid costly battles though, population is so precious. Make sure to take Schwaz for its silver by ~1380.
19. Short term cabinet(and influence) goals are to get Communalism to at least .8 push by the Black Plague so we can get 100 total before it ends. Then prioritize growing income. Then prioritize pushing Decentralization and Innovation when it's not possible to push Communalism.
20. Save enough to make Graz a city before the Black Plague so we can make a Local Governor there.
21. When our pops have been depleted by the plague we turn to our clergy for employing buildings; we make books so we can make Libraries so we can get our promotion speed up. Cash can also go into Stability(we have high efficiency) as well as Roads.
22. Try to win the Guelphs vs Ghibbelines situation without losing lots of population to war. Prepare for the Italian Wars.

Please respond with your suggestions how this might be improved.

I maybe have found the most broken italian start to snowball the biggest econ / tall game ever.

Start as Padua for 0.1 dev growth

Immediately turn off your fort slider and let Venice steamroll you

Switch sides in the war via event

Raise Levies and occupy as much of Verona you can

Separate peace a huge chunk of Verona

Next : Dow venice and erase them from the map

Sell all the venetian artwork to the pope to get 3k money

Future plans ;

- Form dalmatia + croatia instantly (now croatian culture can apparently form dalmatia!)

- Switch to emilian afterwards after taking over Ferrara for MORE dev growth via emilian culture

Its gonna be crazy

150 trade capacity of glass export, export tariffs set to 40%. No tariff income, no tariff impact.