14 DAY TRIAL // After significantly enlarging the border of France, I am ready to focus inward and abandon my military ways for at least 20 to 30 years.
As I have mentioned before, I lacked the money to actually add infrastructure to my provinces until now, but I have selected a set of National Ideas that increases my revenue from taxation, so I now have a monthly surplus of about 10 gold.
I am spending that to build tax collector's offices, temples and marketplaces all over the map, to draw more money from my own population, while also getting more trade from the routes that crisscross the world of EU IV.
France cannot become an actual trading power because it has military matters to solve with its neighbors, but I can invest enough to attract some more traffic and I will maybe also take some territory to boost my position.
I am also trying to influence both Luxembourg and Lorraine enough to make them vassals, but my military success has not helped matters too much on that front.
I have also been hit by two monarch changes in quick succession, which lowered my stability just as I lacked the administration points to boost it.
These points, spread across three categories, are the lifeblood of a solid empire and I really like how the development team at Paradox uses them in order to add limitations to a number of areas of the game in order to prevent rampant player expansion.
I also appreciate the new trade routes, although at the moment in my ability to draw revenue from them is limited.
Just as my building spree was nearing its end, I found out that my beautiful empire was a target for Spanish aggression and I prepared to fight this new enemy from the south, which doesn’t really seem capable of defeating me.