META GEOPOLITICS for dummies 2: Electric Boogaloo (updated for T&T economy revamp)

This is a follow up on my previous guide, explaining the basics of CK3 economy and meta of it. However, i'll try to make this guide self-sufficient so you won't have to have 2 tabs opened at the same time.

This is a basic guide of principles of geopolitics for CK3: where to put your capitals and what counties are the best to hold in your personal domain and develop. Probably skip if you're a roleplayer who doesn't want meta spoiled.

The basic principles of CK3

The first step for optimising your gameplay is to understand the core mechanics. The game could be divided into several basic systems of different volatility that are stacked on each other in order from the most to the least volatile assets: leaders, nations, land.

Leaders

Leaders are the characters that you will play as or that will accompany you throughout your journey. Generally, depending on your dynasty management skill and some luck, they will change every 30 to 50 years. While their skills will define the rate of success of your interactions with the world, they are mere frail and mortal humans after all, so you should be prepared with a strong base that even the most unfit ruler would use effectively.

However, the better your rulers are, the easier it would be for you to play. The aptitude of a character is defined by his skills:

1. Diplomacy defines your relations with other characters. While you don't really care about foreign rulers' opinion of you, you need to keep your vassals in check, and diplomacy can ease this up a little. Plus, consider taking «True ruler» perk after the initial expansion to vassalize people diplomatically (works well if you're surrounded by people of your faith and similar culture).
   
2. Martial defines your aptitude for war and battles. It's almost OP in the first stages of your expansion, but it's usefulness drops off drastically with better land and more competent vassals you have. «Overseer» perk tree allows you to establish control over newly-conquered counties and thus make use of them quicker. I won't touch on details of warfare in this discussion, but the skills of the commanders really matter: a general with 30 points in martial will negate any defensive advantages your enemy could've had and it can change the course of a battle dramatically.
   
3. Stewardship defines how many holdings can be held in your personal domain without debuffs and how much money you get from it. Stewardship is the opposite of martial: it's practically useless in the early game (as your holdings are too poor to really benefit from +10% to taxes), but it's a must-have in later stages after you consolidated your realm. «Architect» tree is almost OP and you definitely have to take it when the time of upgrading your domain comes.
   
4. Intrigue defines the strenght of your schemes: if you want to murder someone, seduce someone; or become so feared that people will scare their children with your name. It works really great if you're a vassal, but to an independent ruler its usefulness is quite limited. Use it all you want for your roleplay, but for meta game it's a bit useless.
   
5. Learning defines how educated you are both in theological and wordly matters. Probably one of the best skills as you generally need high learning to rush through technologies. «Scholar» tree will also improve your other skills and it will give you great bonuses to development. Learning and Stewardship should be main skills of your rulers throughout mid to late game.

Now that we defined what the skills do,

how do we improve skills?

First of all, make sure you're educating your heirs — that way you'll have most of the control over the traits they will get (but be beware: traits choices are defined by your own traits, so if your character is lazy and content he may be not the best person for a role model). I won't go into the tier-list of traits in this guide, but here's a warning — do not try to minmax. Sometimes, it's better to have a content ruler that a diligent and ambitious one, because the amount of stress you'll get in the second case is enormous.
Secondly, EUGENICS. Make sure to breed the best traits into your dynasty: genius (intelligent, quick), beautiful (handsome, comely) and herculean (robust, hale). It may take several generations of marrying into generated lowborns, but it's worth it.
And lastly, focuses. Some of them give you a flat increase and some give you even more through perks. «Pedagogy» and «Groomed to Rule» are gonna help a lot with your heirs and «Learn on the Job» will help you with your current ruler.

Nations

By nations here i mean religions and cultures that you will encounter across the world.

Religions define your immediate diplomatic situation, since NPC rulers tend to base their policy around the borders of the spiritual domains: brothers in faith tend to intermarry with each other and thus form alliances, while the further astray they see a faith, the more hostile to it they become. Additionally, some religions have bonuses/debuffs to leader traits and to geography.

Cultures are quite similar to reiligion in the sense of their effects, but with lesser impact on diplomacy (no one will attack you just for having a different language or heritage, but it will lower their opinion of you a bit) and with bigger effects on the bonuses.

Both religions and cultures are highly customizable, but they have little to no RNG (unlike genetics and education of the characters) and they shouldn't be changed at all or changed as rare as possible (however, most of the times you will need to hybridize or diverge a culture and create the best religion at least once in a campaign, but you'll have to be prepared for massive conversion campaigns and some unrest as the result of that).
Try to go for lay clergy of either gender and temporal, revocable appointment — that way you will be able to provide 5 spots for powerful vassals instead of 4. If you want an additional bonus to your profit, then you can become a head of the faith and add «Communion» tenet — that way, depending on the size of your religion, you'll get constant requests of indulgencie — practically speaking, that's free 100 (or more!) coins every request.

Land

And finally, the land. Most of the important aspects of it are hardcoded in the game, so you won't be able to change it by gameplay.

Land is divided into baronies with or without holdings; several baronies make up a county; several counties make up a duchy; several duchies make up a kingdom; several kingdoms make up an empire.
The land by itself is worthless, because the base of your interaction is with holdings: castles, churches and cities placed in baronies. Holdings in your personal ownership are a part of the personal domain which is highly limited, but you'll get 100% of the benefits generated by it. That's why you'll have to delegate most of the holdings to worthy people for a fraction of their their income and levies. Since feudalism means the constant arms race with your neighbors and your vassals, having wealthy personal domain is so important.

Every barony in game has a terrain assigned to it. And this is where ck3, IMO, is drastically different from its predcessor. In ck2 it was hard, but not impossible, to play in Arctic Russia and turn a small island into a metropolis rivaling Constantinople, Rome, Baghdad and Delhi , Steppes, Mountains and other regions considered less inhabitable by our human kind.
In ck3, however, you are gonna encounter the glass ceiling of limited building chains — yes, you can invest into a mountain barony, but it will never be as good in raw money and development output as one in farmlands or floodplains, but it could offer you stronger warriors. Because ck3 is a game about realistic historical geography, and not a fantasy or sci-fi world where we can terraform everything we want to, we are quite limited in the choice of regions that are the most optimal for gameplay.

So what can you do about it?

How useful a personal domain is, will be defined by several factors in order of their effect:

DEVELOPMENT

Every county has a developement number assigned to it, but during gameplay this number can rise: the bigger the amount of developement, the more armies and more money you get from controlling it. That's why it is so important to constantly have a steward on a mission to develop the lands and that's why it is important to maximize the efficiency of it.

TERRAIN

Every barony has a specific terrain assigned to it. Terrains largely define how useful a barony is to hold. While supply limit, movement speed and combat width affect the armies going through it, the most important part is a bonus/debuff to development growth. Both Farmlands and Floodplains grant you +20% to development growth, while Plains and Forests (probably, the most common types of terrain) do not grant you any bonuses, and Steppes, Deserts and Desert Mountains cripple you with -50% to developement growth. Some of the debuffs can be negated by specific cultural traditions, but nothing can beat Farmlands and Floodplains with «Agrarian» and «Collective lands» cultural traiditions in terms of raw development.

BUILDING CHAINS

A barony with a basic holding with no upgrades won't provide you with a lot of resources (mainly, men to muster them into armies and money to pay for the armies), that's why you need to constantly invest in them to build holdings that are highly dependant on a terrain type of a barony.
Generally, you want to focus more on making money, because it will allow you to get the best men-at-arms, not go bankrupt for raising an army (otherwise you will practically debilitate your troops) and hire mercenaries in case you need more troops. For example: Farmlands offer you the best buildings to make money: Manor Houses + Farms & Fields + Pastures + Windmills + (if it's located on a river) Watermills + (if it's located on a coast/major river) Tradeport

Now you will also have to decide what men-at-arms regiment to station in a holding. Generally, you should decide what a holding can offer you in terms of buildings and what synergy they have.
For example: Hills can offer you Horse Herds that improve Light Cavalry (LC) and Horse Archers (HA), Hillside Grazing Lands that improve LC, Heavy Cavalry (HC) and HA, Blacksmiths that improve everything, Stables that improve LC and HC, so you can get really powerful LC or HA (one more note, CK3wiki says that Horse Herds are available only at Steppes, but they are available in hills in my games, this could be an error on wiki's part or they changed it in one of the updates)

Another important point is special buildings. Some of the buildings can turn a mediocre province into one of the best. For example, Mines are always great and you should try to snipe one if it's available, Great Cathedrals offer you some money (less than mines), development growth and some other benefits. Notre-Dame cathedral makes Paris arguably one of the best provinces in the game (only for Christians).

HOW-TO

If you decide to optimise the geography, you need to choose a location first and focus your early game on conquering and consolidating it. Don't spread out too much, try to concentrate it. After initial conquest focus your characters on Stewardship and Learning.
Also consider that sooner or later you will hit a ceiling in form of techs: you can't build a lot of upgrades, special buildings and duchy capital buildings without proper techs. So try to follow the next strategy: first two rulers conquer and consolidate provinces you want, then you spend one or two generations by just hoarding money and spending it on upgrades, then you spend one or two generations investing heavily in techs, then upgrades, then techs and so on.

The best regions

IMO with reasoning listed above and below these regions are the most optimal regions to play in.

Scandinavia

Two Farmland provinces, one of which is affected by the Lund Cathedral that gives you even more development growth, a lot of Plains, two universities close, a low-scale mine (still better than no mine). A solid choice for a tall Christian viking.

France and Lower Rhein

A lot of Farmlands, a lot of Plains, powerful special buildings (as it was stated, Paris with Notre-Dame cathedral becomes one of the best provinces in the game), Sorbonne University. Big Blue Blob can be even bigger and bluer!

the British Isles

Several Farmlands in Southern Britain, a lot of Plains, plenty of Cathedrals if you're Insular (or created a heresy out of it), a mine, two universities, the Tower of London. It has never been so easy to conquer India!

Czecho-Slovakia and Transylvania

Plenty of Farmlands, Plains and Hills (with a speicial czech cultural tradition, Hills get a lot more development, arguably making it better than plains and forests!), several powerful mines (including german ones), Prague University and several Great Temples of Taltoist and Krstjani faiths. With a powerbase like that, you can turn HRE czech!

Iberia

Plenty of Farmlands and Plains, so many special buildings, a mine in Tolouse, several cathedrals of the basque faith, universities. As long as you can finish the struggle, you will become unstoppable!

Balkans

Despite having mostly mountanous and hilly terrain, it has two Farmlands and a lot of mines (some of them are locked behind late technologies) that will make money endless in your treasury. Not to mention Constantinople that starts with the highest amount of development and can easily get even more with Hagia Sophia. With so much gold Balkans will become the centre of Europe, not just a powder keg!

Middle East

Middle East has so many grand temples, you'll be the most pious man. Drylands can be fixed by a special cultural tradition and Floodplains are OP enough as it is. Universities, a mine, what else do you need?

Mali and Ghana

Everyone knows about Mali gold, but have you heard of Djenne Mosque and Sankore University? Add a lot of Floodplains on top and you can easily cause inflation in the whole world by travelling there!

India

India has so many special buildings, you can't fit them in one screenshot! Plenty of mines, plenty of Grand Temples, plenty of Universities and other unique buildings. Add huge starting development, a lot of Farmlands and special indian buildings that give you both money and universal men-at-arms buff, India is arguably the best region to play in the game!

Conclusion

Obviously, this is a guide for meta and if you invest in your buildings, you'll become the strongest empire in the world by Early Medieval era. While you can play in other regions, i find them lacking in flavour and in a powerbase.
I hope this guide will help you in your next campaign idea.

Fixed some typos and errors (english is obviously not my first language). If you find any more typos or grammatical errors, please comment about it, and i'll try to fix it ASAP.

[mkvltra]

good guide

[巴特]

good