Europa Universalis IV – Institutions

by Falagar / Game Guides, General Guides / 07 Apr 2021

Institutions

Notes on obtaining institutions:

Feudalism: if you’re in the Americas, there’s a path for you to get this. Otherwise, try to befriend an adjacent nation with this institution. Even if they don’t offer knowledge sharing, it’ll still give you more spread. Alternatively, simply conquer the land which has this institution.

Renaissance: A bugger. No spread other than adjacency. If you’re east of the Ottomans, you’ll have to spawn this in yourself by increasing development.

Colonialism: spreads from friendly ports, but otherwise similar to the Renaissance. If you can make a colonial nation do so. There is an event (Grant Colonial Charter) that will give you 100 support for colonialism in a province if you either have Quest for the New World or it’s the Age of Reformation, and you own at least one province in the New World and one in the Old World.

Printing Press: if you’re Protestant or similar, that’ll happen naturally. Otherwise, and if you aren’t close enough for natural spread, your best bet is increasing development. Again.

Global Trade: high trade value is key. Build those marketplaces, and keep autonomy low. It’ll also spread in all provinces with Printing Press, but too slowly to be much use.

Manufactories: just build manufactories in high development provinces.

Enlightenment: similarly, build universities. A philosopher or natural scientist will help a little, but your capital should get plenty of spread anyway. A slight reason to have a Parliament.

Industrialization: same as Manufactories.

Tips for spawning institutions with development:

Choose a good province: farmlands, not tropical or arid or arctic, a center of trade. Remember that CoTs affect all provinces in the state, not just the province it’s in.

Producing cloth reduces development costs by 10% in that province.

Use the Encourage Development edict. Do remember to switch it off when you’re done.

With no modifiers, it’ll cost about 2000 monarch power to go from 0 to 100.

Traders estate >60% loyalty will lower development cost.

Temporary modifiers are useful. Don’t be afraid to spend what you have while one is in the relevant province.

Your capital gets cheaper development, proportional to your total development.

It’s generally inefficient to spawn more than two institutions in the same province: the cost is quadratic, but the gain is linear.

Exploit development, to lower the cost.

Some institutions (Manufactories, Enlightenment and Industrialisation) spread from buildings. use the development map mode to identify high-dev provinces, and build those buildings (manufactories, universities, and manufactories, respectively) in the relevant provinces before the institution spawns.

If you get Knowledge Sharing from someone, put the Advancement Effort edict on in your capital.

Falagar

He is the founder and editor of Magic Game World. He loved gaming from the moment he got a PlayStation 1 with Gran Turismo on his 7th birthday.
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