Well, I lost my awesome post. So I'll restate briefly. In a nutshell, Pewt killed it earlier in the thread - it's opportunity cost, guys!
We must first consider the costs of a Master of Mint. The first Master of Mint you get will cost you quite a few magistrates to produce; but as you have no use for the first decade-ish of Magistrates (after enacting Expand the Bureaucracy), you have enough magistrates to spend on one Advisor. The Master of Mint is hands down the best Advisor which only uses Cultural Tradition, and I'd even go so far as to argue that the MOM is the best in the game, so it should be your first pick. Even if it's not the best in the game, your Army/Navy Traditions will be so low for the first decade that you're really comparing a 5-6* MOM to a 2-3*, at best, other Advisor. So it certainly remains the best Advisor for that pick. And assuming you're doing anything at all to keep Cultural Tradition from dropping off the face of the Earth, you should easily be able to spare the additional 4-5 Magistrates, tops, every ~20 years (median age is 23, average 25). You'll be doing it anyway (or should be!) to keep your Court stocked with great advisors, why not the best of all?
So the opportunity cost in terms of magistrates, money and an advisor slot is negligible compared to the benefits of minting 10% of your monthly income. This remains true even later on in the game, when National Idea slots outnumber Advisor slots, because the Master of Mint, still being the best single Advisor in the game, is still going to get one of those slots - or at least until you're able to mint so much not factoring him *or* the National Bank that you're not doing anything with it. Which brings me nicely to the next point...
We then need to consider the possibility of stacking National Bank and the Master of Mint. At this point I'm going to bring in a crucial note from my study of economics in real life: a penny saved is NOT a penny earned. A penny lying around unused in real life is wasted value that continues declining from inflation. The inflation bit isn't modeled here (and thank God, because if this game's inflation system were more accurate and the ducat's value was tied to everyone's minting instead of just yours, the game would be screwed over), but the first part is, especially as applied to EU3, where, unlike real life (where your income from work's default position is lying around uninvested in a checking account or a piggy bank), the default position of income is investment. To mint at all, you need a compelling justification - a justification that supersedes tech investment. There must be something better for you to do than invest in tech.
In most cases, there is at least *something.* Military maintenance is a big one for larger states, as that begins to take a toll on your census taxes even when maintenance is minimized. Colonialism is a HUGE one. I know some people say they never mint, but I'm certainly not one of them. The question is how much to mint. I think that if you're a small country with existential threats for neighbors - the Ottomans to your Byzantium, Burgundy to your Brabant, Lithuania or Novgorod or Muscovy to your Tver - then you pretty much throw the minting slider to full for the first 5-6 years so you can make it to 1410 with something to be proud of and to take out of the century. In that case, National Bank is perfectly justifiable. In any other circumstance, though, I cannot see a probable situation where your non-tech expenses are so big that you truly need to mint more than 10% of your income, and I'd set 15% at the absolute cut-off point, typically for later when you've got multiple huge rivals and probably need to keep your own huge army at almost-full or full maintenance at all times.
The litmus test is this: If, after factoring in money you are explicitly earmarking for large investments (say a new Manufactory) and a small rainy-day fund for negative events, you find yourself earning more money than you spend on maintenance and building expansion, gifts, merchants, colonies, etc., reduce your minting. Any surplus money at that point is wasted, because you could have invested it at a 1:1 ratio into tech and now it's not doing anything (and the only way to appropriate it now is to spend it at an inefficient 2:1 ratio in immediate tech investments). And I posit that there is essentially no circumstance where this should be the case, and that in most circumstances National Bank and Master of Mint will put you here; thus the National Bank and Master of Mint should not be stacked, because together they're
worse for you than either one individually by costing you tech investment for no gain.
Now we need to assess the National Bank's opportunity cost. This is the defining reason, taken with the above, as to why the Master of Mint is better and the Idea is in most cases one of the worst choices.
The National Bank costs you a National Idea. That means that you're not taking Military Drill, National Trade Policy, Quest for the New World, Land of Opportunity/Colonial Ventures, Patron of the Arts, Unam Sanctam, etc. And you're electing not to take it for sake of taking, as argued previously, a benefit made redundant by the Master of Mint. Unless someone would like to argue that, say, having Grand Captain and National Bank (for +.3 morale and 10% inflation reduction) is better than Military Drill and Master of Mint (+1 morale and 12% reduction)... it should be clear why this is not a good choice. If you can name at least 12 Ideas out of 35 that you would like more than a redundant inflation reduction bonus in a given game, then congrats, you have proved National Bank to be pointless. The effect is even more exaggerated early in the game, when choosing National Bank *literally* means no Military Drill or NTP or QftNW, etc. Later on that's not necessarily the choice because you might already have those Ideas and be comparing NB to decidedly second-tier ideas like, say, Grand Army, but early on you're literally costing yourself the best ideas for a redundant benefit.
So to summarize:
Premise 1: The opportunity cost of a Master of Mint is minimal, as one does not use magistrates in the first decade, 4 magistrates every 20+ years is negligible, and the Master of the Mint is the best Advisor in the game;
Premise 2: Combining the Master of the Mint with the National Bank and actively using both (and thus minting 20-22% of your income) is in most cases actually worse than either one individually, as one usually accumulates annual surpluses, a sign of economic inefficiency;
Premise 3: The opportunity cost of the National Bank is very high, as using NB means not using another NI, which tend to have very good effects;
Conclusion: The Master of Mint makes the National Bank redundant and therefore useless in the vast majority of games.
The only time National Bank isn't useless is when you are a small country with either no income (in which case you mint to avoid loans) or existential threats for neighbors, in which case you (or at least I) mint all your income for 5-6 years, go jump those neighbors quickly and then stabilize your economy from there (in which case any amount of inflation reduction, Bank included, is invaluable to the stabilization process). That's it.
I'll go ahead and reply to criticisms of my nominations - I'm not ignoring y'all!
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.
I've never played as Sweden, but my gut reaction is surprise that it qualifies as aforementioned small state. In any case, yes, if you must mint more than the Master of Mint allows without inflation in order to avoid taking on loans, and you need it on a consistent basis, then you should take the National Bank. I'm curious, though, what is Sweden's problem, specifically, that would cause such a situation?
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.
...easily reachable? Forgive me if this sounds like an attack on your economic skills, knul, but in what situations could you possibly need to mint to 15% inflation? 10% I could see, maybe; my current Byzantium run saw me getting to 7% inflation before jumping the Ottomans, and I only pulled it off at 7% because I got really lucky and had nine Greek Patriot rebel regiments spawn in Europe while the Ottomans were already set up for the attack, so it saved me the 3 planned years of infantry buildup. I'd say 10% is understandable in the two special cases I mentioned at the end of my argument earlier, so if you're there, then yes, it is useful. I would counter by positing that these situations are uncommon enough that in most cases, NB is worthless, and therefore meritorious of the "worst NIs" pile.
I'll cast a vote for NB being useful also. It can be used to mint hard, expand, then cool off while you core up and convert your winnings.
I'm not saying minting isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. I love minting. But good management of your economy should lead you never to need to mint more than 10-15% of your income sans the two exceptions cross-referenced earlier.
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.
Yes, having one or the other is good. No, having both is not good. If you're stockpiling money without an explicit purpose for doing so then you're wasting it when it could have gone into tech (and you're still wasting half of it, relative to investing into tech instead of minting, if you use the spend-200-to-get-100 option).
You mean, use the most scarce resource in game, to get something you can easilly get by just one NI?
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.
Sorry, but I think this post is all backwards. The only major sink for magistrates with regard to advisors is in the first decade, when thankfully they have no other use anyway. Once you get that first set of moves to 100, you're still going to be able to keep CT around 75% even with decay if you do anything at all to maintain it, so it then becomes one magistrate every 4-5 years (given average life expectancy of advisors) to maintain. Dirt cheap on magistrate costs. Meanwhile, National Bank is taking up a valuable NI spot, where the Master of Mint, while taking a valuable Advisor slot, is also clearly superior to all its alternatives (where NB, especially factoring the MOM's existence, isn't clearly superior to a host of other ideas, like Military Drill or Quest for the New World). Finally, I would say that large countries, mercantilist or free trade, are the worst options for taking National Bank, because they aren't in need of constant military buildup to beat existential threats across the border, and their census tax income is higher than their annual budgetary expenses. You are certainly right to say that 10% minting w/o inflation is a no-brainer, but you're wrong to say that the National Bank is the way to get that ability.
Agreed. There are many situations in which it's just insanely handy.
Like which?
Anyway NB is quite best NI IMHO. Or one of the best. So no reason why it could be worse...
What rationale do you have for this claim?
1. National Bank can be useful if you really need money, which should be particular the case in MP, since you can hold a way stronger army that way, especially if combined with a MoM. So it can be a quite good decision, especially for land-warfare-focused countries that don't care about colonisation (Austria, BBurg etc.) after the obvious Military drill (lets say 2-4 slot-idea).
Maybe I should make an exception in addition to the previous ones. If you're in a case in multiplayer where you know your neighbors, or otherwise your main threats, are planning to combine a National Bank and Master of Mint to build a much bigger military than you, and you suspect that you won't be able to get a tech advantage fast enough to negate it, then it might be worthwhile to replicate the strategy. In singleplayer the AI doesn't do this, though (rather it ineffectively mints everything without regard for anything and hits an inflationary spiral and dies), so it's not as applicable.
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.
As noted before, the key difference between MOM and NB is that where NB has a lot of damn good alternatives in rival NIs, MOM pretty much stands alone as the best advisor, bar none. Like I said to your previous comment though, if others are combining MOM and NB with the express purpose of outfunding you militarily and destroying you, then you can make that exception.
Just because tech money and spendable money are both called "ducats" doesn't mean they are the same thing or an interchangeable resource. Tech money is inflated money, as evidenced by the huge amounts of it running around compared to spendable money. Any chance you can get to convert tech money into spendable money is hugely profitable.
This is not true, I'm sorry. They are the same kind of money, and they are an interchangeable resource. Converting tech money to buildings is definitely profitable depending on the building, yes.
Saving your money into tech investments is not the best way to get tech. The best way to get tech is to fully develop all of your provinces and build manufacturies on as many as possible. Do that well enough and you can win the tech race even with a blob country. Magistrates and spendable money are what wins the tech race, and you can get a lot of spendable money with NB and a good MOM.
-snip-
You have to be really, really really rich not to have a vast preference for money in hand over tech money. There's so much you can do with it, and that definitely includes building up your tech.
I'll point to my litmus test earlier: If, post-buildings, you are in the black, your economy is less efficient than one which is at zero. Stockpiled money that isn't being directly earmarked for big spending projects (like your magistrates bit) is wasted. You don't seem to disagree, I think, since you're just talking about spending stockpiled money on buildings, so the argument is a bit different - you seem to be saying that in order to maximize your building capacity you need more than a Master of Mint.
I would actually then conclude that your later argument that this doesn't apply for rich countries in false. In fact, it's the opposite. It's
poor countries that might want to consider this strategy. You're specifically citing a manufactory blitz strategy to maximize your research gains and implying that you can't do this with just a Master of Mint. I think this assumption is wrong because I find that usually the bottleneck to buildings-based expansion of the economy is
magistrates, not disposable income. If you're minting at 10% with a 5* MOM (or, later, 15% with no MOM, Full Centralization, Tax Assessor and Gold Standard) and are reasonably wealthy, you should find yourself limited not by money but magistrates.