Question about this.
Playing Austria, fighting Hungary is almost a pointless endeavor with the 200% coring cost modifier they have. I managed to somehow get a restore personal union CB against them and after a ridiculously costly war, manged to from a PU with them. So I thought that eventually I can integrate/inherit Hungary and save myself the coring trouble. Does this mean that plan will no longer work?

No, you'll still get cores in all provinces that Hungary has a core in at the moment of inheriting or integration. And they will have cores in all provinces except maybe recently conquered ones or ones that they cant core for being too far away.

This will be an issue generally only if u let them occupy some far away provinces and give them those provinces in a peace deal.

the patch is online on steam now!

This:

Seems lame then.

I think it's reasonable, if they hadn't done that you could still avoid having to core almost anything yourself by selling and letting ur vassals use their admin to core them before you diplo annex them.

Although might have been been better if they still would have let you sell provinces that were a perfect religion and culture match for your vassals, that would have limited it enough imo

It makes picking vassals a bit more interesting too - there's little point in having small ones, but much more point in vassalising Spain etc. If I understand it correctly anyway.

I don't see anything wrong with using your vassal as a puppet government for wrong-culture/religion territories. They take up a relations slot, they waste your tax income on armies they don't know how to control, etc. A better nerf would be to make annexation time scale with size.

You pay for your vassals' armies? I thought the $$ in that relationship goes in the other direction.

I just meant they keep 50% of their income and waste it on being useless mopes.

1.2.1 hotfix notes:

So DotF gives you CB on any other religions? Seems so stronk.

I'm in 1700 now with Mughals, latest I have played a game so far. Despite the +45% tech costs for being muslim I am one of the most advanced nations in the world. Being rich enough to afford +2/+3 advisors in every area helps a lot with tech costs, as does being -100% pious (-25% tech costs) which almost reduces the tech penalty alltogether, giving you the same tech costs as Eastern tech nations. Only real problem is that because my tech is so advanced I will likely never be able to westernize so my units are always going to suck. I maxed national ideas in like 1550 or so and have maxed diplomatic, trade, offensive, defensive, and religion ideas. Currently working on expansion tree to colonize Somalia/Taiwan/Indonesia and another extra merchant.

I also pretty much never build buildings unless I am both super flush with cash and ahead of time in tech and have no ideas needing the monarch points. There are exceptions like the unique buildings like embassy etc, and I try to get docks shipyards etc in every coast for lower naval cost and +naval limit but things like temples etc I almost never build. Anyone else play like this or am I dumb for not building buildings? Just seems like the opportunity cost of spamming say, temples is enormous given that say, 10 temples might be a years worth of admin points and 500 gold for a tiny return that won't repay itself for decades, and even then you never get repaid for the admin points spent, only the gold, which is useless. I could see the military buildings being very worth it if you are a smallish country and need to get every ounce of manpower possible, or in multi games.

Depends if you can get the money really.

+trade power buildings are definitely worth it if you don't get to invade everyone nearby - i.e, in Europe.

I'm not sure on +goods buildings yet. If you have 100% of the provinces in a trade node then it maaaay be a more efficient way to get more money, but I don't understand the game well enough to calculate that.

Yeah I haven't touched the +goods yet. I could see trade buildings being worthwhile if you have no coast, but isnt just building ships more efficient usually given that you can move ships to other nodes once you dominate them? My problem as mughals is I dominate or fully control like 3-4 trade nodes and am still competing with Orissa the last indian country in the Ceylon node. They have more provinces than me there so I've just been sending big trade fleets. I could build trade power buildings in the area to gain more power but its easier to just send more trade ships, especially since once I kill Orissa I won't have competition anymore and the trade power buildings wont really be worthwhile but the ships can be sent elsewhere.

I guess probably more useful in multiplayer too where you might actually lose your fleets and where competition for trade would be much more fierce compared to lol AI.

In the Euro nodes you won't dominate even with max ships, unless you conquer a lot of your neighbours. The countries are less concentrated outside Europe compared to the trade nodes so you can probably rely on ships (also it's easier to kill off neighbours outside Europe).

I'm playing a colonising Portugal game (again) at the moment, in 1510 I have 50 trade ships - from about 60 ship power - at Sevilla and only about 60% of the trade power.

As Mughals perhaps this isn't a problem, but +manpower buildings did wonders for me as Venice; having started on these from pretty much the beginning, at just about every point in the game my manpower has significantly exceeded what you'd expect from a country of my size, and it's saved my bacon in some close wars against juggernauts like France/HRE where attrition would otherwise have sucked me dry.

Remember dem diminishing marginal returns adding more ships. I usually stop trying to add ships once I have around 50-60% of the trade power in a node.

Still working on my United Portugal of Americas but really struggling with income in 1575 despite owning most of the Caribbean and Brazil with cores. I am starting to think I need to restart the game and get some European holdings early on to boost my income to finance the colonial expansion.

You should be able to run Portugal mostly on trade income.

From where? Africa? I am running brazil>cari>sevilla but the americas are so poor early on I am not getting that much.

What percentage are you getting in Sevilla? Caribbean starts out poor, but it should get pretty rich once you develop all those sugar islands. Expanding around Africa to India is nerfed in 1.2, but it's still good.

63%. I figured out why I was struggling to break even. I was paying 16g for advisors I don't need.

I switched to cheaper advisors and now I am +7 gold, not great, but enough to give me wiggle room.

Silly mistake but I got too used to Netherland/Venice games where I got more gold than I know what to do with.

What's your tax base?

I'm 1585, 571 tax base, 51 tax, only 43 trade & I own all the bahamas and most of south america.

If you're under ~2/3 power in a node, make the buildings. As Goofy says, split your trade fleet as diminishing returns can really hurt you. Putting a merchant plus 10 ships in Genoa can make a big difference. And ignore north America unless you can take over Spain (or really, France, but that's not likely if you're aiming to colonise). I think I have temple + constable in every province, and lots of trade buildings in the nodes I'm competing with others in.

How do you guys know when you are getting too many aggressive points? It's seems I always get a little too greedy and countries start forming coalitions against me.

If you look at the reasons for your relations with a given country, it will show you how many AE points they have on you. I'm not sure what the trigger is for them to jump into a coalition though, probably a mixture of AE and how much they view you as a threat to their security.

Papal influence such a stupid mechanic. Orthodox and Muslim religious bonuses so good.