Debt increasing with every conquest

[mercurydawn]

I'm currently dead broke, having just conquered Ireland from the vikings. I was gobbling up towns and resources at a very high rate, walled cities 2-3 at a time every two turns, or knocking out multiple resource hubs at once.

Noticed I went from several thousand mid conquest available per turn to just being broke, and the debt increased with every conquest except one.... I took a port (near cork down at the bottom, can't recall the game name). It halved my debt, and now I'm several hundred in the negative.

I also had to give out virtually everything in my estates to keep my worthless nobility happy. I have a conquest of Scotland or the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom ahead of me. From what I've read here, Scotland doesn't have much in terms of estates to give out, but since I don't grasp the damn mechanic wittling away my currency, be it estates, being a large faction or whatever it is.... I'm not sure if taking a low estate territory is wise. Especially given my Treasury's allergic reaction to ever more conquest..... the more I conquer, the worst it gets. It makes no damn sense to me.

I have only a handful of repairs needed, cant be it cause they usually repair in a few turns automatically. I did increase the armor on a few troops, but the downward trend had already started, and would have a noticing debt increase only when I conquered stuff that really should pay me, not break me.

Never heard of a bank robber falling into debt after looting the damn vault. Makes no damn sense.

[The Blind One]

It's the corruption mate.

Once you grow to a certain size almost every province will get 100% corruption meaning that yes ... every new town you conquer just becomes a new debtor for you to pay off. I've discovered this myself as I've just conquered the whole of England + Scotland and am now invading Ireland ... and my income tanked to -6000 :'D I'm pretty sure I'm gonne go bankrupt next time I boot it up.

The only way I've found to counteract and mitigate this somewhat is to build LOTS and LOTS of court houses and heavily invest in governors with scribes so they decrease corruption. (and focus build income provinces early so you don't go into debt when the corruption wave hits you from the expansionism you went through)

Estates themselves don't do ANYTHING at all ... seriously ... they are just fluff ... completely useless mechanic. Governors have limited uses as they are capable of reducing corruption but estates?

Literally the only thing you do with them is assign them to nobility who ask for them and you can't have too many personally held or otherwise they'll get a hissy fit with you. They provide 0 bonus to you if you hold them personally in any shape or form and 0 bonus for you if you hand them out other then the nobility stops nagging you for some random estate. They are just that, fluff, an annoyance for you to click every time you conquer a new province. That's all. There's no absolutely zero benefit to having them in-game.

''They do nothing'' except make your nobles pissed off if you have theoretically too much. The game might as well randomly assign them for you, it would make your life easier and provide you with zero negatives either way.

It's one of the most pointless mechanics I've ever seen in a game. It only serves to annoy you.

I don't even hand them out if I don't need to, all my nobles are still content with me as long as they have above 0 loyalty hahaha.

I have 40+ estates :P

[Hoellenbote]

Can somebody shed more light into the mechanic? How does it actually work? How is it calculated? Having a hard time finding any great information on it...

[Mile pro Libertate]

Originally posted by The_Blind_D00D:

It's the corruption mate.


Estates themselves don't do ANYTHING at all ... seriously ... they are just fluff ... completely useless mechanic. Governors have limited uses as they are capable of reducing corruption but estates?

Literally the only thing you do with them is assign them to nobility who ask for them and you can't have too many personally held or otherwise they'll get a hissy fit with you. They provide 0 bonus to you if you hold them personally in any shape or form and 0 bonus for you if you hand them out other then the nobility stops nagging you for some random estate. They are just that, fluff, an annoyance for you to click every time you conquer a new province. That's all. There's no absolutely zero benefit to having them in-game.

''They do nothing'' except make your nobles pissed off if you have theoretically too much. The game might as well randomly assign them for you, it would make your life easier and provide you with zero negatives either way.

It's one of the most pointless mechanics I've ever seen in a game. It only serves to annoy you.

I don't even hand them out if I don't need to, all my nobles are still content with me as long as they have above 0 loyalty hahaha.

I have 40+ estates :P

Originally posted by Chief Einherjar:

Can somebody shed more light into the mechanic? How does it actually work? How is it calculated? Having a hard time finding any great information on it...

The estates actually do give a bonus to you if your king personally holds them: they increase his Influence rating. This is also a way you can raise the Influence of a younger member with little experience, like for me as Alba, when Aed started getting pretty old I gave some estate to my heir so his influence would be higher when Aed died than it'd otherwise be.

If your king personally holds too many estates, the nobles get a -2 Loyalty malus. Giving a nobleman an estate gives him a Loyalty Bonus, "Estates Holder," of +2. As far as I can tell, this is capped, so giving a nobleman 2 estates or 3 won't give him +4 or +6 Loyalty: it stays at +2 Loyalty.

Now this is on Legendary, so I'm not sure how it works for other difficulties right now.

On Legendary you also get a -1 loyalty malus for all the nobles arcoss the board...the malus is literally just called "Difficulty" in the tooltip lol...so that also impacts things somewhat.


It's sort of a balance act, because if you give away all your estates your king's Influence drops, which can decrease nobles' Loyalty, plus lower your "Imperium" (forget what they're calling it in Thrones now), but if you hoard them you get -2 Loyalty for all of them.

I guess you could get to a point where you have so much faction tech and Influence that you wouldn't have to worry about estates at all, but in my game right now I can see where that could be anything but the case. As Alba, I get a +2 Loyalty bonus as a faction trait, and without that, many of my nobles would only have 2 Loyalty without giving them estates; early game, all my nobles would've had 1 to 3 Loyalty and a couple would've got down to 0. Even later in the game right now, if I hadn't made a bee line down the relevant Civic tech chain, half my nobles would be at 4 Loyalty.

And again, this is for a Gaelic faction with Loyalty bonuses, so if I was another faction, and I didn't do the Civic tech as fast as I did, I'd be looking at 2 or 1 Loyalty for some high rank generals and governors, and then all it would take is a faction dilemma event to put them into rebellion. Plus, you have wives and aquired traits for nobles that can lower Loyalty -1 or -2.

So I guess with estates, a lot comes down to which faction you're playing as, what difficulty setting you're on, what events happen on the map, random events, wife traits, and whether you want to, or can afford to, focus on Civic techs.

Depending on your situation, the +2 Loyalty from giving an estate could make all the difference in keeping a noble from insurrection, and just one general taking off in rebellion at the wrong place and time could spiral out of control where your entire kingdom is falling apart, so I wouldn't go so far as saying estates are useless or fluff.

Now, from what I understand, the upcoming patch is going to change how estates work somewhat. I guess they are going to run 100 gold maintenance cost for each estate not held by the king.

[Hoellenbote]

I was more about corruption, i understand how estates work :D

[crtaylor1]

This game is terribly unbalanced. The loyalty process seems out of wack. You do not have enough resources to prevent a civil war. The economic system is too limited. You go bankrupt for conquering other factions. And you can not keep up with the enemy replacements. They just keep pouring in while you struggle to recruit any.

[mercurydawn]

That sadly sounds.... brutally accurate to how it works in real life crtaylor1.

I have a small force guarding a road by Wales and England not particularly upgraded, just some fast moving calvary for grabbing resources if England ever was to move against me while in Ireland, I'll disband them, use what is flowing in to slowly build up the executioner's noose building (whatever it is called) and anything else that reduces corruption (churches maybe?)

What are the various ways to reduce corruption? What civilian techs, what traits to upgrade, buildings to hold, etc? And why was only my port immune to corruption, seems the only building I took that didn't have a negative? What makes my sailors and their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ down by the docks so wholesome in this period?

[mercurydawn]

Oh yeah, just started replaying my campaign, switched my research from Community to Leadership, the second one in "Strong Leader" just took me out of the whole from several hundred negative to +2806.

It would be higher, but I rehired my general from my deleted calvary force for a army that just lost it's commander from old age, deleting his calvary force brought it from the negatives into the positives, but less than +200. Was looking at several dozen turns to fix this..... but when I hired him back, my Treasury plunged way the hell down into the negatives again.

This means your individual experienced generals have a hugh cost to your Treasury already, not just estates, as I didn't gain or lose any in his firing and rehiring. Given the corruption reduction of strong leadership (-10% corruption all provinces) kicked in, I'm assuming the general was corrupt. Perhaps not, but that's the corollary I'm taking. If someone knows better, let us know how that works.

I'm going to be upgrading every anti-corruption building I can for a while, and keep peaceful with everyone. Just hang everyone on the scaffold till my coffees are hugh again.

[mercurydawn]

Oh, the two Irish economic targets I hit that cut my debt down when corruption was killing me was Cathair Domnaill with it's Grand Kiln at level 5, taken from the brown Irish Sea Vikings kingdom, and the port of Ard Mor, it has a level 4 copper foundry and level 5 fishing port.

They give you money instead of debt when corruption is killing you. I've taken similar economic targets, and they didn't benefit me at all. I don't quite know why, sure someone will work out a theory as to why, so players in the future can adjust their conquest strategies accordingly to climb out of debt and solve their issues. Seems fairly random to me right now.

[Hoellenbote]

For my Irish Viking game i figured out, that much off my income was from trade, so when i go to war with big factions (big tradepartners, it seems) everything just goes to hell.

From what i figured out now:

Governance gives you - % corruption, but you can only have 10 governors.
The tech gives you -10 % corruption.
The Lawhill / Thing (red building) can give the province and neighbours - 20 %.
There are certain Great Hall buildings, that come with - X % corruption.

[mercurydawn]

Level Ten generals can own up to 20 estates (I'm writing this prior to the first patch).

I had two level Ten generals, so had to give out t them alone 40 estates. I think I'm playing on hard, I had only two ultimate victory landings and the consensus is that means I am playing hard.

Others want estates too, but bottomed out a few hours ago to the point nobody is asking for more estates, my governors are quite old, and sedated, and my king has a absurd number of them. This is compared to earlier in the game where I barely seemed to have any.

While 20 estates sounds absurd for one general to have, you have to consider I have every tech researched, stack army is full with elite units, and they can take down a fully upgraded and defended, with a full additional field army garrisoned inside with the home force, in two turns (one if you have artillery I guess, I only started using it), and have hardly any loss of life, being able to attack city after city after city without pause. These are great guys to have around, and they quickly pay for themselves.

Thing is, I had two, and had a couple almost level 10 as well, and that was a big drain on my estates. But there is a upper limit, once these guys manage to die (of old age) the general who inherits doesn't get all those estates. I haven't had anyone ask for one in a very long while.

Just stay focused on upgrading your anti-corruption buildings and tech. Priests do help with loyalty, so I research a priest first, then 5 quartermaster stacks, then return to priests. I've stopped adding siegecraft a while ago, realized it does really nothing if you have a good balanced stack.

[mercurydawn]

I completely conquered the map, upgraded everything I could. I got a 111 estates.

I ummm.... couldn't earn the last medal, to control all the saint buildings at once (think I do, dunno what I did wrong, no rebel holdings, no hidden enemies, everything max upgraded). So in theory if I just don't know how to upgrade things, then perhaps more that 111 estates are possible. Some cities just don't want to upgrade anymore.

Some things to know about loyalty and it's link to estates..... I had in my last hour of gameplay a lower ranking commander, who stayed -2 loyalty even though he went from 0 Estates to nearly 30, no change. What made that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Marxist happy wasn't more estates, but being given a office. Had I not done this, I never would of been able to count the estate total..... cause my king ran out of icon spots for possessing estates.

After initial periods of gameplay, when food is sufficient (+200 farm) stop giving generals the forager ability, just do a priest, then quarter masters, then all priests again, and if you can still go after that upgrade the bodyguard. I consider mobility better than the priest's ability to stop corruption, but in bad situations you can reverse this.

For governors, do one priest, then all scribes, then finish off the priests. Makes some sense to make them siege resistant.

Upgrade your leadership capacity as soon as possible.

Still not sure if church buildings reduce corruption, but some buildings do, like the noose mound building, and two others I can't recall the names of, up in scotland, reduced corruption.

I'm not willing to drag the game out any longer, have a good century till 1066 and that's like, 400 turns of nothingness.