Is it just a bad idea to keep Landowners in power?

[KnightGoblin8]

At launch Landowners used to be generally worse than any other interest groups. Has there been any news related to 1.7 if playing conservative and authoritarian countries has become any more viable alternative? Or is it always better to become more liberal?

[Damedius]

It depends on a lot of factors. What is Ideology of the IG Leader? What laws do you need to pass? (Serfdom/Slavery).

For instance with Russia, when you get the heir that is a Market Liberal, it's not bad to have the Landowner's in power.

[endymionologist]

The Landowners are modeled to generally prefer a constrained government, so if you want to play a run where you just kind of go along with things and mostly get your enjoyment from watching what shenanigans the AI get to with each other, they're fine; otherwise they are always going to either be directly stopping you from doing what you want or being something that you have to strategically work around. Even the other Conservative IGs will leave you with more things to do as a player, more *play*, and that may be more important to you than the joys of keeping the poor in their chains and whatnot. Or not, it's play, have fun.

[Oracle]

think of landowers as potential lazze faire, once u get it, u can kill em (they are good as reformers too btw, just in case)

[D-Black Catto]

It's possible to keep them fairly strong by keeping certain laws in place, but the more industrial you get, the less wealth they will have due to being replaced by capitalists and it will be harder and harder to keep them influential, much less powerful.

All my "conservative" games had religious faction being dominant due to state religion, charity hospitals and religious schools, sometimes supported by the blues or the oranges, sometimes ruling on their own.

[Ninephoenix]

Landowners are good if you go industry banned early game on countries like Dutch indies, India and Russia. Because industry banned makes aristocrats give a ton of their money to the investment pool. Agrarianism is good too for a while on countries with powerful agriculture bonuses.
There's also something to be said for not rushing through laws creating a ton of radicals or revolutions that damage the country. And landowner's contribution pool bonus is pretty good early game.
But yeah they fall off, especially when you get to electricity.

[Kiethoo]

Land Owners are bad.

JUNKERS however are good, and should be kept strong and in power with a loyal Royalist IG leader. The Junkers will keep the filthy bucktoothed peasentry inline while you handle more important things a Kaiser needs to handle.