How do I get loyalty higher than influence really quick, and how to lower influence

[shower_room1944]

Idk anything about the estates.

[Marquoz]

You don't "get loyalty higher than influence really quick." Loyalty slowly grows over time to the equilibrium value. If you want that value to be higher than influence, most of the privileges you grant should boost loyalty by more than influence, or at least boost them equally. Then you wait.

Note that one particular privilege reigns supreme for this, Supremacy Over The Crown. It's usually (but not always) a nobility privilege. Granting it to one estate boosts the loyalty equilibrium of all estates by 10 (and their influence by the same amount), no matter how many you have. It's by far the most important privilege in the game.

[shower_room1944]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

You don't "get loyalty higher than influence really quick." Loyalty slowly grows over time to the equilibrium value. If you want that value to be higher than influence, most of the privileges you grant should boost loyalty by more than influence. Then you wait.

Note that one particular privilege reigns supreme for this, Supremacy Over The Crown. It's usually (but not always) a nobility privilege. Granting it to one estate boost the loyalty equilibrium of all estates by 10, no matter how many you have. It's by far the most important privilege in the game.

How do I lower influence? The nobility has 100 of it

[Marquoz]

Here's the link to the main wiki page on estates:

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Estates#Privileges

In the upper right corner, there are links to individual estates. You'll find a list of all their privileges there.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Danger_WW2_Danger_Survival_Kid:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

You don't "get loyalty higher than influence really quick." Loyalty slowly grows over time to the equilibrium value. If you want that value to be higher than influence, most of the privileges you grant should boost loyalty by more than influence. Then you wait.

Note that one particular privilege reigns supreme for this, Supremacy Over The Crown. It's usually (but not always) a nobility privilege. Granting it to one estate boost the loyalty equilibrium of all estates by 10, no matter how many you have. It's by far the most important privilege in the game.

How do I lower influence? The nobility has 100 of it

It's hard. You can directly lower influence by revoking privileges, but if your loyalty is lower than your influence, you can't do this. If you don't call diets, influence that was increased by calling them will eventually expire. Influence that's a result of events will also eventually expire. You can lower influence by seizing crownland, which lowers each estate's influence a little each time you do it because they control less of your nation. Developing provinces will have a minor effect as well.

Edit: and, as grotaclas mentioned, you can pass government reforms that lower influence, though again that's not something you can do "quickly" unless you have a lot of reform progress saved up. I'm a big fan of those reforms.

Overall, though, be very careful with event choices and granting privileges.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Danger_WW2_Danger_Survival_Kid:

How do I lower influence? The nobility has 100 of it

Is the sum of influence modifiers exactly 100 or is it higher and just capped at 100. If it is higher, lowering the influence might not really help. But AFAIK you can fulfill all conditions which require higher loyalty than influence by having exactly 100 loyalty and exactly 100 influence.
If the influence is just 100, lowering it could help you. There are several government reforms which either increase or lower the influence of one or all estates. Changing them is one of the few quick ways to lower estate influence.

[Marquoz]

Here's a screenshot from my current campaign illustrating my points:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2943279951

I've highlighted the estate with the lowest current loyalty, the Jains. Note that that loyalty (37%) is still greater than their influence (35%). I've revoked most estate privileges over the last couple decades to prepare for the Age of Absolutism, which is coming soon.

Jain loyalty is boosted by Supremacy Over The Crown and two government reforms, Maintain Balance of Power and Decentralized Bureaucracy. I love, love, love both of those reforms. They make it easy to seize crownland and revoke privileges as needed. The white circle of my crownland isn't quite 100%--it's 96.97%. But you can see that I've had no issues with boosting it. High crownland has many crucial benefits, including lower estate influence. But the two biggies are higher max absolutism and faster government reform progress gain.

[MasterYi]

1: If you want a quick one time boost, sell crownlands for 10% loyalty, but you are also giving then slightly more influence by reducing your crownland by giving it to your estates.

2: Monopolies give 10% loyalty and 0% influence, there are also privileges for each of the estates that give 10% loyalty and 10% influence.

3: Pick Government Reforms that lower Estate Influence or raise Estate Loyalty and try to avoid the opposite.

4: There is a Gov Reform that prevents raising Estate Influence via manually summoning the diet, pick this if you call a diet every 5 years (which can stack up to 25% influence for all estates…)

5: Forget about Loyalty and Influence completely, pick Espionage Ideas and pick the Tier 2 Gov Reform “Puppeteer the Nobility” which allows you to revoke privileges regardless of Loyalty and Influence.

If you cannot complete Espionage Ideas fast enough, you can pick another Tier 2 Reform and switch back later, or use the excess Gov Progress to boost your Gov Capacity.

Espionage isn’t really a good idea group though, but I suppose it synergises with the other Gov Reform that gives you +1 Monarch Admin Skill and +0.20 Yearly Corruption, since Espionage also reduces Corruption by the same amount.

[RCMidas]

Man, I always forget Bharat and Hindustan can just be instantly formed when you have the right cores.

[Marquoz]

Doing so can definitely be worthwhile for the perma-claims you get on the remaining Indian lands.

[MasterYi]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Doing so can definitely be worthwhile for the perma-claims you get on the remaining Indian lands.

I’m curious, how do you play after you completed all achievements?

Do you still play the mathematically correct way by blobbing hard WC style?

Or do you set other goals and self-limitations?

(I wonder, how to make the game not feel stale? There’s no shifting meta, the most efficient method has been discovered for years.

Should EU4 have regular patches like League of Legends with constant changes to keep the game fresh, for new metas to develop? Or would it not work cuz different genres?)

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by MasterYi:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Doing so can definitely be worthwhile for the perma-claims you get on the remaining Indian lands.

I’m curious, how do you play after you completed all achievements?

Do you still play the matey mathematically correct way by blobbing hard WC style?

Or do you set other goals and self-limitations?

I do a few things:

1) I play nations I've ignored for years, like Vijayanagar in the current campaign I just shared a screenshot from. How do they play now, after multiple patches? That's always interesting to see.

2) I try to duplicate previous achievement runs under new patches to see if the optimal strategy has changed much. I generally don't finish them off, but I'll play them long enough to be able to accurately forecast the result. Then I can answer forum questions about those patched nations with confidence.

3) I try something I haven't done before, like going heavily into the colonization game with Lotharingia.

But it's almost impossible for me to resist taking optimal approaches to all of these things. Once I know what works best, doing anything else runs counter to my nature.

[Lord Kraken]

Achievements are just artificial pre-set goals. The sandbox aspect of EU4 lets you set your own goals (aka achievements) as a nation of your choosing. Mini-maxing got old for me many moons ago, but the game is still fresh because there are thousands upon thousands of ways to play. I'm playing as Mewar now, which is a totally new geopolitical situation for me, different from past runs as VJ, Bengal or Bahamanis, and the "achievements" I'm going for are ones I set on the fly (admittedly using the mission tree for some guidance).