Is Offensive overpowered?

[Beagá]

Ok I think most people think that if not OP then at least Offensive is na excellent NI. However everyone compared it to Defensive.

What about Quality and Quantity? I can´t see many reasons to go those BEFORE Offensive.

 

[Novacat]

The EU series has always represented non-Europeans as being about as strong as they historically were in the period covered by "Victoria" from 1500 on.

Dont you mean 1800+?

 

[Incompetent]

Ok I think most people think that if not OP then at least Offensive is na excellent NI. However everyone compared it to Defensive.

What about Quality and Quantity? I can´t see many reasons to go those BEFORE Offensive.

Quality may be preferable if you already have plenty of manpower and force limits - the combined effect of the Discipline bonus and the combat effectiveness bonuses is quite strong. Quality + Naval is also a good combo for a strong navy.

I can't think of many situations where I'd take Quantity ahead of Offensive/Defensive though.

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

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.

In my current Prussia game, I was inexplicably losing battles for "no good reason" for a large majority of the game, getting stackwiped very easily by Austria who was the same tech level as me but had much, much, much less discipline -- something that to me, was horribly unthinkable. Our generals were almost the same, too.

The winner was Defensive ideas. After taking that, even only the first two ideas unlocked, I started stomping /everyone/. Even though I lost my tech advantage through a few 1/0/0 and 3/1/0 kings.

Image Reference:

Spoiler

Because taking any military idea as first idea is asking to lag in military tech, which is often a death sentence.

Not if you do it right. You don't HAVE to rush every single idea in a tree ASAP.

Quality may be preferable if you already have plenty of manpower and force limits - the combined effect of the Discipline bonus and the combat effectiveness bonuses is quite strong. Quality + Naval is also a good combo for a strong navy.

I can't think of many situations where I'd take Quantity ahead of Offensive/Defensive though.

I did a few tests taking Quantity first simply for the manpower bonus, and it worked /amazing/. It's a bit gimmicky though and probably not worth it over something like Defensive, though not having the manpower bonus hurts a lot.

 

[FrigidSoul]

Not if you do it right. You don't HAVE to rush every single idea in a tree ASAP.

Right, but then you're not advancing ideas as quickly as you could, all else being equal. Both mil tech and idea advancement are at their most important in the beginning of the game. Granted, if you get a leader with an awesome mil score and crap Adm/Dip scores, you might be best off starting with Military ideas, but all else being equal mil ideas are rarely the best option.

 

[mgoetze]

The EU series has always represented non-Europeans as being about as strong as they historically were in the period covered by "Victoria" from 1500 on.

Dont you mean 1800+?

No, but he meant to place a comma after "Victoria".

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Right, but then you're not advancing ideas as quickly as you could, all else being equal. Both mil tech and idea advancement are at their most important in the beginning of the game. Granted, if you get a leader with an awesome mil score and crap Adm/Dip scores, you might be best off starting with Military ideas, but all else being equal mil ideas are rarely the best option.


I did a few tests taking Quantity first simply for the manpower bonus, and it worked /amazing/. It's a bit gimmicky though and probably not worth it over something like Defensive, though not having the manpower bonus hurts a lot.

[/QUOTE]

If you're western, I would consider a military idea 2nd, just to avoid something like +12 ahead of years with extra military points. Putting them into an idea is much stronger than putting them into the limited buildings available at that point typically.

If you're, say, Indian, Muslim or Chinese, I would advocate against taking a military idea until the mid-game or even until after post-westernization, because every drop invested in tech over ideas gives you a massive advantage. Sub-Saharan and New World shouldn't take them until after westernizing also of course, but that's because they'll typically only get one idea group before doing so and it'll always be something to let them colonize.

 

[Beagá]

Yeah getting a military NI as 1st or second group is a MUST. Otherwise the chance of points piling up is very big.

Not to mention low tier buildings like temples and such are often worthwhile and you can build, well 20 temples and 20 constables for the cost of one ADM NI. It´s obvious what is usually best.

 

[mgoetze]

If you're, say, Indian, Muslim or Chinese, I would advocate against taking a military idea until the mid-game or even until after post-westernization, because every drop invested in tech over ideas gives you a massive advantage.

Military Tech 9, 10 and 11 are all completely underwhelming actually, so it's ok to take a military idea group second. You just need to be a bit more flexible and not commit to filling out the idea tree before going back to tech.

 

[FrigidSoul]

If you're western, I would consider a military idea 2nd, just to avoid something like +12 ahead of years with extra military points. Putting them into an idea is much stronger than putting them into the limited buildings available at that point typically.

Yes, second is good. First is sub-optimal. Ideally you'll start with a Dip group, buy a small handful of those ideas, and then open up a Mil group. You're at your best when you can dump extra points from two different categories into ideas, which at the beginning stages will also buy you NIs.

I was kinda rushed when I posted last time, so if it wasn't clear I apologize. The formatting certainly turned out to be a mess. The main principles I wished to convey in this thread are that Dip points are generally less valuable than ADM/MIL at the beginning of the game, and that alternating Idea types maximizes the purchasing power of your MP.

Both approaches may eventually get you to the same place at the end, but there's an enormous practical difference between the following two paths:

1. Dip group -> Mil group -> Adm group -> Mil group
2. Mil group -> Mil group -> Adm group - > Dip group

 

[Novacat]

No, but he meant to place a comma after "Victoria".

Well, hes either referring to the Victorian era, or hes referring to the Victoria games, both are after EU4's end date. So it stands good reason to believe that he just made a typo.

 

[FrigidSoul]

Well, hes either referring to the Victorian era, or hes referring to the Victoria games, both are after EU4's end date.

He's making a sarcastic observation about EU4's design: the game portrays 16th century Europeans as if they were as strong (relative to the rest of the world) as Victorian-era Europeans.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Military Tech 9, 10 and 11 are all completely underwhelming actually, so it's ok to take a military idea group second. You just need to be a bit more flexible and not commit to filling out the idea tree before going back to tech.

For western absolutely, unless you're just trying to get as many colonies as possible and open exploration --> expansion, efficiency in MP spending be ****.

For Indian? No way. Even a 400 point difference on tech 5, 8, 12 is huge. But not just for that reason; the Asian nations really need more help elsewhere. They can same-continent colonize for a big benefit (both Siberia and Malacca node potentially), so exploration is just better than 1-2 military ideas. They also have massive religious diversity in the area, so religious ideas are extremely helpful to mitigate that issue (IE you can chew through Sunni lands to block Russia, or conquer into Timurids/take down Aceh/Brunei without problems). On the flip side, they don't have to worry about going ahead of years for a long time, so the incentive to take a military idea group just for that is virtually nothing until 1550-1600+, which is "plan for westernization" territory, even if you won't just yet.

 

[AttilaTheFun]

actually if you think about it... offensive and defensive are mil ideas you take every game... what differs is the order and the number of ideas you take before going with the other....

One drawback (which I am surprised wasn't mentioned yet) of offensive is that to have it work you need to have military leader at every stack... don't know how you guys, but after first 70 years I have multiple stacks, but only 1 good military leader since getting more directly cuts into your mil tech and ideas...

This is one of the reasons why I find offensive significantly less useful until late-game. Also Defensive having cheap +20% (or whatever) morale in the second slot makes for a quick, cheap investment.

I have to say, though, behind forced march, my second-favorite individual idea between the two groups is +1 siege: it cuts down drastically on war length, overall attrition and WE—and even if you can't afford enough commanders to effectively buff carpet sieging, it still allows you to quickly and effectively siege their capital in under a year and force them to accept your demands.

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

Right, but then you're not advancing ideas as quickly as you could, all else being equal. Both mil tech and idea advancement are at their most important in the beginning of the game. Granted, if you get a leader with an awesome mil score and crap Adm/Dip scores, you might be best off starting with Military ideas, but all else being equal mil ideas are rarely the best option.

I generally don't find this to be the case at all. Very often I find that taking a military idea group first opens up the option to take a quick boost from a powerful early idea slot much sooner than anyone else, and as long as you keep up-to-date in tech you can actually snowball harder than if you just decided to get diplo filler as your first group. In pretty much every case where I took a military idea first in all my testing, the early boost more than made up for the slightly slower start on nation specific ideas. By the time you get your second group, your tech will have stabilized to a point where you generally fall into a rhythm of tech, idea, tech, idea, so you can THEN take your diplo filler second and catch up on your nation specific ideas extremely quickly.

 

[deezee]

Quality may be preferable if you already have plenty of manpower and force limits - the combined effect of the Discipline bonus and the combat effectiveness bonuses is quite strong. Quality + Naval is also a good combo for a strong navy.

I can't think of many situations where I'd take Quantity ahead of Offensive/Defensive though.

At least if the wiki's calculations are accurate, +1 shock and +1 fire almost always change damage by more than 10% and apply to both attack and defense, while quality bonuses apply +10 only and only on offense. At early game, since combat is dominated by shock, it is a broader bonus than getting a bonus to only some units too. So for land armies, offensive is clearly better than quality. However, quality is better for naval powers (unless the +1 leader bonuses apply to admirals too, which seems improbable), and the bonuses complement each other well, while offensive and defensive can be a little contradictory.

 

[illapa]

Wait what. Why are people saying Aristocratic is bad?

Aristocratic's cheaper cavalry can really help early game by letting you have more cavalry and money is nice later game.
+100% hostile core creation makes you a much less appealing target especially in multiplayer.
Serfdom's 25% manpower is really nice early game
+1 leader shock is nice
+1 diplomat is good and can really help especially if you are a nation that does benefit from the diplomatic ideas.
-20% cost of reducing war exhaustion might not seem that great until you get into a slug fest with another huge nation and then it really helps you win long term games
-10% military tech and +10% cavalry combat ability yes please. Try fighting a Poland, Lithuania, Ottomans or any other nation with cavalry combat abilities + aristocratic and cry as your cavalry just collapses on the flanks every battle.

Aristocratic ideas rock especially for non Western nations because of the cavalry and tech bonus. The events that come along with Aristocratic are also really good. I love the Military Treatise event. You just randomly get free military points every few decades. All the negative aristocratic events can be easily dealt with and are mostly just peasant uprisings that you can easily crush.

 

[Novacat]

Wait what. Why are people saying Aristocratic is bad?

Because Cavalry sucks.

-20% cost of reducing war exhaustion might not seem that great until you get into a slug fest with another huge nation and then it really helps you win long term games

Or you can get Innovative and with -0.05 constant war exhaustion you never have to worry about war exhaustion ever again.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've been thinking that for vassal spam SP, aristocratic might actually be a solid choice just for the diplomat. Once you're running away, you don't exactly need high army oomph.

 

[illapa]

I agree that massing cavalry sucks but it really makes a difference if your cavalry beats theirs on the flanks because then your cavalry goes ape shit on their army because they flank harder.