Idea groups for a Poland game/achievement run

[Casus_Belli]

What should my first ideas be, I was thinking Aristocratic, Humanism, Diplomacy then Religion.

Also, should I revoke Moldavia's march status?

 

[FreeSoc]

I'm doing a Poland achievement run currently, which is going pretty well (Muscovy/Russia wilts in the face of Poland's god-cavalry, morale, discipline and better manpower), and so far I've gone for:

1) Diplo - it made diploannexing Moldavia, Mazovia and the Teutonic Order much quicker, and is a very good first idea group generally, because as a non-colonising non-naval power DIP tech is your lowest priority.
2) Humanism - to stop your religious unity tanking too badly when you form the Commonwealth, and make expansion easier. It also segues nicely with your -accepted culture threshold tradition. With a few decisions, I've nearly completed converting the Commonwealth by 1550ish.
3) Aristocratic - obviously. You need it for the Hussars achievement, it's pretty great generally and a free leader without upkeep is never bad.

For later ones, I'm thinking that Offensive, Quality and Influence will be must-haves (to go with your discipline and morale NIs), and I will probably take Administrative. I'm not sure about number 8.

I revoked Moldavia's March status, and then annexed it; I've subsequently changed my mind, however, and decided to feed my future Balkan conquests to a vassal-Wallachia that I have no intention of annexing.

 

[Casus_Belli]

OK Thanks, I'll do what you suggested and not annex Moldavia, for now. I'll also get those idea groups.

Also, should I attack Muscovy early, or wait until I have formed the Commonwealth?

 

[FreeSoc]

OK Thanks, I'll do what you suggested and not annex Moldavia, for now. I'll also get those idea groups.

You *can* annex Moldavia, for the early extra forcelimits, money and manpower and whatnot, it's just that once you form the Commonwealth, you will not be able to get Romanian as an accepted culture and keep it as one for any meaningful period of time, even with a -65% accepted culture threshold. Likewise with Bulgarian if you extend down into the Balkans. If you create a Romanian-culture vassal, you can just feed it Moldavia, Wallachia and Bulgaria and it will accept those cultures itself, saving you the bother of spending ADM and DIP points on coring and culture-converting.

 

[ChildeR]

Aristocratic and humanist are good choices early on. I would skip religious (did in my 1.8 Poland game), since with humanist and the ambition there's no need to convert everything.

If you want another military group, offensive is best. A third would be overkill in SP with Poland's traditions, so I'd recommend filling the rest with admin and diplo ideas. Influence foremost. Expansion is an option, especially if you take Muscovy out of the picture early.

Edit: and I second the suggestion of keeping Moldavia a march, at least early on. Annexing them early will just cause unrest because of the Orthodox provinces. If you don't want to keep them a march the whole game, annex them once you have influence.

 

[Cossack_PL]

OK Thanks, I'll do what you suggested and not annex Moldavia, for now. I'll also get those idea groups.

Also, should I attack Muscovy early, or wait until I have formed the Commonwealth?

The 3 idea groups mentioned before are also very useful as they all provide tech cost reduction, so you will save more MPs for Poland can into space

The earlier you contain Muscovy, the better. They will be much more difficult to deal with after they take Defensive Ideas (or even more military groups) and unite Russia. My preferred way is to wait until Muscovy eats Novgorod so it's small enough to be force-vassalized, then vassalize it in war and start feeding them back with provinces conquered by Muscovy before. If Lithuania makes any claims on them, it's also useful to push them. In my last Poland game (1.7, so no Lithuanian claims) I formed Commonwealth just around the time when I finished feeding Novgorod with their cores, so from then I could just fabricate on my own and conquer straightforward.

Also from Aristocratic and Polish NIs you get 43% cavalry combat ability, so you need to either take Quality or Espionage to be over 50% for Winged Hussars achievement. Obviously Quality is a better choice

 

[Jeggred86]

Lately I take Quantity in all my games.
I took it as fourth idea in my current Poland game after Diplomatic (Influence is a good choice as well), Humanism and Aristocratic.
You will pay -20% for your troops, combine that with Treasuries in 10 provinces and only recruit there, you will only pay 60% for your army. As Poland you also get the -20% cavalry cost from your NI and -15% from Aristocratic.
And the cost relates directly to the upkeep cost so you only pay 60% upkeep for infantry and canons and 35% for cavalry.

Infantry: Cost 6 ducats / Upkeep 0.15
Cavalry: Cost 6.3 ducats / Upkeep 0.15
Canons: Cost 18 / Upkeep 0.45

I pay as much for my cavalry as I pay for my infantry and they have +43 combat ability at the moment. Next is Quality.

Didn't really realized that my cavalry is that cheap until I wrote it down just now... have to update my army setup ;-)