Olav said:
Perhaps this is the reason? I tried lowering the population to 800, and then sent a settler there. Following the expansion, both culture and religion changed.
Don't lower a colony's population to 800 and send a settler; lowering the population to 890 more or less will do it. Note that 899 is too high for the most part in growing population areas because the population could soon be 900 and that would be problematic. But if the population is in decline, you might send a settler at 899 population or even more if you were counting on the further decline before the settler arrives.
Olav said:
New question: Is promoting to chief judges worth it? If one only consider the lesser RR and increased province tax factors, perhaps not. But it also increases value of some trade goods - but to what degree?
Wreck said:
Mats- no, I did not account for the RR decline. This depends a lot on how you play; I tend to avoid having nonzero net RR for prolonged periods in more than a handful of provinces at a time. But yes, if you ever do have nonzero net RR in a province which you have built a tax collector in, then of course your ROI for the chief judge will be slightly better. Is this a large effect? No. At best it will increase the ROI from 2% to 2.1%. At worse, it increases the ROI from 0% to 0.1%; although this is an infinite proportion, you should never make any investment with 0.1% ROI.
Chief judges are not often the best investment; but they are worthwhile. In correct culture and religion provinces, they pay for themselves in 50 years, i.e. ROI of 2% per year/(100%+inflation%), unless there is substantial revolt at times, in which case you get less tax from the province. But if there is revolt risk, the reduction in revolt risk helps; and it can help more than just raising 2% to 2.1% for a number of reasons. First, the 5% of tax spared from revolt risk is for all of the base tax not just for the chief judge's portion of the tax. If the base tax is 9, and there is a tax collector to make it 10, a revolt risk of 1% makes tax 9.5, then with a chief judge the tax is 11. So that is 1.5 ducats more tax; and multipled by 2 for the year you will see 3% ROI. Of course if revolt risk is very high, you see little of the original 2% ROI; and if base tax is low you don't get so much additional ROI. But you can see, in high base tax provinces like maybe base tax of 16 in Andalusia, that revolt risk is even more important.
Now, if there is frequent revolt risk that cannot be placated, you have to figure that you will have an additional rebellion in your province every 200 years or whatever depending on how frequently there is revolt risk. If you do not put down the rebellion as soon as it pops up, your province will be looted; and you lose all your tax (and gold production if applicable) for that year. If you station soldiers, then those soldiers' maintenance costs must be figured if the troops could better be used elsewhere, i.e. not just an idle force of troops to discourage neighbors from war.
It also causes a loss of troops to put down a rebellion, maybe 5d to 25d say 15d on average, and troops have to be moved to and from the province if the troops are needed elsewhere, during which time you can count the maintenance cost for the troops as savings if you had the chief judge. Ships may be needed for transport as well.
If rebels loot a province they can burn a manufactory, ouch. A 1% lower revolt risk is really going to make a difference if there is a manufactory. Um, better not put a tax collector in there if you want a manu. But if you get a manu by random event where there is a tax collector, better to have a chief judge ASAP.
Sometmes one of your provinces may be captured by rebels because of additional revolt risk. That may be like a one in two thousand year chance. But you would lose the production income and merchant taxes in CoTs plus have to pay soldiers to siege the province and possibly have a second province looted. Even more rare would be the chance that the province defects, declares independence, or causes a collapse of your government. Well it is difficult to put a price on the revolt risk contribution. There is also the micro-management issue which makes lower revolt risk very desirable regardless of the money issues.
Wreck said:
Olav, the reason for (b) is simple. If someone else is going to pay for something regardless of what you do, then you don't need to buy it. If you do buy it (in order to speed things up), then you can only count the income in the time between when you bought it, and when it would have been bought otherwise, as returns on your investment.
The AI doesn't build many chief judges until pretty late in the game. You are going to get your higher return on investment from increased trade for a good time like until the AI builds 100 chief judges or so. What I look at is how long it takes for an improvement to pay for itself.
Wreck said:
On rebels, what I suspect is the case is that they are given maximum morale based on where they are. When they are on your turf, they have your max morale and will gain or regain morale on that basis. But you may occasional fight rebels in enemy terrain, or they may move across a border, and you'll notice their morale is low.
They have their own DP sliders. So, getting a fire/shock bonus from quality/offensive should help with fighting them, even though they get the additional morale from your DPs.
Wrong, whenever a human initiates a fight with rebels, the rebels will have whatever morale, tech, and DP sliders the initiating player has at that time. If the AI fights rebels, the rebels morale and tech is governed by the same rules as in early versions, that is they have their own tech, DP sliders, and morale like any country. Any additional troops entering the battle against the rebels will not raise the rebels' morale; but I suspect may cause the rebels to gain tech levels to match the tech of the best army in the battle, either that or the opposition fights at the lower tech level of the initiating army. Anyway, additional troops can come in at higher morale and give a better chance of defeating rebels by morale. Just try sending a tiny army that can barely survive a day of battle to fight rebels on the last day of the month; but those troops arrive at 50% maintenance. Then on the first of the next month, a large number of troops arrives at 100% maintenance. Basically your troops fight at 100% maintenance while rebels start at only 50% maintenance. Same with fighting rebels after the AI initiates the battle; you usually have a better chance of winning. Sometimes it is no contest at all.
Wreck said:
Unloading land units, I am pretty sure, do get a negative DRM, if they trigger a battle. I'm not sure if it is the same as the bad DRM for amphibious landings, though. I have the feeling it's better to unload than to land.
I'm pretty sure amphimbious landing and unloading to port has the same malus judging from the battles I have fought. It is a minus one to your leader's shock, just like crossing a river or strait. But again the initiating army is important because it is the leader of the battle that is used in deciding combat. The highest ranking leader will lead the battle with his stats; but if leaders have the same rank, it is the leader that arrives first that is used to lead the battle much the same way as leaders of sieges are determined, not sure if the siege stat is relevant in determining leadership as it is with leaders of sieges. Anyway, it doesn't matter if your leader gets minus one shock if that leader is not leading the battle.
Wreck said:
And when I convert a wrong-culture province, I usually sacrifice all of its income to rebels in order to make the conversion cheaper and faster.
Olav said:
I don't understand this. Are you using rebels to decrease the population, thus making conversions cheaper and faster?
Yes, the rebels can reduce the population; but you are not going to lose
all of the province income unless the rebels control the province or it is a gold province without a CoT. You still get trade taxes and reduced production income (but not gold) from looted provinces. And you never loose CoT income from merchant taxes until you lose control of the CoT. I doubt that Wreck loses control of all provinces to rebels since getting rebellions where you want them can be tough and the rebels move once they capture the province. Provinces that can defect or declare independence must be besieged at every month end, but the siege cannot progress; otherwise the province would be recaptured, and more rebels would be required. So that would involve a lot of micro-management.
But hey reducing the population can also reduce production income and also manpower, if there is any to be had. So you pay less money for the conversion but it costs in other ways. I suspect what is most important is increasing the success rate of conversion because the number of missionaries is the real the concern.
Olav said:
Is cavalry less efficient in southern/western Africa (Ethiopia), or is it just me?
No, cavalry is just as inefficient in European forests, swamps, and mountains as it is in Africa. Of course the lower supply and slow movement speeds in Africa are going to hurt your cavalry more than in Europe. Anyway, cavalry rely on shock to be awesome in battle; and what you notice is that cavalry are really poor in mountains since they have half total shock (not the stat but the total of their shock contribution) and when any army attacks a mountainous province the army leader gets minus one shock to his stats. In forests cavalry get half shock. But infantry and artillery will not lose shock in mountains and forests (except for possibly losing a shock stat, which they do not rely heavliy on once they have firepower, when attacking a mountainous province). The AI and rebels are mostly infantry and artillery you may notice. In swamps, both cavalry and infantry get half shock and firepower which makes the battle more drawn out but othrwise much the same as it would be on a plains or desert if not for the routing phase. The routing phase only happens on plains and desert provinces when one army has four times more shock than the other, generally only possible with cavalry or an awesome leader endowed with a high shock stat. The routing phase can happen any day at random during a shock phase and will devestate or annihilate an enemy in terms of numbers of men. In any terrain, there is also a final roll at the end of battle if shock of one army is four times higher than the fleeing army as decided at the end of battle. If so, the fleeing army gets reduced even further. But the shock difference is not going to be so high if it is not a plains, desert, or swamp province. And because of the drawn out nature of battle in swap, you often lose cavalry to attrition which reduces your shock, and you are not going to get a routing phase to reduce the enemy's shock in the same manner. At the end of battle you are not as likely to get that final roll. So cavalry are most awsome in plains and deserts, can do okay in swamp, are poor in forests, and are worst in mountains. But who attacks who in mountains, amphibious landings, crossing rivers and straits, and leader's shock stats are all very important when using cavalry.
