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Europa Universalis III 46143 EU3 - After Action Reports (AAR)
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knul

knul

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We've had discussion on what the best National ideas are, but I can't remember discussion the worst National Ideas. So here are my thoughts:

Naval Glory/Glorious arms: these give double prestige gain from naval/land battles. Useless, as the prestige gain from battles is very small compared to peace negatiations and other sources. Also, there are so many NIs that improve your combat or economic capabilities that are more important than idea that slightly improve your gain from battles you win.

Naval Provisioning: enables repairing ships in coastal areas. A very unimportant ability to have. Even worse, Naval Provisioning requires Naval tech 53. Compared to other lvl 53 tech NIs (Napoleonic Warfare, Rev and CounterRev), it's extremely weak. No idea why anyone would want this in any situation.

Naval Fighting Instruction: +50% blockade efficiency. Not as bad as Naval Provisioning, but it's also a very weak effect for a high tech level (at least Naval lvl 30). Again, comparable tech lvl NIs as Cabinet and Scientific Revolution are much, much better.

I also think Bureaucracy, Merchant Adventures and the pre-DW Regimental System are pretty weak, but these at least they give some advantage that can be useful. The above four NIs are useless in any situation.

Any thoughts?
 
National Bank. Seriously, just use your magistrates wisely and you'll have a superior alternative in the Master of Mint anyway.

Also going to suggest Improved Foraging due to tech level. This would be amazing if accessible to countries around the Middle East in the early game. Having to wait until L53 is ridiculous. Attrition sucks, but not THAT bad.

Pre-DW Bureaucracy is abysmal; DW Bureaucracy is hard to justify in most cases but a shade above useless.

I also personally am not a big fan of Revolution/Counterrevolution but that's more personal and less generally justifiable. So we'll stick with NB, IF and Bureau for my votes.
 
I once played a game where I controlled the Western Hemisphere and blockaded the entire rest of the world (In Meiou with its more valuable trade goods and 2x number of provinces. Thanks to the privateer and blockade NI, I was able to make so much money off of blockades that I made thousands a month without minting) The coastal repair idea reduced micromanagement too.

That was a completely unique game though, outside of that, those two NIs are bloody useless. I think that Nation Bank is a waste of an idea slot but the +prestige from battles are absolutely worthless. Grand Army also doesn't have much place in my books unless you are a tiny rich nation. It saved my bacon in my 14-province Cherokee vs all of Europe game.
 
President_Eden said:
National Bank. Seriously, just use your magistrates wisely and you'll have a superior alternative in the Master of Mint anyway.
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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.
 
While National Bank isn't the best NI and IMO overrated by many, I disagree that it belongs to the worst NIs. Inflation reduction is in most cases a good thing, the fact that MoM also reduce inflation doesn't make the idea worthless. If you have 10-15% inflation (easily reachable), NB can help drive it down. The fact that in so many situations NB is helpful makes it at least a middle class NI.

Revolution/Counterrevolution gives one of the best CB in the game and personally I rank it as the best NI amongst the high-tech NIs. When you get to tech lvl 53, in almost all cases you already dominate military and economically, but infamy/CB remains a limited resource. Improved Foraging is indeed a bit weak, as Revolution/Counterrevolution and Napoleonic Warfare are almost always better.

Grand Army can be quite good: in my last Sweden game I really needed to have a bigger army, while MP and income were good. In such a situation, Grand Army is very nice. Situational, but in some cases one of the better ideas.
 
Merchant Adventures, Naval Glory, and Glorious Arms.

Those are it. There's really shouldn't be a debate about it, these are far worse than any other ideas.
 
maxirage said:
Merchant Adventures, Naval Glory, and Glorious Arms.

Those are it. There's really shouldn't be a debate about it, these are far worse than any other ideas.
Click to expand...
you still need to take Merchant Adventures for merchant shipping act, but after that there's not much point in keeping it and it should then be changed for something more useful
 
knul said:
We've had discussion on what the best National ideas are, but I can't remember discussion the worst National Ideas. So here are my thoughts:

Naval Glory/Glorious arms: these give double prestige gain from naval/land battles. Useless, as the prestige gain from battles is very small compared to peace negatiations and other sources. Also, there are so many NIs that improve your combat or economic capabilities that are more important than idea that slightly improve your gain from battles you win.

Naval Provisioning: enables repairing ships in coastal areas. A very unimportant ability to have. Even worse, Naval Provisioning requires Naval tech 53. Compared to other lvl 53 tech NIs (Napoleonic Warfare, Rev and CounterRev), it's extremely weak. No idea why anyone would want this in any situation.

Naval Fighting Instruction: +50% blockade efficiency. Not as bad as Naval Provisioning, but it's also a very weak effect for a high tech level (at least Naval lvl 30). Again, comparable tech lvl NIs as Cabinet and Scientific Revolution are much, much better.

I also think Bureaucracy, Merchant Adventures and the pre-DW Regimental System are pretty weak, but these at least they give some advantage that can be useful. The above four NIs are useless in any situation.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

I agree on naval glory and glorious arms, but rest are decent. +50% blockade effenciency means : -50% to tax for blockaded enemy, which severly hurts his income. But it is only good if you are naval nation, plus is one of NI's that are good only late. Anyway the fact that later, you get more tax increasing decisions, makes it usefull if you know you will fight an enemy with much income from taxes in shore provinces.

And it think the fact your ships repair in your naval range provinces is very good thing - actualy i think that for late game naval power, it is must have NI.

President_Eden said:
National Bank. Seriously, just use your magistrates wisely and you'll have a superior alternative in the Master of Mint anyway.

Also going to suggest Improved Foraging due to tech level. This would be amazing if accessible to countries around the Middle East in the early game. Having to wait until L53 is ridiculous. Attrition sucks, but not THAT bad.

Pre-DW Bureaucracy is abysmal; DW Bureaucracy is hard to justify in most cases but a shade above useless.

I also personally am not a big fan of Revolution/Counterrevolution but that's more personal and less generally justifiable. So we'll stick with NB, IF and Bureau for my votes.
Click to expand...

Well i agree +5 to tax is not big thing. Anyway 10% is good enough.

But you must be kidding about improved foraging... it actualy doubles number of soliders you can have in a province without atrition(not decrease it by half actualy, just doubles the support limit...). So if you buildup big armies, this is certainly NI for you.

Falahk said:
you still need to take Merchant Adventures for merchant shipping act, but after that there's not much point in keeping it and it should then be changed for something more useful
Click to expand...

This. But otherwise it would be nearly useless. Before it was changed, it gave +1 merchant, which was decent. Now if not Merchant shipping act, it would be the worst NI. with it, it is decent enough...
 
Iwanow said:
I agree on naval glory and glorious arms, but rest are decent. +50% blockade effenciency means : -50% to tax for blockaded enemy, which severly hurts his income. But it is only good if you are naval nation, plus is one of NI's that are good only late. Anyway the fact that later, you get more tax increasing decisions, makes it usefull if you know you will fight an enemy with much income from taxes in shore provinces.

And it think the fact your ships repair in your naval range provinces is very good thing - actualy i think that for late game naval power, it is must have NI.
Click to expand...
The point is that these Nis are much worse than other NIs. Blockade efficiency doesn't help you win wars, it doesn't provide you with Cb or other diplomatic boons, for economic improvements there are much better choices (I rather have Scientific Revolution, NTP or most other ecomic ideas than a measily +50% blockade efficiency). You only look at the effect and say "oh, it's nice to have". Of course, every NI does provide some bonus, but as you have only a limited amount of NIs, the bonus from any NI must compete with other NI-bonusses. And in that regard, Naval Provisioning and Naval Fighting Instruction fall short.
 
+50% blockade eff. only adds 50% to the income you make off of blockades and that amount is only effected by the trade value of the province it blockades. Higher blockade eff. does not mean harsher penalties for the person you are blockading. Tax has no effect on blockades other than the knock-on effect of base-tax meaning more units of trade goods -> higher blockade income. If you blockade a gold province you get nothing.
 
Liberté, Equalité et Fraternité and vetting aren't that strong...
 
DDRJake said:
+50% blockade eff. only adds 50% to the income you make off of blockades and that amount is only effected by the trade value of the province it blockades. Higher blockade eff. does not mean harsher penalties for the person you are blockading. Tax has no effect on blockades other than the knock-on effect of base-tax meaning more units of trade goods -> higher blockade income. If you blockade a gold province you get nothing.
Click to expand...

Oh, then it is even better. Getting income from blockades...

Grubnessul said:
Liberté, Equalité et Fraternité and vetting aren't that strong...
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Well Vetting is usefull if you got problems with everyone sending you tons of spies...
 
knul said:
The point is that these Nis are much worse than other NIs. Blockade efficiency doesn't help you win wars, it doesn't provide you with Cb or other diplomatic boons, for economic improvements there are much better choices (I rather have Scientific Revolution, NTP or most other ecomic ideas than a measily +50% blockade efficiency). You only look at the effect and say "oh, it's nice to have". Of course, every NI does provide some bonus, but as you have only a limited amount of NIs, the bonus from any NI must compete with other NI-bonusses. And in that regard, Naval Provisioning and Naval Fighting Instruction fall short.
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I guess it depends on priorities. I bring this up often, but most tech reductions are almost completely worthless. A player who doesn't gain a significant amount of inflation shouldn't be falling behind in tech. A reduction of 5-10% will put you ahead of the curve, but anything more than that will actually start reversing the efficiency of your teching by massively inflating tech costs as you get the ahead of time penalty, which can only be avoided by minting. So Scientific Revolution could very well be useless unless you've gone heavily towards narrow minded or serfdom, which most players avoid. It's a bit like National Bank in that respect: It's an alright fix for a problem you really don't really want and shouldn't really have.
 
I never understood the "ahead of time penalty makes researching ahead of time useless" reasoning. I mean, it's not like you are not researching - and with enough income, you can very well bulldoze through the penalty. NIs and effects that reduce tech cost still affect the ahead of time penalty, so they are useful too. Of course, you can allow yourself to mint quite a bit, but being A LOT ahead alway helps, especially if you played conservatively speaking of territories and have to compete with blobs.
 
I don't understand why people always talk about National Bank and MOM as ways to "reduce inflation." I always keep inflation at zero, and I always have NB and a MOM, not for reducing inflation but for making money. They do stack, by the way, so it's not a matter of choosing between them. They allow me to greatly increase my income with no inflation. Am I missing something? This seems like a must-have idea to me. I always take it early, and I never let it go. Sometimes in the late game I calculate how much less money I would be making without the .10 minting from National Bank, and it makes me shudder.

And Foraging. By level 53, my wars are usually ended because I don't want my war exhaustion to get out of hand, and the timing between wars is usually set by war exhaustion. Foraging is a huge help in keeping war exhaustion down. I consider it an essential late-game tech if you are fighting big wars in Europe, especially if you are fighting in Eastern Europe or Russia where the supply limits are low. Try defeating and fully occupying a blobbed-up superpower Bohemia with lands extending back toward the Urals in 1700. You really need Foraging for that work. When I am playing a land power, I consider this tech so important that I work on my trade tech the whole game just so I can get it, even though I get the great majority of my money from production and minting.

I would vote for Vetting and Blockade Efficiency as the bad ideas.
 
President_Eden said:
National Bank. Seriously, just use your magistrates wisely and you'll have a superior alternative in the Master of Mint anyway.
Click to expand...
You mean, use the most scarce resource in game, to get something you can easilly get by just one NI?
:rofl:

IMO, NB is no-brainer.

For large, mercantilistic country you can easilly pick it as first NI, for smaller/trade/treatened by big blobs nations it can be picked later, but by mid game, you have a lot of NI slots, and only 3 adviser slots.
 
WeissRaben said:
I never understood the "ahead of time penalty makes researching ahead of time useless" reasoning. I mean, it's not like you are not researching - and with enough income, you can very well bulldoze through the penalty. NIs and effects that reduce tech cost still affect the ahead of time penalty, so they are useful too. Of course, you can allow yourself to mint quite a bit, but being A LOT ahead alway helps, especially if you played conservatively speaking of territories and have to compete with blobs.
Click to expand...

Yes, you are still researching, but stacking tech reductions is actually counter productive. That 10% only applies if you're already behind on tech. Once you start getting ahead in tech, the ahead of time penalty might make that 10% into 5%, and then 3%, and so on. Eventually the bonus will be so small that you're basically researching at the same speed you would have without the bonus. Is it really worth wasting a NI on Scientific Revolution to stay slightly ahead of the curve when the same general result could be accomplished by simply maintaining a good economy and maybe leaning a bit towards innovative or free subjects?
 
Dafool said:
Yes, you are still researching, but stacking tech reductions is actually counter productive. That 10% only applies if you're already behind on tech. Once you start getting ahead in tech, the ahead of time penalty might make that 10% into 5%, and then 3%, and so on. Eventually the bonus will be so small that you're basically researching at the same speed you would have without the bonus. Is it really worth wasting a NI on Scientific Revolution to stay slightly ahead of the curve when the same general result could be accomplished by simply maintaining a good economy and maybe leaning a bit towards innovative or free subjects?
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So what you say is : If you are ahead of tech, take something that will increase your economy?
 
Espionage is fairly useless, even if you're going free trade/aristocracy...which most people don't!
 
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