Admin Monarch Points Idea Groups

[Korashy]

Anyone else think they are kind of lackluster for the opportunity cost of ADM points? Half of them seem to be about buffing Mercenaries, and ADM points are generally the most precious pool in my opinion, between needing new Idea Groups to dump points into, coring stuff, taking the odd decision and stability, ADM is in constant demand, and if you start filling up an ADM idea group you delay any other group.

 

[Heatth]

If you don't play as an expansionist country, you won't need that much admin points at all. Their only real cost, outside tech, is stability, but if you not expanding than stability will likely relatively cheap as well. And if you are an small country, it does make sense to invest in mercs, as you will be lacking in manpower.

 

[Korashy]

Why wouldn't u want to expand tho, it's not hurting your tech anymore and as of the demo the AI tries to eat everything that even looks at them funny. Last match I had Augsburg owning half of southern Germany, and the rest of the HRE being split between a few people. I also feel like that DIP has much stronger ideas personally, but I guess that's biased toward my playstyle.

 

[Rubidium]

Looking at the idea groups, there are some really nice ideas in the admin category, even if you don't want mercenaries (and mercenaries certainly have their use).

Things like reducing inflation, or permanent CB on heretics. Not to mention the ability to do fun things with spies.

In the demo, we don't have much time and are expanding rapidly, but I expect in an actual game, there will be plenty of times where we aren't needing to spend furiously on buying cores. I certainly wouldn't pick an Admin group as my first choice, or probably even my second, but I would certainly want one as my third idea group. That way you always have a use for surplus admin points.

 

[Heatth]

Why wouldn't u want to expand tho, it's not hurting your tech anymore and as of the demo the AI tries to eat everything that even looks at them funny. Last match I had Augsburg owning half of southern Germany, and the rest of the HRE being split between a few people. I also feel like that DIP has much stronger ideas personally, but I guess that's biased toward my playstyle.

Actually, although indirectly, expanding do hurt your tech. Due to the cost of coring, building and etc. I am not sure, but I believe some countries might be better off not expanding mindlessly and focusing to grow only to where it really matters. A trade focused nation, for example, might be able to make plenty money without having to expand excessively.

Expanding give you more money and more military power, but it costs you monarch points and it piss off people around you. Sometimes, the trade off is not worthy.

 

[beckermt]

Sometimes, the trade off is not worthy.

Core construct of the game, that is.

 

[Heatth]

Core construct of the game, that is.

Sorry, I don't understand what you are saying.

 

[1alexey]

Administrative ideas are not worthless for expanders, that is true, you get more gold, and more manpower, thus you`re not reliant on mercs.
However, Admin ideas allow a country that doesn`t have easy expancion options to punch far above it`s weight.

At some point getting another province for 50-100 admin points only increases your strengt by 2-3% or less. Spending Admin points to get a buff on all of your holdings, might be way bigger bang for the buck.

 

[Skrytwitch]

I think admin looks pretty good overall. For example, Innovative has a 5% reduction to all tech costs (only other place you can find a tech reduction in the generic ideas is by getting the final 10% bonus at the end of plutocracy) and also a nifty 25% discount to advisors. Both seem like great ways to save a bunch of MMP over time.

 

[Keinwyn]

I think the Innovative chain is underrated:

Prestige Decay -2% - This is good, it better enables you to take the negative prestige option in bad events
Mercenary Cost -25% - Good if taken with the Admin chain I guess.
Technology Cost -5% - if you take this as a third NI it gives you a net ~1.2k MP
Army and Navy Tradition Decay -2% - Even as an expansionist nation it is sometimes hard to keep tradition above 80. Very nice.
Regiment Recruitment Time -10% - Reg recruit time isnt usualy a problem. meh.
Monthly War Exhaustion -0.05 - Very good if you are expansionist.
Leaders without upkeep +1 - again very good for expansionist
Advisor Costs -25% - This is fantastic. late game advisers will cost a fortune ~600 to hire and ~40 per month upkeep for lvl 3.

Then the Economic chain is also very good, but I think that is self evident. The religious chain can be good for expansionist nations. The espionage chain I need to play with to understand how useful it is. The Admin chain is good for mercenaries - a nation with an existing NI for mercs could get a great deal of benefit from this *looks at Burgandy* As you can fight way beyond your manpower pool at a relatively cheap cost.

 

[Fawr]

I think the Innovative chain is underrated:

Prestige Decay -2% - This is good, it better enables you to take the negative prestige option in bad events
Mercenary Cost -25% - Good if taken with the Admin chain I guess.
Technology Cost -5% - if you take this as a third NI it gives you a net ~1.2k MP
Army and Navy Tradition Decay -2% - Even as an expansionist nation it is sometimes hard to keep tradition above 80. Very nice.
Regiment Recruitment Time -10% - Reg recruit time isnt usualy a problem. meh.
Monthly War Exhaustion -0.05 - Very good if you are expansionist.
Leaders without upkeep +1 - again very good for expansionist
Advisor Costs -25% - This is fantastic. late game advisers will cost a fortune ~600 to hire and ~40 per month upkeep for lvl 3.

Then the Economic chain is also very good, but I think that is self evident. The religious chain can be good for expansionist nations. The espionage chain I need to play with to understand how useful it is. The Admin chain is good for mercenaries - a nation with an existing NI for mercs could get a great deal of benefit from this *looks at Burgandy* As you can fight way beyond your manpower pool at a relatively cheap cost.

I think prestige decay moves your prestige back to 0. So that first idea is actually bad if you have negative prestige...

Also why do late game advisors cost more than the ones in the demo? Is there something I've missed?

 

[Rubidium]

I think prestige decay moves your prestige back to 0. So that first idea is actually bad if you have negative prestige...

Also why do late game advisors cost more than the ones in the demo? Is there something I've missed?

How often do you actually have negative prestige? He was just saying that you sometimes see events that say "choose: bad thing or lose x prestige", and this makes those less painful.

I'm pretty sure it was said somewhere that base advisor costs increase over time (and obviously, later on you'll want to grab higher rated, and thus more expensive, advisors).

 

[Fawr]

How often do you actually have negative prestige? He was just saying that you sometimes see events that say "choose: bad thing or lose x prestige", and this makes those less painful.

I'm pretty sure it was said somewhere that base advisor costs increase over time (and obviously, later on you'll want to grab higher rated, and thus more expensive, advisors).

When I tried to play non-militarily I seemed to always have negative prestige. If you are fighting battles its easy to get prestige, but when you are peace it seems harder.

 

[Keinwyn]

I'm pretty sure it was said somewhere that base advisor costs increase over time (and obviously, later on you'll want to grab higher rated, and thus more expensive, advisors).

+1% cost per year... so by end game that is a lot.

When I tried to play non-militarily I seemed to always have negative prestige. If you are fighting battles its easy to get prestige, but when you are peace it seems harder.

Exploration and (I think) maturing a colony also grant prestige. And of course you can get your troops involved in a few fights for a bit of prestige.

 

[Lessing]

+1% cost per year... so by end game that is a lot.

That's only if you KEEP him afaik. If you re-hire every few years, this won't matter.

 

[jockedahl]

Admin points can be abundant if you have a ruler that gives a lot of it. Plus the techs that it unlocks aren't really as good as the other two. Some admin techs buff taxes, which are great. But most only unlock buildings which you don't really need ASAP.

 

[Keinwyn]

That's only if you KEEP him afaik. If you re-hire every few years, this won't matter.

On Quills videos the monthly cost of a new lvl 1 advisor went from 1 to ~1.5.

As they age the initial payment to hire actually goes down.

 

[Lessing]

On Quills videos the monthly cost of a new lvl 1 advisor went from 1 to ~1.5.

As they age the initial payment to hire actually goes down.

All right, I stand corrected then. If it keeps up with general economic growth, it should be a doozy.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Anyone else think they are kind of lackluster for the opportunity cost of ADM points?

It is likely that there are others who think the same as you.

I am not one of them.

AMP is the most valuable currency, and as such it is natural not to want to pick administrative idea groups as the first ones to unlock, but the idea groups themselves are extremely powerful for the purposes for which they are designed and make excellent mid-to-late game picks.


If you are not seriously considering an administrative group (that most benefits your overall strategy) for your third or fourth idea group (assuming you have not taken one before), you are probably making a mistake. I am not saying that you should necessarily take an administrative group as one of your first four, but you should definitely consider it. They are just that powerful.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I think the Innovative chain is underrated:

You are right, but only partly for the reason you mention. You list all those modifiers, and some people will go "meh" because the values are individually small. But once people start actually using it and see what it means in terms of events (or read ideagroups.txt, which is the relevant event file), they are likely to rate it much higher.

It is the same with the other idea groups; I mean, if somebody were to tell you that the Economic idea group, that already looks very good on paper, in addition has a random event associated with it that gives +100 AMP and another that gives +50 AMP at a cost of money, then you might justifiably consider it even more valuable. And innovative ideas can add AMP, DMP, or MMP as well as further decreasing tech costs and several other interesting things. All idea groups also have negative events, but there are more positive ones.