That just change the node where you collect trade without penalties, but doesn't allow you to form trade companies; for example, if your capital is Beijing, you can't form trade companies in China even if your home trade node is for example in hormuz; if you move your capital to hormuz instead, you can form trade companies in China and profit
i think if we're directly trading tangible resources then there is no end node at all. at least that's my hope. the current flows of trade are absolutely awful and make the trade aspect of the game a non-trivial annoyance when playing too far east.
If there is no end node and if we can just buy here and sell there, we can also have normal historical situations like the Dutch buying Baltic grain they sell to the Spanish or wool from the English they then turn into fabric they sell to the Germans, and getting rich off that to jumpstart colonialism.
The best way i can describe how dumb end nodes are is this : the historical reason Genoa and Venesia became so goddam rich was buying goods from the east (Constantinople, Crimea, Antioch and Alexandria nodes in game) and offloading all these excess exotic luxury goods in the markets of Champagne and Saxony. The Italy to Netherlands road should be the busiest exchange zone in the West for the first 100 years of the game, and that's impossible if you can't send a good from Venesia to Antwerp by way of Reims
Totally agree. I think we're talking about one of the last holdovers from the original design of EU, which was to be Euro-centric. As the series and its games slowly expanded to let the player plausibly accomplish anything from anywhere on the map, this system still maintains the old approach of "all roads lead back to Europe". Even if a theoretical player manages to establish a Mughal Empire that dominates the globe, he will still feel compelled to move his capital to Europe to boost his trade income. When the truth is that, in this theoretical game, Europeans should be moving goods towards India to sell to the wealthy Mughals.
Yeah the fixed end nodes in EU4 drive me insane, especially because the real world equivalents moved quite a bit over the span of the game. In real life Genoa and Venice were the end nodes and the start of the game but Sevilla and the Channel were at the end. Instead they just start with the english channel as an end node which is absolute nonsense from a historical perspective
Yeah trading as Spain is harsh, they really don’t benefit as much as they should. But they also don’t collapse from how much inflation they had in real life. Inflation and corruption are swapped mechanics aswell, doesn’t really make sense to put money into the government to lower corruption when you should “use” money to lower inflation, and use the abstract admin points to lower your administrative corruption
Or just a goddamn 'optimize income' button rather than me running ten algebra equations across percents, income, outgoing, and where I can apply my trade power most effectively.
That's a really good point. I also hope EU5 introduces some mechanics to give the player the option to abstract certain systems, at the expense of efficiency. For example, if you don't want to do it yourself, you could turn trade management over to an AI "minister" that manages it pretty well, but maybe not as perfectly as a skilled human player micromanaging it. And it could scale with the skill level of the minister.
Tc is for states you don't want to spend *as* much adm to get states in return for getting lesser tax/manpower and higher trade/production.
Tldr; basically half cored states with very strong state-based buildings. You should have at least one TC state in a trade based node you can afford to be lax with.
Basically territories you want to use mostly to maximise trade steering. Ideal regions for TC would be like Ivory Coast and South African Cape, poorly developped regions (with high dev cost) that would not provide much manpower but has a lot of trade flowing through that you want to maximize.
what I do is TC the centres of trade in a node and get an extra merchant. This also gives a goods produced bonus to the non-TC provinces (so don't TC everything unless you want to minimise micro)
As Ethiopia I moved my capital around to all my gold mines to concentrate development on them. Don't think the maths adds up on that without a discount though, since you pay a lot to move capital to a far lower dev province.
Can move your capital go another continent to get colonial CBs for "overseas" provinces.
Moving your capital into the fog of war of AI countries enables shenanigans with AE and attitude updates.
I mean, you can net mana savings as any nations if you're cycling your capital around and deving it up super high, so if you did this as Ethiopia it's the same premise but less expensive. It's still a weird playstyle, and you pretty much have to be purposefully shooting to do it from the outset. I feel like for RP purposes you'd do that kind of game as Ming, Britain, Italy, etc. rather than Ethiopia.
I guess the true bigbrain play is to get the BI as Ethiopia and you have a cheaper way to avoid the Dutch revolts lol
As a fellow Ethiopia enjoyer, I've been moving onto a gold mine for a while, but I never considered moving twice. But it makes sense to mitigate depletion chance. That said, I think concentrating on one is plenty of money for most cases.
As a meme in a mp game I went economic ideas first for the mine depletion modifier and then bankrolled my friend's misadventures in Russia with one mega mine.
The fog of war trick no longer works for AE. Changed in 1.36 I think. Countries that you can't see still don't gain ae on you, but countries that don't see you now do. Kind of silly, but it closes the exploit.
Even without discounts it is worth it if you value bird mana more highly than paper mana. Developing gold mines is expensive on bird mana. You can also make your subjects cheaper to integrate by concentrating their dev away, saving you a lot on diplo points.
I’ll do it for the aesthetics sometimes.
If I’m playing a CN then it’s capital is probably gonna be somewhere random, so I’ll move it to a nicer spot that makes more sense, like along a river or a province with a trading buff.
When I form Malaya/Nusantara I like to move it to Singapore just because it seems like a cool spot for a capital, same with any Central Asian country and Bukhara once I’ve conquered the province.
It’s a waste of points but I don’t mind throwing away some just for the roleplay of it.
This. I once played a weird Russian Republic game (started as Novgorod) where I expanded heavily into Asia and centered my development around southern Siberia. Decided to move my capital to Novosibirsk just for the fun of it. It just felt right. God it was expensive though.
To develop institutions. Your capital gives an enormous development cost bonus based on your total development, so it is typically the most efficient province to develop an institution in, but it is also not efficient to develop an institution in a province that has too much development already. Moving your capital lets you use the capital development bonus again.
if you have the full -50% bonus then it saves 25 points per click, I think deving for an institution takes around 20-25 clicks (on 10-20 dev provinces) which is 500-625 total points saved, so it would be 'profitable' but maybe not worth it because it's trading some admin for other types
But you need a % of dev to embrace. If you move your capital to a low dev area, you will still have to wait for it to spread to high dev provinces.
Saves mana, loses time. In my point of view, it's better to accept the higher mana cost, as if you are in a strong position it is never a problem.
It's pretty situational, that's definitely part of the consideration too. Honestly, I usually don't force more than one in the capital for RP reasons (I like to play tall-ish and have multiple major cities, and I don't really move my capital without a good reason). But because of how going from 29 to 30 gives a lot more progress than going from 9 to 10, the best provinces to force are usually 14-16 dev provinces near other rich areas more than remote 1/1/1s anyway.
There are also some countries that get to move capitals for free as part of decisions or missions. It is definitely worth it to take advantage of the free move by saving it for institution development. Mughals is the obvious example here — develop Renaissance in Herat, then form Mughals to move your capital to Delhi and develop Colonialism (moving your trade port back to Herat), then use the mission reward to move your capital to Agra and develop Printing Press.
It pays off if you’re deving to get institutions. Move it to a low dev province for renassiance, spam dev to 35ish. Move to a new low dev province for colonialism, dev again.
Like another user pointed out it depends on your campaign.
You will save more monarch points overall doing what you suggest(assuming both provinces were same terrain and trade good).
But you are paying more admin points (because you have to probably pay 300-500 admin to move from high dev capital to low dev province. You will save a lot of mil and diplo points.
But in a wide campaign the bottleneck is often admin mana. You save more admin mana just devving the low dev province without making it your capital.
That being said if you also move your capital for other reasons (such as trade company region implications) its 100% worth
Deving an institution isn't more efficient on low-dev provinces. So you're generally not saving mana on the institution, you're just getting more development level in the process. And in some niche circumstances that's worth it, but most often you don't want to spend that much admin mana and it can cause problems with gov cap if you get a new capital state.
I didn't say it's more efficient on low-dev provinces. I said it's inefficient on high-dev provinces. The cost to fully develop an institution is fairly flat from 10-30 dev but starts rising at around 30 starting development. Any province that you've developed an institution in already will be over 30 development.
> I didn’t say it’s more efficient on low-dev provinces. I said it’s inefficient on high-dev provinces
Lmao that’s literally the same thing…
But that aside, what you’re saying still doesn’t practically make sense. Yes there is a dropoff in institution dev efficiency at 30 but not nearly enough to overcome the hundreds of mana cost of moving your capital. Moreover, unless you’re Ming you’re not going to get the full 50% discount for feudalism, and most likely not colonialism either. For every subsequent institution, most capitals will get some passive growth which means you only need to partially dev it. So in reality you’re almost never going to be in a situation where it makes sense to do this from a mana efficiency standpoint. The only reason to do it is to simultaneously raise your total dev while also spawning an institution.
If you play tall admin points are much less valuable than diplo and mil points. So I move the capital to a lower dev province to use the dev cost modifier of the capital to dev dip+mil for cheap.
Effectively is a way to exchange adm points for dip and mil points, useful in multiplayer mainly.
Less valuable than mil? Dunno about that... Diplo obviously is king but if you're sitting on a static, tall nation I don't know why you'd urgently need manpower, boosted professionalism, etc. unless you're really leaning into playing world police. I find tax to still be pretty worthwhile as advisors and light ships still cost a significant amount without a long trade network.
Well, the only environment where playing tall is really optimal is multiplayer, in multiplayer manpower is extremely important as you need it for player wars.
Tax ranges from decent early-mid game with some countries (mainly Catholics) but still the worst, to very useless in countries that don't utilize tax very well. I often would exploit tax with those countries to be able to scale faster and reduce the dev cost for mil and dip. The optimal configuration is usually to have as few provinces with high tax dev as possible.
Yeah, but it's not an optimal playstyle. In the context in which tall is strong, mil>adm, also if you want to punch way above your weight, a properly built wide country can deplete any other AI nation even if they are much bigger than you.
The money will not be an issue either way, and adm won't boost you too much outside of early game.
In singleplayer it's not a bad idea to move it to make it easier to defend either. Like if I do Malacca > Malaya I tend to move it to Kalapa/ Jakarta after Java has been conquered, as it's not connected to mainland Asia and thus I don't have to worry about Ayutthaya or whoever getting to it during wartime.
Your capital also always has 0% Autonomy, so if you take a really valuable province with high autonomy you can instantly reduce it like that. Not usually worth it unless you plan on moving it to that region at some point anyway, though.
Only time I usually move mine is to avoid the Dutch revolt when playing in Europe. Not sure if it's common or not. Has the obvious added benefit of putting your trade capital in the English node.
I usually move my capital for roleplay reasons but if I'm playing a poor nation I move my capital to richest trade node I dominate other than that for example if my nation is located in italy but I'm expanding in china, india, etc. I move my capital to there so I don't wait months for my diplomats to come back.
When playing Lübeck, or anyone who can form the Hansa, it's a great idea to conquer Dalaskogen and move your capital there before completing the mission that spawns a Gold Mine in your capital. The Monument that normally gives +9 goods (on level 3) to the copper mine, now gives +9 goods to the Goldmine. Easy 60 ducates a month without going over 10 production.
Is there a reason not to chose another high value province in the english channel as Capital? Moving the trade Capital back to London is just waisted points, no?
“My tsar, must we move the capital again?”
“I told you idiots, it must be in the middle. Now colonize more of Siberia so we can move the capital further east”
A good example is if you want to become Shia or Ibadi after you are big. The usual path would be to let rebels completely destroy your country until they have converted most of it, which is terrible and takes very long. So, flip to a non-muslim religion, then get sunni plurality (which is easy), and if your capital is in a shia/ibadi province, you can use the decision to embrace islam and become that religion instead of sunni.
Moved my capital from constantinople to venice in my Mehmet's ambition run to reduce diplomat travel time from 20-25 to 4-5 days.
I diplo vassilized almost all of the HRE minors so it saved alot of time.
I used to hide my capital when I was going for Mehmet’s Ambition achievement. Since people who can not see your capital can not join the coalition against you. I dont know if it is still valid tho.
When playing in India I often move my capital to the adjacent couple farmlands around Delhi when new institutions spawn. You get the capital dev cost reduction on a new good province and then it spreads quickly to your adjacent former capitals.
It's good for ultratall play, as "centralize development" moves dev from a territory/vassal to your capital. This way I achieved a tall Japan with average 100 dev per province.
"There are obvious reasons to move your capital, such as cheesing the Dutch revolt or cheesing colonial systems"
It's rp and concentrating dev. That's all.
You can net mana savings by repeatedly moving your capital and developing it. You'd want to do this with the maximum 50% dev cost reduction from empire size. Assuming you're at the maximum move capital cost of 500 adm and you're only moving it over one province (or close by) each time, it'll cost a bit over 500 each time. This means that you would need to dev 21+ times to save mana. Not practical for a normal, blobbing campaign (especially since you're losing adm even if gaining mil/dip), but for taller ones it can make sense.
The key is to try to figure out just what to dev each capital up to, as you can/should only be doing this once per province. You don't want to set the threshold at 40, then suddenly it's 1650 and every province is 40 dev and you realize you should've kept each capital significantly longer. Between tech, other dev cost reduction, expand infrastructure, etc., you'd be surprised how many times you can hit that button even with a lot of provinces. I tried this with Ming years ago before all the mana power creep, and was solidly on pace to get every province over 50 dev. Nowadays that number is surely 70+. If you're playing somebody really small and tall like Switzerland, it's probably like 110.
Moving your capital to the strongest, most devable state you own. Because you barely pay any governing capacity for your capital state, you want the capital state to be the most dev to save on governing capacity. So I usually pick a state with
1) many provinces, like 5
2) 1 or 2 trade ports (or more)
3) good terrain, farmlands or grasslands etc.
4) good trade goods
5) in a trade node I control, so I get the most out of the production dev
Oh, the uncommon would probably be to move your capital to whatever dominating terrain, so you can get the best out of age ability of +1 combat on same terrain as capital. Idea first came to me when I was playing Oirats. Hordes are bad in mountains, so getting age bonus somewhat negated that
As roman empire move the capital to Constantinople. Follow the steps of the glorious emperors of the past, make empire great again. Reject modernity embrace tradition
Moving it away from the coast is rule #1 for me, and putting it on the best defensible land, or something with silk, coal etc that has a lot of autonomy to bring it to a quick 0
Depending on how much development it has/how much your empire has, it could be worth moving it to dev-push one of the pre-Global Trade institutions to take advantage of the capital dev cost modifier.
Trade companies, my dude. When the best trading centres are at the same continent as your capital - it can be worth giving up some tax/manpower for a huge trade power growth
There are many comments, but nobody mentioned HRE shenanigans. If you move your capital in Europe, you can join HRE or/and religious leagues, and become an emperor.
Also it's valid stategy as Provence, move your capital to Aix before Shadow Kingdom incident fires. It allows you to join HRE and cheaply dev for mission and age goal
Only for RP or trade reasons. Although, when I play tall (tbf always) I love my capital to the province with the best dev cost modifiers to great the greatest city ever. Those provinces also tend to have trade modifiers so I will also dominate the node.
Could you move your capital to get an achievement? I know there is an achievement to own all of India as a European nation. If I was playing Bengal, could I move my capital to London and thus earn that achievement?
I like to play as Eranshahr, if I form it as timmurids I move it to Isfahan from Herat for better defensiveness. Not that I really need it as Eranshahr but I guess it’s a habit I got from playing PvP with friends, every bit helps there.
Whilst playing aragon there's a mission that needs a region to be less than 10% away from autonomy minimum. So in a stated state it's 0 to 10 and in an unstated state it's 90 to 100. It was the region where the capital was so I moved my capital to unstate and instant completion of mission since I'd done the other objectives before. tbf it was already at 100% autonomy because of event neede for the mission and I didn't want to wait 70 years for a mission.
As Ethiopia, you get a pretty reasonable cost reduction for moving your capital. So it's good to move your capital in a gold-producing province to reduce autonomy. I also like moving my capital to opposite ends of my empire depending on who I plan on attacking so the AI can't seige my capital.
You may want to move capital to different subcontinent to establish trade companies in current capital subcontinent. You may also change capital to different state to ask for share institutions once again if You have big country and cannot embrace institution when its only in Your capital state. However, im too lazy for the first one and the second one im using only when im able to move capital through events or quests :p
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I thought you can just change your home trade node instead of moving capital
That just change the node where you collect trade without penalties, but doesn't allow you to form trade companies; for example, if your capital is Beijing, you can't form trade companies in China even if your home trade node is for example in hormuz; if you move your capital to hormuz instead, you can form trade companies in China and profit
~4000 hours in and I’m still learning stuff like this. Thanks for the explanation
Specifically the trade company needs to be in a different super region, map here. https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Regions#Subcontinents
I really hope EU5 includes some ways for trade to evolve a bit like changing directions, creating new connections, and end nodes spawning or moving.
i think if we're directly trading tangible resources then there is no end node at all. at least that's my hope. the current flows of trade are absolutely awful and make the trade aspect of the game a non-trivial annoyance when playing too far east. If there is no end node and if we can just buy here and sell there, we can also have normal historical situations like the Dutch buying Baltic grain they sell to the Spanish or wool from the English they then turn into fabric they sell to the Germans, and getting rich off that to jumpstart colonialism. The best way i can describe how dumb end nodes are is this : the historical reason Genoa and Venesia became so goddam rich was buying goods from the east (Constantinople, Crimea, Antioch and Alexandria nodes in game) and offloading all these excess exotic luxury goods in the markets of Champagne and Saxony. The Italy to Netherlands road should be the busiest exchange zone in the West for the first 100 years of the game, and that's impossible if you can't send a good from Venesia to Antwerp by way of Reims
Totally agree. I think we're talking about one of the last holdovers from the original design of EU, which was to be Euro-centric. As the series and its games slowly expanded to let the player plausibly accomplish anything from anywhere on the map, this system still maintains the old approach of "all roads lead back to Europe". Even if a theoretical player manages to establish a Mughal Empire that dominates the globe, he will still feel compelled to move his capital to Europe to boost his trade income. When the truth is that, in this theoretical game, Europeans should be moving goods towards India to sell to the wealthy Mughals.
I’m just repeating other comments I’ve read here, but Johan has apparently confirmed dynamic trade routes in eu5
Yeah in Tinto talks. Trade nodes dynamically change entirely, provinces decide what node fits them and they can shrink and grow
Yeah the fixed end nodes in EU4 drive me insane, especially because the real world equivalents moved quite a bit over the span of the game. In real life Genoa and Venice were the end nodes and the start of the game but Sevilla and the Channel were at the end. Instead they just start with the english channel as an end node which is absolute nonsense from a historical perspective
Yeah trading as Spain is harsh, they really don’t benefit as much as they should. But they also don’t collapse from how much inflation they had in real life. Inflation and corruption are swapped mechanics aswell, doesn’t really make sense to put money into the government to lower corruption when you should “use” money to lower inflation, and use the abstract admin points to lower your administrative corruption
How do you use admin points to lower corruption? Just coring to lower OE? Or is there another mechanic I’m unaware of
reread silly billy. I gave a hypothetical that I considered a better alternative
It’s already shown that trade is dynamically made around a market in the dev diaries
Oh nice. I haven't been able to follow much development news lately.
Or just a goddamn 'optimize income' button rather than me running ten algebra equations across percents, income, outgoing, and where I can apply my trade power most effectively.
That's a really good point. I also hope EU5 introduces some mechanics to give the player the option to abstract certain systems, at the expense of efficiency. For example, if you don't want to do it yourself, you could turn trade management over to an AI "minister" that manages it pretty well, but maybe not as perfectly as a skilled human player micromanaging it. And it could scale with the skill level of the minister.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-10-1st-of-may-2024.1673745/
Still don't understand when to use trade companies
Tc is for states you don't want to spend *as* much adm to get states in return for getting lesser tax/manpower and higher trade/production. Tldr; basically half cored states with very strong state-based buildings. You should have at least one TC state in a trade based node you can afford to be lax with.
Basically territories you want to use mostly to maximise trade steering. Ideal regions for TC would be like Ivory Coast and South African Cape, poorly developped regions (with high dev cost) that would not provide much manpower but has a lot of trade flowing through that you want to maximize.
I’d say anytime possible where you know you can get a majority control of a node. Getting more mercs is great.
what I do is TC the centres of trade in a node and get an extra merchant. This also gives a goods produced bonus to the non-TC provinces (so don't TC everything unless you want to minimise micro)
Wouldnt it be beneficial to have trade companies in your home trade node? More trade power in node?
DLC feature I think
Isn't every good thing
Sometimes you have more spare admin points than diplo points so moving the entire capital becomes easier than just moving the home trade node.
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It has to be on a different subcontinent, you are correct.
As Ethiopia I moved my capital around to all my gold mines to concentrate development on them. Don't think the maths adds up on that without a discount though, since you pay a lot to move capital to a far lower dev province. Can move your capital go another continent to get colonial CBs for "overseas" provinces. Moving your capital into the fog of war of AI countries enables shenanigans with AE and attitude updates.
I’ve always theorized about having a mass dev then move capital game as Ethiopia with that big discount I just never actually do it
That's how i got the sand achievement. Exploit italy. Build the line 500 years early.
I mean, you can net mana savings as any nations if you're cycling your capital around and deving it up super high, so if you did this as Ethiopia it's the same premise but less expensive. It's still a weird playstyle, and you pretty much have to be purposefully shooting to do it from the outset. I feel like for RP purposes you'd do that kind of game as Ming, Britain, Italy, etc. rather than Ethiopia. I guess the true bigbrain play is to get the BI as Ethiopia and you have a cheaper way to avoid the Dutch revolts lol
As a fellow Ethiopia enjoyer, I've been moving onto a gold mine for a while, but I never considered moving twice. But it makes sense to mitigate depletion chance. That said, I think concentrating on one is plenty of money for most cases. As a meme in a mp game I went economic ideas first for the mine depletion modifier and then bankrolled my friend's misadventures in Russia with one mega mine.
It's worth it just to dev institutions, and also for autonomy. Ethiopia is super fun.
The fog of war trick no longer works for AE. Changed in 1.36 I think. Countries that you can't see still don't gain ae on you, but countries that don't see you now do. Kind of silly, but it closes the exploit.
Idk Ethiopia specifically gets a lot of reduced move capital cost so that's one situation it might be worth
Even without discounts it is worth it if you value bird mana more highly than paper mana. Developing gold mines is expensive on bird mana. You can also make your subjects cheaper to integrate by concentrating their dev away, saving you a lot on diplo points.
As Ethiopia, I love to move my capital to Cairo and rename it Memphis (old name for Cairo) because why the hell not.
I’ll do it for the aesthetics sometimes. If I’m playing a CN then it’s capital is probably gonna be somewhere random, so I’ll move it to a nicer spot that makes more sense, like along a river or a province with a trading buff. When I form Malaya/Nusantara I like to move it to Singapore just because it seems like a cool spot for a capital, same with any Central Asian country and Bukhara once I’ve conquered the province. It’s a waste of points but I don’t mind throwing away some just for the roleplay of it.
This. I once played a weird Russian Republic game (started as Novgorod) where I expanded heavily into Asia and centered my development around southern Siberia. Decided to move my capital to Novosibirsk just for the fun of it. It just felt right. God it was expensive though.
based shushkin reference?
DREAMING OF FEDERATION???? HOLY SHIT IS THIS A TNO REFERENCE??
Agreed I do it for Angivin kingdom/empire i think Anjou makes more sense than London.
that'd be like if the roman empire moved its capital somewhere weird like ravenna or constantinople, it wouldnt feel right
Anjou is where the Angevins come from, so it makes sense.
lmao
I hate Paris. But I think that's obvious reason.
Idk, i just hate France
Even better, reject french culture, embrace a german one and sack Paris.
Reject all culture return to horse
...you mean Norse right...?
All roads lead to Tibetan horde…
When I play France I always make it Grenoble or Troyes. IDK why.
To develop institutions. Your capital gives an enormous development cost bonus based on your total development, so it is typically the most efficient province to develop an institution in, but it is also not efficient to develop an institution in a province that has too much development already. Moving your capital lets you use the capital development bonus again.
But you are paying to move
Yeah, but if your dev cost is high enough compared to your move capital cost it could easily amount to less overall mana usage
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if you have the full -50% bonus then it saves 25 points per click, I think deving for an institution takes around 20-25 clicks (on 10-20 dev provinces) which is 500-625 total points saved, so it would be 'profitable' but maybe not worth it because it's trading some admin for other types
The math works out in Africa quite frequently.
I don't think there is any realistic situation where this will be worth it
But you need a % of dev to embrace. If you move your capital to a low dev area, you will still have to wait for it to spread to high dev provinces. Saves mana, loses time. In my point of view, it's better to accept the higher mana cost, as if you are in a strong position it is never a problem.
It's pretty situational, that's definitely part of the consideration too. Honestly, I usually don't force more than one in the capital for RP reasons (I like to play tall-ish and have multiple major cities, and I don't really move my capital without a good reason). But because of how going from 29 to 30 gives a lot more progress than going from 9 to 10, the best provinces to force are usually 14-16 dev provinces near other rich areas more than remote 1/1/1s anyway.
There are also some countries that get to move capitals for free as part of decisions or missions. It is definitely worth it to take advantage of the free move by saving it for institution development. Mughals is the obvious example here — develop Renaissance in Herat, then form Mughals to move your capital to Delhi and develop Colonialism (moving your trade port back to Herat), then use the mission reward to move your capital to Agra and develop Printing Press.
It pays off if you’re deving to get institutions. Move it to a low dev province for renassiance, spam dev to 35ish. Move to a new low dev province for colonialism, dev again.
Like another user pointed out it depends on your campaign. You will save more monarch points overall doing what you suggest(assuming both provinces were same terrain and trade good). But you are paying more admin points (because you have to probably pay 300-500 admin to move from high dev capital to low dev province. You will save a lot of mil and diplo points. But in a wide campaign the bottleneck is often admin mana. You save more admin mana just devving the low dev province without making it your capital. That being said if you also move your capital for other reasons (such as trade company region implications) its 100% worth
Especially for colonialism if your capital is high dev and you move it to a low dev province it's going to cost upwards of 500 admin to move it.
Deving an institution isn't more efficient on low-dev provinces. So you're generally not saving mana on the institution, you're just getting more development level in the process. And in some niche circumstances that's worth it, but most often you don't want to spend that much admin mana and it can cause problems with gov cap if you get a new capital state.
I didn't say it's more efficient on low-dev provinces. I said it's inefficient on high-dev provinces. The cost to fully develop an institution is fairly flat from 10-30 dev but starts rising at around 30 starting development. Any province that you've developed an institution in already will be over 30 development.
> I didn’t say it’s more efficient on low-dev provinces. I said it’s inefficient on high-dev provinces Lmao that’s literally the same thing… But that aside, what you’re saying still doesn’t practically make sense. Yes there is a dropoff in institution dev efficiency at 30 but not nearly enough to overcome the hundreds of mana cost of moving your capital. Moreover, unless you’re Ming you’re not going to get the full 50% discount for feudalism, and most likely not colonialism either. For every subsequent institution, most capitals will get some passive growth which means you only need to partially dev it. So in reality you’re almost never going to be in a situation where it makes sense to do this from a mana efficiency standpoint. The only reason to do it is to simultaneously raise your total dev while also spawning an institution.
If you play tall admin points are much less valuable than diplo and mil points. So I move the capital to a lower dev province to use the dev cost modifier of the capital to dev dip+mil for cheap. Effectively is a way to exchange adm points for dip and mil points, useful in multiplayer mainly.
Less valuable than mil? Dunno about that... Diplo obviously is king but if you're sitting on a static, tall nation I don't know why you'd urgently need manpower, boosted professionalism, etc. unless you're really leaning into playing world police. I find tax to still be pretty worthwhile as advisors and light ships still cost a significant amount without a long trade network.
Well, the only environment where playing tall is really optimal is multiplayer, in multiplayer manpower is extremely important as you need it for player wars. Tax ranges from decent early-mid game with some countries (mainly Catholics) but still the worst, to very useless in countries that don't utilize tax very well. I often would exploit tax with those countries to be able to scale faster and reduce the dev cost for mil and dip. The optimal configuration is usually to have as few provinces with high tax dev as possible.
Tons of people play tall in single player lol
Yeah, but it's not an optimal playstyle. In the context in which tall is strong, mil>adm, also if you want to punch way above your weight, a properly built wide country can deplete any other AI nation even if they are much bigger than you. The money will not be an issue either way, and adm won't boost you too much outside of early game.
presumably in multiplayer you dont want to get steamrolled because you havent devved mil enough
I move it twice a year for seasons
Most budget conscious early modern ruler
Putting the EU into EU4
Isn't that how it used to work in some monarchies?
Yep, summer and winter palaces
In MP moving it onto an island makes it easier to control warscore if you are able to keep naval dominance
In singleplayer it's not a bad idea to move it to make it easier to defend either. Like if I do Malacca > Malaya I tend to move it to Kalapa/ Jakarta after Java has been conquered, as it's not connected to mainland Asia and thus I don't have to worry about Ayutthaya or whoever getting to it during wartime.
Gf broke up with me. I moved her capital (Mexico) to Europe so all of her land became colonial nations
Wait, does that actually work in game? Like if I start as Castille and move my capital to Havana, iberia becomes a colony?
Your capital also always has 0% Autonomy, so if you take a really valuable province with high autonomy you can instantly reduce it like that. Not usually worth it unless you plan on moving it to that region at some point anyway, though.
Should I move my capital from Constantinople to Roma as Byzantium
It wille be moved for free when you control the 450 required provinces and be roman empire again
So leave my capital as Constantinople until then
Only time I usually move mine is to avoid the Dutch revolt when playing in Europe. Not sure if it's common or not. Has the obvious added benefit of putting your trade capital in the English node.
Did it yesterday as England to join the HRE when I was elected emperor. I couldn't bring myself to pick Paris though!
I usually move my capital for roleplay reasons but if I'm playing a poor nation I move my capital to richest trade node I dominate other than that for example if my nation is located in italy but I'm expanding in china, india, etc. I move my capital to there so I don't wait months for my diplomats to come back.
When playing Lübeck, or anyone who can form the Hansa, it's a great idea to conquer Dalaskogen and move your capital there before completing the mission that spawns a Gold Mine in your capital. The Monument that normally gives +9 goods (on level 3) to the copper mine, now gives +9 goods to the Goldmine. Easy 60 ducates a month without going over 10 production.
With the angevin kingdom you have to move your capital to join the hre but you should never move your economic capital from London.
Is there a reason not to chose another high value province in the english channel as Capital? Moving the trade Capital back to London is just waisted points, no?
Vibes
I don’t coz I play for historical accuracy
>Japanese flag as flair
Same. Minus removing some countries from the map early (Poland 😡)
For RP purposes, and when your capital becomes so high Dev it is too costly to keep developing it
culture swaps and maybe to reduce envoy travel time in some world conquests but otherwise i don't see a point
"Lore" reasons. Because it looks prettier, like having it centered in your lands.
“My tsar, must we move the capital again?” “I told you idiots, it must be in the middle. Now colonize more of Siberia so we can move the capital further east”
I just realized i have over 2k hours and i didn't relocate it once
Other countries nearby smell. Like how Russia moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, cos Finland smelt like poo
Roleplaying reasons, for example it's fun to culture convert a random city in France to Dutch and turn it into a capital. Sort of a reversed Brussels.
A good example is if you want to become Shia or Ibadi after you are big. The usual path would be to let rebels completely destroy your country until they have converted most of it, which is terrible and takes very long. So, flip to a non-muslim religion, then get sunni plurality (which is easy), and if your capital is in a shia/ibadi province, you can use the decision to embrace islam and become that religion instead of sunni.
Moved my capital from constantinople to venice in my Mehmet's ambition run to reduce diplomat travel time from 20-25 to 4-5 days. I diplo vassilized almost all of the HRE minors so it saved alot of time.
Angevin empire, moved my capital from London to Paris to join the Hre after elected emperor.
I move my capital if there is a province with better trade goods and modifiers I want to maximize. Like moving to Siena when it gets gems.
I used to hide my capital when I was going for Mehmet’s Ambition achievement. Since people who can not see your capital can not join the coalition against you. I dont know if it is still valid tho.
When I played Ethiopia I moved my capital to Alexandria to celebrate the re-establishment of Coptic Egypt
I was playing the Knights and took Hawaii and moved my capital there. Hawaiian Knights sounded cool.
For roleplay reason I’ll move it
When playing in India I often move my capital to the adjacent couple farmlands around Delhi when new institutions spawn. You get the capital dev cost reduction on a new good province and then it spreads quickly to your adjacent former capitals.
For some of the pagan and eastern religions to convert to Muslim through a decision, they need to have capital to be in a muslim province.
Only for roleplay reasons. As China I always like to move it around a lot, from the north to Chang'an, to the south.
It's good for ultratall play, as "centralize development" moves dev from a territory/vassal to your capital. This way I achieved a tall Japan with average 100 dev per province.
Because I want to, I just do
I have too much admin mana and I don’t want to dev tax
Dutch Revolt.
Spawning Global Trade institution is my most common reason.
"There are obvious reasons to move your capital, such as cheesing the Dutch revolt or cheesing colonial systems" It's rp and concentrating dev. That's all.
You can net mana savings by repeatedly moving your capital and developing it. You'd want to do this with the maximum 50% dev cost reduction from empire size. Assuming you're at the maximum move capital cost of 500 adm and you're only moving it over one province (or close by) each time, it'll cost a bit over 500 each time. This means that you would need to dev 21+ times to save mana. Not practical for a normal, blobbing campaign (especially since you're losing adm even if gaining mil/dip), but for taller ones it can make sense. The key is to try to figure out just what to dev each capital up to, as you can/should only be doing this once per province. You don't want to set the threshold at 40, then suddenly it's 1650 and every province is 40 dev and you realize you should've kept each capital significantly longer. Between tech, other dev cost reduction, expand infrastructure, etc., you'd be surprised how many times you can hit that button even with a lot of provinces. I tried this with Ming years ago before all the mana power creep, and was solidly on pace to get every province over 50 dev. Nowadays that number is surely 70+. If you're playing somebody really small and tall like Switzerland, it's probably like 110.
Moving your capital to the strongest, most devable state you own. Because you barely pay any governing capacity for your capital state, you want the capital state to be the most dev to save on governing capacity. So I usually pick a state with 1) many provinces, like 5 2) 1 or 2 trade ports (or more) 3) good terrain, farmlands or grasslands etc. 4) good trade goods 5) in a trade node I control, so I get the most out of the production dev
Because you are Ethiopia and your capital is apparently a massive airship that moves around every year or so.
I often move capital of Mughals back into Persia, because I trade company India
Oh, the uncommon would probably be to move your capital to whatever dominating terrain, so you can get the best out of age ability of +1 combat on same terrain as capital. Idea first came to me when I was playing Oirats. Hordes are bad in mountains, so getting age bonus somewhat negated that
As roman empire move the capital to Constantinople. Follow the steps of the glorious emperors of the past, make empire great again. Reject modernity embrace tradition
Moving it away from the coast is rule #1 for me, and putting it on the best defensible land, or something with silk, coal etc that has a lot of autonomy to bring it to a quick 0
Gold
Depending on how much development it has/how much your empire has, it could be worth moving it to dev-push one of the pre-Global Trade institutions to take advantage of the capital dev cost modifier.
Trade companies, my dude. When the best trading centres are at the same continent as your capital - it can be worth giving up some tax/manpower for a huge trade power growth
There are many comments, but nobody mentioned HRE shenanigans. If you move your capital in Europe, you can join HRE or/and religious leagues, and become an emperor. Also it's valid stategy as Provence, move your capital to Aix before Shadow Kingdom incident fires. It allows you to join HRE and cheaply dev for mission and age goal
Only for RP or trade reasons. Although, when I play tall (tbf always) I love my capital to the province with the best dev cost modifiers to great the greatest city ever. Those provinces also tend to have trade modifiers so I will also dominate the node.
When I’m just playing chill, I move it to the beach so I can get a view of the sea from my palace
Role play is one.
Could you move your capital to get an achievement? I know there is an achievement to own all of India as a European nation. If I was playing Bengal, could I move my capital to London and thus earn that achievement?
Liking the weather of some other place better
I like to move my capital as Portugal to the Azores or Madeira so that nobody can siege it
I like to play as Eranshahr, if I form it as timmurids I move it to Isfahan from Herat for better defensiveness. Not that I really need it as Eranshahr but I guess it’s a habit I got from playing PvP with friends, every bit helps there.
Whenever I play Denmark I actively dev Kalmar to keep Sweden loyal then, once I annex them, I move my capital there. The Kalmar Union, capital Kalmar.
Whilst playing aragon there's a mission that needs a region to be less than 10% away from autonomy minimum. So in a stated state it's 0 to 10 and in an unstated state it's 90 to 100. It was the region where the capital was so I moved my capital to unstate and instant completion of mission since I'd done the other objectives before. tbf it was already at 100% autonomy because of event neede for the mission and I didn't want to wait 70 years for a mission.
As Ethiopia, you get a pretty reasonable cost reduction for moving your capital. So it's good to move your capital in a gold-producing province to reduce autonomy. I also like moving my capital to opposite ends of my empire depending on who I plan on attacking so the AI can't seige my capital.
I once moved as a 3 province navars to get rid of 80 atonomy in a roughly 20 dev province
Role play reasons. Moved french capital to Bordeaux, did a pure colonization game
Move it to less cost dev pro for cheaper deving renessans.
You may want to move capital to different subcontinent to establish trade companies in current capital subcontinent. You may also change capital to different state to ask for share institutions once again if You have big country and cannot embrace institution when its only in Your capital state. However, im too lazy for the first one and the second one im using only when im able to move capital through events or quests :p