Worst National Ideas

Im one of those weird people who tends to Mint from 20-30% when i can keep inflation from rising while doing so Every bit of extra cash can go straight to building more expensive buildings including Manufactories which offset any tech loss by minting.
I rarely find myself behind in tech or atleast far enough for it to be an issue, hell in SP games its HORRIBLY easy to mint heaps yet be 10 or more years infront of any AI.

I usually take Grand Army as my first NI's for the Quality event. Same goes with Humanist Tolerance Free Subjects event. I've never taken NFI or Naval Provisioning.

You usually find yourself limited by magistrates and not money for regular province improvements, but I've never had enough money to continuously build manufacturies or to build a manufactury in every province of a good-sized empire.

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First, how many provinces are we talking? I can't remember running into a situation where I could manufactory spam at 20% minting but not 10%. Actually, I can't ever recount a situation where I could manufactory spam (as in, neither money nor magistrates were limiting factors) without saving up for it in advance. And even then I usually run out of steam before building manufactories everywhere simply because they're incredibly cost-prohibitive. Sure, doubled minting would better facilitate the process, but what you would then need to ask yourself is whether or not the extra research relative to 10% justifies 20%. My gut feeling is that it's not, but I don't have numbers on hand. The manufactory will pay for itself, but assuming you eventually plan to build manufactories everywhere anyway, it's not a question of "Will this Manufactory produce x ducats?" but "Will the extra amount of ducats from building some of these Manufactories earlier than I would at 10% minting pay for the loss of tech research in the meantime?"

My #1 priority is to milk the game for every fraction of a magistrate I can get up to spending 90 prestige on a sphere, but #2 is to make as many ducats as possible. I agree that stockpiled money is wasted money--in theory at least, although in practice a small-to-medium stockpile is invaluable to deal with unexpected problems and to cover your mistakes--but I'm talking about spending, not stockpiling/ There's always a better way to spend your money than to leave it in tech investment, like manufacturies and the high-end government buildings, and of course military/diplomacy/cultural specials, etc.

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I might quibble a bit with the high-end government buildings, but your point is well-taken, which is why I rephrased my argument in response. Definitely correct that spending on buildings is better than raw research; I think we're in agreement on this point.

A question: when you say tech money and spendable money are an interchangeable resource, are you talking about minting or something else?

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I am. Our context is probably a bit off because your initial response was to Pewt, who (I think) doesn't mint at all. I strongly advocate 10-12% minting with a Master of Mint, but not the National Bank.

Every time I play I tend to avoid the one which establishes viceroys because I find it useless (especially since I tend not to play colonizing nations), and also the prestige from battle ones.
I tend also to not use the siege bonus NIs or the religious ones because I don't care for religious conflicts. I tend to have intrareligious conflicts more often anyways and by the time the Reformation hits if I'm Christian, I tend to just not care.

n0thin said:

And the tooltip of a MoM should read the same? At least in the 5.1 patch, players go over their forcelimits. Hard. So more money => more soldiers. There is no real point of "enough money". I don't really know how you can build up an army 3 times over your forcelimit, have a money reserve to build up destroyed regiments again and still use agents, especially magistrates. And later you say, you shouldn't pump all your money to colonization. Well, NB gives you money. Quite a lot of it.

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No, you need one or the other, but advisor slots are a lot more flexible than NI slots. If MotM didn't exist then National Bank might be worthwhile.

And I play plenty of MP and do just fine without National Bank. Can't say I've seen you in the MP section, but feel free to pop into a game I'm signed up for next time one's starting.

n0thin said:

Even in your mentioned multiplayers, there are some nations, that are usually quite safe. Venice, Brittany, Portugal, sometimes Holland have usually a protector. And England has his fleet.

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Someone protecting your homeland can't stop someone who spent their money on ships rather than colonies from burning or seizing all of yours.

n0thin said:

So, let's say we have a Spain, owning all of Iberia and maybe a little bit more in Europe (e.g. Italian holdings) and a not so little chunk of South or North America, which is not uncommon, neither in SP (well, it would probably be all of America there) nor in MP. Either way, if the capital is in America or in Europe, the player would still have some quite high tariff income.

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Not high enough to justify viceroys if it's in North America. If you want +income NIs, take Smithian Economics and the trade NIs.

n0thin said:

Glorious Arms offers little to no bonus, Engineer Corps is actually not that bad. But, as you and I before said, there are way more important NIs, so it wont be picked until quite late in the game.

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There are much better NIs which offer too little of a bonus to be picked until late in the game, such as Battlefield Commissions.

glen55 said:

words

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You can afford to efficiently spend magistrates without National Bank.

Nunn45 said:

Ive used those Colonial NI to absolutly blitz Colonies to full in atleast one MP game, they are great at getting it all out of the way and blocking off opponents, its not like you cant change your NI later anyways.

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If your opponents don't war you it works. If they do you die.

Ashantai said:

words

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You expanded inefficiently, probably due to RP reasons. Had you focused your provinces on North/South America you wouldn't be in that situation. You also really don't need more income with over 5,000 per month (you don't really need anything else either, but when you could pick Glorious Arms, Glorious Navy, Merchant Adventures, Engineer Corps etc and still easily be the #1 nation NI picks are meaningless and you can't use it as an argument for Viceroys being good).

Cpl Wilding said:

I have to disagree so much with this. In my Sweden AAR, NB is an outright lifesaver. And for other states who need to mint to avoid taking loans, it's necessary as well. I don't think it deserves to be called "worse", just situational.

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I'm currently in a multiplayer game as Sweden where I fought and beat multiple players (Brandenburg and Russia) at once without using National Bank. My inflation at its highest was ~1%.

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Solidarity to President_Eden for being part of the Great Crusade against National Bank!

As sad as it makes me, I do have to say that there is one situation where NB in MP has its merits: Burning excessive Inflation in the late game with a nation with a strong ecconomy in peacetime. If you can afford to recover stability quickly (lets say around 400% stab-speed which is definitely possible) and there is enough inflation to warrant it (lets say 6-7) NB is a simple .1% Ecconomy increase per year. Keep in mind though that this is a scenario that probably wont and shouldnt happen at all in MP. The nation I am referring to is Venice-->Malaya in the Hotseat game on Monday. Got kicked out of europe in ca. 1460 by Elcyion, picked up around 7 Inflation during the ensuing ecconomy collapse and could not get it down until after naval 20 was reached since the capital needed to be moved a whopping 4 times. So I actively chose to keep NB over the Naval Morale NI since it was the best bet to get inflation down.

But in ALL other cases NB is garbage, dont misunderstand me, a MoM should always be enough, coupled with the gold standard, tax assesors, centralization etc.

stnikolauswagne said:

As sad as it makes me, I do have to say that there is one situation where NB in MP has its merits: Burning excessive Inflation in the late game with a nation with a strong ecconomy in peacetime. If you can afford to recover stability quickly (lets say around 400% stab-speed which is definitely possible) and there is enough inflation to warrant it (lets say 6-7) NB is a simple .1% Ecconomy increase per year. Keep in mind though that this is a scenario that probably wont and shouldnt happen at all in MP. The nation I am referring to is Venice-->Malaya in the Hotseat game on Monday. Got kicked out of europe in ca. 1460 by Elcyion, picked up around 7 Inflation during the ensuing ecconomy collapse and could not get it down until after naval 20 was reached since the capital needed to be moved a whopping 4 times. So I actively chose to keep NB over the Naval Morale NI since it was the best bet to get inflation down.

But in ALL other cases NB is garbage, dont misunderstand me, a MoM should always be enough, coupled with the gold standard, tax assesors, centralization etc.

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True enough (President_Eden also noted this) but I'm of the opinion that you get yourself into those situations via mistakes in the first place; that is, it's a solution to a problem which shouldn't exist.

Pewt said:

True enough (President_Eden also noted this) but I'm of the opinion that you get yourself into those situations via mistakes in the first place; that is, it's a solution to a problem which shouldn't exist.

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Quite so, though there are nations like Manchu or the Hordes (should someone choose to play them) who will be swimming in Inflation since their ecconomy is abysmall. Another example would probably be Navarra, since it just does not have ANY census whatsoever until Naval 20, but Navarra is not that common a MP nation anyway.

NB is situational, but that doesn't make it bad.


Opportunity costs are not relevant when comparing NIs as they are the same for all except the very best: Every NI except, except the best, is crap if it stops you from getting the best one.

Well, it means your economy is not in tip top shape already and you have to sacrifice a NI to make it less worse. If Venice/Holland/Hansa/Portugal lose their realm in Europe, your diplomacy has failed already. NB can be useful as repairing NI, but normally not really worth it.

Its not situational enough though. As mentioned above, the only situation where its useful is if you still have Inflation left around Gov 30, meaning that you can pick all the "good" NI's for peacetime and still have slots for more. For example I would prefer NTP over NB anytime, simply for the fact that it would take at least 50+ years for NB to even remotely catch up to NTP and even then only in the best of circumstances.
I also prefer one year of minting at 100% over switching a NI to NB, recovering the 3 stab points within one year and then minting at 10% more for 10 years. Both have roughly the same monetary gain but in the end by switching to NB you lose 2 years of income spent on stab-recovery. Not all that good an NI, is it?

Most ideas are "not all that good" compared to NTP.

How much inflation reduction would you have it to provide to not suck?
Buffing it would just trivialise inflation even more.

Sickness_ said:

Most ideas are "not all that good" compared to NTP.

How much inflation reduction would you have it to provide to not suck?
Buffing it would just trivialise inflation even more.

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I don't think extra inflation reduction would make it suck less, it would remain the same cup of tea. An automate cup of tea which tastes horrible but sometimes necessary when you're really thirsty. Other effects would make it "suck" less, but might overpower it or steal other NIs their thunder.

EDIT: give it +10/15% tax income and make bureaucracy give you more magistrates might make it worthwhile.

What you could do is make it give a significant decrease in Interest. In that case it gets one more situational use: If you accidentally take a loan as a empire with 10k+ Income, but flat out increasing the inflation reduction is simply not the way to go.

Sickness_ said:

NB is situational, but that doesn't make it bad.

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"Situational" in that the only valid "situations" that have come up (barring the manufactory blitz which has yet to be evaluated) are FUBAR/way-the-hell-out-there/why_would_you_do_that.jpg and definitely not regular enough to be used as a basis to make a meaningful claim that it's good. It should be telling that the only agreed upon situation where NB was a good idea was the one where a guy playing as Venice got kicked out of Europe in 60 years.

Opportunity costs are not relevant when comparing NIs as they are the same for all except the very best: Every NI except, except the best, is crap if it stops you from getting the best one.

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...yes, and? It's not like opportunity costs just disappear by your fiat. I'm not following the logic of this counter-objection at all.

How much inflation reduction would you have it to provide to not suck?
Buffing it would just trivialise inflation even more.

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I think the real way to make it worthwhile would be to halve (or more) the Master of Mint's inflation reduction. Hell, we have an equivalent situation with morale; the 6* Grand Captain only provides 30% of the Military Drill NI, it shouldn't be surprising that Military Drill is seen as a huge upgrade - when you then look at the National Bank and realized the relevant advisor provides 120%... Of course you don't want to dump all over the MoM, but hey, what can ya do?

Sickness_ said:

Most ideas are "not all that good" compared to NTP.

How much inflation reduction would you have it to provide to not suck?
Buffing it would just trivialise inflation even more.

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The problem is that between MotM, tax assessor, gold standard, Fugger/NL banking decisions (if applicable), and centralization you really don't need any more inflation reduction.

That the situations are rare doesn't really make it worse in those situation. I don't agree with saying that it's bad just because it's rarely needed.

...yes, and? It's not like opportunity costs just disappear by your fiat. I'm not following the logic of this counter-objection at all.

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If they are the same for all, why bother with it in the first place?

If you list the pros and cons of all ideas then every idea (except GoodIdeaX) would have "it's better to take GoodIdeaX" in the list of cons. That is not useful information.

There is really no point in taking NB. the master of the mint does the job quite well and for the first 10-15 years you are rather short on cash to build buildings, except the very neccessary ones such as constables and armories. Later on when you actually can spend the magistrates on buildings without bankrupting yourself, you will be in a rather solid position where minting might not be that neccessary and if it is, centra and the MoM will take care of the issues. There are simply more neccessary and important things to take rather than NB. Only time i'd justify NB is when you're Holland dominating all the COTs in Europe and you need to convert that god tier income into cash ASAP. Even then you'd still switch to NTP when you're done minting though, as stab is very cheap.

That the situations are rare doesn't really make it worse in those situation. I don't agree with saying that it's bad just because it's rarely needed.

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It's not that it's rarely needed, it's that it literally does nothing to help outside of these extremes, and thus once you bring in the opportunity cost, you're getting nothing by sacrificing GoodIdeaX (as you put it).

If they are the same for all, why bother with it in the first place?

If you list the pros and cons of all ideas then every idea (except GoodIdeaX) would have "it's better to take GoodIdeaX" in the list of cons. That is not useful information.

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You're acting like that's all that's being evaluated. It isn't. Not-having-GoodIdeaX in combination with Not_Doing_Anything is the problem.

Holland god tier income to cash

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I know Holland has potential to turn CheckIntoCash like nobody's business, but my argument from before still holds - unbudgeted minted money is money wasted. So you don't really want to do that, per se. Anything for which you'd want cash should still be planned out and minted at 10% instead of flipping for 20% - flipping there and back is 6 stab hits for nothing, not exactly the best decision.

Pewt said:

The problem is that between MotM, tax assessor, gold standard, Fugger/NL banking decisions (if applicable), and centralization you really don't need any more inflation reduction.

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Tax Assessor and Gold standard are only available after Gov Tech 30. Only Austria and Netherlands get special decisions. And most countries start highly decentralized (usually 3 or 4) and they won't usually use their first slider change for centralization, since a big early revolt before you build up your armies can be really bad. Even if they use every other slider use for the first years (while e.g. the trade slider is also quite important early on) and totally ignore slider restrictions, it will take about 100 years (more when blobbing, less with unifications) to be fully centralized. And then it still only gives you -0.05 inflation/year.
So basically, you're stuck with the -0.1 or -0.12 inflation reduction of a MoM for quite a long time. I wont say you should mint 30% of your income after you got to Gov Tech 30, that's to much for almost any country to be sure. But 20% can be really useful (again, SOMETIMES) and in almost any case, the only thing that gives you that before half of the game (and usually all the important stuff) is over is, well, National Bank.