Beginner's guide

Easy Beginner Nations

Easy Beginner Nations are:

Bohemia: Reigning emperor of the HRE and direct overlord of multiple smaller subjects, Bohemia is poised perfectly to expand both within and outside the empire. With an already respectable urbanisation ratio and no lack of raw resources a booming economy awaits those who unlock the feudal locks that tie it down.

Poland:A big player in the east with the potential to become a behemoth, Poland is situated between the rich urban cities of the HRE and the endless fields of Ruthenia and Crimea. While fairly rural itself a strong military sets Poland apart from its neighbours, though one should be careful not to make too many enemies within the borders or become overambitious with plans of gulping up territories.

Denmark: A small though not powerless kingdom. However it's diplomatic situation allows it great potential. If the power of the country doesn't wane long enough for a united Scandinavia to form under its wing it will be turned into the a power to be reckoned with.

Milan: Rich mines, richer fields and cities bustling with workshops and merchants, Milan is the jewel on the crown that Italy is. The largest of all imperial lands in Italy and a local power left almost unchallenged, only its bigger neighbours can keep it check if the diplomatic game is not played right. Given enough time however Rome or even the whole of Italy is not too big a dream. And should it the opportunity arise, why not an imperial title as well...

Portugal: Tucked away in the westernmost corner of Europe Portugal can choose its friends,enemies and along with them, the direction of expansion if any. Whether isolationist, colonialist or warmonger Portugal can benefit from its advanced trade practices and its geographical location in combination with a modern navy to reach and grab confidently where others would struggle.

Naples: The best nation to learn 3.0 by far. It's fairly rich, somewhat strong nobility, but manageable. Extremely safe with no enemies unless you want to go out and make some of your own. Is in the best trade region early-mid game and has the largest army in Italy with no worries of invasions from nearby enemies, as all of them are far weaker than you.

Aragon: A strong thalassocracy at the start of the game that has many fun expansion routes/wars. Is generally very safe if they ally with Castille, and you can simply refuse the personal union if you don't want to. Does, however, have an opening war to take care of, but should be very manageable. Has important provinces all over and can very easily integrate Sicily once they fall under a personal union to directly access one of the best islands in the game.

Ottomans: The Big Green Blob. So strong, the AI can even be seen stomping all over Europe. Has a lot of great flavor, you get a lot of fantastic reforms for free that allow you to dominate your neighbors. And if you manage to conquer enough of Europe, you will automatically integrate all of the weaker Beyliks, making you even stronger. Hard to mess up on as every mistake can be fixed by destroying your enemies.

Mamelukes: Eternally rich and ever ruling, the Mamelukes are at the center of the Indian Ocean trade and are blessed with money and resources that any European state can only dream about. A great game for players that want to experiment with the economy system, build tonnes of stuff and play tall.

Ashikaga: The most powerful of the Japanese Daimyo, good land, you start in a favourable position in the first war that will then give you further opportunities to form Japan. May be one of the more challenging nations on the Easy List, but you are guarenteed an easy game as soon as you can form Japan

Tenotichilan: The strongest power in the Mexican Valley, starts with one of the best cities in the game and many easy routes to expansion. People who love playing in the new world will find Tenotichilan to be a power that punches above its weight, with an interesting challenge of beating back the Europeans

Vijyanigar: The strongest and richest power in southern India of which there is no equal around them. Fantastic for uniting India with a Hindu state or just simply keeping your borders in the south and using your massive population, resources and wealth to build a nation that has no equal.

Bengal: This nation will be suggested by many our devs and top players as the easiest nation to learn 3.0 overall. Bengal is incredibly rich, with some of the best farmland in the world, big cities and great produce in every direction. You will very rarely lack what you need as Bengal to build an Indian Nation of your dreams.

Majapahit: The dominant SEA power with an incredible navy to boot. As long as you don't anger China (or take Taiwan), you will generally can have a game without war, or you ending up dominating the SEA and Oceanic areas. Has all the spices you'll ever need, great cities, and a high population. Sell spices, get that bag.

Goryeo: Is the most urbanized and "China Esque" country besides China. Starts with some of the best reforms in the game and one of the largest armies in the world early game. Is very very safe if they accept tributary status from China. Fantastic nation for playing tall and building up a ridiculously wealthy nation.

Oyo: The strongest Pagan West African country. Starts in one of the most populated parts of Africa, has a very weak nobility, a more feudal structure, and the largest Yoruban army. Has easy access to one of the best cities in West Africa (Ife, it produces glass). Can very easily form Yorubaland, which is a fantastic tag that feels very Netherlandy-esque. Great nation to learn how to get commercialization + how to reform your nation. (WARNING: The Yoruba do get horses at the start. They can get horses when their armies attack an army with horses in them, which may be quite hard. So be sure not to take the 27-28 mil tech that gives you cavalry before you get that event. Once you get an event for the horses arrival into West Africa, feel free.)

Mali: Strongest overall west African power. Starts with the largest army in West Africa, the most wealth and makes for another great place to learn how to invent institutions, as you have both the knowledge capacity and the cities to do so. Great for both safe, tall gameplay and expansionist.

Kilwa: The dominant African East Coast power. Very rich, gets trade directly from one of the best trade nodes in the game (the indian ocean trade). Is however at threat to Europeans if the nation doesn't invent institutions and keep up on military tech. Otherwise, provides one of the chillest tall games imaginable.

Ethiopia: The glorious Christian Kingdom of East Africa, the Origin of Prestor John. Has an absolutely massive vassal swarm that they can use to dominate their enemies early game, unlike other nations on this list, is generally very safe from Europeans regardless of where they expand. Fantastic for a very chill nation-building game with the Mamelukes serving as the primary antagonists.

Dai Viet(Accept Tributary): One of the best nations in the game for nation-building. However, it is recommended that you do not fight China at the start and be sure to become their tributary. Very rich, has silk galore and can become an urban wonderland with no threats around you. Either dominate or play tall.

You can click on any of the bookmarks, and it will show a list of interesting/easy nations that are great for beginners and explorers alike!

Investing & Economy 101

Before anything else it suggested you enable pop-ups for the expiration of country modifiers. To do this, you must start a campaign, open the menu, go to Message Settings, select All from the top bar and To me from the left one and then type country mod in the search bar. The option reads When one of our temporary Country Modifiers expires. Select first option from the left if you want the game to pause and get a pop-up, or the second if you just want a pop-up. The second is usually more convenient.

Investing can be thought of as investing into infrastructure of a province to utilize resources to a greater extent. You can access the investment table by clicking on the macro builder and then clicking on the building tab. You can see two different types here;

Showing the split between urban and rural investment

Rural and urban, you can see more about how to interact with various industries and how to do so in the investment guide. One important thing to note is that rural does have a cap that is based on the province size and how good the land is. The resource expands as tech progresses, while urban/districts do not have a cap and can be invested ad infinitum.

For urban areas, while there is no cap, there are certain areas that are better for building cities than others. Ones with natural features, natural harbors or a natural land route are typically places where cities can find themselves being built with great ease. While cities can be built in any province, these provinces will be much more efficient to urbanize. General rule of thumb is to only invest as much as you are capable of, if you have a smaller economy, invest small at first, then put more investments as your industries get bigger and more profitable. (Note: For newer players, do not invest in commerce, as it is quite a volatile industry).

These investments lie on top of another structure that is called infrastructure, as can be seen here:

There are 6 sets of Infrastructure; Capitol (for Nation Governance), Amenities (For supporting an Urban populace and industry), Garrisons (for reducing unrest and increasing local defensiveness to protect your provinces), Pathing (to increase trade output and improve CE in your provinces), Irrigation (To improve productivity in crop and fiber growth), and finally Harbourage (for Coastal/River Regions, to improve CE and link overseas regions). These are built using the province selection tool found here or can be found in MacroBuilder with the red pin on the center. You can change how the tool selects provinces by going into decisions and clicking the select estate decision, which will cycle through the various types of selection. Once you have selected your province(s), you may then click on the decision (Build Infrastructure) which will then pull up a list of infrastructure to build and to what level. We highly recommend you use Parallelism 10, always use Improve to X Ranks (Which will be in Yellow at the top)and always build 2-3 extra units to deal with infrastructure decay.

Then simply click on the button at the bottom right, and small red pins will appear on your nation, that means it worked! You can now build infrasture, do censuses, and more!

However, while infrastructure does typically need to be built by hand (however the powerbrokers will build some themselves sometimes), we do have a method that allows for you to skip out on the investment portion. There are certain parameters (That are shown here) that must be fulfilled for a province to get investment from the AutoInvestor.

The AutoInvestor is perfect when it comes to short-term investment, it is better than even the most skilled player at detecting very small investments/large investments that generate money for you. This takes only into account how much money you can make from investing in those provinces with the parameters you have given it. To activate auto-investor you will need to click on the Select Estates Button until it says All Stated Provinces, click on any stated province, and click the selection button, and it will automatically select all stated cores for you nation. After that, you click on "Show Utility Decisions" and go down to the bottom where it says "Add Selected Provs to Investment' ', make sure Automatic investment is on and click on Investment Manager and then it will present with a number of options. We highly recommend that you select 30% of the Treasury every 3 years for all new players to begin with and disable urban investments (which can be found in the advanced options). If you are wondering if you have done it correctly, you can go down in the Investment Manager Event Box and click Show currently selected province for investment. You can then go to the trade screen and you should see a large number of blue or red boxes covering your nation. If you see this after clicking the trade screen, congratulations! The auto investor is set up and ready to go. You can disable this at any time by simply opening the utility decisions and disabling automatic investment

What Auto Investor looks like when it is complete

For more details on investment check out the Industry guide.

Bureaucracy & You

In 3.0 there is an entirely new estate that has many important interactions and it is the center of 3.0, which would be the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is a group of individuals that are employed directly by the state to do it's bidding. This estate has privileges and reforms of their own that will unlock new taxes, more efficient soldier recruitment, reduce autonomy and more. However, most of these reforms and privileges are gated off behind the need for a state building structure. This is a progress that will take it's time and will vary from nation to nation, depending on the situation. The easiest way to begin building a bureaucracy is to expand it to more parts of the realm, this can be done through accessing the Direct Your Bureaucracy Tab in the estates menu

The Direct the Bureaucracy Button is Underneath the First Red Book, and is highlighted in this picture

Then click Expand State Reach, with it's effects shown here

The effects of Expand your State Reach within the Direct the Bureaucracy Tab

This causes your bureaucracy to expand throughout the realm at a pace that is dictated by your various bureaucracy reforms, privileges, institutions and ideas (bureaucracy ideas make this more efficient). After 10 years, the expansion will complete and if the situation permits it, you can direct your bureaucracy to expand once more. Overtime, once a bureaucracy grows very large, and without bureaucratic privilege and reforms, can become very corrupt. Bureaucratic loyalty is the inverse of the total national provincial corruption, so when the bureaucracy is corrupt, it becomes controlled by the powerbrokers. This is often the case directly after major reforms, as the status quo has been shaken up and various powerbrokers have taken over the vacuum. This is normal however, and typically will go back down as the reforms settle into society, uncontrollable corruption is typically the result of high state reach without proper reforms, so it may be wise to stop expanding the bureaucracy every now and again to reform your bureaucratic privileges before expanding further.

Reforms and Privileges

Reforms and Privileges are an essential part of both characterizing and forming your state structures in MEIOU and Taxes 3.0.

This is the Estates screen, where you can see Powerbroker Power, Loyalty, as well as Bureaucratic corruption, this is the screen where reforms are carried out and privilieges are revoked!

This is the reform screen, it can be accessed by clicking the estates tab after clicking on your nation's flag and then clicking on the estate tab in the far right. You can see the various effects of each privilege by either hovering over them or clicking on them

To reform these privileges, you will need to fulfill the requirements and have the proper amount of mana for it, once these conditions are fulfilled, the option will become a bright white, meaning it can be enacted. Reforms are a bit different. Reforms are complete changes in civil/social structure, you must meet those requirements,which are usually greater than most reforms, and then, once the requirements are met, the arrow will turn green, meaning that the reform is now ready to be enacted (picture). Once you click on the arrow, you will receive a screen that looks like this

Which will allow you to either enact it immediately, or you can click further reforms, which will put the reform on pause for 6 months until you enact another reform. What this allows is a chain reform or a "Package" of different reforms. This can lead to a large increase in corruption and loss of stability but a large boost in state capabilities. If you fail to reform, or you back off after realising something, reforming will go on cooldown for 5-10 years, meaning you cannot enact a reform again. Some very important bureaucratic reforms ( All reforms and privileges cost mana to enact or get rid of, please be sure to look at the amount and the requirements before deciding any sort of reform or package reform. )

Power and the Powerbrokers

Power and Powerbrokers are no longer simply represented by just a single group owning a province and commanding it, now there are multiple hands within the pot that will control various sectors of the economy, land and people. This can vary province by province, state by state and tag by tag, no two places will typically have the same proportion of power brokers, but that overall power is summed from the various provinces into the estate screen, which can be thought of as the 'national sum' of the power of all power brokers in your state (State, Nobility, Tribal, Burghers, Clergy). At the beginning of the game, for the vast majority of tags, power has been decentralized to these powerbrokers. Unlike in 2.52, these power brokers are not all bad, they manage your land, they comprise the majority of your military and pay you taxes. However, they will never reach the same efficiency as a fully state-run modern bureaucracy, and some privileges will hinder your ability to reach your full potential as a nation (Such as Rural Autonomy, which increases autonomy, Both military and tax obligations along with Noble Courts). Trying to hammer your nobility without a state army to back you up will lead you being often without much of an army and not many friends, leaving you open to attack from both outside and internal. If you do disrupt them and make them upset, worry not, as there are now tools for you to placate and improve relations with your estates. Each negative action towards an estate or reform will drop their mood and relations, to recover this, you need to do supportive actions such as marrying the nobility or supporting commerce to increase relations back to a better resting point for the powerbrokers. This will then translate to mood, which you can see here, which can improve various aspects of the functioning of your state. Mood is a constant balance between positive and negative and it will take time and experience to learn how to properly balance relations while keeping reforms at a steady pace.

Elites

The estates have been changed quite a bit. Most notably the Greater- and Lesser Nobles have been merged, and there is now a bureaucracy estate. Also in game there is now a distinction between Elites (the provincial estates), and Factions (their national representatives in the government). The Elites each have a loyalty and power percentage per province. Note that the loyalty value you see for the bureaucracy is actually their corruption percentage inverted, and that each estate individually can have a power percentage from 0 to 100% (so the total is not 100%). E.g. the Nobles and Burghers can both have 100% power, meaning the Burghers rule the cities, and the Nobles rule the rural areas.

You can interact with the Elites via the estates menu, simply take the time to go through the interactions, each powerbroker has a leveraging action (negative) and a supporting action (position). Every estate has a set of starting reforms, with nobles using a newer, more modern privilege framework that will be expanded as the mod develops. Estates will not demand privileges like in 2.52 at the moment. Revoking them costs heavy amounts of loyalty, so take your time but remove them for a more efficient set of elites. Uncorrupted elites can be of good value to the realm.

You can promote each Elite if you so desire through their own special positive interaction in exchange for positive relations and loyalty. Expanding the Bureaucracy is a good way to increase State Reach, which increases the efficiency of taxation of money (not manpower, and not Obligations (e.g. Feudal or Noble Dues)), reducing mana cost.)

Via the Bureaucracy estate menu you can now also interact with the commoners. The most important thing to know is that you can buy grain for the commoners, this is expensive, but gives you stability.

You can check the power of Factions in the Factions menu in the bottom-right corner of the screen, it uses the Vanilla Faction Republic Symbol from Vanilla, and when opened, looks like below:

Different Factions in control of the government provide different bonuses and maluses. The best way to impact the power of Factions is by hiring advisors of the faction you want to promote. Every time you get a new ruler you can also choose to align with a certain faction, which will give you available advisors of that faction. You should always promote your advisors for more monarch power since they cost very little money (but beware that they do give corruption). Changing alignment and changing advisors will cost stability points.

Factions also have opinions of other factions and the state. Relations between factions don’t do much yet, but Faction relations with the state are used to determine legitimacy gain from them. (Legitimacy from Factions is: relations x influence x elite power.)

There are also the Clans. Like State Reach, they don’t have gravity for power. Their power only changes if acted upon. Clans are a replacement override for all other Elites. All other Elites power is inversely capped by Clans. The only ways to extract from Nomads are the Tribute and Tribal Host taxes, all other taxes are inverse capped by Clans.

Corruption

For corruption there is both national corruption and provincial corruption. Provincial corruption mainly represents the power of the Elites in your provincial administration, which they try to use for the benefit of themselves. The corruption value of the bureaucracy estate *is* provincial corruption.

National corruption comes about half from a lack of executive authority and half various privileges and reforms that were listed in the Reforms Section of this guide. You can view executive authority in the country modifiers tab. The main source of national corruption is the power vacuum in the government, especially under weak rulers. Note that ruler stats are not solely made up any more of just the stats of the ruler him/herself. The state-bureaucracy also has stats: it is always 4 4 4. The more institutional authority you have, the higher the weight of the bureaucracy stats. This will make the effect the ruler has on the government smaller, so weak rulers are much less of a problem, but the benefit of strong rulers is also less.

Generally corruption is much higher in 3.0 than in 2.52, at least at the start of the game. Don’t worry if you start and end up having about 40 corruption early game, the game is balanced around this. If you have the money, use the various Anti-Corruption Measures which can be found in the "Direct the Bureaucracy tab as well. Note that the effect of corruption on all power costs has been halved (so 40% corruption means +20% all power costs instead of 40%).

Institutions

Institutions still have starting dates, but after that they can invent simultaneously and completely independently in any province that fulfils the requirements. There is no longer a single province in which an institution is invented and spread from. Institutions increase your tech cost, just like in vanilla(except for Meritocracy). They spread from all places they have been invented, but just like for inventing, there may be requirements for the institution to spread (but spread requirements are always lower than invention requirements). Most institutions will always be invented in Europe without player involvement. However, if you play in any part of the world, and fulfil the requirements of any institution, you can invent them separately, and don’t need to wait for them to spread to you from Europe. The requirements can be found when hovering over the name of any institution in the institutions menu.

When you hover over an institution, it will tell you the exact conditions it takes for you to have it be invented and spread in your provinces

Note however that most institutions require the Commercialisation institution. To invent this you need to allow for a certain amount of commercial freedom, which is linked to a reform for the Burghers. All nations in Europe start with the required reforms, but almost every nation outside of Europe does not start with these reforms, and the Commerce reforms are locked behind Trade ideas. So as pretty much any nation outside of Europe unlocking trade ideas should be high on your priority list.

Dei Gratia

3.0 comes with an old favourite from 2.52, Dei Gratia, except it has been reworked from the ground-up to work within our system. Minorities are no longer just province modifiers done in multiples of 10% of the population, but are actually based entirely off of the population itself

Hovering over the religion icon shows different religious populations, press A to cycle through all the layers to see everything! You can also do this with all the other Meiou and Taxes Modifiers below to find more info!

So while your province may say one thing about your religion, what may be going on underneath is an entirely different story. You can see Dei Gratia especially in Europe, with heresies of Christianity popping up first in their historical regions and then possibly spreading outwards based on a number of factors. This becomes especially apparent in the late 1400s-1500s, when the Protestant reformation begins.

The Reformation in Action! Various centers are shown in Northwestern Europe, vying for dominance

At first, the spread is typically slow, but could be quickened by the reform desire of Catholics, it then quickly becomes a game of protestant vs catholic when the Printing Press institution is invented and centers of reformation appear, most often in cities. These centers of reformation will go to various heretic provinces within their superregion and convert the province to that faith. After some time, the Counter-Reformation will spawn and centers of counter-reformation will convert provinces that are Lutheran, Calvinist or others back into the fold of the Catholic Church. These will continue to be active until the Age of Absolutism spawns. This mod does also include fun, flavorful options to introduce fun religions in your nation, based off of your location (Byzantium can hire a Philosopher and revive the Hellenic Religion, and a Persian nation can have the Zoroastrian rebels spawn and convert their nation to Zoroastrian)

Colonization

There cannot be a game of EU4 without colonization, and this is another section of the game that has been heavily reworked. Colonial range has been massively reduced and exploration takes place primarily through the new expedition system. To unlock expeditions requires the third exploration idea. To unlock exploration ideas you will need either the third naval idea and dip tech 21 or dip 33 and naval force limit 50 and furthermore, you need to have at least 1,500 maximum naval materials and Commercialization Institution. Once you've unlocked Exploration Idea 3, you will begin getting a biennial event that will ask for what region you would like to send an expedition to. This is based on your home trade node position, as well as your diplo tech, the higher your diplo tech, the further you will be able to reach. Within a year of selecting the location you want to send an expedition to you will hear back about the results. Expeditions may result in nothing, maps, money, or a settlement. Most expeditions will not result in a settlement until success chance improves with the first colonialism idea which also increases expeditions to yearly. Failure is far more likely if you are sending expeditions to an already owned location. This is determined by many factors, but the rule of thumb is the greater the military tech gap is between you and your target, the more likely the settlement is to succeed. So while you can send expeditions to France, you will just hurt your relations unless they fell far behind. Once a settlement is founded, the fun begins, it immediately becomes a core and connects itself with your empire so that you can then send colonists to neighboring provinces. This works the same as vanilla and is not required to follow any particular path. The expedition system works for anyone, even non-historical colonizers, so if you want to colonize California as Japan or Indonesia as Inca you can. These expeditions however, can only take coastal provinces, and will require colonists to venture into the hinterland to expand the reach of your empire.

Overland colonization can also be done with Expansion ideas (requires Administration ideas and 24 admin tech) via frontiers. This will go faster than overland expansion with exploration ideas at the cost of not having expeditions. Making it the better choice if you don't plan to expand overseas.

Trade

Trade is another system in Meiou and Taxes that has been completely reworked, trade is still very much like Vanilla in which you can collect and transfer trade, just like in Vanilla, however that is not typically going to be the primary source of income, what is the majority of your income is what happens within that province.

You start with your home node, and every province you own can trade with each other. Next to your home node are other nodes, which you can trade with if you have a merchant in those provinces. That trade is dependent on whether you have provinces within that node and the tag's opinions of you within that node, the higher the opinion the more you can trade with that nation. If you want to stop trading with a nation, an embargo is the way to go, enacting an embargo on a tag will stop all trade from that tag to you. This is a great way to restrict the market access of rivals that wish to use those ducats to hire soldiers to storm your nation. However, if you are looking to open a country's borders to your merchants, by love or by force, the best way is to force the opposing tag to transfer trade to you. Percentage does not factor into the amount of the market that is open, if the country is transferring trade to you, that market is now open to you, regardless of opinion (if you have a merchant there, at least). This same effect can be felt when an opposing tag is made a subject of any kind. It will open their trade to you and your trade to them, and you will then be able to trade freely (Also applies to transfer trade).

Immigration/Emigration

This is a new feature of 3.0 and has many interesting applications. Pops will now migrate to different provinces based on the wage level, if a province can give that worker a better wage, than he will be much more likely to go and set up shop somewhere else.

Immigration pictured in the population screen. Emigration is red and at the bottom, immigration is in green and natural births is in yellow.

Most migration happens within the nation, from poorer parts to richer, from rural to urban, generally. However, immigration can change greatly if one is a subject or another or has subjects themselves. These subject's pops can migrate to the overlord and the overlord's pops can migrate to the subjects, as always, based on wages. However, the only type to not receive immigration are the tributary tags, while they are linked closer in markets and commerce, immigration still only passes from their lands and subjects. There are even special zones of migration that apply to one or multiple tags, the most notable being the HRE. All pops within the HRE are able to migrate to another province based on the wages they could garner. This makes population growth a competitive experience in the HRE, as different states invest and increase wages to attract other state's population to come to their province. We are looking to add more zones like this in the future when they are historically applicable. This migration also applies to colonial nations, so that nations with colonies can send some of their own subjects overseas to increase the wealth of the colony. As any subject nation (And especially colonial nations), it may be wise to stay as a subject as long as you are able without disrupting your chance at independence, as you can leech population from your overlord. Overall, migration/emigration are the lifeblood of both growth and change throughout the game.

Stability

Stability has changed significantly since 2.52, it is no longer a resource that is constantly ticking upwards, but instead an equilibrium for you to manage and control. You can find the stability modifier in the government tab and click the stability modifier.

If we go to the government tab, we then find a +/- symbol, we click on that...

We scroll to the bottom and Voilà! We see that we have positive stability and will be trending upwards! You can also see any other government modifiers affecting your nation now (don't worry, you don't need to know all of them)

Once you hover the stability modifier it will give you the percentage of if it is ticking downwards (red) or ticking upwards (green) the stability percentage updates every first of the month, which can also be found within the Direct the Bureaucracy tab.

You should only reform when you are at Stability +1 or else the powerbrokers of your nation will be quite upset at you for shaking the already delicate balance of power. Unlike in Vanilla or 2.52 you have direct control over your stability. There are now multiple interactions that will increase your stability, mainly the Grain Dole and Tax Relief.

Temporary Tax relief is great for nations with a healthy treasury who can spare the coin to make their people richer or to bring their nation back in line.

The Grain Dole can help alleviate situations where your people don't have enough food, and thus low life fulfillment. It may cost a lot but it can help correct a bad situation

This will cost you a great sum of ducats, but can be quite beneficial to both growing your population and keeping your population stable. Positive stability will increase your pop growth by a percentage that caps at +2 stability. Keeping your nation stable will be both a challenge and a game in and of itself to keep your nation competitive

Advisors

When you are looking for help to run a nation, you typically go to someone with power, well educated and has good skills. Advisors bring these to the table, they have been completely reworked from 2.52 and are now a much more interesting feature overall.

Each Advisor has a Faction, and will increase the influence of the government with that given faction

Firstly, you may notice the advisors are very very cheap, and that is intentional, advisors are essential to generating the mana and giving each faction a chance at representation at your court. Each advisor is aligned with a certain faction, and comes with traits like in 2.52. The higher the level the advisor is, the greater influence they will have on faction influence. There are plenty of situations in which you would want to have different factions in control of the advising. If, for instance, you are a nation outside of Europe and you would want to reform into Commercialisation, it may be wise to align with other factions, like the burghers to increase their influence and pass needed reforms. An advisor dying will have a 25% cost on stability, and will take another 25% stability hit to hire.

Realignment can be an opportunity to get cosier with some factions, or bring them greater influence in your Empire

However, upon ruler death, one is presented with two options, you can either decide to upset some people but keep your current cabinet (based on who you have in your cabinet) or you can align your nation with a different faction, based on your needs. Aligning with a faction will significantly increase your relations with that chosen faction but decrease the relations of other factions, and any advisors hired from that faction do not incur a stability loss. You can also mix and match your advisors to try and influence different parts of your government in other ways, like a burgher advisor with a bureaucrat advisor and an aristocratic advisor, all with their own purpose to placate other factions.

Policies

Policies are very similar to 2.52 and vets will remember many of the policies that are in. There are 4 main policies that players will be encountered with at the start, as pictured here. Centralization is already picked for this run so it is not showing in the policies tab. You can have 1 free pick of each policy (with an addition that is added with some ideas), and it will then continue to effect your nation while it is active. At the start, picking policies is very simple, you would want to pick centralization as you may want to increase that modifier (as you did back in 2.52) to reduce your autonomy even further, at the cost of unrest. Above those, you also have "Enforce Religious Authority" and "The Tolerance Act" these do as they say on the tin and are up to the player to decide on whether they want to convert their population or tolerate them and let them live in peace. There is one other final policy at the start that is for nations going under extreme duress. Aggressive policing reduces your manpower to send your soldiers to police the streets, it will decrease your unrest by -4 at the cost of a reduction in manpower, you typically will only want to do this in extreme situations in which unrest is starting to get out of hand. These policies can be seen as another tool in the box to increase the ability to shape the state that you want to make.

Centralization

Centralization is both familiar and strange in 3.0, as mentioned in policies, it is used to help increase centralization. However, what is different in 3.0 is just what I said, it is only used to help in the process and is not the main source of centralization. The main increase of centralization is state reach, as state reach grows, your centralization grows as well, and is much more efficient than centralize the state policy. Centralization bonuses however should be very familiar to 2.52 players, as they have been kept largely the same and will benefit/detriment your nation the same way as it does in 2.52.

Legitimacy, Republican Tradition, Devotion & More

Legitimacy & Co, are a much different beast to 2.52, they are mostly related to the mood that was discussed in the Powerbrokers section. This will show up as faction support and will increase/decrease your legitimacy over a period of time. If mood is overall low, then you can expect to see a significant dip in your legitimacy for a time, until relations improve between the various factions.

The mood of your faction is dictated by your past actions, if you have been supportive of your nobility as of recent, their relations will increase and the resting point of their mood will go up. A happy nobility is a strong nobility, so peppering them with support can bring good benefits to your nation!

This as well as centralization is a primary method of reducing autonomy while also increasing diplomatic reputation, liberty desire and Tolerance of the True Faith. Because it effects all provinces (like centralization) and is not hindered in any way by infrastructure, distance or land, the bonus is applied directly to all provinces, meaning that autonomy is overall lowered when legitimacy is very high. It is however, not designed to stay at 100 legitimacy all the time, it is an equilibrium of actions, much like Stability. So it is very normal for a nation to hover around 50-60 and it still be positive in autonomy loss.

Legitimacy & Co can help you get past that rough autonomy spot you're in!

Subject Types

There are varying types of subjects that are contained in EU4, they represent the various vassalation types and situations that nations found themselves in during this era. There are 6 subtypes of vassalship, each with their own varying rules for integration and their abilities.

This can be seen on this picture here of the varying types that are in the game. There are some special unions that have their own integration rulesets, but those are clarified on those specific vassalships. Keep in mind, if you have the Nominal government form, your vassals can declare war on each other and gain land, which possibly could make them strong enough to take you on. To remove this reform you will need either Adm 40 or Adm 30 and Commercialization, after that point, vassals will no longer be able to go to war. Keep in mind that this applies to player vassals as well and can lead to interesting state arrangements around a particularly powerful vassal To integrate vassals below Vassal State, you will need certain reforms that can be found within the Dharma government reforms which can be found here.

Government reforms are located in the government tab with the big crown on top, just like Vanilla, they are essential to integrating various vassals

These reforms will require some reforms that are listed in the tooltip when you hover over the selected Dharma Reform. All nations start out with all reform levels and you do not spend any points, but you do spend 10 corruption points to go to a selected reform. These reforms are mostly unfinished except for Internal Structure and Regional Military which are necessary for integrating subjects and must be used to integrate the higher tier of subjects. These reforms will be worked on throughout the development of the mod and will be given added effects, bonuses and maluses.

Life Fulfilment, Unrest and Concerns

Unrest is a much different game now than in EU4, while there are many common threads, you may notice that unrest can vary a lot more than you may think. The unrest and concerns tab, as pictured here, shows that this province is experiencing an increase of unrest and banditry among the population.

My mouse slipped, oops! But thankfully we can still see that our banditry is increasing, but our nobles are strong enough to alleviate some of the pain

This can cause a variety of effects that can cause provincial trauma, and other negative effects. But what could lead to such a thing? If we examine this province's population...

we can note that the peasants are below 100 life fulfillment (Green number at the top), which is food. We can see that this province is not able to meet the needs of feeding it's entire population, only 96% of Vexin's Peasant population can eat, thus welfare goes down and causes increase to rebellion and unrest. It is important that you try and keep 100% life fulfillment in all provinces that you are able to, or else a portion of your population can start to die out, decrease productivity, or worst of all, rebellion.

All social strata of society in Meiou and Taxes have 3 needs that can be fulfilled. The most important by far is life fulfillment, which is a combination of food, salt, fiber and raw materials such as wood for fire. If this is not met, then nations may find that even though they are not at war, they are not able to sustain their population. The only way to attain these is by having proper access and price or for trading them with another nation that has materials that you need. Without access, your population and thus your nation will suffer, so securing access to essential goods is imperative. The other needs would be comfort needs, which is a series of various industrial goods, and luxury needs, which are your exotics and delicacies that all the nobles crave. By far, life fulfillment is the most important, but it is always a nice bonus to have your people be comfortable and well dressed!

Conducting a Census

Conducting a census is one of the simpler joys of Meiou and Taxes. You can conduct a census on any scale, from a single province to your entire nation. We would suggest doing a national census every couple of years (up to the player, I would say 10 is a nice round number). Censuses are very important to know what your nation produces and what it is lacking. When you have started your provinces you must then click in the decisions "Conduct Census", which can be seen here, if you do not see Conduct Census, that means no provinces were selected and you cannot complete a census with no people! After you click Conduct Census, you will see two options, Population and Industry. Population is what it says on the tin, it gives you a census on all your population within the selected area, but do keep in mind the total value at the end is bugged and is not accurate, to find the total population, you will just need to manually add the Residents, Tribals, Peasants, Nobles, Burghers and Clergy population together. The second option for the population will show its wealth among each strata, how much they are earning and how much they are spending, this is useful to know if your pops are poor or not. The final option, Industry, is the most straightforward, it will give you a very clear picture of what you are producing in your nation and how much is being consumed by your nation. Now keep in mind that it only takes into account the production of a good and the consumption of that good within the borders of your nation (or the places selected) and will not take into account trade that fuels the consumption or exportation of other goods. For instance you can see a massive salt deficit as the Yoruba, but then see that every province is fulfilled on salt, that would mean your salt is mostly exported into your nation and comes abroad. However, it is always smart to try your best to become self-sufficient, some nations are incapable of this due to various historical realities and resources, so it may be prudent to keep track of your fulfillment for your most sensitive and precarious goods.

Performance, System Requirements and Recommended DLC

Despite 3.0 being coded much more efficiently than 2.52, due to the sheer number of calculations happening in the background the performance is slightly worse than 2.52 and will require more RAM than before. The minimum system requirements would be 8 GB of RAM (16 GB recommended), and while there is no strict requirements for CPU, high single core performance is best. If you have an SSD, we would recommend installing EU4 and the mod on the SSD for faster loading and saving. EU4 is not graphically demanding so graphics card requirements are not high, but a dedicated video card would be great to help free up more RAM and CPU time. M&T requires a 1080p display resolution for the UI to show correctly on the screen. If you have a smaller screen, consider forcing the resolution higher in display settings.

The current version of M&T 3.0 is for EU4 version 1.35.6, you can roll back to it in Steam's game settings, betas page.

The lag spikes of 2.52 especially in the beginning were due to the initialization of all the different mod components that would become active throughout the first 5 years,. There is no initialization period now as the initialization is run on a Dev's computer. This does however mean that loading into a country and starting a country for the first time will have a noticeably longer load time. Most of the lag is concentrated on the 1st and 2nd of January, so the game will freeze for a while and then continue as normal when it finishes the calculations. The rest of the year should be lag free.

Recommended DLC:

Art of War (General features),
Mandate of Heaven (Is essential for the macrobuilder (which is used in all interactions), and China mechanics)
Cradle of Civilization (So disbanding troops does not kill population)
Cossacks (For game stability, is essential)