The Europa Universalis 4 Dev Meta
Or how development goes brrr
Europa Universalis 4 is one of the best and most popular Grand Strategy videogames of all times, the many years of success and the almost endless amount of high quality streamers who focus almost solely on this title give credit to its worth…
India can be a nice land to conquer, but it's also excellent to dev. (Image form my Mewar > Rajputana > Bharat run)
Yet almost every player has come up to a point where they wonder: “How can some players get those incredibly strong nations?” A question that becomes even louder once the top tier competitive MP games are discovered, where nations comprising sometimes not even more than 4-5 regions in Europe are capable of fielding hundreds of thousands of soldiers and have millions of reserve manpower, all while keeping a healthy balance.
The answer to this question comes in the form of a particular technique known as the “Dev Cost Meta”.
The Dev Cost Meta, briefly explained, consists on stacking various modifiers that reduce the development cost of provinces, with the objective of facilitating higher levels of income and manpower base, since both values are closely tied to the development of every province comprising a nation.
This can be achieved through the right combination of ideas, policies, buildings, privileges and other modifiers, some of which are temporary, the key is then to exploit a time window on which dev cost is reduced to its minimal expression, while you have a surplus of power points, specially diplomatic and military points… “why diplomatic and military?” you may ask…
Well, first of all, administrative points are better spent on coring provinces than on developing them, second, administrative development is related to the tax base, which only gives you tax income which doesn't have many modifiers that help it grow, while, on the other hand, diplomatic development is tied to the goods production, which is also directly related to the trade income, the amount of modifiers that can influence both of those income sources is very big and increases progressively all over the game, which means that a well developed nation can easily have most of its income coming from production and trade.
The military development is more obvious, since it directly influences manpower, which also receives tons of modifiers, but, in this case, there's not even a choice, since manpower can only come from the military development, which makes it arguably the single most valuable category in this entire aspect.
As such, the ideal ratio of development for any province is 1 Tax, x Production, x+2 Manpower (+2 since you can dev up to 1 more point than the combined value of the other two categories), which, once it's considered that, generally speaking, deving is most efficient up to 20-21, the ideal ratio would look like 1/9/11… with the same adjustment being made for any other size (like 1/4/6 for an 11 dev province of 1/14/16 for a 31 dev province).
In order to reach the efficiency necessary to achieve this ratio in all (or most) controlled provinces, there are some conditions to be considered:
Idea Groups (Quantity + Economic is the perfect combination for deving, since the dev cost reduction of Economic can be combined with the dev cost reduction policy given by having both Quantity and Economic ideas at the same time, it's advisable to take Quantity first and Economic second, since admin points are required both to take Economic ideas and take Administrative tech, which unlocks idea groups, taking Economic as the first Idea Group can delay taking Quantity by some years)
Terrain, every province has a different terrain type, which influences many things related to such province, like defensiveness, movement speed and dev cost, grasslands don't have any dev cost modifier and farmlands even give a reduction, any other type of province will give some kind of cost increase.
Good production, every province also produces different types of goods, the ones that produce cloth and cotton get dev cost reduction bonuses, which means that a combination of farmlands and cloth/cotton is the ideal terrain to dev, such terrain can be easily found in areas like Poland, the Netherlands, England, Northern France, part of Spain, India and China.
Centers of Trade, every trade node contains a certain amount of Centers of Trade, which are special provinces that give special bonuses to the nation that controls them, such bonuses contain trade value, trade power and dev cost reduction, level 2 Centers of Trade give a dev cost reduction to the province they're in, while level 3 Centers of Trade give a dev cost reduction to their entire State, hence it's a priority to conquer, develop and upgrade Centers of Trade.
Estates, some Estates like Burghers or Cossacks can give dev cost reduction bonuses as well, Burghers need to have high loyalty for it to work, so it's advisable to increase their loyalty before deving, an easy way to do it is by selling the titles, which reduces the crownland by 10% in exchange for some money and a +10 loyalty for all Estates, while the crownland loss is usually worrying, it can easily be recovered through deving itself, so it's definitely worth it; Cossacks can give both a dev cost reduction for Steppe provinces, which makes it very good to dev them and also give a nice manpower increase for Steppe provinces, which can make it even more worthwhile to dev Steppe provinces.
Buildings: Universities reduce the dev cost of the province on which they're built and buildings like workshops, training fields and manufactories compliment with your development to provide higher returns.
Othermodifiers, this includes both permanent and temporary dev cost reduction modifiers obtained through national missions and event/luck based temporary dev cost modifiers, as well as the Golden Age dev cost modifier, all of which can be stacked with the previously described modifiers to help you dev even more efficiently.
Withall this information, you are now more prepared for building stronger and more powerful nations, both in single player and multiplayer… and most importantly have even more fun in Europa Universalis.