Give us MP for our ideas

[mudcrabmerchant]

The monarch point system is my favorite addition to EUIV, and a great step for the series, but I think it could use some balancing. As mentioned by others, focusing a nation around diplomacy can cause you to actually fall behind in some diplomatic areas as compared to say, a military focused nation - for example, if you spend most of your points on diplomatic ideas, you can easily fall behind on diplomatic tech, while a military nation that often finds itself with diplo points to burn will end up rapidly teching through that branch, as they have no diplo ideas to spend it all on. There's also the issue that speccing your country out for diplomacy will harm your naval ambitions, and vice versa, both being relatively unrelated parts of the game that use the same resource pool.

On top of this, you have the basic problem that you have little control over your MP generation. Your ruler is usually random, and whether or not you can find or afford an advisor who really makes a difference is largely out of your control as well.

To an extent, I think a lot of this is just a natural result of the monarch point system, and the case could be made that we should just accept this. However, all of these problems could be ameliorated if your ideas gave you monarch points. It wouldn't have to be very much - simply giving you 1 point once you reach the end of each idea group would be enough to give you a significant boost to the areas that you focus your nation's resources on. It can be rationalized as building up a strong diplomatic corps or administrative or military bureaucracy over time, that will make future actions in the appropriate field more efficient.

 

[RiseOrDie]

I would like to see member of staff reply instead of us fan boys arguing about what we want.

ps, I agree with OP

 

[Kiithis]

While I agree that there is always room for improvement, I do believe that only time will tell if any major readjustments will be completely necessary. As it stands now, you can't spend points on everything, whether PD adjusts this or not is up to how satisfied with the overall balance at this time, and 20 years in a demo simply cannot show that. Simply from playing the demo, it did not feel overly game breaking to me, but I would have to play the actual game to figure out what I can and cannot do with Monarch Points in relation to what I believe I should and should not be able to do with them. In short: only time will tell.

 

[murlocmancer]

I think this is another good idea.

 

[Thanik]

I think this system "military idea should give military points" ,is against "avoid snowball" effect - one of the major feature in EU 4.
Nobody want France with super military tech + super military ideas and 6 generals, or England with super navy tech+ super navy/trade idea, and fleet of 600 light ships with 6 admirals...

 

[unmerged(445810)]

The problem isnt so much the system as 1) the lack of control (or rather influence) over your MP generation, and 2) having naval ideas/tech in the diplo group.

 

[cristofolmc]

Agree, because any trade and colonization nation will pick at least 3 diplomatic ideas. That unbalances the game completely. I could say the same for military nations with military idea, but I'm not sure that it would be the same case. I see more concerning the issue with diplomatic ideas. England needs for example, four diplomatic ideas groups. Exploration, expansion, trade, navy...that is unmaintainable. :S In the demo I couldn't even handle with two diplomatic idea groups without falling behind the rest of nations in diplomacy technology.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

To me it is clearly a balancing mechanism to prevent player focusing entirely into one sphere. As I see it:

There is a direct trade off between ideas and tech... making eaverydecision to go more tech or more ideas critical.

As the OP points out, you don't want to put all your ideas into under one MP type... instead the ideas allow you to tweak your specialization. So it would be bad play to choose all military ideas. But it does allow you to choice whether you want to focus on offense, defence etc.

I think it is a good way to allow variety with creating cheese.

 

[unmerged(445810)]

Agree, because any trade and colonization nation will pick at least 3 diplomatic ideas. That unbalances the game completely. I could say the same for military nations with military idea, but I'm not sure that it would be the same case. I see more concerning the issue with diplomatic ideas. England needs for example, four diplomatic ideas groups. Exploration, expansion, trade, navy...that is unmaintainable. :S In the demo I couldn't even handle with two diplomatic idea groups without falling behind the rest of nations in diplomacy technology.

It is mainly in regards to the diplo group as the other two are more focused. Most if not all military ideas will benefit any military venture, while diplo ideas most certainly will not.

To me it is clearly a balancing mechanism to prevent player focusing entirely into one sphere. As I see it:

There is a direct trade off between ideas and tech... making eaverydecision to go more tech or more ideas critical.

As the OP points out, you don't want to put all your ideas into under one MP type... instead the ideas allow you to tweak your specialization. So it would be bad play to choose all military ideas. But it does allow you to choice whether you want to focus on offense, defence etc.

I think it is a good way to allow variety with creating cheese.

This!

 

[cristofolmc]

To me it is clearly a balancing mechanism to prevent player focusing entirely into one sphere. As I see it:

There is a direct trade off between ideas and tech... making eaverydecision to go more tech or more ideas critical.

As the OP points out, you don't want to put all your ideas into under one MP type... instead the ideas allow you to tweak your specialization. So it would be bad play to choose all military ideas. But it does allow you to choice whether you want to focus on offense, defence etc.

I think it is a good way to allow variety with creating cheese.

Yeah but you can't simulate the huge british trade empire without get all the colonist and merchant that gives you all the diplomatic ideas, and without get navy ideas either. :S

 

[unmerged(445810)]

Yeah but you can't simulate the huge british trade empire without get all the colonist and merchant that gives you all the diplomatic ideas, and without get navy ideas either. :S

I think that having to chose at times of limited resources to prioritize colonization over trade for the time being is great, but there's still too much going on in the diplo group.

 

[Lessing]

As others have pointed out, you do NOT fall behind kin diplomacy when you invest in diplomatic ideas. Ideas and technology are interchangeable. You gain by investing in either.

You do NOT fall behind if you invest in an idea instead of a tech.

 

[Zenith Darksea]

To me it is clearly a balancing mechanism to prevent player focusing entirely into one sphere.

But the whole raison d'être of national ideas is to allow a player to focus on a sphere. Technology is essentially linear (as it should be) for every country - you tech at different rates, but you all develop the same technology, ultimately. The national ideas give you a way to give your country a special direction on top of your technological progress. But making you choose either a national idea or a new technology completely invalidates the logic of it.

 

[knul]

Disagree. As Thanik mentioned, the whole Monarch Point system is explicityly designed to avoid the snowballing effect, the rich getting richer. Having Ideas generating Monarch Points would do exactly that: you breed Monarch Points with Monarch Points.

People make the distinction between Ideas and tech much too big. A nation that is a tech level behind but an Idea ahead is not weaker.

 

[unmerged(445810)]

But the whole raison d'être of national ideas is to allow a player to focus on a sphere. Technology is essentially linear (as it should be) for every country - you tech at different rates, but you all develop the same technology, ultimately. The national ideas give you a way to give your country a special direction on top of your technological progress. But making you choose either a national idea or a new technology completely invalidates the logic of it.

Again, this is not a flaw in the MP system but in the limited control of MP generation and the assumption that you should be able to entirely control your nations focus.

 

[Belissarius]

Every time I see this complaint I smile. It is so obvious that players are not understanding the synergy of MPs, Techs and NIs.

How advance your military is in NOT solely determined by your Tech level. Tech levels are broad knowledge about a given field. NIs are applied innovations to a specific technology. The call for MPs for national ideas is equivalent to asking for technology purchases to give you MPs.

Yes you will either be ahead in tech or ahead in NIs because they both take MPs but this is BY DESIGN. You are specifically making the choice to either focus on a narrow area of advancement (NIs) or a broad field of advancement (Technology lvls).

Simply because you are behind in Technology doesn't mean you are behind in effectiveness. A nation that has Ideas does INITALLY fall behind in a tech field HOWEVER and this is a HUGE however, you not only get the advantage of the NIs but you also get the advantage of a neighbour bonus to buying tech that you fall behind in so its cheaper for you to catch up. This means that over the long haul you will be in a better position to a nation that just bought tech.

Also MPs are the gating system used by EUIV to slow people down. You have to make choices in how you spend your points because you are BY DESIGN not suppose to be able to do everything. Getting MPs of NIs means you can do more which is counter to the whole point of the MP system.

 

[Cymsdale]

I think it's worth repeating...

When you open an idea group, it opens up potential country events. It stands to reason that idea group events may lead to more MP in their respective areas.

 

[knul]

I think it's worth repeating...

When you open an idea group, it opens up potential country events. It stands to reason that idea group events may lead to more MP in their respective areas.

I've just checked the demo event files and there are indeed quite some that give Monarch Power.

 

[Cymsdale]

This is also why picking an idea group when a slot unlocks is important, even if you don't want to spend points in it right away.

 

[cristofolmc]

G

As others have pointed out, you do NOT fall behind kin diplomacy when you invest in diplomatic ideas. Ideas and technology are interchangeable. You gain by investing in either.

You do NOT fall behind if you invest in an idea instead of a tech.

Good point. I didn't see in that way. I think you are right, that makes more sense. The more money you can get investing in diplomatic ideas, the more you can invest in advisers to increas your MP's investment in diplomat technology.