You newbs, we all know the only real OP idea is Espionage... *covers from the rotten tomatoes*
Is Offensive overpowered?
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Not hardly. It might be better but it definitely isn't any sort of multiple magnitudes of better.
some of you guys are ridiculous, really.
How can you ever argue that discipline makes you win a war, while morale doesnt?
Especially in the early game, the higher morale WILL make you win THE decisive battle, especially when its a war between medium-sized nations, that dont have more than 1 or 2 stacks. Winning the decisive battle vs an enemy that has just that one stack, will obviously give you the chance to hunt that stack down and whipe it, which leads to winning the war. More often than not, you will lose early game batltes due to better morale. More often than not you will win early game wars due to higher morale. Really noone cares about 10 % more casualties in early game battles, simply because that exactly wont lead to winning a war. In early game, everything depends on wiping that single stack the enemy has, which defensive is just plain better at.
And yea, of course getting both is a good idea, when youre a nation that focuses on its military, like Sweden, Ottos, France, Prussia and the like. When fighting one enemy that has both, when you dont, youre at a serious disadvantage. When not fighting a militarily strong enemy, having both will simply allow you to cut down your military upkeep and still have at least as good morale as the enemy, while having better discipline, tradition and generals.
Besides that, relating to the topic, offensive isnt really OP. It is stronger than qantity, quality and aristocracy, but that is, for me, a design flaw of those idea trees. Dont know why PDox made these ideas that bad, but they need a serious rework.
How can you ever argue that discipline makes you win a war, while morale doesnt?
Especially in the early game, the higher morale WILL make you win THE decisive battle, especially when its a war between medium-sized nations, that dont have more than 1 or 2 stacks. Winning the decisive battle vs an enemy that has just that one stack, will obviously give you the chance to hunt that stack down and whipe it, which leads to winning the war. More often than not, you will lose early game batltes due to better morale. More often than not you will win early game wars due to higher morale. Really noone cares about 10 % more casualties in early game battles, simply because that exactly wont lead to winning a war. In early game, everything depends on wiping that single stack the enemy has, which defensive is just plain better at.
And yea, of course getting both is a good idea, when youre a nation that focuses on its military, like Sweden, Ottos, France, Prussia and the like. When fighting one enemy that has both, when you dont, youre at a serious disadvantage. When not fighting a militarily strong enemy, having both will simply allow you to cut down your military upkeep and still have at least as good morale as the enemy, while having better discipline, tradition and generals.
Besides that, relating to the topic, offensive isnt really OP. It is stronger than qantity, quality and aristocracy, but that is, for me, a design flaw of those idea trees. Dont know why PDox made these ideas that bad, but they need a serious rework.
Offencive is good nothing more, without high morale and high traditions its useless, actually 2 ideas of defencive do almost the same as full bar of offencive.
I think a lot of people underestimate this. The extra tradition from defensive can easily give you +1 shock/fire. The inevitable counterpoint will be that you can just be at war all the time.
25% Morale is not better than 10% discipline and pips. Forced march is so good that it makes fighting good players with it impossible when they're large, unless you have it too.
And it´s even more hilarious versus AI. Intercept stacks before they blob into one, and between the extra pips and discipline, high chance of insta wipe.
If na idea allows me to fight 2 15k stacks, or 3 10k ones, instead of one big 30k stack, and in the terrain I choose, I can safely say it´s VERY good. But maybe the title wasn´t right... what I should have said was, Is there any reason why not get it as first NI.
If na idea allows me to fight 2 15k stacks, or 3 10k ones, instead of one big 30k stack, and in the terrain I choose, I can safely say it´s VERY good. But maybe the title wasn´t right... what I should have said was, Is there any reason why not get it as first NI.
Because taking any military idea as first idea is asking to lag in military tech, which is often a death sentence.
Since it's a percentage bonus, it scales, so it's pretty good even later on in the game
Offensive ideas in general are balanced. It is forced march that is 'overpowered' since it allows stack wiping a lot more easier.
Nobody said to fill out the entire idea tree before going back to tech.
I almost always take a military idea first (generally defensive. Offensive if I'm playing an op hyper-aggressive country like France/Ottos), grabbing any major early ideas (like morale, or the +1 leader shock), go back to tech, then put some more ideas, etc.
It's quite possible to have your first 2-3 ideas be all military, and not lag behind in tech, if you can manage it right (assuming you're not screwed by a bad monarch, but that's why I play with a mod that doesn't screw me over with stupid monarch stat luck).
Millitary ideas 1st are junk. One out of diplomatic/exploration/expansion or even religious (if in a weak tech group) are better sells. In single player exploration is absolutely brutally OP right now, because it opens up conquest cycling out of AE instantly.
+1.
Also, regardless of which group you take first, you should take a different type second. Alternate groups so as to maximize the purchasing power of your monarch points. Stacking 2-3 military groups in a row unnecessarily slows your idea progression. Of course, later in the game, once you've already filled out 3-4 groups (and your NIs), it's less important to alternate.
Me -- I almost always take Diplomatic first, both because I'm a diplomat junkie, and because I want to sprint through the first few levels of Admin and Mil tech as fast as possible. Offensive usually comes second. YMMV.
All 3 quality increasing ideas(offensive, defensive and quality) are strong, but strictly speaking, Offencive=>Defencive.
Army tradition actually give you better generals, for 1 idea, while offensive has, 3 ideas equal to this. You also get manpower recovery bonuses, from army tradition.
You save manpower by having better sieges, and decreased attrition.
10% discipline is not that huge of a boost.
You inflict more casualties on enemy by forcing longer sieges.
You get big boost to morale.
But I can see that forced march can be strong if you`re nation oriented at offence in rather small aeries, and you don`t need to siege a lot.
Army tradition actually give you better generals, for 1 idea, while offensive has, 3 ideas equal to this. You also get manpower recovery bonuses, from army tradition.
You save manpower by having better sieges, and decreased attrition.
10% discipline is not that huge of a boost.
You inflict more casualties on enemy by forcing longer sieges.
You get big boost to morale.
But I can see that forced march can be strong if you`re nation oriented at offence in rather small aeries, and you don`t need to siege a lot.
Unless you're sitting on a 6 military monarch+heir combo, there is no reason to get military first. 90% of the time sacking your diplo tech in exchange for a diplo idea, be it diplo or exploration or even naval is extremely beneficial. The benefits of the idea vastly outweigh the early benefits of diplo tech.
+2...
Diplomatic if landlocked; expansion or exploration (whichever is more applicable) if not. I generally take defensive 2nd because THE big draw of offensive I tend not to use (forced march-cus any mp taken from tech/ideas is bad). Playing as non-western nations makes every monarch point expenditure that much more questionable and I tend to not play western...
Offensive, Defensive and Quality are all solid ideas at the moment. People have different preferences, but the overall balance is fine. The real question marks for me with the military idea groups are about Aristocratic and Quantity: Aristocratic doesn't seem to have a clear niche in practice (because it doesn't give any monarchy-specific bonuses, and because cavalry sucks), and Quantity suffers from the fact that if you want a bigger military, it's more profitable to build up your economy and use more mercs rather than just making units cheaper.
Don't get me wrong; Defensive's tradition boost is absolutely wonderful, but by itself it is by no means equivalent to Offensive's boost to leader shock/fire. You still need to be almost constantly at war to maintain high tradition; Defensive simply makes it easier to maintain. Would I take Defensive's tradition bonus instead of either +1 leader shock or +1 leader fire? Probably, but never in a million years would I take the tradition over both.
The dominant strategy is to use lots of small stacks (generally of mercenaries) to siege many provinces all at once. Lots of small stacks mean you aren't getting the leader siege bonus most of the time, and it also means that attrition's influence is minimized. Mercenaries mean no manpower lost.
That's not to say that Defensive's attrition and leader-siege bonuses are bad; they're just not nearly as good in practice as they are on paper. And even on paper, they don't come close to saving you as much manpower as Offensive gives you (+25% of total manpower, rather than saving 25% solely of the manpower you would have lost through attrition).
By the same token, Defensive's 10% cost reduction to land maintenance suffers grievously in the comparison with Offensive's +33% to land force limits, which is the closest analogue in the tree.
10% discipline surely isn't gonna change your life or anything, but it's at least as good as many Defensive ideas, and arguably better than most. A case in point follows:
Is that unambiguously more helpful than inflicting 10% more casualties in every battle?
This, along with the army tradition, is probably the main reason to pick up Defensive. Not that the other ideas in Defensive are bad, but as I see it, Defensive's main draw relative to Offensive is that Defensive gives you big and immediate bonuses in the first two idea slots, whereas Offensive needs a fair amount of time before it really starts to shine.
So if you need military help right freaking now, Defensive seems like the better bet. Long term -- assuming you'll eventually be rich enough to spam mercs for siege phases -- Offensive is almost certainly better, if only because it interacts better with the bonuses from the Quality idea group. (Discipline and unit combat ability multiply each other, and leader stats augment both). If we're working from the premise that you'll end up with two military idea groups, then Offensive + Quality beats Defensive + one of the other two. But if you plan to take all three eventually anyway, then awesome.
In any case, Defensive's attrition reduction didn't deserve to be nerfed in 1.4, but Incompetent's post is spot on: whatever imbalances there might be among Offensive, Defensive, and Quality, they are absolutely miniscule in comparison with the vast gulf that separates those three from Quantity and Aristocratic.
Forced March is also a potent defensive tool, given the (frankly screwy) reinforcement mechanics.
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The Offensive + Innovative + Quality trio is king IMO. A constant stream of high powered generals, increased discipline, better combat ability, and forced march = massive casualties and lots of stack wipes.
Especially since there's something about morale a lot of you are overlooking: you can compensate for lower morale by splitting your armies up and rotating them through a battle. Keep 2-3 armies close to each other, let your opponent attack first (to get defensive bonuses), and then march army #2 in. When they arrive, retreat army #1 and watch your morale bar jump as fresh soldiers take over. Repeat until victory.
Especially since there's something about morale a lot of you are overlooking: you can compensate for lower morale by splitting your armies up and rotating them through a battle. Keep 2-3 armies close to each other, let your opponent attack first (to get defensive bonuses), and then march army #2 in. When they arrive, retreat army #1 and watch your morale bar jump as fresh soldiers take over. Repeat until victory.
I don't think anyone is arguing that one single idea is better than a fully completed idea group. Defensive gives other valuable bonuses -- the morale is just the most obvious one, and I believe it's better than any single idea in the Offensive line.
yea, you can do that when you are France. Or England. Or Austria. Or Poland. Or Lithuania. Or any other country that starts off large and has several stacks at the beginning that fill the width.
However, most countries dont have so many armies at the beginning, and due to that, Defensive is alot better for small to medium sized countries. They just havent enough armies nor MP to cheese the AI the way that big countries can. And usually, when youre not a big country, you need to have better morale than your bigger neighbours to stand a chance against them. At least when your allies are not significantly stronger than theirs. As a 3PM Brandenburg for example, have good luck not going defensive when battling vs Denmark and Poland for Danzig, or Poland and Bohemia for Breslau, when your ally Austria cant field as many soldiers as their ally Lithuania in the early period of the game. No 10 % Discipline will help you as much as 25 % moral in that situation.