Half of the idea groups are suboptimal
- Thread starter Kryndude
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One thing I don't understand on this thread is, nobody mentioned plutocratic. It's one of the best military groups and most possibly also one of the best overall. This is one with which you can vary your usual pick. And there are many ways to be able to pick it up in a playthorugh. If you have plutocratic, some other groups become questionable. First is defensive, most ppl pick it only for the morale and the army tradition. The morale you get already from plutocratic, do you really need more? And for army tradition there are other options. Manpower recovery speed also means Quantity is a lot less worth. And ofcouse you can also think about skipping Humanist, since you got already -2 global unrest from pluto.
What I like is combining Plutocratic with Aristocratic. Sounds weird? Think of it. More manpower, manpower recovery speed, morale, +30% available mercs, merc discipline, lowered tradition decay, free leader, land leader siege, cav combat and cheaper Mil tech as the pure military benefits, combined with extra diplomat, merchant, monthly autonomy change, goods produced and institution spread. A combination of any other 2 mil idea groups doesn't rpovide as many useful benefits.
When thinking of SP combat nearly only needs equal tech and high army tradition/good generals to win, with siege ability making it faster and easier, you can skip the other Mil groups with that. You don't need extra dscipline, combat ability or morale to beat an AI. And morale you can also get from other sources as power projection, prestige, DotF, advisor, ruler trait, army tradition.
The other thing is, there are 2 good routes for expansion. One is to core much directly, which favors RCC, tolerance and unrest reduction, meaning Admin and Humanism are the best picks. The other route relies on heavy vassal feeding, which means Influence, Admin and Diplo are the best picks, but everything else contributing to vassal feeding is highly welcome. Which means, extra diplomat is awesome, especially when there aren't diplo points needed forthe idea group, leading again to aristocratic. Key group for both is ofcourse Admin (mostly because of the policy with influence), but going Influence-Aristocratic-Admin-religious is pretty competitive with going Admin-humanist-Mil group-Influence.
Third expansion option, colonization, is also a good one, when you have the start position for it. And since you are often racing against AI in start for something (spawning colonialism, reaching key provinces, creating first CN for Treaty of Tordesillas etc.), an exploration-expansion-mil group pick isn't that bad. You can still pick admin-humanist/religious-influence with the later groups.
It is not needed to model everything against the first route with alot of direct coring. The end result, played seriously, will be nearly the same, no matter which of the 3 options is used, but it depends ofcourse on starting psotion.
What I like is combining Plutocratic with Aristocratic. Sounds weird? Think of it. More manpower, manpower recovery speed, morale, +30% available mercs, merc discipline, lowered tradition decay, free leader, land leader siege, cav combat and cheaper Mil tech as the pure military benefits, combined with extra diplomat, merchant, monthly autonomy change, goods produced and institution spread. A combination of any other 2 mil idea groups doesn't rpovide as many useful benefits.
When thinking of SP combat nearly only needs equal tech and high army tradition/good generals to win, with siege ability making it faster and easier, you can skip the other Mil groups with that. You don't need extra dscipline, combat ability or morale to beat an AI. And morale you can also get from other sources as power projection, prestige, DotF, advisor, ruler trait, army tradition.
The other thing is, there are 2 good routes for expansion. One is to core much directly, which favors RCC, tolerance and unrest reduction, meaning Admin and Humanism are the best picks. The other route relies on heavy vassal feeding, which means Influence, Admin and Diplo are the best picks, but everything else contributing to vassal feeding is highly welcome. Which means, extra diplomat is awesome, especially when there aren't diplo points needed forthe idea group, leading again to aristocratic. Key group for both is ofcourse Admin (mostly because of the policy with influence), but going Influence-Aristocratic-Admin-religious is pretty competitive with going Admin-humanist-Mil group-Influence.
Third expansion option, colonization, is also a good one, when you have the start position for it. And since you are often racing against AI in start for something (spawning colonialism, reaching key provinces, creating first CN for Treaty of Tordesillas etc.), an exploration-expansion-mil group pick isn't that bad. You can still pick admin-humanist/religious-influence with the later groups.
It is not needed to model everything against the first route with alot of direct coring. The end result, played seriously, will be nearly the same, no matter which of the 3 options is used, but it depends ofcourse on starting psotion.
Whether an idea group is sub-optimal depends purely on the player and the type of game your are going for. I am of the opinion that every idea group(except Espionage) has its uses in Eu 4. It depends a lot on the TYPE of campaign you want to play.
Say you are going for a WC, then it is imperative to go for Admin,Influence,Diplo,Religious,Humanism etc. You want to play tall then Economic,Trade,Innovative are your go to picks. If you are trying out the achievements involving building a large number of forts,Quantity is your friend.
The OP feels that Economic and Trade ideas are underwhelming. Honestly I do believe they should get a buff to aid the player in playing tall. However having said that you can easily get an sum of 450,000 ducats(using loans and development) . Check the challenge game thread by spambuca.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...world-in-80-years-achievement.1034059/page-36
With proper use of Economic Ideas to develop your provinces you can easily play a tall game where you are overflowing in ducats.
As for Maritime and Naval ideas, they are weak but if you are roleplaying a historical England or any other nation then they are quite good to aid you in having a massive navy.
A colonizing game must have Exploration and can do with Expansion.
Innovative and Aristocratic are very good and can even be the 6th and 7th idea groups in any campaign.(say horde WCs.)
The only idea group which needs a true buff is Espionage as there really no tangible benefit in picking this group.
Now the idea groups that everyone picks for WCs and in blob fests are the Admin,Inluence/Diplo,Religious/Humanist. They are essential if you are going for a record time WC or a nation starting in a precarious position. This is because these IGs are the ones which help you in coring,AE management and rebel squishing. Infact a WC is nothing but a campaign where there is the tedious chore of coring,AE handling and rebel stackwiping. So people pick the ideas that help them alleviate these problems. This is thus related to the type of campaign people are choosing to play which is massive conquest.
However there are Eu 4 players(like florryworry) who have WCed after picking Maritime ideas. Basically even in a slow WC you can get away by just picking Admin ideas and then choosing whatever idea groups you feel like. It would make your task of rebels and AE harder but it is possible and AE and rebels become a non issue in the late game.
In the end idea groups are there to aid the type of campaign you are playing. I am confident that even without idea groups one can WC or play a tall game.
(It seems like a challenge that I may attempt.
)
Say you are going for a WC, then it is imperative to go for Admin,Influence,Diplo,Religious,Humanism etc. You want to play tall then Economic,Trade,Innovative are your go to picks. If you are trying out the achievements involving building a large number of forts,Quantity is your friend.
The OP feels that Economic and Trade ideas are underwhelming. Honestly I do believe they should get a buff to aid the player in playing tall. However having said that you can easily get an sum of 450,000 ducats(using loans and development) . Check the challenge game thread by spambuca.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...world-in-80-years-achievement.1034059/page-36
With proper use of Economic Ideas to develop your provinces you can easily play a tall game where you are overflowing in ducats.
As for Maritime and Naval ideas, they are weak but if you are roleplaying a historical England or any other nation then they are quite good to aid you in having a massive navy.
A colonizing game must have Exploration and can do with Expansion.
Innovative and Aristocratic are very good and can even be the 6th and 7th idea groups in any campaign.(say horde WCs.)
The only idea group which needs a true buff is Espionage as there really no tangible benefit in picking this group.
Now the idea groups that everyone picks for WCs and in blob fests are the Admin,Inluence/Diplo,Religious/Humanist. They are essential if you are going for a record time WC or a nation starting in a precarious position. This is because these IGs are the ones which help you in coring,AE management and rebel squishing. Infact a WC is nothing but a campaign where there is the tedious chore of coring,AE handling and rebel stackwiping. So people pick the ideas that help them alleviate these problems. This is thus related to the type of campaign people are choosing to play which is massive conquest.
However there are Eu 4 players(like florryworry) who have WCed after picking Maritime ideas. Basically even in a slow WC you can get away by just picking Admin ideas and then choosing whatever idea groups you feel like. It would make your task of rebels and AE harder but it is possible and AE and rebels become a non issue in the late game.
In the end idea groups are there to aid the type of campaign you are playing. I am confident that even without idea groups one can WC or play a tall game.
(It seems like a challenge that I may attempt.
)
Optimal is defined within a set of constraints - this is basic engineering, for example a wheel is optimal on roads and four articulated feet with clawed paws is optimal in wilderness terrain. The player defines the constraints subjectively. There is no rule or requirement in this game that says optimal is maximizing development or province count. This notion only exists in peoples minds.
Yup forgot about Plutocratic which is indeed one of the best groups around. I still remember having a blast with it in my Milan to Italy WC game.
I think you are right, mostly because once you have enough development nothing else in the game matters. Decisions are routine and your only enemy is the clock.
Personally I think there should be much, much more aggressive penalties for massive dev acquisition.
Getting a massive navy with out these is not hard. What's fun is the quality you can develop.
It's very easy to figure out with the console. Take a couple CoTs in the Bengal node and add them to TC, collect with the new merchant. Compare the additional income with getting 20% global trade power as any European nation collecting in 2 end nodes. Most of the people arguing for bad idea groups are not weighing modifiers properly and/or do not understand the economic/trade system well enough. You should be able to see that blobbing gives by far the highest ROI with a few hundred hours played. I can only assume that the people who disagree have a poor understanding of game mechanics.
I misunderstood. I thought you meant you had done a spreadsheet analysis of trade.
I said I looked at them, not made them.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...akvdbuXDCNJTM2tmCjnTnwHqc/edit#gid=1199777264
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/5c7xaw/release_eu4_trade_calculator/d9vm6z5/
The point is you don't need spreadsheets to come to the right conclusions about most of the mechanics. A decent math background or min/max experience with other games helps, but most of it is common sense.
its easy to see in a before and after. Here is a game where I have most of the trade company regions controlled.
I earn 240+ trade ducats. Abandoning an unfilled Admin idea and purchasing trade (with console assistance for diplo) my income rises to 267. The three merchants when assigned further increased trade income to 287. So the idea group increased my profits by a total of 47 ducats per month. That sounds great, but I was already earning around 100 ducats free and clear even while supporting a 400k+ army in that picture. The extra income in this particular situation is inconsequential compared to the bonuses the other idea groups offer, which cannot be bought with money.
You, someone else. no matter. Thank you for the link.
Well it does not even take any math what so ever to know that enough dev trumps everything in the game. Meh. Knowing this is not knowing game mechanics. Knowing game mechanics is knowing how to solve micro problems in game moment by moment.
Spreadsheets are useful for other things.
its easy to see in a before and after. Here is a game where I have most of the trade company regions controlled.
I earn 240+ trade ducats. Abandoning an unfilled Admin idea and purchasing trade (with console assistance for diplo) my income rises to 267. The three merchants when assigned further increased trade income to 287. So the idea group increased my profits by a total of 47 ducats per month. That sounds great, but I was already earning around 100 ducats free and clear even while supporting a 400k+ army in that picture. The extra income in this particular situation is inconsequential compared to the bonuses the other idea groups offer, which cannot be bought with money.
And to break this down further, the main reason (imo) is that % modifiers for trade are mostly worthless. This applies to mercantilism, provincial trade power modifiers, etc. You're taking a % of a % of a % which amounts to almost nothing. On the other hand conquering a CoT gives a flat boost to trade power, which is modified further by 0 autonomy floor trade companies. The gist is that flat = good, % = bad.
Another example is to compare admin efficiency vs. CCR.
having 40% admin efficiency with 90% CCR reduces coring cost by 0.4*0.1 = 4%. Having 40% admin efficiency with 20% CCR reduces it by 0.4*0.8=32%.
I dont consider myself a skilled player, and I do not know about a wide range of game mechanics, to put it simply. I dont keep up with patch changes so Im often in the dark there. As you say, dev trumps everything, and all you really need to succeed in EU4 is just enough knowledge to conquer the trade company regions, and everything else works itself out from there. A little bit of monarch power efficiency, too.
Thats the problem I have with trade ideas, and the other ideas I think are weak too. I want trade and other idea groups to become better and more useful, and for that to happen we need to look at the reality of the situation and address it, not stick our heads in the sand and play make believe that all idea groups are good.
The way to solve "the problem", if there is one, is to more severely penalize expansion beyond a certain point. Not make every idea group optimal for sucking dev into your empire.
Except that effective blobbing is much more difficult than not blobbing. So unless you have good reason to penalize skill, the more obvious solution would be to buff other idea groups.
If difficulty is the goal, then don't use any ideas and then we can all be in awe of these "skills".
I would rather see idea groups buffed than constant nerfs. The main benefit of trade is the extra merchants, but they are not particularly valuable as you get so many from either colonials or trade company. Money itself needs to be more valuable so any increase there is more worthy of consideration. As I recall, large trade incomes in eu2\eu3 were possible even without owning all the land. I think you got a merchant per COT at one point, and then you focused on getting your merchants into higher slots which payed out better, and then your higher quality merchants would outcompete the locals in that way. That RNG based placement system was aggravating but maybe something like that for trade would help in general.
My goal is to have interesting and compelling choices which make me think long and hard about what options to pick. Thats not the case so much in my casual conquest games. There are the idea groups I can pick automatically as the best, another group that are reasonable but picked just to spice it up, and then the worthless ones which are little different from not picking an idea group at all.