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Worst National Ideas

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Europa Universalis III 46143 EU3 - After Action Reports (AAR)
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1alexey said:
That is only one case, that desn`t contradict the fact that you can benefit (from:) (having very high Prestige, longer colonial range, extra clolnial grow, extra infamy reduction, extra fort defence, extra diploskill, extra convert chance, and all the juzz that advisers can provide you,) in case you pick NB instead of other idea, and hired another advisor instead of MoM.

It is just one instance where you do not.
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Yes, but changing out an advisor is a lot less of a hassle than changing an NI when you no longer need it. By mid-game, if not sooner, I have no need for MoM or NB. Firing the MoM has no cost, swapping the NI costs 3 stab hits which for some nations can be a 2+ years of full investment cost with the unhappy alternative of keeping an NI with zero benefit and the occasional 200 ducat downside. It's likely there are very few situations where any advisor is worth that expense, I personally can't think of any. It is almost certain that the likelyhood of there being 3 advisors that are worth that cost and available is negligible.
 
WeissRaben said:
And, as the research formula is COMPLETELY multiplicative, those modifiers are ABSOLUTE - Innovative/FS/SR/Education Act/HRE/LEF are easy to get together, and they offer a -72% that applies ABOVE size/ahead of time penalties. So, the more you have this two problems, the MORE useful they are, not less.
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Like I said, this is... an odd philosophy. You're stacking bonuses to overcome penalties that arose because you're stacking bonuses. There's a significantly easier answer in the "sweet spot" that I mentioned earlier. You'll tech just as fast overall, but won't have to devote nearly as much to tech reductions in the first place.
 
Jazumir said:
You mean the numbers are off? Then gimme better ones, please!
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Saving 100 gold/year involves a pretty weak economy. With ~0.15 inflation and ~5000 country income it's pretty easy to be having >1000 yearly surplus with an army/navy bigger than you'll ever need to beat the AI, which allows you to buy one manufactory and several other buildings.

President_Eden said:
In what world is this guy EVER worth a spot? Prestige is one of those weird all-or-nothing quirks where you're either a great power that has sources of prestige anyway (in which case you're not concerned with wasting a valuable advisor slot on a 2.5-3 boost) or you're a small power that's getting eaten alive by the 5% decay (in which case a 5* Philosopher adding +2.5%/yr isn't going to matter much in slowing that down). Either way, he's not doing anything.
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Prestige is pretty powerful in multiplayer but the rest of the thread seems to be disregarding MP so I guess we probably should here too.

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People are listing alternative advisors as if they replace MotM, but in reality your advisor lineup should probably be MotM - Trader - X (or MotM - X - X for mercantilist countries). In addition, while some military advisors perform decently at high levels, it can be very hard to maintain enough tradition to get them to those levels without spending NI slots of Battlefield Commissions and/or Seahawks.
 
Pewt said:
People are listing alternative advisors as if they replace MotM, but in reality your advisor lineup should probably be MotM - Trader - X (or MotM - X - X for mercantilist countries). In addition, while some military advisors perform decently at high levels, it can be very hard to maintain enough tradition to get them to those levels without spending NI slots of Battlefield Commissions and/or Seahawks.
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Nah, in SP your setup be MotM-X-X since the AI is that bad at trading. Unless you take infamy en masse you can dominate all (important) CoT's.
But then we arrive at the strange point again: Why bother?

Btw, something I saw in the thread is the prevalent fear of Inflation. I dont really understand it. Low (0-7%) of inflation dont kill you, afterall every move towards free subject statistically removes .66 inflation.
 
stnikolauswagne said:
Btw, something I saw in the thread is the prevalent fear of Inflation. I dont really understand it. Low (0-7%) of inflation dont kill you, afterall every move towards free subject statistically removes .66 inflation.
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True, except:

1. This concept only holds consistently in very large sample sizes. At low sample sizes (i.e. < 10), the noise of the overall outcome is big.

2. There are often free slider moves associated with the Serfdom/Free Subject axis.
 
glen55 said:
I can't really quantify the usefulness of max minting -> more buildings, especially manufacturies. I haven't run any tests, and I don't play MP. All I can say is that in SP I can make my nation a blob with 200+ provinces and still out-tech Aachen. I doubt that's a particularly special accomplishment, but for what it's worth it comes out of max minting and max building-up of provinces, along with at least a tad of best provinces > trash provinces acquisition selection. Like I said above, #1 goal = more magistrates, #2 goal = more cash on hand.
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This almost exactly coincides with my experience. I really don't see how extra money is a bad thing, sure you might be taking away from tech investment but I think that's more a matter of preference at that paticular time in-game for the player.

My votes for worst ideas are extra prestige from land/naval battles surpassed in uselessness for me (even though it is close) by extra army/navy tradition ideas. (4 separate ideas there)

If you have an absolute fortune later in the game you can build 2 monuments which will you the +.20 navy and army tradition annually.
 
stnikolauswagne said:
Nah, in SP your setup be MotM-X-X since the AI is that bad at trading. Unless you take infamy en masse you can dominate all (important) CoT's.
But then we arrive at the strange point again: Why bother?

Btw, something I saw in the thread is the prevalent fear of Inflation. I dont really understand it. Low (0-7%) of inflation dont kill you, afterall every move towards free subject statistically removes .66 inflation.
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In SP you don't need anything since the AI is so bad at everything, but that doesn't really make for an interesting debate about what is optimal. And while you should be willing to take inflation when absolutely necessary, I think it's good to fear it just so that you don't become one of those people who takes it without thinking hard about it first.
 
Iwanow said:
You may take no NI's and build no buildings, and still conquer the world.
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It depends on what countries you play as. To pull a WC, NI's like colonial ventures are quite necessary for smaller nations (i.e. not everyone plays as France/England/Burgundy/Austria/Muscovy/Novgorod/Bohemia/Castile/Portugal/Poland/Lithuania)
 
ywhtptgtfo said:
It depends on what countries you play as. To pull a WC, NI's like colonial ventures are quite necessary for smaller nations (i.e. not everyone plays as France/England/Burgundy/Austria/Muscovy/Novgorod/Bohemia/Castile/Portugal/Poland/Lithuania)
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Well, a WC according to the game doesn't actually require you to colonize everything; you just have to be the only nation.
 
Prestige is pretty powerful in multiplayer but the rest of the thread seems to be disregarding MP so I guess we probably should here too.
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Speaking for myself, I've been disregarding MP because I hardly touch it, certainly can't claim to be anything resembling an expert or veteran on the subject (not that I am in SP, either, but you get what I mean). But I think most of the points of discussion should be fairly similar across SP and MP; after all, most of the evaluations aren't "YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THIS OR YOU'LL DIE" (which may be true of several NIs in MP, but isn't true of any in SP) but instead "This idea is better than this one" (which can be evaluated on its merits relatively independent of the mode of play involved, since for the most part it's the same game).

What makes Prestige more powerful in MP though?
 
President_Eden said:
Speaking for myself, I've been disregarding MP because I hardly touch it, certainly can't claim to be anything resembling an expert or veteran on the subject (not that I am in SP, either, but you get what I mean). But I think most of the points of discussion should be fairly similar across SP and MP; after all, most of the evaluations aren't "YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED THIS OR YOU'LL DIE" (which may be true of several NIs in MP, but isn't true of any in SP) but instead "This idea is better than this one" (which can be evaluated on its merits relatively independent of the mode of play involved, since for the most part it's the same game).

What makes Prestige more powerful in MP though?
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Trade and SoI mostly, but just look down the list of its effects; it makes everything better. It's not that it isn't good in SP so much as it's a lot easier to float ~100 and, like with everything else, you aren't really punished for not doing things in SP.

Trade is definitely a big one though; when every free trader is intelligently managing NIs/decisions/advisors/infamy/etc, getting into the best CoTs takes every minor compete chance boost you can find.

Edit: Oh, and the diplomat income bonus can be huge in the early game too.
 
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