MEIOU&Taxes 2.0 Brittany AAR/Mod Showcase -- Part 2: Peace in our time

Welcome back. In this "exciting" episode I will go through several M&T mechanics. Fun times ahead.

First of all, last time I forgot to take a screenshot of the loot screen after the war ended. We got about 100 ducats of loot and were given three options about how much we want to take for ourselves. By taking the smallest amount (10%) we got 10 ducats and ensured the rest returned to local wealth pools in Brittany. If you take more like a greedy asshole then you piss people off and get some penalties.

The war is over but the wounds it has left on Brittany will take a while to heal. Nantes especially has suffered, having been besieged and looted multiple times.

Province trauma is a cool M&T mechanic created before devastation was added to vanilla which made it redundant. Whenever Paradox adds a worthwhile feature a mod has already done it and sometimes better. Just look at that food mod for Stellaris that added food transports you could raid and destroy.

Like devastation, trauma represents severe damage caused to a province by warfare, disease, famine or other disasters and gives penalties to growth, meaning that raped provinces will need years of councelling and therapy to heal. This encourages you to avoid heavily raping I mean looting provinces, including those that you don't plan on taking, to avoid the risk of famine. Famines, you see, can spread far and wide and kill a lot of people. I'll cover famine mechanics once peasants start dropping like flies. It will happen eventually, trust me. They're too dumb to just eat cake.

Let's take a look at the trade map, shall we? In M&T this is the second most important mapmode, but keep the game paused if you look at it. There's so freaking many icons on the trade map that your game might crash. I'm not joking.

Here you can see how four of our provinces have natural trade power bonuses: we have three estuaries and one bay. Because three of those modifiers are in the Bay of Biscay trade node, we have a lot of potential to become a trade powerhouse there. But because our cities are tiny, that potential isn't realized yet.

Also: Saint-Malo is one of the many provinces with a special modifier representing a local power in the province that gives it more autonomy. Here it is the city of Saint-Malo itself that has a history of self-rule.

The other icons visible here are: mundane urban goods in Bro Roazhon and Normandie, metalwork urban good in Tourraine, salt mine in Nantes, iron (or maybe lead) mine in Sussex and in that province east of Maine and lastly a "province built building" modifier in Haute-Poetou, east of Bas Poetou.

Yes, provinces can build buildings once they have enough local wealth. So can estates. It's almost like nation states aren't the only actors in the world. R E A L I S M

Now it's time to visit the Greater Nobles estate. These guys are usually assholes and a vital objective of many nations is to reduce their power. They often have a fuckton of privileges that give nasty penalties and increase corruption (that's why we have so much of it), will demand more privileges and if you try to take them away they'll start crying like babies, throw a hissy fit, drop stability and give nasty negative modifiers to the provinces where they're dominant.

But they can also provide some assistance in the form of favours. During the war, for example, I got a free unit from them. Nations like France where the Greater Nobles are very powerful can almost double their army by asking for levies. They can also give powerful buffs at the cost of loyalty.

Loyalty doesn't increase on its own so you have to send them fruit baskets as well as give them expensive favours and privileges fairly regularly.

Look at that list. And this isn't even that bad, try playing as the Mamluks to know what a true privilege bonanza is. The privilege highlighted in the image is one of the nastier ones. We can get rid of it by peacefully by revoking it, but there's a big risk that the nobles will be pissed off. Stability is the currency you spend on getting rid of these things, so don't expect to stay in +3 stab all the time.

Charles has seen how capable commoners or lowborns can be in war. The leader of the English army, John, was after all a mere gentleman (son of a baron), and Joan of Arc was a peasant girl. Therefore he thinks it would be a good idea to give some of the lowborn an opportunity to become officers in service of the Breton crown.

We ended up getting 14 war exhaustion from that war. Sheesh, looks like we'll be at peace for a long time. In vanilla this would mean I'd tab out and watch cat videos, but in M&T this means I can focus on solving internal problems. Not that peacetime is anywhere near as action-packed as war in M&T either, but hey, an improvement is an improvement.

Looks like it's time for me to explain what Communication Efficiency is.

CE is a modifier that shows how well connected to your capital a province is and how long it takes for a "plz send help rebels r burning shit" letter reach you. The modifier gives a large reduction to unrest and autonomy in your capital, but the effect wears off as you go further and further. Ports and roads improve CE and are vital in keeping a large empire stable and the estates at bay.

Recently taken provinces have this "Martial Law" modifier. Read the tooltip in the image to understand what it is.

If you don't want to have martial law or if you massively improve your transportation infrastructure in a short time, you might want to click on the State estate and dispatch runners. But your PC can get dispatched to hell if you do it so be careful.

Here you can see the Lesser Nobles estate as well. They have no influence yet, but that is because the only province they own still doesn't have its autonomy calculated. Yes, influence is based on number of controlled provinces plus autonomy.

Lesser nobles usually appear in provinces with a small rural population and are weaker and nicer than Greater Nobles. You can also demote Greater nobles to Lesser nobles and vice versa. A nice tactic is to take away all the privileges of lesser nobility (they are less likely to get mad) and then demote your greater nobles. Doing that will drastically reduce the loyalty of both, though.

The merchants of Nantes receive funding from Charles so they can build a ship. Charles felt indebted to them, for the English sunk their fleet after Nantes was taken by John Montfort because he and his army couldn't get there in time and save the city.

If you click on the State estate you might notice a "timber management" button if your nation has coastal provinces. This mechanic was made by one man for no particular reason and I'm not sure what it does. This early in the game it's not important, but later on when ships become vital for European powers that will change. I think. I'm not entirely sure.

just read that fucking wall of text jesus

basically the mechanic won't even be relevant until later on, so let's ignore it for now

Here you can see banking spreading rather erratically, or so it seems. Banking, however, doesn't just spread to nearby provinces, it spreads to provinces with high trade power that are controlled by burghers (the urban estate). Flanders dominates the waffle industry and thus also gets banking. If we improve our cities, it should spread to us within decades.

That "interest per annum -2" modifier might seem powerful but it isn't because Catholicism gives +2 interest by default. This is because only filthy Jews loan with interest, at least until filthy christian bankers start doing that too.

Prague is an important center of trade, but also a center of art and science thanks to its university and the court of the ruler. Here you can see how investing in education can really help institutions spread, and also that the institution jumps from one trade center to another.

Here's that interest penalty I mentioned, along with other modifiers catholics get.

Oh boy, I guess I need to explain everything about religion as well. Soon you'll see what brilliant madness Dei Gratia is.

oh my fuck

so basically this is church influence. if you have none you get jack shit. if you have full influence you get a bunch of religion-related buffs like missionary strength and tolerance of the true faith but also some penalties as you can see here. It increases and decreases mostly from decisions as well as some events.

and then

*faints*

Huh, where am I? What am I? Oh, right, I'm Charles de Blois, Duke of Brittany.

Wait, or was I some faggot explaining game modification mechanics to people who don't really care?

Ah, whatever. Enough mechanic explanations, let's play the freaking game.

After pleas for help, Charles granted privileges to a merchant company in Nantes in November 1362 to help them get back on their feet after the devastating war. The privileges were supposed to be temporary, but the company would retain them for a long, long time.

While Charles is as humble as any pious Christian, his wife pays for a man talented enough to capture his glory to paint a portrait of him.

Here you can see that you can get stability points from events. 50 is a lot of points and we're currently sitting at 0 stab, so I accept.

The artist painted him without a beard so Charles secretly hated the painting and ordered it to be burned at his death bed.

This tech means we have serfdom in Brittany but no we don't. Serfdom in western europe was in severe decline after the Black Death and would mostly vanish during the 15th century. We get this technology because some European kingdoms especially in the east enforced serfom at the time. France sure didn't and I doubt Brittany did either. Also not sure why it gives +1 states.

But oh well, whatever. They're planning to get rid of the railroaded vanilla tech system entirely and only use institutions and events and such to simulate technological advancement without being eurocentric. There's no point in complaining about something that will eventually be removed entirely.

If you turn on additional tags at the start of the game you get some cool formables such as the Modern Nationalistic League of Celts I mean Brythonia. TOTALLY NOT AN ANACHRONISM AM I RIGHT GUYS NATIONAL IDENITY TOTALLY EXISTED IN 14TH CENTURY EUROPE!

We might or might not form it. Also, did I mention there's a wagonload of new decisions in the mod? Most of them are from Dei Gratia like the "Establish a state inquisition" decision you can see in the image.

You might expect the Spanish inquisition because it's a stale meme and a dead horse but NOBODY EXPECTS THE BRETON INQUISITION!

Charles' wife Matilde loves holding banquets and parties in Nantes. This has resulted in both nobles and foreign envoys respecting the Duke more.

We lose the penalties and get some minor buffs. Neat. Rising the court level further would require more money than we currently make in a decade so we'll keep it stable at level three. In game you can click on the "Current Court Level" button to see the requirements for level ups.

Time to take a closer look at Nantes because there's nothing better to do. By clicking on the big province interaction button next to the pop icons we get a menu with a bunch of options. One of them opens a new menu allowing us to access a load of data regarding the province.

I have the "Food information tab" submod installed and I recommend it to everyone, for it adds a lot of information to the province interaction button. It's kind of like a tileset for Dwarf Fortress, helps you understand what the fuck is going on. Link: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/submod-food-information-tab.1028566/

Here you can see fucking everything. It's as detailed as Victoria II for Johan's sake. But what do these words mean, exactly? I'm gonna explain the ones that aren't obvious and that I understand, because jesus fuck this system is complicated.

And no the "may I have more information" button doesn't do anything. It's the same as going outside, looking at the sky and asking "what's the meaning of life?" God won't answer you because fuck you.

Rural saturation means how close the population is to the ideal population. The closer it is, the faster it will grow, but being above it slows growth. Ideal rural population can be increased mostly through Farming Efficiency, which tells how much food a single unit of farmers produces. Right now FE can only improve through local wealth (which can increase from loot brought back home and improved production, for example), but in the future you'll be able to build canals. Innate fertility is different for each province, can't change and affects both growth and ideal population. Not sure how exactly.

For cities and urban population, ideal population is represented by urban gravity. That can increase from buildings, modifiers and trade power. Cities grow relatively fast but are also more fragile than rural pop. Percentage Urban Gravity is a tally of all percentage modifers, which come from buildings and modifiers (e.g. center of trade). Yes, this means exponential growth of urban gravity is possible, but unfortunately the more you build the more expensive it gets. The Infrastructure province modifier increases build cost by quite a bit and represents money invested into buildings. Looting can take money away from infrastructure and if enough is taken a building will be demolished.

fuck my fingers hurt

Here's the local wealth I talked about. Read that neat tooltip in the image first. You can't see it here but when you have a lot of local wealth you also get a tax income bonus in the province. Too bad Nantes was looted empty so people are poor as fuck.

You can see how the rural population is doing a lot better and is making twice as much money as urban pop. The burghers are in debt, but thanks to the salt mine and the estuary they'll pay back eventually. I'm not sure but the wealth calculator might be bugged in the version I'm playing because it's possibly not supposed to be negative. You can also see how every year some cash is invested in farming efficiency.

It's barely visible under the tooltip but there's also an "Urban Production Skill" thing in the bottom. My fingers beg for mercy so I'll explain it once we get some production going by building a workshop here.

And lastly -- just kidding there's one more page coming after this but it'll be brief -- here's stuff about food. So, the basic rule is, each rural pop produces 1 food + farming efficiency. In Nantes, FE is 120% so each pop produces 1.2 food. Then each pop eats 1 food. Excess food is then eaten by regional rural industry (cash crop plantations and such) and cities. Some rural goods like wheat or fish can be exported elsewhere in the continent by rural production, which is increased by the Farm Estate building. Rural goods like wine can't be because you can't eat wine, silly.

The region we're in has 60% food available, meaning growth of cities and rural industries will be slowed down by 40%.

What this means is that the historical scenario of Eastern Europe having small cities but producing lots of food for Western European large cities can be repeated. If rural production eats and exports all the food, local cities can't grow.

And lastly, for real this time, intellectual levels. I don't really need to explain it myself, just read what's in the image. Forgive my exhausted fingers. Basically, generate a lot of art power by investing in education and court and you'll be good to go.

Phew, there we go. And EVERY SINGLE COLONIZED PROVINCE IN THE GAME HAS ALL THIS DATA STORED. No wonder the mod runs almost as slowly as Dwarf Fortress does.

Also Joan of Arc is still alive. Poor Englishmen didn't get the chance to burn a young girl alive, they must be very sad. A moment of silence for them, please.

Ah, the Martial Law modifiers are gone. We have excellent communication with Brest and its surrounding region. Small nations benefit from being very centralized and having low autonomy and thus weak estates. In fact, M&T makes tall minors really fucking viable. Education is cheaper, development is easier to increase, estates are weaker, et cetera. Meanwhile in vanilla you can click a button to make your provinces a little bit better instead of blobbing like homer simpson in a donut store. Wow. Bravo, Paradox.

hey look the pope is dead and we got a new pope. maybe if you elected younger popes you wouldn't need to replace them all the time.

There's Avignon, the only province of the Papal State. It's doing pretty well, despite having a religious scandal (the black icon with a white man admiring a giant mushroom). They also get three foreign students from three foreign upper class pops (the book with green plus signs). The Pope is guaranteed by France so don't worry about him.

Charles' envoy told the Pope and the cardinals about how pious his liege is. They like Charles and he's now is a pen pal with the Pope.

Next thing on Charles' to-do list is building new walls around Nantes and a proper ducal castle in it, for he doesn't want the town to get looted again. It will be expensive, but I'll get to show you how building forts and roads works. Once we have enough dosh, that is.

It has come to Charles' attention that the bishop of Quimper, Gaufridus Lemarhec, has been selling blessed items such as rosaries and crosses to local nobles and bishop Pierre has done nothing about it. Charles, however, turns a blind eye to the act. Why not let pious nobles acquire some holy merchandise and simultaneously support the church monetarily?

This is one of the many events related to the corruption of the Church. Eventually this will lead to the reformation happening, unless a council convenes and fixes things. Bro Gernev also got a "Corrupt Bishop" modifier giving minor penalties.

So from the province interaction button we can build a fort. It's going to cost 150 bretonbucks because Nantes is surrounded by low and level farmlands. We can spend manpower to reduce the cost, but it's not necessary and we don't really have men to spare.

oi shit

Our education level is dropping and I didn't even notice. That happened because after uniting Brittany we got a huge influx of upper class population and I didn't increase the amount spent on education much at all. This is bad and we need to fix it ASAP before it drops too low. Time to pour money into this shit. The fort will be delayed a bit.

hey look people are more peaceful and stuff

also if you've ever wondered what stability represents in-game take a look at this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_States_Index

Now that we have stability we can bully the nobles a bit.

Also here's the estate menu, I guess I should've shown it earlier.

In October 1364 Charles promoted some able commoners to high-ranking military positions. This made a lot of people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.

Note how the privilege got downgraded instead of being completely removed.

Charles reasonably explained his decision during the meeting of the Estates and Mathilda held a crazy party afterwards where everybody got drunk, so the anger dissipated for the most part. We lost no stability.

Sometimes you can get completely wrecked by this and lose three stability. That's like, three comets at once.

Nantes has recovered from the war and we finally have an urban pop in the province.

Here's what each urban pop does. Rural pop does little except pay a bit of taxes and add very little trade power and some rural production. Urban pop is very valuable mostly because of that +0.50 trade power modifier but also because of urban production. I'll explain later, don't you think I've done enough mechanic explanation in this part?

By clicking the quick build button or whatever its called next to the Coat of Arms, then clicking the building menu, scrolling down (if your resolution is as shit as mine) and clicking on the roads in the bottom, we get a crude way of seeing where we have roads. You can't build them this way even if you have the money.

Turns out we don't have proper road networks anywhere. We've got a lot of work to do.

England and Portugal had a royal marriage and now the King of the latter has died without an heir. The King of England Edward III has thus been crowned the King of Portugal. France is allied with Castile so a war in Iberia is now expected if the Hundred Years' War continues.

We have 5 upper class population and still not enough funding for the education of their youth. Charles is now considering founding a university in Nantes after the fort has been built.

Also inflation increases on its own just like in real life. R E A L I S M.

Lately some priests and nobles have gotten excited about the legend of Conan "the Not-Barbarian" Meriadoc, the mythical founder of Brittany, and wrote a bunch of terrible fanfiction about him. He will one day return in time of need, drive the Anglo-Saxon scum back to hell where they crawled from and reclaim Britannia for the Britons.

Charles decides to join this fad, claim descent from him and thus prove that he is a Breton instead of a Frenchman. This way he also assures his subjects that Brittany will remain independent and free of foreign influence, whether French or English. But the House of Rohan aren't very happy about it as they claim Conan was the founder of their dynasty.

If you thought Tolkien was creative and original with the names in LoTR, you're very wrong.

Charles married his daughter Marie to Castilian King Henry II's cousin. If the French King is a friend of Castile, then so is the Duke of Brittany.

I got this marriage in the hopes of getting an alliance with them, but then it turns out they had already reached alliance limit. What's that? It's a balancing mechanic introduced in M&T that limits the amount of nations one can ally. I'm pretty sure large nations like Castile only get two alliance slots or something.

In the early game, ally ASAP before anyone worth allying fills their slot with Ulm or something.

In the meeting of the Estates some influential nobles and even a few members of the clergy complain and whine about Charles' promotion of common mudblood whoresons (they used cleaner language). One of the loudest complainers was an elderly count who had hoped for his son to have a military career, but commoners had occupied all available positions so he was salty as fuck.

Charles uses empty political rhetoric! It's not very effective...

Fall back in line bitches! Charles is now strict. You do what he says or else you lose your beard.

Three positive traits? That's pretty good.

hey look the pope is dead and we got a new pope. maybe if you elected younger popes you wouldn't need to replace them all the time.

The tensions between Charles and the nobility intensify more when he ceases issuing high courtier titles, officially claiming they serve no purpose except making their holders impiously proud. Of course, he just wanted to show middle finger to nobles.

The privilege gave lesser nobles a yearly chance to promote to greater nobles. It was cheap to remove so I decided to get rid of it so the only province with lesser nobles doesn't switch to greater nobles and so my upcoming demotion of nobles won't be reversed.

But this time the nobility won't take it up the ass. The noble courtiers protest loudly and claim Charles is abusing his position of power and should remember he is just first among equals. Charles does not budge, however, and refuses to revert the changes. This increases tensions within the duchy and raise plenty of concern among the populace.

During the Estates meeting last year Charles had proposed the construction of improved defences in the ducal capital and got approval from all three estates, even the nobility. After all, Charles would die within decades but the walls would last for centuries. Work began once the weather improved in April and Charles sent a large workforce comprised of local levies to work. They were exempt from military duty during that time and were paid in food.

Once a fort is under construction, the province will get this modifier. Forts take 2,5 years while roads take 5. When it goes away the building will magically appear.

This system is in place so you can have terrain modifiers for build costs and the possibility to reduce cost by investing manpower or by bumming money off locals. People in Nantes were poor as shit so we couldn't beg for cash from them.

A commoner Charles had promoted to the position of Master of the Horse told Charles they should adopt a new innovation: the lance rest (or more aptly lance arrest). He showed him a breastplate with one attached and explained how it worked. His proposition was approved and Charles ordered him to ensure all knights and nobles who could afford one would use it.

Here you can see how some nations get unique unit types with this tech. We don't, sadly.

While Charles rarely attended them, Mathilde's parties and banquets were very popular among the nobles. As a result she had formed close (completely platonic I swear) relationships with many of the most respected ones. This, in turn, made them like Charles a bit more.

You get these random loyalty increase/decrease events every now and then, so make sure loyalty stays high above 40% because it might drop by 10% and then you've got trouble.

nothing to see here just war of the roses almost a hundred years earlier than historically

And that's all, folks. Join Charles and Mathilde next time to read more boring mechanic explanations.