Idea group balancing

[KRBLACK]

I might be the only one, but I would like to see the current idea groups be revised a bit.

I think we can all agree that some idea groups are onbjectively better than others.

-Naval and Espionage are so situational on of the other 14 idea groups is always a better pick even when you could benefit from one of these two.
-I think Expansion is considered a worse version of Exploration.
-Aristocratic and Innovative are good idea groups, but are rarely better picks than things like Administrative, Religious or Quality. (Even though Innovative is my favorite group)

Does anyone know if the devs are planning to change any idea groups in the near future? Or would one of the developers be so kind as to clear this up for me and anybody who is interested?

I love the work that is being put into India and the rework of policies is in my opinion one of the best things in the patch, but I would just love to see Expansion and Espionage get the same love that Aristocratic did a few patches ago.

 

[Piotrzeci]

Naval, Espionage and Expansion all are bad choices. Innovative has some questionable bonuses. There are also Maritime, but they are nice choice for trade conflicts and generally holding the sees.
I love Aristocratic though.

 

[KRBLACK]

Naval, Espionage and Expansion all are bad choices. Innovative has some questionable bonuses. There are also Maritime, but they are nice choice for trade conflicts and generally holding the sees.
I love Aristocratic though.

I believe innovative gives +1 monarch point for the rest of the game spread over categories with its -10% tech cost. The -0,05 WER basically removes war exhaustion for the rest of the game (unless you are badly losing wars). The advisor cost should also not be underestimated.

I think the ''problem'' with Innovative ideas is that you don't immediately see the benefit, but 1MP/ month +1 prestige and no WE for the rest of the game is pretty good. Advisor cost means in most circumstances you can afford +1 level of advisors and is especially good mid game with level 5 advisors.

Aristocratic is good, and I also love it, but I have to admit quantity and offencive are better picks most of the time.

 

[Sousuke123]

I might be the only one, but I would like to see the current idea groups be revised a bit.

I think we can all agree that some idea groups are onbjectively better than others.

-Naval and Espionage are so situational on of the other 14 idea groups is always a better pick even when you could benefit from one of these two.
-I think Expansion is considered a worse version of Exploration.
-Aristocratic and Innovative are good idea groups, but are rarely better picks than things like Administrative, Religious or Quality. (Even though Innovative is my favorite group)

Does anyone know if the devs are planning to change any idea groups in the near future? Or would one of the developers be so kind as to clear this up for me and anybody who is interested?

I love the work that is being put into India and the rework of policies is in my opinion one of the best things in the patch, but I would just love to see Expansion and Espionage get the same love that Aristocratic did a few patches ago.

The only thing we know is that idea groups won't be changed in Dharma but we can safely assume that they will do one day. I hope not only for revisiting them but adding new ones with system like MEIOU where some idea groups unlock other ones or you can specialize in something you want.

 

[afb]

They are rebalanced once in a while, so at some point, we can expect it again. One of the issues is that some groups are insanely hard to balance and make attractive at the same time. Naval, for example, is useless for a lot of countries. And even if the entire group basically gave the effect "win every naval engagement", it would still not be really attractive, as a good navy is just not a essential as a good land force.

I think having entire groups that focus only on the naval aspect is a bad idea. I sometimes take Quality partly for the naval boost, but only because I also get a significant land boost. I almost never take Maritime and Naval, and when I do, there is usually a trade aspect as well (getting the merchant from Thallasocracy). I would scrap Naval and then make a few groups that help naval somewhat. I might also make Maritime slightly more versatile. Perhaps a decent institution spread bonus in coastal provinces?

I think Aristocracy is actually a decent group for cavalry-oriented nations, ie. Poland/Lithuania/Hungary, various steppe tribes, a few Middle Eastern/Indian states. Expansion is only really useful for colonizers that want to double down on colonists and take it on top of exploration.

 

[EquilinT]

On water groups, i'd say the better solution is make navy more important. Add some levels on blockade/naval bombardment/change to naval AI etc etc.
Expansion was meant for countries that only colonizes nearby provinces e.g. Russia (before Third Rome) while also doing something else, but it still didnt do that job as good as exploration which colonize faster in every situation. So yes, it needs a total rework.
Espionage I'd fix the "less cost to fabricate" to be actually percentage (not a flat -5 like it is) and maybe something about supported rebels.

 

[randomgamer71]

Expansion can be useful if you can reach colonizable provinces without the need to exploring (Ethiopia, indonesia, east and west african nations places like that). If you are not interested in full time colonization the expansion's other bonuses are more interesting, IMHO.

The problem is that it cost ADM points.

About espionage, the problem is less the idea group, and more the espionage system, the only thing espionage is useful are claims(which are boring), the other options are simply not worth it, or require a too high level ot technology, (or both) when you can use them you are probably strong enough that is just simpler to conquer whatever nation you are targeting.

The problem is not that the idea group is not torth taking, the problem is that is not really worth to do espionage (claims excepted)

And the same is true for naval and marittime, is not so much that their are bad, is just that navies are not really that useful

 

[afb]

What if you could fabricate permanent claims or even cores with Espionage? Maybe you could upgrade a claim to a permanent claim and a permanent claim to a core. Obviously cores would have to cost some amount of monarch points, possibly full price. But if you already had the core before going to war, you would be spared most of the AE penalties as well as the normal unrest from conquering provinces. Possibly, the cores should cost diplomatic points instead of admin?

Both options should cost a lot of spy network, so you would really have to be patient to do it large scale.

Perhaps coring should be limited to provinces with an accepted culture.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

Just from a naming standpoint it feels weird that three of Administrative's ideas are dedicated to Mercenaries. Maybe merge them into two ideas? Then again given the raw power of -25% CCC that might just be the price you pay: Paying less for mercs.

 

[KRBLACK]

There are a lot of suggestions, but I was wondering whether more people are interested in a grander rebalance of the idea groups. So we pray to prophet jake and thank him for not abandoning us in july I guess.

 

[schondetta]

Off the top of my head I was thinking that the costs of each idea are variable to there power. That way a player can make a decison of given the limited number of slots how much points they want to devote to more poweful IGs vs less powerful ones. I like having to make decisions like that since the root of a strategy game is decision making.offensive might be too expensive at the time as your tight on sword mana but luckily there's the cheaper quantity group to supplant your needs etc

 

[Casko]

Eh. Innovative is Good idea group. However its much more overtime, and passive than compared to say, Economic. You won't see the effects instantly, but you do save a whole lot of monarch points in long term as you won't core your provinces with the increased cost from war exhaustion, and you roughly speaking get +1 monarch points thanks to the tech cost reduction. Similarly the advisor cost reduction is massive that allows you to use level 5 advisors that much sooner.

Espionage ideas are quite good as well, however they suffer from bad reputation due to how bad they were in the past. the +33% Spy detection helps immensely against the AI that loves to build 100% spy-network on the player, and if you have 100% spynetwork on a country you are at war with in turn, you get +20% Siege ability against their forts, this makes sieges that much faster, and its very precious when you are siegeing down some mountain forts and the like.
Similarly -10% Liberty desire, while nothing major, can help keeping a vassal swarm or a horde of CN's in line.

Expansion is super situational, and probably best with African, Native American, and Malay/SEA nations that have plenty to colonize without exploration needed as you can't get Conquistadors nor explorers with Expansion.

Naval is... .Bad. because Quality does things better, while helping your army as well. and the fact that Navies are not nearly as important as they historically were in the game, thus making this idea group worse version of Maritime ideas.

 

[PrimeYuri]

Expansion should be buffed by giving it CCR while in the adm group its CCR should be replaced by a 5% adm efficiency.

 

[pttaylor]

Innovative is the most military focused of the ADM ideas and crops up in MP for that reason: it gives ticking WS reduction, which very few things do, and it has some powerful military policies. It just suffers from the fact that Administrative + Humanist (or Religious) are such must-picks in single player that by the time you're even considering a 3rd ADM group (5th group overall at the earliest) it doesn't really matter what you take because the game is close to over.
Expansion suffers similarly, in that if it were a DIP group there are places where I'd take it over Exploration, but it's never worth the ADM group slot. Even Economic is rather situational for me, despite strong bonuses, simply because the dev cost reduction is best early and I'm taking Administrative as the first ADM group every game.
Naval warfare is largely irrelevant so Naval and Maritime feel useless despite having much larger effects on naval combat than most mil groups do on land combat.
Espionage is simply useless. Maybe for specific policies, like stacking Cav combat ability, but that's more about memeing than optimising.
Aristocratic suffers from being unfocused - each idea is fairly strong but whatever you want to do there's a group more specialised for it. The are situations where I'll take it, though, which is better than the others under discussion here.

The change to policies might affect the utility of these groups, at least enough that you feel like you're actually getting something when you pick the up 6th or 7th. And the devs have proven willing to re-balance individual ideas, most notably giving Aristo +1 leader siege which moved it from a never-pick to something I seriously consider in some games.

 

[misiceman]

Naval and maritime are actually fine. What they do they do well and can be quite powerful. The problem is the naval game is just bad and more importantly naval AI is horrible. Until the naval game gets an overhaul and the AI learns to use the navy properly, taking either of these two groups are meaningless outside of a multiplayer setting.

Innovative suffers from it not being admin or humanist/religious, which lets be fair come next patch will be admin/humanist. Its actually a solid group. Expansion has issues stemming back from its CB nerf, and Eco is actually good too, just very situational.

Espionage.... just no. I would honestly be happy if they just removed the group and put expansion in there.

The rest of the groups are actually ok, and the plicy rework is going to shake things up as well.

 

[ecrurudesby]

Remove Expansion ideas from the game.
Give the merchant to Economic (maybe in place of the nerfed land maintenance reduction).
Combine Recruitment and Shipbuilding into one idea and give it to Innovative in place of the pathetic inflation cost reduction.
Add the +1 diplomatic relation to +1 possible advisor in Innovative.
Add the trade company fabrication to the Exploration bonus.
Give the state maintenance to either Economic or Administrative.
Take the colonist, settler increase, and global trade power and create a new decision that requires exploration ideas and colonies on multiple continents, among other things.
Remove mercenary maintenance from Innovative ideas and give them Innovativeness gain (probably make it the bonus and bring the other ideas forward).
Voila! Expansion ideas are no longer a problem and Innovative ideas are better (no one took Innovative for the merc maintenance anyway).

 

[KaiserJohan]

In SP I rarely deviate from the standard formula but in MP diplomatic circumstances can make nearly all picks reasonable.

 

[KRBLACK]

In SP I rarely deviate from the standard formula but in MP diplomatic circumstances can make nearly all picks reasonable.

TLDR: Espionage is a jack of all trades, but mostly a master of none.

Well I understand that MP is a different beast, and I have little experience playing competitive multiplayer, but I can't imagine that espionage or naval would really be better than their competition in multiplayer.

In my experience navies rarely decide (or even influence) the outcome of a war. The only thing your navy has to do is win the first few battles, because it takes too long to build up new ships to contest the enemy fleet and prevent opponents from landing. If you only care about the first few battles then Quality's naval boosts will suffice in most cases whilst also providing valuable land bonuses.

Espionage suffers the same fate. To fully utilise Espionage you will have to micromanage your diplomats an immense amount for too little gain.
Idea 1: +50% spy network construction, -10% advisor costs
The extra spy network construction is nice, but in most circumstances I am able to wait a few more days for claims and the like.
Less advisor cost is nice and allows for earlier adoption of high level advisors, but if I want or need this it pays more to take other groups so I consider this bonus an extra

Idea 2: +1 diplomat
If I need this I can also take Diplomatic or Aristocratic (for that sweet siege ability), therefor this is not what I would pick Espionage for.

Idea 3: +10% provincial trade power modifier, +33% foreign spy detection
The trade bonus is equal to 5% mercantilism if I recall correctly, and is a nice addition but again if this is what I need I will take Trade ideas.
Foreign spy detection is what I consider a core ability, but for most of the game I don't care about AI's fabricating claims and late game it is more to reduce the amount of AI's annoying me with spy actions.
That said I can see this bonus performing very different in a multiplayer environment.

Idea 4: -10% liberty desire in subjects
If I have many subjects I can achieve better results taking Influence, so whilst not useless this idea would better suit Influence I think.

Idea 5: -25% claim cost
I have never had a use for, (but I might be completely wrong) and I classify this as filler.

Idea 6: +25 embargo strength, +33% privateer efficiency
I have to admit I don't know the usefulness of embargo strength, but I do find privateering quite useful alot of times so I quite like this in fact. It provides an efficient alternative to protecting trade that also grants power projection.

Idea 7: -0.10 corruption
This is hands down the best addition of the set. There is not a single nation that cannot use corruption reduction. Whether you are a conqueror or playing tall and just farming debase currency.

Finisher: +50% rebel support
To be honest I have never been able to succesfully spend money to support rebels and achieve better results than outright declaring war or waiting a while and seeking another target.

 

[hashinshin]

In MP espionage/quality/aristo has 20% cav combat -1% army tradition policies. That's +1 army tradition, -2% decay, 40% cav combat in 3 ideas. When your base generals are basically 4-4 and you frequently ram in to 5-6 or so generals it can be difficult for your opponent's. They can get offensive-quality-economic to just mash the 15% discipline though. Dunno why the discipline policy isn't being nerfed in the upcoming policy rework... (No discipline in policies! Discipline stacking too OP!)

Now I haven't played vanilla in awhile, but the espionage build does allow you to do UNREAL cav damage, while you have so much mil tradition you have a huge morale lead as well. On Poland for example, with how broken cossacks are right now, you have 33% cav, 20% cav, 10% cav from cossack units, 10% cav, 10% cav, 20% cav, 15 morale from poland, ~15 morale advantage from army tradition, and suddenly if you're fighting anything less than an S tier country their troops might as well just dig their own graves.

 

[PhoenixG]

TLDR: Espionage is a jack of all trades, but mostly a master of none.

Well I understand that MP is a different beast, and I have little experience playing competitive multiplayer, but I can't imagine that espionage or naval would really be better than their competition in multiplayer.

In my experience navies rarely decide (or even influence) the outcome of a war. The only thing your navy has to do is win the first few battles, because it takes too long to build up new ships to contest the enemy fleet and prevent opponents from landing. If you only care about the first few battles then Quality's naval boosts will suffice in most cases whilst also providing valuable land bonuses.

Espionage suffers the same fate. To fully utilise Espionage you will have to micromanage your diplomats an immense amount for too little gain.
Idea 1: +50% spy network construction, -10% advisor costs
The extra spy network construction is nice, but in most circumstances I am able to wait a few more days for claims and the like.
Less advisor cost is nice and allows for earlier adoption of high level advisors, but if I want or need this it pays more to take other groups so I consider this bonus an extra

Idea 2: +1 diplomat
If I need this I can also take Diplomatic or Aristocratic (for that sweet siege ability), therefor this is not what I would pick Espionage for.

Idea 3: +10% provincial trade power modifier, +33% foreign spy detection
The trade bonus is equal to 5% mercantilism if I recall correctly, and is a nice addition but again if this is what I need I will take Trade ideas.
Foreign spy detection is what I consider a core ability, but for most of the game I don't care about AI's fabricating claims and late game it is more to reduce the amount of AI's annoying me with spy actions.
That said I can see this bonus performing very different in a multiplayer environment.

Idea 4: -10% liberty desire in subjects
If I have many subjects I can achieve better results taking Influence, so whilst not useless this idea would better suit Influence I think.

Idea 5: -25% claim cost
I have never had a use for, (but I might be completely wrong) and I classify this as filler.

Idea 6: +25 embargo strength, +33% privateer efficiency
I have to admit I don't know the usefulness of embargo strength, but I do find privateering quite useful alot of times so I quite like this in fact. It provides an efficient alternative to protecting trade that also grants power projection.

Idea 7: -0.10 corruption
This is hands down the best addition of the set. There is not a single nation that cannot use corruption reduction. Whether you are a conqueror or playing tall and just farming debase currency.

Finisher: +50% rebel support
To be honest I have never been able to succesfully spend money to support rebels and achieve better results than outright declaring war or waiting a while and seeking another target.

Actually the -10% liberty desire in subjects is the best one. The +2 dip rep from influence or diplomatic only gives -6%