Reformed vs Protestantism?
- Thread starter geminisama
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Well, if you are the Teutonic Order, you can form Prussia without being protestant/reformed. Considering that you are located in a comparatively bad economic zone and is in need of an additional boost, reformed is usually the way to go, though.
The ideal choice is dictated much more by what you are doing than by what nation you are playing as only a few nations are affected by their choice of religion (Netherlands, non-TO nations trying to form Prussia). Ramidel gave a pretty good summation of the best religion choice for various situations from an optimization perspective. Of course you can also choose to do things one way or another as a role-playing thing for fun.
Problem is that its not really optimizing to stay catholic in 9 cases out of 10. Optimizing means going full innovative and probably fully free subjects. That means your papal influence is horrible, which means that even as a catholic power you wont really control the curia. Both reformed Religions give you lots of monetary benefits, so I really dont see a point in staying catholic unless you are the pope.
I ussually roleplay(a habit from ck2)it makes the game much more enjoyable for me thinking "What would a (adjective) king do?"
That's not entirely true. Colonial powers definitely want to be Narrowminded for the colonial growth. Mixing Narrowminded with Free Subjects still provides a net tech cost reduction (-20% from FS, +15% from NW is a net -5%) while giving a free CB on any state until 1650 (Holy War for infidels, Cleansing of Heresy for heretics, Excommunication for Catholics) and up to 1.5 annual Infamy reduction. I'd take that 11/10 times as a blobbing continental power over the tech gain from being Innovative.
I do place level one forts in all my provinces, but sometimes I feel progress colonizing is slow, so if someone were to ignore placing level one forts in all provinces, they could colonize at a much faster rate, due to not having to pay the 47 ducats every time a colony becomes a province. I tried not placing level one forts every time in recent provinces to see the difference, and I was able to colonize at a much faster rate without really having to care that my provinces lacked forts, as no one could reach them anyways, and I had no revolt risk so no risk of rebels.
This is all under the impression you're not one of the major european powers though, such as france, england, or castille. In a multiplayer situation you very well could be, and likely easily able to afford colonizing very quickly and building forts as you go, but as a weaker power you won't have as much cash at your disposal.
I'd actually argue the innovative part. Free subjects is almost always the superior choice, but narrowminded has some very nice bonuses to it that make it just as viable as innovative.
Stay Narrowminded until you're satisfied with the expansion of your territory and religion, then switch. Moving toward Innovative goes pretty fast if you get those architecture events.
First: The "net tech gain" from narrowminded/FS is a fallacious comparison. You're comparing Narrowminded/FS to a neutral state, and not comparing Narrowminded/FS to Innovative/FS, which has a net tech cost of -35%. Significantly better than -5%.
Second: Colonial powers can go either way. While I concede that narrowmindedness allows for accelerated colonization, you're also going to need to deal with "the minorities flock to the province" (which leaves your colonies wrong-religion for decades). For a pure colonizer-trader who isn't interested in European wars, I'd go for Innovative.
(1) No, it's not a fallacious comparison by any means. I'm not comparing the two possibilities to each other. The point of using a neutral state is to have a control group for better analysis of the variables at play. And I'm not sure where your 35% figure comes from; it's a net change between them of 30%, not 35%. Further, the effect of too-early techs isn't being considered here; in practice a full Narrowminded country won't be teching 30% slower than a full Innovative country, because the Innovative country will get hit with rather harsh tech costs that will prevent it from simply growing at the same rate. I don't have the data on me to calculate out the effects of that, but I think it's fair to suffice to say that you won't actually be looking at a 30% differential (and thank goodness, too - how broken would that be?).
(2) Decades... Talk about an overstatement! It's 20 years. Two decades. You make it sound like the wait time for coring a province! It's not that bad, especially since your colonies aren't going to be huge sources of income during the Reformation era anyway. You'll have plenty of time to use all those awesome missionaries and religious decisions from being Narrowminded to bring them back into the fold before the wrong-religion penalties start seriously cutting into your income. And in the meantime, you get them off the books quicker, meaning not only a savings in cost (though albeit one I would be inclined to think isn't paid off in the end given the cut from being wrong-religion) but also less time as vulnerable fortless colonies. The way I view the Narrowminded/Innovative slider is that it's probably better just to stick with what you already have. Even if I were intending to build a significant colonial empire as Holland, I wouldn't burn through the 7+ slider moves it would take to get to strong Narrowminded positioning. (Of course, that advice isn't for non-Western states, for whom going Innovative is obviously a necessity, or any similar such situation.)
1: The difference is -30%, yes. -5% vs. -35%. Anyway, point being, innovative is still going to tech faster than narrowminded, which in turn means more money to spend on colonies and better troops and ships to defend them, and this is especially true when Innovative/FS is combined with Free Trade.
2: Ultimately, that's what I said: it's a trade-off. Holland and Portugal can both supercolonize before anyone else touches America, even though one's utterly innovative and the other's narrowminded like no one else. And I do agree that other sliders matter more (particularly Free Subjects and, for Holland-style colonizers, Plutocracy), but events and decisions will give you a chance to take a direction, and it's a good idea to have a plan in mind when those events occur.
2: Ultimately, that's what I said: it's a trade-off. Holland and Portugal can both supercolonize before anyone else touches America, even though one's utterly innovative and the other's narrowminded like no one else. And I do agree that other sliders matter more (particularly Free Subjects and, for Holland-style colonizers, Plutocracy), but events and decisions will give you a chance to take a direction, and it's a good idea to have a plan in mind when those events occur.