Monarch Points
How to gain them?
Monarch Points is the unique resource of EU4, that’s the reason behind its existence, as it is the primary difference between EU3 and EU4. In EU3, you used gold for everything, here there is an entirely new layer of complexity brought up by monarch points.
As pretty much everyone knows, you generate a limited amount of Monarch Points. It’s capped at 39 points in total, either 13 everywhere or 15-12-12 with a national focus. Unless you play a CK2 converted game with an immortal 6/6/6 ruler, you will never generate that for the entirety of the game. It scales on the stats of your ruler, the skill of your advisors and your national focus, with a base value of 3, and potential maluses to diplo for being over the diplo cap, and to mil for being over the leader cap.
Stats of your ruler can’t really be modified, even if there are certain events that occur in regencies or with a consort that can boost a stat. You still have the possibility to abdicate and disinherit with Rights of Man. You should pretty much always do it if you have a clear benefit, especially as a big country which generates prestige easily. There is also the Ottoman government which allows you to choose between heirs, but that’s very specific.
You need money for advisors, and we’ll cover money in an extreeeeeeemely long part. But just a small hint to see how you should think. Developping a goldmine costs a certain amount of diplo points (and other points if you want to push it further), let’s say 50 for 1 ducat. Let’s imagine that you develop the province 10 times, this 500 seems a lot. Now consider that this 10 ducats pay extra advisors. You can calculate in how many months your investment in term of monarch points pays off and is a benefit, and consider if it is worth it, or if you should stop at 5, or not develop at all. That’s the idea of trading resources and investing them into other resources.
The national focus and being over caps is another kind of trading. Just keep in mind that this is not always a bad thing to lose monarch points due to being over the cap.
Some nations generate monarch points in specific ways like Hordes who raze, or Ming and their tributaries, but that's too specific.
Besides events which gives you monarch points for free or ask you to choose between monarch points and another resource, or between two types of monarch points, the other source of monarch points is
estates. Every 20 years, you can ask 50, 100, 150 or 200 points to estates at the cost of 20 loyalty (admin for clergy, dip for merchants and mil for nobility). This number is based on their influence. You’ll almost never have 50 and 200 is trickier. The most important number is therefore 75 influence, below it’s 100 points, over it’s 150. Always get at least 150 points, unless in some very specific situations where it’s impossible.
Here we come to our first example of learning the real value of things. You can consider an average of 150 points over 20 years, so 150 points over 240 months, which is about 2/3 point per month. That’s huge. Therefore, if you cannot get 150 points but can have them in less than 80 months (6 years and 8 months), it’s worth waiting to have 150 points instead of 100. That’s also what allows you to get 200 points in some situations. If there is a modifier, like for instance recruiting a general, and it expires in less than 6 years and 8 months, you can wait until just before it expires, push influence at 100, which means you can squeeze 200 points. That’s the kind of intense micromanaging that is required to have very successful campaigns. You have the right to consider it’s too difficult and boring to time everything, and you’ll often forget it, but that’s a perfect example on how judging the real value of things allows you to create resources out of thin air.
Most players I see asking for advice say that they only get 100 points because they are afraid of a bad event that would create a disaster. That can happen, and that’s why getting 200 is risky and I would not do it in any situation. You need to be careful and keep several things in mind. First off, every time an event-based modifier expires, you get a popup for a new event at the middle of a month, and the previous modifier expires on the first day of next month. That’s extremely important, as you should not take your decision based on the number you see when you have the popup, but based on the number you’ll have at the beginning of next month. As an event-based modifier replaces another, don’t use the 200 points thing if the expiring modifier is event-based unless you have a backup strat, because the same modifier could replace the previous one. However, it’s entirely safe to do it with generals, admirals and ministers, as you chose to boost influence this way or not.
I mention backup strats. You should not be afraid of risking things. To get the most out of the estates, you
have to put yourself at risk. Sometimes you will lose, and you will have a bad event that means you’ll have a ticking disaster. More often than not you will just win more monarch points and not have a bad event. Don’t panic anyway, a disaster is nothing so long as it only ticks. It’s +1 per month at 80, +2 over 85, +3 over 90 and so on. Below 80 it decreases by 1 every month. Only over 85 should it be a concern, and only over 90 is it extremely dangerous. Having an estate at 84 influence means you have 8 years and 3 months to fix the situation before it becomes a real disaster (actually you have more, we’ll come to it).
Other modifiers will expire (of course don’t take risks if modifiers decreasing influence will end up soon), and you can always remove provinces. That brings me to estate loyalty.
Estate loyalty is another resource, it ticks towards 50 so long as they have enough land. There are negative effects under 40 loyalty, and positive effects over 60 loyalty. That’s a bit offtopic regarding monarch points, but the clergy being over 60 loyalty will give extra conversion strength in provinces they control, which means you can convert easily very early in the game (and that’s easy to have very loyal clergy early on, as you can give them all the provinces you conquer early on and send them gift regularly). The positive effect of Merchants being over 60 loyalty is reduced development cost, scaling on their influence. You can save hundreds of monarch points by ensuring you have loyal and influential merchants before you forcespawn an institution, which is often overlooked (and obviously try to do it when you have prosperity and the proper state edict).
As Estate loyalty is a resource, it is absolutely useless to have them at 50 all the time. If you can gain something by putting it under 50, or even below 40, that’s good, it will tick up again. That’s why overinfluential estates is not a problem, especially between 80 and 85. In 8 years you have time to play around the rules I mentioned. Wait 3 years, remove a province, that put them to for instance 43% loyalty and below the number of provinces they want, you have 2 years and a half before they go disloyal, during which the disaster almost entirely ticks down, then you give the province back, the loyalty ticks up again, and you still have almost 8 years before the disaster. With that example, not wasting the resource that estate loyalty is means you have 13 years to solve the fact an estate is between 80 and 84 influence, and that’s what sometimes enables the 200 monarch points gain, and always guarantees a 150 gain.
By respecting these rules, you can go beyond the obvious and generate the maximum amount of monarch points. But that isn’t everything you need to know, you still have to understand how to spend this precious resource efficiently.
How to spend them?
As I mentioned, monarch points are used for a lot of things in EU4, as opposed to other strategy games like EU3. As the resource has a very low cap of 999*(1+yourtechnpenalty), this is not an end in itself, as opposed to money (999999 ducats is the cap) or provinces (One Tag is the cap). You should always think of a way to spend it and pick up the most valuable one.
Once again, it depends on your situation and the goal of your campaign, and there is no better choice
per se. I’ll try to explain what’s usually better in the context of a blobbing game in SP, as it’s the gameplay I’m the most familiar with, and that’s where optimization truly shines.
The most obvious way to spend your MP is with techs. Techs play an important part in the game, and that’s something even complete beginners immediately understand. But what only more experienced players tend to realize is that not every tech is equally important. Some are clearly decisive ones in almost every scenario.
For instance, military tech 3 gives an extra 25% base morale, and military tech 4 gives an extra 20% and extra tactics. I won’t go into further details regarding how battles work, but trust me if you don’t see it, that’s insanely decisive. Miltech 15 gives a staggering 33% base morale and tactics. At the same time, Miltech 10 only gives better cavalry units and flanking range, so that’s clearly not decisive unless you rely heavily on cavalry.
Military tech is generally always good, but that’s not the case of Admin and Diplo who sometimes do literally nothing. Key admin techs are the one who unlock idea groups and the ones giving you admin efficiency, in some scenarios those giving you extra states. Key diplomatic techs are… are… pretty much nonexistent. There is one, tech 23, which unlocks Imperialism and Client States. There is one very useful in some scenarios, tech 9, and I’ll talk about it later. Else pretty much everything is irrelevant unless you fight highly contested naval battles or you play the colonial game (in which case you must rush dip7). Extra accepted culture can also be nice. I’d go so far as saying that the only reason to tech up dip is that your vassals don’t become disloyal.
Yes, you read me. Falling behind in tech is often not a problem at all so long as you hit the key techs on time. Playing in ROTW and trying to conquer massive amounts of land usually means that you will fall behind, you can’t help it unless you play too passive. That’s ok to be something like Admin 10, Dip 10, Military 15 when it’s time to get tech 15. What really matters is that you catch up at Admin 17, and Admin and Diplo 23. Players usually overcommit to techs, while only military tech is almost always relevant.
A good example is the early admin techs. Tech 5 unlocks the first idea group, and let’s assume you took Administrative as many people do. The next important tech in admin is tech 7, it brings a new idea group… which you deemed less important than admin ideas. The next one is admin 8 which gives more states, as does the finisher of admin ideas. So what’s better in most scenarios, to fill out this idea group and get admin 6, 7 and 8 after, benefiting from the discounts you’ll have to the cost of admin techs, or to care about getting these techs as fast as possible? In 99% of the scenarios the answer is pretty obvious.
I mentioned discounts, so let’s dive into it and talk about the cost of technologies. As with estates, institutions made the game more interesting as you have a lot more control on what happens and there is a real space for optimization and a real difference between playing your cards good and playing them perfectly. The cost of spawning an institution depends on many factors, but with loyal and influential burghers, prosperity, edicts and proper terrain (temperate, farmlands, CoT, capital, cloth is the dream province, it’s actually also called Milan), that’s cheaper than you would think.
Once again there is a choice to make between developing to force spawn an institution or wait for it to spread, and between forcing it now or getting that crucial miltech on time despite the +10% cost from institutions and only then forcing it even if you sacrifice monarch points in the process. I won’t go into details here, I’ll try to focus on more unknown things instead.
Techs have a basecost of 600, which increases over time. Let’s go back to our admin tech 5. I’m playing the Ottomans, I’m OP so I had it as early as 1453, with a 3% tech penalty. I chose admin ideas first. Let’s imagine I try to get Admin Tech 6 as early as possible without a ahead of time penalty and I have taken the first 2 ideas to have reduced coring cost and I spent the ret of my points coring during those years. It’s 1466, it costs me about 680 with all the modifiers. Now let’s imagine I filled up admin ideas instead of saving my admin points to tech. By the time I filled the group, I embraced Renaissance because it has spread in Constantinople naturally. The cost is as follows.
That’s about 480, I literally saved up 200 admin points by doing this. How? That’s simple. Every idea gives you -2% tech cost in that category, and the finisher of admin, diplomatic and aristocratic give you -10% in their respective category. So in 20 years of game, we earned 2*50-100 admin out of estates, and 200 admin out of tech 6, compared to a casual gameplay. Pretty nice, hm? And I did that with console so no neighbor bonus as we’re still on the first day, but in reality, you could save some 3-60 more with neighbor bonus.
The key, especially when you play in ROTW, is actually to intentionally fall behind in admin and diplo when you’re lagging behind in institutions and to only focus on mil, and only use your admin and diplo points for ideas and expansion. And as soon as you catch up in institutions, you fabricate a spy network on a western nation and catch up in tech insanely fast. Techs can cost less than 100 monarch points each thanks to the ultimate reduction mechanic, study technology. Based on your spy network and the number of technologies you miss, you can have insane bonuses to tech from diplomatic tech 9 onwards (and here’s the hidden OP of the diplo techs).
On the other hand, you should not overcommit to military ideas and sacrifice military techs, unless this idea gives you more than a tech (extremely rare but, second idea of defensive can bring you more depending on which tech you sacrifice for it, for instance).
As we were talking about development, let’s quickly deal with that. That’s almost always the worst option if you’re playing wide, unless it’s a gold province. Keep in mind that many things come into play when it comes to the effectiveness of your goldmine, most notably the fact this is an accepted culture or not, and that you should probably minmax this development by using an edict, as it’s always a good option.
The general rule is to always be at +1 stab, as the cost is small and this prevents a bad event from putting you at negative stab which is always terribly bad (unless you try to fall into the Court and Country disaster, but that’s another debate). Keep in mind that if you have a +1 stab event, you can raise stability and then accept the event, as raising stab has an increasing cost every time. This way the event brings you more admin, in a certain way.
Raising mercantilism, tariffs and things like that is usually trash as well in wide play unless you got nothing else to do. There are also the recruit generals/admirals/explorers/conqusitadors. Most important to note is that an estate can’t give you an explorer for some odd reason, so you’ll always use monarch points for that. Ok, done? Nothing interesting here, so without further ado, let’s go back to the real interesting optimization business, and let’s talk about what you use your military tech for and the reason why you play the game, you little painter.
When you win a war thanks to your immense skill, or because you were the Ottomans and you attacked Albania, you can set up a peace deal. This deal generates things like Aggressive Expansion, which we’ll cover in Part 3, but also sometimes costs you diplo points. It is because you made some unjustified demands, but as it happens, unjustified demands can be played around. You have -50% for influence ideas, -10% for despotic monarchy or Ottoman government which are the two government forms most players will adopt, and an extra -33% if it’s a rival. So basically, with influence ideas you pay almost no dip for unjustified demands on your rivals, and 40% of the base cost. That’s why admin-influence is the most common starter for a WC. The other option is to have claims everywhere (Russia ftw), or to use superior CBs like Deus Vult or Imperialism.
Coring seems quite straightforward, just press a button and that’s automatic, surely there can’t be any difficulty there, right? Still, there are some things that are worth mentioning about states, integration, and the compared effects of reduced coring cost and absolutism.
Two quick notes: coring costs more when you have WE, so it’s often better to let it tick down, or even to buy it down with dip, and then to start coring to save some precious points; permanent claims only apply their bonus once, so if you have a permanent claim on an area that is not part of a state you’ll get the discount for the coring, but not to make it a full core, while if you have a permanent claim on a province that is already within a state, you’ll get the discount for the two parts of the process.
Some nations have increased coring cost, they are a pain to conquer and be careful never to use them as feeding vassals or you will pay the extra price to integrate them. Common ones are Maghrebi, Georgia, Transylvania, Afghanistan and Britanny, but there are others.
As many people know, coring cost is reduced by some ideas, like the Ottomans or the Hordes, and admin ideas, and integration cost is reduced by influence ideas. What’s also important to note is that integration cost is also reduced by a policy, which happens to be admin+influence. Another incentive to get these two first.
So what’s reduced coring cost exactly. It reduces the cost in admin points of coring something, but also the time it takes to core (and thus the time during which you’re overextended, and the time during which you can’t state the province, increase autonomy, and instantly unstate it for that magical -10 unrest out of thin air, which I mention here even if I will talk about revolts in part 3).
Integration cost works a bit differently. Integration is a certain amount of points you pour every month into annexing a vassal. Having -25% integration cost means that it costs 75% of the base cost. So if you pick up something that gives you -25% integration cost when you’re already at 74%, it will instantly go to 99% (well, technically it will go to 98,67%, but that’s the idea).
Admin efficiency works totally differently from Reduced coring cost. It also reduces the admin cost of coring a province, sure, but by different means. It does not reduce the time it takes to core it, but it reduced the administrative weight it puts on your country. In other words, it does not only save monarch points, but it also reduces the warscore of the province and the overextension it generates. 50% admin efficiency is thus like 50% unjustified demands, 50% warscore cost for provinces, and -50% AE, on top of the reduced OE and cost of cores. That’s why admin efficiency is
the ultimate stat of the game to save resources when you play wide, as all of these resources are the ones that are under the heaviest pressure in a blobbing scenario. Also keep in mind that its effect is, relatively speaking, multiplicative. Going from 0% to 25% admin efficiency reduces everything by 25% by making the costs go from 100% to 75%. Going from 25% to 50% absolutism is a gain of 33%, as the costs go from 75 to 50. Going from 50% to 75% (which is now only possible as Yuan ;’( ) is a gain of 50% as the costs go from 50 to 25. Admin efficiency also is a diplomatic efficiency, as it reduces the integration cost as well.
I’ll talk about admin efficiency and absolutism stacking in the Third Part, but I wanted to give a small inch of why it is so good. The days where you could have more than 100 absolutism and thus absurd amounts of admin efficiency were really insane.
So, for a very simple and basic resource like monarch points, I think that’s more than enough and I'm surprised by how much I said.
I hope that was helpful, and I’ll post the rest later on. So see you soon, to see how you can make 20000 ducats every month, why interest per annum is an insanely stupid modifier, or how debasing makes you money while preventing revolts if you play as a horde. And easier and more standard things, like simple optimization of buildings, and another look at estates to understand which province should go to which estate. Oh, and the big elephant in the room, obviously: trade.
