Court Expanses

[Orxan]

First of all, props to devs. This game series has had a great potential and it gets more interesting with new games.
But, I have to stress it strongly that this game needs a lot more guide, tool-tips and explanations.
Many of the things you either have to guess or figure it out by yourself.
My main bottleneck right now comes at Court Expenses. I build huge empires with late game hard difficulty, and when I have a Zero Admin ruler with Bad administration, it screws up everything. I manage to survive, but I would like to get more information on from where does this Court expenses come from? does it come from demesne size or population number, or vassal count or governor or all of them together? I have looked into official Manual and there is not much explanation. and in late game you get -dozens of thousands because of court expenses. It would be nice to see further details if you hower over your court expanses tool tip.
Another big thing is buildings. What unlocks what, certain buildings requires some stuff but not mentioned as well. you are just left with mostly randomness or things that you figure out.
I remember from older games of Field of Glory, you had to build 3 level 1s to be able to build 1 level 2. I see it is not the same anymore, or is it?

[kezthezek]

Ok, so court expenses comes mainly from number of buildings.

So more regions -> more buildings -> more costs.

Think of it like an abstract "administrative cost", the bigger you are, the more it costs to maintain things.

It's imperative if you get a bad admin king to not expand, unless you can capture capitals which can sustain you for a while (you get a large influx of money when you capture capitals).

Assassinate ruler card is very unreliable so you can't just get rid of your king that easily. The best option is to make him an army leader and let him do some fighting but that comes at -0.5 auth cost, which can be hard to swallow. Again, not very reliable.

This comes with experience when I say that you should always run a LARGE budget surplus in higher diff. A bad admin is the strongest hard cap on expansion and it forces you to turtle to some degree, especially if you don't have a strong economy. So try to aim to always be in the yellow (cap exceed) money wise and you'll be mostly fine.

[kezthezek]

And I agree with you, the mechanic is not explained at all, devs should definitely fix that since it's one of the most important mechanics in the game.

[Orxan]

Originally posted by kezthezek:

Ok, so court expenses comes mainly from number of buildings.

So more regions -> more buildings -> more costs.

Think of it like an abstract "administrative cost", the bigger you are, the more it costs to maintain things.

It's imperative if you get a bad admin king to not expand, unless you can capture capitals which can sustain you for a while (you get a large influx of money when you capture capitals).

Assassinate ruler card is very unreliable so you can't just get rid of your king that easily. The best option is to make him an army leader and let him do some fighting but that comes at -0.5 auth cost, which can be hard to swallow. Again, not very reliable.

This comes with experience when I say that you should always run a LARGE budget surplus in higher diff. A bad admin is the strongest hard cap on expansion and it forces you to turtle to some degree, especially if you don't have a strong economy. So try to aim to always be in the yellow (cap exceed) money wise and you'll be mostly fine.

Where do you get that info about buildings? It makes sense, but I could not find anything about it.
Is there nothing else increasing it other than buildings and Rulers and cost reduction buildings?

I know all what you say already. I have been in money cap exceed but it doesnt matter when you have bad administrator with 0 admin. Also Courthouses + Assasinate ruler card.
But all of this I learned after getting this crap ruler. So I had to roll 20 years for that first Assasinate ruler card. and building courthouses also doesnt take 2 turns. Still managed to stay on plus but it is very stressing me out.

Also, off topic, maybe you can give me some tips on how to establish stable vassals, I notice some of them are -100 -30 authority some of them are +100. I started removing their claims from each other including mines, with logic that it is the problem, also maybe their bancrupcy.

[waku waku]

It works basically like decadence from Field of Glory: Empires, except you can't actually see the breakdown unlike decadence, which is awful. Some sort of building browser is also simply a must have.

You have to build multiple same level buildings to get the next tier here as well. But I'm not sure what it takes to actually get to the third tier, or if it even exists. Courthouses are clearly the most important building in the game, you can get them by constructing a Mesne Lord Manor, then upgrading it to a Lord's Manor. They were actually nerfed in the last update, even though I don't think most players are even aware of how necessary they are and how they work...

[thekossack]

As for bad admin characters, Ive found that is vitally important to keep an eye on the heir. If he has a bad admin rating, make him a Peer somewhere then use Embezzlement/Witch Trial to get rid of him. In my Fati grand campaign, I have done this twice to Admin 0 rating heirs. In both cases, the next son in line had a 5 rating. Dodged bullets and gained exceptional rulers.

[Grognard]

I like the concept of court expenses, but think it needs some transparency. The changes made in the latest Beta definitely increase the impact, since I went from around 10K to almost 2x that. I had to disable the Beta to keep playing -- I suppose I could go bankrupt, but it was -7000 per turn, and there are not many viable levers to pull to address it in the short term. I've started hitting my presumptive heir with "Send Councillor" to hopefully raise his admin stats. Since there is not much data in-game, it becomes a bit of trial and error.

[PocusFR]

Having a better breakdown would be nice, I concur.
Court Expense is rather dynamic. Even if you lose a ton of money initially from the beta, it will be reduced as your huge treasury (probably) shrinks. In the meantime, higher Court Expenses also mean more bonus Legacy Points.

[Grognard]

So I tested it out and went back about 10 turns from when I started running an ~ -7000 deficit with the latest Beta. Pre-Beta, I had been making in the thousands at that point, but was now down to about +200 with the Beta loaded. I went slowly, and really thought about expansion and building chains. All said, I actually like the increased court costs, because it reduces surplus and creates more tension for a large empire. At least for me, it would be helpful on the region screen to see a breakdown of the gold earned AND the amount of court expenses created by that region. That gives the player insight and enables strategic trade offs. I still don't have a good sense of WHICH buildings, etc., increase court costs. I assumed it was authority/governance (i.e, someone has to pay for that infrastructure), so I went went crazy demolishing alarm bells and town criers. But that did not seem to impact court expenses, at least that I could see. What it did do, however, was open more space for commerce buildings, which helped in the end.

[waku waku]

After playing as the HRE I feel the court expenses are probably too much for them. Like, the Emperor can handle it on top of the vassals, but the others are stuck with either low authority due to small demesne size, or costs that can get out of hand. And they don't get the benefits that Emperor gets aside from protection. Probably would be top contenders for which nation is the most frustrating to play.

[PocusFR]

I'll double-check that, but note that I'm on vacation, so I'm not doing any new coding for now. However, I'll check the forum and usually tackle 5-minute bugs, as it's faster to fix them than to log them for further inspection.
Bugs in the beta will not be hotfixed unless quite troublesome (as this Absorb Vassal issue), but 1.03 official will benefit from fixes.

[kezthezek]

I feel there's something very wrong with the court expenses in 1.03.

Save file: https://file.pizza/download/n8zjfv2u

Sometimes during peace time and always when declaring war (without occupying territories) it's increasing exponentially until it becomes unsustainable.

In my current game it's up to -22k (!!!) and increasing by 1k-1.5k every month, while my total income is about 19k.

A couple of turns ago I was exceeding the budget and 4 turns later I'm going bankrupt. This is unplayable. You either need to properly explain what these mean or reduce the swings because I'm at a point where even if I have 15K+ I'm afraid to do anything since I might be bankrupt a few turns later.

[kezthezek]

Also in the save file above Mazovia and Denmark have been at war for 135 turns !!! (they have a warscore of 1350 or something like that).

Hungary and Mazovia have been at it for no less than 125 turns as well (also a crazy war score).

I'm having a 5 turn war and my economy crashes but the AI can do this for hundreds of turns ? No way this is not a bug.

[PatRat]

I'm playing as France, version 1.03. Experienced level of difficulty. I occupy most of modern day France.

I've never paid any attention to court expenses or any other expenses, except my army. I've been running with a minimal reserve of cash. I've gone negative a couple of times, but nothing game breaking. Even when I got a mediocre administrator sovereign, followed by a horrible 0 administrator heir, I still managed to stay in the black. I've been at war off and on for almost 200 turns.



It's my understanding that buildings are the major contributor to court expenses. I grow population as fast as possible and am continuously building stuff as soon as a slot opens. But I've never even looked at court expenses, I don't even know where to look for them. But somehow they don't seem to be an issue for me.

Anyway, If some people are having problems with court expenses in 1.03. I just want to point out that I'm not experiencing that issue.

[kezthezek]

Save game I provided above is from turn ~320, England, Very Hard, Acceding Empire with Golden Age.

Goes like this:

Turn 320, Peace, Course Expenses is ~16k, Declare War
Turn 321, No occupied territories, CE is ~18k
Turn 322, 3 enemy regions occupied, CE is ~20k
Turn 323, 3 enemy region occupied, CE is ~21k
Turn 324, 5 enemy region occupied, CE is ~22k, Sue for peace

After peace is negotiated and I get 3 regions, in about 4-5 turns the CE drop back down to 16K.

A few questions:

1. Why does CE shoot up as soon as I declare war, without occupying enemy territory ? What's increasing it ?
2. Why there's a 6k swing building up in a few turns ? Imagine having a budget income of +3k (which is quite good imho) and having to deal with bankruptcy 5 turns later despite having a very strong economical output.

[Arakus]

In peace time units need less money, at war they need the full amount.
I think trade is also a bit more handicapped then.