Any guides or advice on escaping starting decadence trap as Seleucids?

[Tharoz]

First a rant, to get off my chest. I hate calling it decadence, can it be named something more accurate in Kingdoms? It doesn't function like decadence, and it doesn't punish decadence, in fact you can end up pretty decadent trying to fight it, with most of your population lazing around producing culture, rather than actually driving the nation forward. Meanwhile in early game particularly, its normally more of a problem for low population nations rather than high. This is not to say I have an issue with the mechanic or how it functions, just the name and what that implies about it. It functions more like cultural instability or inequality.

Now, to the point of this post. I can comfortably avoid getting my faction into a problem with decadence, consolidating provinces, building culture buildings, lowering government age with events, putting pops to work on culture as necessary, etc. The problem comes with a certain faction, and maybe others I haven't tried, that start off there.

Playing the Seleucids where you start with so many low population, non Greek regions, I have been unable to escape the decadence, and I've looked for explanations, guides etc, but I can't find anyone talking about it.

I've tried focussing on building cultural buildings (particularly religious) to speed up conversion, I've tried putting every spare pop into culture, I've tried every combination of both of those. I've tried invading neighbours to get more population to fight it, and nothing has worked.

What am I missing, because I've seen people talk about how it's no problem?

[Gray Fox]

Build Schools, Perceptor's Houses and Tribunals. These reduce Decadence every turn. Also, eliminate and do not build structures that cause Decadence unless these have a big pay off in Culture. Focus on Culture. By turn 100, I was making over 5000 Culture/turn and much less decadence. Don't grow too large. You can win with less than 100 regions. Good luck!

[Mevelios]

I've tried focussing on building cultural buildings (particularly religious) to speed up conversion, I've tried putting every spare pop into culture, I've tried every combination of both of those. I've tried invading neighbours to get more population to fight it, and nothing has worked.

What am I missing, because I've seen people talk about how it's no problem?

Trying to conquer more regions while in the lower third of the CDR is the absolute opposite way of adressing it, unless you're a small nation

Conquests immediately yield two flat points of decadence per region conquered, then adds a small increase to your national decadence per region. Religious buildings don't do much for the sake of producing culture unless you have some myrrh/frankincense around, which at the start isn't exactly easy to spread around. Thalassean temples are more accessible, although restricted to coastal regions; they're quite an exception as they trade conversion rate for food and decadence reduction.

As Gray Fox advised above, your best take at it consists in removing structures that might be producing decadence even if it comes at the cost of loyalty. About population conversion, the citizenship decision works wonders even if there's no guarantee of getting it anytime soon; then a preceptor house here (if you can shoulder the cost from lacking papyrus, should it be the case) or a courthouse there can help a lot. If you have marble around, an expert stonecutter is also largely worthwhile early on! Monuments produce enough culture to counter their decadence rate, although obviously not as efficient in fighting national decadence.

I tend to prefer playing smaller nations which struggle a while with building only first tier buildings in a race between food, infrastructure & culture; it takes some time to grow used to how decadence works, but you can largely overcome it! The real issue is how long do you leave it be - if it takes you 20 or 30 turns to react to it, the comeback is that much harder to make. If need be, you can even use wars to let neighbours invade unwanted regions, negotiations to hand it over to a friendly competitor or the liberate region decision! The latter isn't guaranteed to obtain anytime soon and has a high legacy cost, but with some luck you may get a client state - and abandoning regions is another way to diminish national decadence, lowering immediately your national gains and losing the decadence tied to that precise region.

[Tharoz]

Perhaps I should have clarified, I did not do the different things I mentioned all in the same game. I've tried several different games with different approaches, always at "difficult" difficulty.

I have tried exactly what you suggest regarding focussing on culture. Very undeveloped regions may have got a food building or an infrastructure building, but otherwise I was only building culture buildings that increase culture, reduce decadence or occasionally, increase loyalty.

The best I managed was to get fairly close to the green section of the culture table, but never in it, and as the culture aged, I slipped down into the orange and decayed. I never saw the even that allows you to convert pops to your culture or reduce your government age, so I just kept on sliding down. Then when I aged, I managed to get back up into the white for a time, until age pulled me back down. Throughout all this, many of my non Greek regions did not convert even a single pop, whether they had a religious building or not, and bolster colony was never usable. So I ended up with the east of the Empire being almost as useless as it starts, as the non Greek pops are still very bad at generating Greek culture.

Am I just at the mercy of RNG? Or is there something else I'm missing, because building exclusively culture buildings (unless there was some other vital and cheap structure that would help in another way, such as crafting quarters, sheep pens, cheap infrastructure buildings, and not just because a region didn't have them, but because that particular region needed it) was not enough for me to stop the Empire from terminally declining.

[Mevelios]

The region of Uxia has marble, with several hills around; they are prime candidates for expert stonecutters (same thing applies anywhere noble gardens can be found, and around it). If you get the opportunity, you could also build ceramics works nearby, fed by that marble for a slight culture gain (5 points) while feeding satrap palaces around (you should have two in range from Persis & Elymais, 20 points) despite being a low priority thing. The Sinus Persicus provides fish around with several coral providing regions bordering it, ideal for thalassean temples (although not immediately available). The natural presence of papyrus around Mesopotamia eases access to preceptor houses to avoid paying huge import penalties, with the possibility of doubling down on that papyrus import by building street parlors.

Then there are the provinces: Atropatene bordering Media is awful to develop, you could hand it over to them (acting as a buffer state against Armenia). You have only a single region of Parthia, you can hand it over to Bactria; then there's Osroene, which you can let Antigonos invade. If it's not enough, there's Arachosia & Gedrosia you could get rid of through Bactria (although that client state is guaranteed to soon struggle with decadence), however it's a bit of a shame to give up such large swathes of land that could share trade goods with ease; then there's Hyrcania through Media (better make them kneel before you if you intend on offering them both Atropatene & Hyrcania).

One thing you can't get around as Seleukos is the decadence from satrap palaces and the low loyalty because of the many slaves; downsizing can make it easier to manage, although it'll inevitably reduce your national strength! It clearly suffers from overexpansion, so as you increase the difficulty the challenge becomes clear. You can only prove opportunistic by jumping on any cheap structure you'd otherwise ignore, because time will be an obstacle. RNG only comes into play for your decisions - it eases a few things but doesn't solve it all!