How to improve Innovative idea group?

[damifoe]

Bonus for having all innovative ideas: Removes ahead of time penalty.

That would be too much. Imagine beeing 3 military techs ahead of the current level...
Just remove it for 2-3 years ahead of time.

 

[Monty_Droppings]

That would be too much. Imagine beeing 3 military techs ahead of the current level...
Just remove it for 2-3 years ahead of time.

2-3 years really doesn't seem significant enough to be noticeable. Why not something like you can research up to one tech level in front of the current one without penalty?

 

[b.bever]

I file like discussing and on recent voting Innovative idea was one of the worst ideas next to Espionage, Naval and Maritime. If you have any ideas to improve it, discuss.

While I like the idea of discussing the current state of a part of the game and how it could evolve there are a couple of "problems" I have with you posted premise.

- the recent voting shows the majority of the people who are active on the forum vote this as one of the worst idea groups, in all likelyhood this is still a vast minority of the players. Without any real data on which idea groups actually get chosen it's questionable to assume that nobody picks something because the active part of the player base thinks it is not worth picking.
- When you have a sample size > 1 you will always have a best and a worst one. It seems to be human nature to start poking fingers at the bottom and say "that's obviously too weak, let's make it better" while looking at top and saying "that's obviously too strong, let's take it down" would result in a much more interesting game, if only because it would make it harder instead of easier. If the goal is balance striving to average out would be the way to go, which would probably result in a very bland situation.

Now on the group itself.
I tend to look at this group as a jack-of-all-trades group (like aristocracy) and as always the individual bonuses of such a group are, and should be, weaker than the same bonuses from a specialist group. Given most other idea groups are specialized groups it's hard to really assess it's strength. As is I rarely want to take a non-specialized group, but I'm happy the option is there.
Take the inflation reduction discount that most people in this thread perceive as too weak. Whether or not this actually the case, cutting it would leave us with exactly 1 group which still counters inflation, couple that to the removal of inflation countering buildings and we have cut the strategic set size from 5 to 3 (economic, advisor, full cost reduction). That's not adding strategic depth, that's starting to look like railroading.

Does this mean I think things are perfect and should stay as is?
Definitely not, perfection in itself is an unachievable goal. Given the massive changes in game mechanics and balance, a rebalancing of a group which touches many aspects of your realm could very well be in order. But as is the spread of ideas still looks pretty decent to me.

 

[Illianor123]

- When you have a sample size > 1 you will always have a best and a worst one. It seems to be human nature to start poking fingers at the bottom and say "that's obviously too weak, let's make it better" while looking at top and saying "that's obviously too strong, let's take it down" would result in a much more interesting game, if only because it would make it harder instead of easier. If the goal is balance striving to average out would be the way to go, which would probably result in a very bland situation.

I agree with your post and the sentiment of the quoted bit. But as ideas currently stand, I think for the most part ideas are balanced with no idea being too strong, but that a few ideas are weaker. Probably easier to buff the weaker ideas a little bit, than to pull down the rest from their mostly balanced position.