Humanist or Influence

[Rexos]

So everyone around the web talks about this "vassal feeding", but I want to know, is it worth it?
I got some questions:

-I always see that they check for the core of the future vassal, like, Novgorod after Muscovy conquers almost all their cores....but if I give provinces to my vassal without a core, what's difference?

-Is it better to have multiple vassals, or to keep a big one every time

-When I annex a vassal, I can make states on their provinces without paying adm points, but...if I'm over my states limit, can I do that the same?


and finally, Humanist or Influence?

I started a game with england time ago with a special purpose, and one of the requirements was to get the PU over France and then annex them....but to do that before jesus came back to life I had to have high diplomatic reputation.....so, diplomatic and influence groups(-20% annex cost was pretty necessary too).....but now that I'm playing another game I'm thinking.....can't I just get the humanist group?

Do you know if getting this group will "grant" a peaceful living without rebels, or at least with a lot less than before?

I'm also currently at -20% idea cost, and the final idea would get me to -30%(pretty awesome)

What do you suggest?

 

[Tyriion]

1 You want a basaal with a lot of cores to conquer because it is cheap AE wies

2 The bigger a vassal gets the harder it is to control as the LD Will rise. Stop feeding After 100 dev or so, unless it has cores left

3 Annexing nets you full cores so you don't need Admin to core. You do need state limit though.

 

[Dominion]

100 dev is too early. 250 gives a base LD of ~80% from dev which can still be counteracted by DipRep. Gets a bite more complicated once you get multiple big vassals, but you're only doing that if you're expanding fast at which point you're permanently prestige capped anyways and can placate rulers regularly.

You can't state provinces if you're at your state cap. Doesn't matter if you already have full cores. State cap is state cap.

Usually you either reconquest your vassal's original cores or feed them whatever you conquer. Obviously trying to give them wrong-religion same-culture provinces so they convert for you while still being comparatively stable.

I like to create and integrate continuously. Never keep a single vassal for too long. I'm going to conquer beyond their borders soon enough and with the same patch where they changed the Dev-LD relation from a stair system to a gradually increasing curve they've also increased LD almost every step of the way so big vassals become a tad hard to control.

Unless you cheese by building a few forts in their provinces and keep paying their debt.

 

[Rexos]

mmmm.....ok, so I my doubts about the vassal are gone but......what about Humanist ideas? You just avoided talking about it......is there some kind of reason for that?

 

[ElGranCapitan]

You don't need Humanism before 1600 unless you play a Horde

 

[Rexos]

Well, but....I'll need that anyway soon or later....and as I said what are the benefits? I mean I'm not taking both influence and humanist, so I must choose...

 

[Balinkay]

The dev cap is no joke though - have a ~650 dev Nitra in my game with my dynasty and an RM and they're still quite reluctant, even though I'm at 10 times their dev.

 

[petertju]

The benefits of humanism are that you literally don't have to think about uprisings anymore. rebels are no longer a nuissance and less annoying.
This is especially useful in the late game when you have absolutism. Absolutism is something you want because it gives administrative efficiency (coring costs less admin). Reducing autonomy is something that gives a lot of unrest but increases absolutism. Because of this humanism is very good because it lets you reduce autonomy without causing massive uprisings.

 

[gia257]

Well, but....I'll need that anyway soon or later....and as I said what are the benefits? I mean I'm not taking both influence and humanist, so I must choose...

you take both, but if you want to know whats each one for, humanism gives less rebels, period, it is best once you start taking huge batches of land from a single source because they will form a mega rebel stack. If you only take 2 or 3 per war, they will only be 10-20k in size, manageable. It is usually taken while working on court and country (absolutism) so that you trigger it first (you need high unrest, and humanism will make it a bit harder), and then use it to reduce the effects and also future effects (once you get absolutism you start taking huge batches of land). Besides rebels, it has better relations and lower idea cost.

Influence, it is for vassal feeding, ae reduction, and a must when you dont take religious. For vassal feeding it has a 25% discount and an extra 20% if you also have administrative, another vassal slot and 2 diplo rep to speed up annexation, reduce liberty desire and allow some vassalizations. For ae it has 20% reduction. If you dont take religious you will have to pay diplo points to get land without claims and other demans out of CB, this is unjustified demands, influence give a 50% reduction, religious gives a 25% ae reduction and 100% "unjustified" reduction on cede provinces of different religion tags (because it is justified under Holy War CB).

 

[Rexos]

you take both

I would rather not do that, oh wait I'm not doing it....cause you really convinced me about the humanist, I'll takethis group now to get the -30% idea cost, so I'm paying less for all the others groups, it would be a waste otherwise.........and since you talked about ujustified demands and CB, it seems religious are better, and I usually take it so.....I'm fine with all the rest
Thank you guys, humanist here I come

 

[ElGranCapitan]

I would rather not do that, oh wait I'm not doing it....cause you really convinced me about the humanist, I'll takethis group now to get the -30% idea cost, so I'm paying less for all the others groups, it would be a waste otherwise.........and since you talked about ujustified demands and CB, it seems religious are better, and I usually take it so.....I'm fine with all the rest
Thank you guys, humanist here I come

Humanist is an admin group, as is Religious and Administrative. Among those groups Administrative is CLEARLY the best and the one you should take first, unless you have a very good reason for it. Sometimes you take Religious before Admin (if you are Coptic that makes sense, or the HRE Emperor)
Admin saves you way more admin points through the 25% coring cost reduction and admin point are the most important
Therefore Admin should be among your first 2 groups. The other group should be from the diplomatic branch, either diplo or influence (or exploration in some odd cases)
Those 2 reduce AE and AE is, besides admin point cost the most important thing to reduce early game

The only reason to pick Humanist before Admin is if you play a Horde. Hordes get monarch points from razing (which also reduces development and thus coring cost) and most have a coring cost reduction in their national ideas. So admin points isn't as important to them. They have a really bad economy though, and are at war a lot so need to conserve manpower and can't afford fighting a ton of rebels. They need Humanist.

You apparently want to save monarch points (you mention paying less for the other groups as the reason to pick Humanist). Humanist saves mostly manpower. Admin saves admin points, influence saves diplo points. You should pick Admin and Influence.

 

[Vulkandrache]

this group now to get the -30% idea cost

You are running your head against a fallacy here.
You get 10% cheaper ideas from Humanist. What other modifier you might have cannot be taken into account here.
Humanist ideas are good and usually usefull but you need to spend 21000 point on other ideas to pay for the cost of the whole group.
That 10% idea is a filler, not the selling point of the group.

I'm not taking both influence and humanist

You have not given any sort of reason for that beyond "i dont want to".
Why should people write lenghty explanations about this and that if you only throw out one-liners?

There is no real reason to not take both in many games, and the two groups dond have any overlap in their funtionalities.

cede provinces of different religion tags (because it is justified under Holy War CB).

Not entirely correct.
The important part is the Warleader you are negotiating with.
You can take provinces from anyone for free as long as you talk to the warleader under the Deus Vult CBs.

 

[gia257]

"i dont want to" is a powerful reason tho

about the other thing yea, its the same with other cbs having special rules based on alliance peace or separate peace though

 

[erneiz_hyde]

The thing about taking Admin first is, the rest of the idea beyond -25% coring cost isn't too useful that early in the game. But if you stop at -25% coring cost then it takes longer to fill out your national ideas, which could be critical depending on who you're playing as. Sure, you can use the same argument about Admin but the main point of Admin is the core cost idea, and not the group as a whole so it's not a priority to finish. Meanwhile Humanist is best finished ASAP because aside from all the useful ideas that are actually useful in early game, there is the critical policy of further reducing separatism (the largest single source of unrest in the game), which will result in a total unrest reduction of -10.5 in every province you conquer and own (outside of other effects like stability and tolerance). As such, unless I play a more specific country and strategy, I will always default to Humanist -> Influence -> Offensive.

 

[evilcat]

If you are already on blob level then taking Administrative + Influence is start to speed up blobing. This two take asap.
Humanist is great to reduce time wasted on rebels. All 3 save you monarch points, so it is not like you cant take them all.

Personally i like taking anything diplo as 1st idea group, since i dont want to lag in militarry, and admin 7 is so close.

 

[Rexos]

The thing about taking Admin first is, the rest of the idea beyond -25% coring cost isn't too useful that early in the game. But if you stop at -25% coring cost then it takes longer to fill out your national ideas, which could be critical depending on who you're playing as. Sure, you can use the same argument about Admin but the main point of Admin is the core cost idea, and not the group as a whole so it's not a priority to finish. Meanwhile Humanist is best finished ASAP because aside from all the useful ideas that are actually useful in early game, there is the critical policy of further reducing separatism (the largest single source of unrest in the game), which will result in a total unrest reduction of -10.5 in every province you conquer and own (outside of other effects like stability and tolerance). As such, unless I play a more specific country and strategy, I will always default to Humanist -> Influence -> Offensive.

MY NIGGA....(sorry)....but seriously, I really never considered adm ideas so powerful, OF COURSE the -25% is really good and +5 states too, but as I said before in other posts, the rest of the ideas are really not that good(for me), maybe byzantium could mix his -25% mercs maintenance and get a good result(just to say), but I rarely use mercs, so I would occupy a group slot just for 1 idea
These are my thoughts, the thoughts of someone who's not so good at this game, and doesn't really know it that deep, and most of all, I'm not aiming for a WC, I just can't....
It's just that, rebels are really annoying.....and for the core I'm trying to cap the adm points, right now I'm at 13/14....then when I'll be paying 280 points for any idea I'll save a lot on everything. I'm playing as japan and I took exploration and economy for now, the development in Manchuria is not that high so I don't really need so many adm points right now....we'll think about that later

You have not given any sort of reason for that beyond "i dont want to".
Why should people write lenghty explanations about this and that if you only throw out one-liners?

Well.....I gave you a reason, I want to choose between these 2 groups, that's why I created this post....."Humanist or Influence?", maybe you think that those 2 are both necessary in a normal game but.....not for me....
Ok I admit that with Influence-Diplo-Adm groups you would annex vassals every year but I prefer to conquer my self in this game, and since I'm japan I can't really conquer at east, have a vassal to the north and an ally to the south, I can go to manchu or maybe to Indonesia, but right now I'm colonizing Merica to get Colonialism so.....not gonna happen

"i dont want to" is a powerful reason tho

Yeah, like when your mother says "because I said so!"

and anyway if I don't have adm points I could grab land and wait to gradually core....since I have humanist ideas I shouldn't have too many rebels, RIGHT?!........or at least I think so....we'll see

Thanks to everyone, if you anything else to add I'll gladly read it

 

[Dominion]

Merc ideas are extremely useful.

Of course if you're just playing a relaxed game aka I want to recreate Charlemange's borders and drink a glass of whiskey you're not going to get much out of the group, but any kind of blobbing game absolutely has to pick up adm. Everything else is just a lesson in misery.

Rest of the group isn't too shabby either.

 

[Rexos]

You hurt my feelings Dominion....I don't remember, but I think we already talked about the adm group on another post, anyway, as You said....I was just to go out to buy some whiskey......
I can imagine, that a WC requires a certain speed of action and you can't always wait for the manpower to recover, and then there are the reinforcements costs and all, so THEN mercs ARE REALLY USEFULL, so if you mix 50-50, or 60-40 them with normal troops, then, I CAN SAY adm groups ARE A GOD GROUP.....but in my casual games are not that usefull....

Rest of the group isn't too shabby either.

well......1 possible advisor....I would say it's just as useless as the interests....-10% adm tech it's pretty good.....

 

[TheMeInTeam]

"i dont want to" is a powerful reason tho

about the other thing yea, its the same with other cbs having special rules based on alliance peace or separate peace though

Even if it is a powerful reason, a player declaring that he's going to throw because he/she wants to throw is not something that encourages much future advice.

Given the priority assigned to administrative for SP blobbing, players are largely choosing between religious or humanist as a 2nd admin group, and for most games it will be the only other ADM group taken.

When you take humanist, influence is the top pick because its finisher halves the DIP cost you pay per peace deal (or more if you have other sources of unjustified demands). It's already a good pick for SP blobbing anyway since it offers more -dipannexation cost as a policy (trade 120 ADM for 500-1000+ DIP) and speeds up vassal annexation even more than diplomatic.

Merc ideas are extremely useful.

I do think you're overrating merc maintenance reduction. That -25% is an additive modifier to the + >200% cost mercs have, so you're not actually reducing maintenance by anything near 1/4. It's not useless and ADM is a winning group for -25% core cost and policy alone so you take it in blobbing games, but -merc maintenance isn't all that strong. You'd probably get more out of -land maintenance and other boosters in economic or quantity. Those don't give the RCC. That's why ADM wins.

 

[Dominion]

Nothing against a good glass of Whiskey.
I don't recommend drinking and conquering the world though or you might end up releasing and feeding Bohemia.
Not like I would ever do anything like that... I swear

Btt, there's no 5050 ratio. Usually you run around with full merc inf after 1600. Maybe even 1500 with easier tags.

@TheMeInTeam I was more thinking about available mercs. Those 25% extra get overlooked too often. Because most people, as you correctly said, get tricked by merc cost reduction.

Additional mercs is superior to merc costs. Since a lot of people avoid using mercs at all costs it rarely gets the attention it deserves and needs to be pointed out more often.