You can simply invest nothing into production and use draft from other nations - it gets better than the advisor. Counting Houses are good, but they're too far in the future - you don't need to worry about them in the first 70-80 years. Extra efficiency is also not very helpful early on, since production income is a very small portion of your income and trade good prices are pathetic. I think there's no need to invest into production until you get Gov 10.
Best first national idea for Holland?
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Your opinion, and one I don't share. Technically there's no urgent need to invest in Naval or Land (>5) until the same point either. And for those of us who don't see it that way, my original point still stands - NB + 3rd Tech Adviser is more optimal in the early going than NTP + MoM.
There is nothing subjective in my opinion. You can simply count how much extra income you would get from the production by keeping production advisor. It will give your 3-4% better efficiency, which is around 10% production gain in that timeframe. What kind of production are you expecting to have in 1400-1450 period to match the gains from NTP? NTP gives you around 30% extra trade income (which translates into 15-25 ducats per month). In addition it also improves your compete chance which reduces cost of keeping merchants in.
Pretty much everyone in Europe wants Naval 4 and Land 5, but whether you want to research beyond that depends on the situation and if your anticipate serious conflicts. It often worth waiting until you get to Trade 7 and Gov 10 before investing anything in other branches.
The subjective part of your opinion is that you're not valuing the 15-18 ducats / month income generated by the adviser itself relative to NTP, which will produce less than that in additional trade income early in the game. The extra income generated by the production efficiency from tech wasn't even factored in to my analysis.
I am not valuing 15-18 income from production advisor because objectively it's not income and your only gain from it is that 3-4% gain in productivity that I do count. The extra investment in tech is only as good as the benefits from the higher tech level.
Well, if tech investments aren't income, then clearly you should get National Bank and a Master of Mint since only ducats that end up in your treasury are income. Or are only the tech investments that you subjectively deem important considered income? The 15-18 ducats objectively is income because it's objectively no different than any other tech investment whether from taxes, production, trade, etc.
I think you are completely missing the point. 15-18 ducats from the advisor are exactly the same as 15-18 ducats from the slipstream. You can chose one or another. The latter frees up advisor slot at the cost of 3-4% production efficiency (which is ~10% of your production income at that period). If you use this advisor slot for MoM, you can free up NI slot occupied by National Bank and use that slot to take NTP. This means that you can trade 10% of your income for 25% of your trade income. Since Holland can easily trade in every European CoT, it's quite a large amount. And break even point would be if your production income is 2.5 times your trade income which is not something Holland can get in the first 60-70 years. Unlikely production other technologies have very specific (and much greater) benefits - Trade 7 gives you access to the rich America, together with Land 5 it gives you access to all CoT in the world. Gov 9 is another NI, Gov 10 is formalized weights and scales. Production doesn't have anything like that early on - it only becomes important in late 15th century techs. That closely spaced block of +2% efficiency and Counting House. Until that point benefits of production tech are minimal.
If you can crank up your minting to 22%, you can drain all your production investment and rely on neighbor bonuses for that. It's really a non issue until post-reformation.
edit - the only advisers you should be using are a MoM, a philosopher, and a statesman/treasurer. I usually avoid the third one altogether to maximize profits.
edit - the only advisers you should be using are a MoM, a philosopher, and a statesman/treasurer. I usually avoid the third one altogether to maximize profits.
I usually use tech investment guys, as I have more money than I will ever need (with minting at 10% I'm making 1400 ducats a year...)
You're missing my point. You can't choose one or the other because NTP won't generate 15-18 ducats worth of extra income until your trade income >= 1.5x your trade efficiency (i.e. 60+ trade income at 40 TE) and that won't happen trading only in the European CoTs that early in the game (I was getting ~42 ducats at 40 efficiency, which would go up to ~52.5 with NTP.) You're chosing between 15-18 ducats from an adviser, or 10ish ducats from the 'slipstream' when you have all the CoTs filled. Once you have access to the Asian CoTs, the equation changes drastically, but by that time you probably already have, or are about to get your second NI. And my point isn't specifically about Production Advisers, they're just the easiest 3rd adviser to get. Swap to QFTNW briefly when you get Trade 7 and pop out a couple of explorers, and you will quickly have enough Naval Tradition to make a Naval Tech adviser (important if you're going the colonial route.) Is having extra production tech crucial? No, but its better to have it up to date than lagging behind, and with probably only 3-5 provinces when Prod 8 hits, the extra force limits from workshops do help a little, on top of the extra income.
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I still like to get NTP, for the extra 5% trade chance. That is, after I did the CAD/GI switcharoo.
Now you've made it clear what you are missing. There's a [rarely abused] mechanics in the game - if you're lagging behind your neighbours in tech you're getting completely free investment in corresponding tech (slipstream effect). It can go quite high, like 100 ducats per month if you're far enough behind. In the case of Holland you won't be getting that much, because your tech cost is low, so you'll reach equilibrium point when the slipstream effect is enough to prevent you behind any further. That's what is an equivalent of the tech advisor. Benefits of NTP come on top of that and the only downside of using slipstream is that you'll have lower production efficiency.
There's around 15 years gap between those two events. And by the time you can chose second NI, colonial growth will probably be the better choice.
Naval advisor is more attractive, but by that point 15-18 of extra investment aren't that big anymore since you've probably doubled your costs due to colonies and your income has increased too. At some point around that time I also like to take advisor that gives extra colony growth. At that point of the game it's getting hard to rank advisors accurately for all circumstances. Government advisor becomes somewhat useless because researching Gov 11 far ahead of time is way too expensive. I wouldn't build workshops at that stage. Colonies provide much better forcelimit increase and docks provide better economical bonus than workshops.
I've rarely had the neighbor bonus generate more than 3-4 ducats / month for me unless I was westernizing. Then again I probably don't let my techs lag enough. I do find this argument more convincing, so long as you don't mind letting your non GOV/Trade techs lag. I'm probably a little manic about building to go that route, though. Hehe.
I'm curious what timeline you have in mind for colonizing, and where exactly that would be occuring? It's easy enough to conquer Ceylon shortly after you get Trade 7 if you plan for it, and colonize The Canaries and Madiera (if Portugal hasn't) at the same time. I don't have the range to colonize Brazil or the Caribbean until Naval 13+, even with with a Naval Range Adviser and QFTNW. Africa holds no appeal unless I'm mercantilist looking for a steady supply of slaves.
Yes, the further behind you fall the greater that bonus is. I wouldn't want to let Gov or Trade to lag, but it makes perfect sense for production (until late 15th century), depending on situation it might be also practical to let land/naval lag. Though with something like Holland I usually find that by 1460-1470 every tech gets ahead of time anyway.
With Holland (or any other colonizer) I would start "colonizing" right when I get to Trade 7/Land 5. By colonizing I mean both literally colonizing and taking good provinces from primitives (that's cheaper than starting colonies and it allows you to quickly get a core so that you can move capital and get range for Caribbean colonies). That's unless PU is still on and it would be dangerous to get rid of it. Early on (before 1450) I focus on Central America and Caribbeans, a bit later (1450-1500) I would just take all eastern coast of both Americas (except the very North and very South). Africa is pretty much useless for anything other than role-playing.