Development Cost reduction guide

In this guide are listed various ways of reducing the development cost of your provinces. You often want to develop your provinces for various reasons, such as having spare administrative, diplomatic or military points (mana) or having difficulty getting institutions, such as playing a non-european nation in the early game. This guide outlines various ways to make developing provinces cheaper and more efficient.

Introduction

One of EU4's core mechanics is province development, which basically means how developed a province is. It has no exact real life analogue, it can be considered a mix of infrastructure and population. It was introduced to the game to help encourage different playstyles and try to kind of model the urbanization and growth of cities and countries over time. Development is often measured by country, but it is increased by province. You can get development from missions or events, and you can also develop provinces yourself, using the three types of power points in the game - administrative, diplomatic and military, also known as mana, which you get every month depending on how much you're earning.

Each province has a development cost, which is the cost of developing the province by 1. You can develop the province with each of the mana types, and by investing a certain amount of one type of mana will increase it's respective development by 1. There are three types of development - administrative, diplomatic and military.

Administrative primarily increases your tax income among other things, military increases your manpower among other things, and diplomatic - arguably the most important development type - increases your trade and production income, among other things. In addition, increasing any of the kinds of development in your provinces increases your force limit (the amount of troops your state can levy without taking a penalty), including unique units, building slots, and also complicates things for potential occupiers, making the province more costly to take.

Increasing development also increases the further cost of developing the province - each time you develop a province, the next development will cost 3% more. The cost of development is same for all of the mana types.

There are many, many ways to reduce development in your state, such as religion, ideas, and estates. This guide will look at general ways to decrease modifiers, then it'll look at some cases where heavy modifier stacking is possible, such as Amsterdam.

But...

Why develop a province?

1) Institutions

Each time you develop a province, the province gains points towards an institution not in that province (first it develops the earlier institutions, so if both renaissance and colonialism has spawned, and the province has neither, it will gain renaissance progress first). This is very useful when playing a non-european nation, because the first three institutions can take a while to reach you - Renaissance can take 50-100 years to reach the far east of Asia. Being able to acquire the institution soon after it has spawned can give you an, albeit temporary, edge over your neighbors.

2) Gold mines

Gold may be the main source of income in the early game for many nations, especially in regions with little tax or trade income, and even if a nation is in a wealthy region, gold mines provide a positive boon that can put one ahead of their neighbors. Increasing a gold mine's diplomatic development makes the gold mine more productive and generates more income. Gold mines have a caveat - they have a chance to deplete by half with each month tick.

3) Spare mana

If you have spare mana, and don't have other needs to take care of (such as coring, inflation, absolutism, generals, ideas), it is often best to invest the mana in the development of provinces.

Development can be a boon if the player is exercising a non-violent/'tall' playstyle, as well as if you need to build up a powerbase as a small country, or you need to gain more autonomy from your overlord.

Why is it important to stack these modifiers?

Because your monarch power is precious and you should try to minmax it's spending as much as you can.

Autonomy

A good thing to mention is the impact of autonomy. Autonomy denotes how much control your state has over the particular province (as opposed to other powers, such as estates, local lords and minority groups). Autonomy reduces the effects of development, meaning that you won't gain the full fruits of your development. That's why it's imperative to keep autonomy as low as possible. Often, if your country has high development but you feel that it doesn't have an adequate forcelimit or income, you don't need to beeline for quantity - you should take a look at your autonomy, see what impacts it, and try to work towards reducing it.

All images are credit to the EU4 wiki and the Europa Universalis IV game

Terrain

Terrain is the most important part of developing a province. Before developing, you must pick a province with the best terrain, before factoring in other things. The best terrain type is Farmlands, which gives -5% development cost. You can see all the development cost modifiers by terrain in the image below.


























The best terrain type for development is Farmlands, which gives a -5% development cost (all other terrain types, except grasslands, add to development cost instead of reducing it). Grasslands is also a decent terrain type for developing, as it doesn't have any development cost penalty.

Drylands adds a 5% dev cost penalty, though it isn't as bad. You can develop on a drylands province if you don't have any grasslands or farmlands (or alternatively, you have a grasslands province, but the drylands province has either Cloth or Cotton).

The worst provinces for development are Glacial (really rare) and Desert, both giving a 50% development cost penalty. These provinces are really costly to develop in, and oftentimes not recommended.

A province might also have climate modifiers. There are three, and they're all negatives. Tropical and arid give a 15% dev cost penalty, while arctic gives a huge 50% penalty.

Province and state modifiers

In this section, I will cover provincial and state modifiers, such as trade goods, edicts and more.

Provincial modifiers

There's two trade goods that give -10% development cost in the province - Cloth and Cotton. It's worth looking for provinces with these trade goods, so that you can get the cheapest development cost possible.


Centers of Trade (CoTs) are also a very important thing. It costs 200 ducats to upgrade one to Level 2, giving you trade modifiers and -5% development cost, and 1000 ducats to upgrade it to Level 3, giving you -10% development cost.




Since you have read the first section, I will now name the provinces that have Farmlands, Cloth/Cotton and a Center of Trade:
Lublin, Baghdad, Macedonia, Cairo (high dev - not worth developing), Regensburg, London, Milan (high dev - not worth developing), Prague and Amsterdam (I'll talk about this in the last section).

If you have the trade bonus for trading in Tropical Wood, it gives you -5% more development cost.





Additionally, capital cities get development cost reduction based on the development of the entire nation - the more development your nation has, the cheaper it is to develop in the capital. It is -5% development cost per 100 development, up to -50% development cost (at 1000 development).

State modifiers

If you have the province in a state, you can use the Encourage Development edict in the state, giving you -10% development cost.

If the province has no devastation, and you have positive stability, you can gain progress to prosperity. Prosperity is really strong, giving you -10% development cost and 25% goods produced modifier.

If you have a trade company, you can't use edicts or have prosperity, however, one of the trade company upgrades gives -15% development cost to the entire state (doesn't matter who owns the rest of the provinces).

Religion

Religion is another big modifier for developing provinces. Many religions have bonuses that give you development cost modifiers. Religion is important if you want to get the maximum dev cost reduction.

All of the dev cost modifiers by religion:

Protestant - Organized through bishops aspect gives -5% dev cost, costs 100 church power.

Orthodox - Icon of Christ Pantocrator gives -10% dev cost (and -10% construction cost), costs 10 Patriarch Authority.

Anglican - 10% development cost as one of the religion's tenets.

Muslim religions - Maliki school gives -10% dev cost, you need to either be a maliki nation yourself, or ally/have a subject maliki nation, and have them at atleast 150 relations, which then costs 50 admin points to get.

Shinto - Adaptive Isolationism level gives -10% dev cost. Japanese nations start at Adaptive, can change through Incidents.

Tengri - Theravada syncretic faith gives -10% dev cost.

Fetishism - Buddhist cult gives -10% dev cost.

Estates, Institutions and Technologies

Estates

There's 2 estates that give direct development cost modifiers, one is for Indian nations, one is for everyone else.

Burghers

Burghers are the merchant estate for non-Indian nations. If the Burghers are over 60 loyalty and over 75% influence, they will give a -10% development cost modifier.



Vaishyas

Vaishyas are an estate for Indian nations. If the Vaishyas control a province, and they are over 60 loyalty, the province gets -20% development cost.

Institutions

The Renaissance institution, when embraced, gives -5% development cost. The province that spawns it gets -5% development cost as well.

Technologies

Development Efficiency is the most important modifier for developing provinces, as they affect the base cost of developing a province. At techs 17, 23, 27, you get -10% development efficiency.

Tech 17 also unlocks the Universities building, which gives a huge -20% development cost modifier to the province that has the building. It is worth building them in provinces you plan to develop.

Ideas

Another modifier to development costs is ideas. Many nations get ideas, traditions and ambitions that give them -10% development cost (Prussia is the only nation that gets -5%, but comes with a +1 tolerance of heretics). A full list can be found on the EU4 Wiki. They include Milan, Naples, Switzerland and Holland/Netherlands among others.

The Economic Ideas finisher grants you a huge -20% development cost modifier, while coupling the group with Quantity ideas gives an extra -10% development cost modifier.

Other things

This section will cover all the other things that can effect your development cost.

Amsterdam

the Holland/Amsterdam province gets an unique decision for Holland/Netherlands "Land Reclamation in Holland", which gives -25% development cost in the province (keep in mind this province is a farmlands cloth CoT already) for the cost of 100 admin power. It's a really strong modifier, which makes it the single best province to develop in the game. However, I have seen an event which gives the province the trade good Paper, which takes away the cloth dev cost modifier, so that can hapepn.

Parliament

Nations with a parliament can have the parliamentary issue "Land Reform", which gives -10% development cost.

Holy Roman Empire

The first reform of the HRE, "Call for Reichsreform", gives -5% dev cost and -5% construction cost to all members of the HRE, with the emperor getting an extra -5%.

Additionally, Free Cities of the Holy Roman Empire have a -10% development cost modifier.

Empire of China

If you spend your meritocracy on the "Expand Palace Bureaucracy" decree, your empire will get -10% development cost and -10% core cost reduction.

Feudal Theocracy

If you use the "Invite Minorities from Abroad" action as a Feudal Theocracy, you get -20% development cost in your capital area and +1 random development in your capital area for 5 years, at the cost of 50 diplomatic power. Feudal Theocracy is available to a few muslim nations, and by forming Persia/Sokoto.

Missions

Many missions in the game give development cost modifiers to specific provinces, capital provinces, and entire nations. The generic mission tree has a mission that grants -10% development cost in the capital.

Government Reforms

Two Indian government reforms give -5% development cost, one for muslims and one for hindus.

Mughal Diwan

Assimilating the South-East Asian culture group gives you -5% development cost.

Natives

Per 500 natives left in a colonized province, the province gets -1% development cost.

Notes

Firstly, after successfully developing a province to an institution, it should be around 35 development, if not more. That means that developing another institution there would be incredibly inefficient, so I don't advise to develop more than one institution in one province.

If you're developing a province for an institution, the optimal development for it before developing is at 14-17 development.

I suggest fully coring (and converting if necessary) the province before developing it, as doing otherwise may result in higher coring costs.

There's a handy list of all the modifiers on the EU4 Wiki[eu4.paradoxwikis.com].

List of modifiers

-5% with Farmlands terrain
−5% in the capital province per 100 country development (up to −50%)
−20% if a University is built in the province
−20% in Capital area, with Invite Minorities from Abroad action as a Feudal Theocracy
−10% if province trade good is Cloth or Cotton (requires Rights of Man)
−10% with the decree "Expand Palace Bureaucracy" active, available to the Emperor of China
−10% with parliamentary issue "Land Reform" active
−10% as an Imperial Free City
−10% if Burghers are at Estate loyalty 60 loyalty and Estate influence 60 influence (lower at less influence)
−10% as Orthodox with Icon of Christ Pantocrator active
−10% as Muslim with Maliki school followed or invited.
−10% as Shintoism Shinto with Adaptive Isolationism level
−10% as Tengri with Theravada as syncretic faith
−10% as Fetishist with Buddhism cult
−10% with Anglican religion
−10% with Encourage Development edict
−10% with Prosperity
−10% if the state the province is in has a level 3 Center of Trade, a "World Port" or "World Trade Center".
−5% if the province is a level 2 Center of Trade, an "Entrepot" or "Market Town".
−5% with "Trading in Tropical Wood" bonus
−5% as Protestant with "Organized through bishops" aspect active
−5% for members of the Holy Roman Empire, if the "Call for Reichsreform" reform is passed
−5% for embracing the Renaissance.png Renaissance institution
−1% per 500 natives left alive in a colonized province
+0.1% per 1% of devastation
+0.5% as Confucianism Confucian for each point of Harmony less than 50 (up to +25%)
+50% for being a primitive nation
+50% for being a subject nation
-20% if you have completed the Economic idea group
-10% from Economic + Quantity policy "Agricultural Cultivation"
-10% from various national ideas
-5% from Prussian national ideas
-5% from Mughal diwan bonus after assimilating South East Asian culture
-5% with the Noble Privileges reform tier reforms "Sufi-Syncretism" or "Empower the Poligars"
-5% with the Theocracy Divine Cause tier reform "Expulsion of Heathens"

[Kioku]

(There's also things like Economic ideas no longer giving dev cost since Infrastructure was added and for some reason gives less, Plutocratic giving 5%, great projects that have been added, and SO many Farmland-Cloth provinces missing from the list.)

[Kioku]

Level 3 center of trade gives -10% development cost to *all provinces in the area,* not just the province it's in. Seemed worth noting.

[Long Dong Huey]

I have sunk a depressingly impressive ammount of hours into this game, yet I never put the pieces together in this fashion and realized just how much could be achieved by combining all the little buffs together. There is a lesson in that, but I don't know how express it.

[suvo.vb]

thnks

[Ahab1851]

Great guide. I'd also add that, with the newer patches and updates to estates, there are now even more reasons to develop because many estate missions require you to develop provinces (especially at the beginning of the game), and developing provinces gives you more crownland. Also, another great reason to learn about how to develop provinces is that it's a great place to sink extra monarch points if you're reaching your cap and you can't purchase any new techs or ideas. Development is honestly weirdly one of my favorite parts of the game somehow.

[Enver Pasha]

thank you

[Chikito]

Thanks, very helpful

[Joobi]

Very helpful, thanks for this!