u/RealAbd121

For some reason, the devs in this game have decided to treat medieval debt the same way you treat a well-off white first home buyer with a very high credit score and enough cash for a 40% down payment!

While Kings used to be thankful that some entrapising jew or italian offer them emergency cash for as little as 25% intrest, here in EU5 you can borrow from your estates for as low as 3% without even trying to get the intrest down it just happens sometimes even early game because of good stablity/ruler trait/council trait/etc, it's even dumber when you realize that Bonds, what should be higher teir tech that allows you to take out loans at lower intrest, actually can't keep up and tend to become MORE expensive than just normal loans when you're that early in the game, making it useful really only when I need to pay out my estate loans since letting them force renew tanks my credit score, the higher intrest rate is a smaller issue than letting that happen! Someone may bring up how they tank your crown power, imo that's irrelevant, it's early game you want to give out privileges not minmax your crown power, it's not 10% or something like that, you're honestly fine...

Anyway, when you see that, what I want you to do is wait for a parliament, find and pick any of the RGOs' 33% discount options, then borrow a thousand, 2000 thousand, it doesn't matter intrest will be very tiny! You just need it to be something you can theoretically pay back eventually, since bankruptcy is horrible, then just pump a bunch of levels on the highest value. And wait, better yet go conquer someone for money to pay back your short-term loans.

I'm playing Granada, my Saffron and Silk RGOs make my super urban 250k early game capital (see tangent * for a free tip) look completely broke, they're completely bankrolling all my economy. Unfortunately, there are no discounts for Urban discounts, but I suppose as long as what you're spending the money on is something that will pay you back, it still somewhat works.

*Expel pops to your capital from newly conquered land, before integrating/turning them into vassals, pops are far more valuable in your capital than bumfucknowhere, and if they're the wrong religion/culture, that's basically a way to get passive assimilation going

I'm trying the game again after reading about 1.3 being good and I'm realizing my previous game knowledge is not only useless they actively nuked my economy, I started my granada run with a small 4 buildings fine clothes rush since that's I used to do, there used to be decent demand for it and with my silk rgo I can make it better than Castile and steak that industry from them. Except that there is no consumption in the patch, the estates are all making negative money. Cloth crashed, and while my silk made me not go negative, gone are the days of 10 duckets worth of profits one year one from that alone.

The second economic pillar used to be trade, just build a bunch of trade centers and make money. Except here thy also pretty much do nothing, profits are Non-existent.

Even RGOs, they're now way more expensive, so you can't kick-start economies with them either.

Does anyone have a decent guide for how this is normally navigated?