Best options for a fully colonial game as England ? (1.8, idea wise)

[BaronNoir]

What matters the most is, obviously, the early order.

The Colonial ideas, should I pick first or second ? (they are hard to use ''immeditately, so I would say second, but which one first then ?)

For a colonial power, should I pick first the group EXPANSION or something else, like INNOVATIVE or ADMINISTRATIVE ? (which will be way more useful for the first 50 years than expansion)

For all the wars in the colonies, should I pick influence, for the lowered unjustified demands ?

 

[Denkt]

1: Exploration
2: Expansion (policy with exploration for 20 settlers per year
3: Quantity (policy with expansion for 1 colonist and 10 settlers per year)
4: Administrative (policy with exploration for 10 settlers per year and 5% settler chance)
5: Economy (Policy with exploration for 20% tariff efficiency)

Also if you can get plutocratic ideas you may want them early, like even at 4.
Trade ideas can be good to but you can very well do without them and things like administrative help you in many ways.
It could be a good idea to get something inbetweem administrative and economy to save adm points, like influence who also can give you more tariff efficiency but not as good as economy.

 

[Achanei]

I'd go exploration > quantity > expansion since that usually makes most sense MP distribution-wise. Influence is a good idea group but not really because of the unjustified demands, tbh im not sure why peple are so interested about that. dip rep + extra relation + vassal integration cost are the big ones here, but influence mostly pays off if you do a lot of vassal feeding while expanding in europe, not sure its the best choice for a colonizer. administrative is always a good choice, im not sure about economics - money shouldn't be an issue with GB since aow, and even if it is, trade is going to net you a lot more once the colonies start rolling.

other interesting ideas to consider are religious (especially if you go reformed, which i'd recommend), offensive for punching france and castile better, diplomacy/influence if you want to expand in europe and/or become emperor. if you go for european expansion, humanist is also interesting because of the accepted culture synergy with your NIs.

you can use the exploration ideas with dip 3 already by selectively stealing territory, I had great success in 1.7 with utrecht no-CBing granada, after integrating them you have the colony range to cap verde and from there into the new world. I think there is also an iceland route that works on dip 3, but going granada also allows you to punch castile and portugal early, and that slows down their expansion significantly.