Mathematics of Religious vs. Humanist

[ChildeR]

try playing at 250% OE for 20 years with 3 military ideas of your choice, and then try it again with quantity, humanist and religious.

Why would you have 250% OE for 20 years? Because you wasted all your admin points on ideas?

But seriously, I don't see any reason to have high OE when you can just feed half the provinces or more to subjects and core the rest. If you expand heavily and eat your vassals, military points are the only ones you have in abundance.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

I haven't found non-accepted cultures to be much of a problem in the long run. Sure, it's nice to have a bunch of accepted cultures, but that won't be the factor that decides humanist vs. religious for me. Handling culture is an extra bonus on top of the religious issues.

If you can max out tolerance of heretics/heathens (or even only one, depending on where you're planning to expand) due to NIs, decisions, or your religion, I prefer humanist. You don't have to convert any provinces if you don't want to, and you'll have an easier time in the short run dealing with cultures.

If you can't max out tolerance, religious is better. Not only do you get a great CB and a large stability cost reduction, but you can speedily convert anything except the highest base tax provinces. Your ridiculously high TTF basically ends unrest as well. If you can get additional conversion bonuses from NIs, decisions, or religion, then religious is a no-brainer (and you can even convert high base tax religious centers such as Rome in a matter of months).

 

[Achanei]

Why would you have 250% OE for 20 years? Because you wasted all your admin points on ideas?

But seriously, I don't see any reason to have high OE when you can just feed half the provinces or more to subjects and core the rest. If you expand heavily and eat your vassals, military points are the only ones you have in abundance.

20 years at 250% seemed just like a good approximation to give you the experience, but you rack up very high overextension when you trucebreak continuously to vassalize a large nation - what you can do is declare, take 100WS worth of provinces, immediately break truce, take 100WS worth again and repeat until you full annex them, then release as vassal. if you need 20 years for that you are doing it wrong, of course, but you'll have to survive a few years of high OE probably peaking at 300% or even more, and with the rebels now you cant just accept demands all day to get rid of them, you have to beat them.

But even without trucebreaking shenanigans, being able to stomach 200% OE for a while is quite useful for seperate peaces in big wars, enables you to take as much as WS allows from all participants. In a lot of lategame scenarios I find that you end up with just a dozen of really big nations left, most of them allied to two others or so. once you break their combined forces you can carpet them all and separate peace each, but if you have to be careful with OE you either have to drag out the war and eat the call for peace WE hits (and a longer wait to the next war), or restrict the provinces you take.

 

[Less]

True, but there is still the question of priority, especially since administrative is usually highest of all adm groups - taking administrative first and considering that you need to invest admin MP to unlock more idea groups, it is rarely sensible to take a third admin group before tech 17, and that is basically halfway through the game.

Administrative is entirely unneeded with AoW's changes to what you can do with vassals, thereby bypassing most coring cost issues.

I'd still find it hard to justify religious + humanist in most situations though. Expansion is just too good to pass up, especially now that it works against Africa as well. I might see religious + humanist working if you were a non-chistain looking to blob hard in europe.

 

[elglanto]

I see lot of people saying that Deus Vult save a lot of diplo points but I don't understand how. Could someone explain it to me?

 

[Denkt]

Religious best idea is the very good cb which allow you to take land for no dip cost and low aggresive expansion with the only requirements that they are your neighbour and don't have your religion, great for rare religions but weaker for big religions like sunni and catholic.

Low stab cost is useful but you need to increase it many times before you gain admistrative points from it.
Missionary part of religious is useful but not that needed in most cases.
Devoutness are useful for some religion but humanism -2 unrest is better for pretty much everyone.
Rest of religious are pretty useless outside of roleplaying.

Humanism is not as heavy on a single idea as religious are on its uber cb.
Tolerance is actually better if you can't get 0 or better because negative tolerance give large penalty while positive only lower unrest.
-2 Unrest is pretty good.
-10 years of nationalism is not as good as it sounds because you can use vassals and split rebels so nationalism becomes much less problematic.
-50% accepted culture requirement is very good because it can make provinces much better.
33% better relations over time is useful but rather weak comapred to many other ideas in humanism.
Idea cost is nice, 25% unit is pretty useless after tolerance but can help somewhat at the start.

With vassals however you can build stable empire without the need of religious/humanism

 

[Xinkc]

If I'm going for both then I go Humanist first and Religious when expanded into non-easily converted heathen/heretic territories (or late conversion). If I'm straddling regions at start near a hard to convert religion then I'll go Religious first. Really, depends on what I want to do and what happens to my nation.

 

[lordelenath]

Administrative is entirely unneeded with AoW's changes to what you can do with vassals, thereby bypassing most coring cost issues.

I'd still find it hard to justify religious + humanist in most situations though. Expansion is just too good to pass up, especially now that it works against Africa as well. I might see religious + humanist working if you were a non-chistain looking to blob hard in europe.

Depends. It's actually pretty efficient to take provinces for yourself if you have a -coring cost NI. As Ottomans coring is insanely cheap and fast, you have lower local autonomy (even if you increase it once to counter-balance nationalism) and if you stack Humanism on top for reduced revolt risk, shorter nationalism and the tolerance it's trivial to do all the conquering by yourself.

 

[Denkt]

Depends. It's actually pretty efficient to take provinces for yourself if you have a -coring cost NI. As Ottomans coring is insanely cheap and fast, you have lower local autonomy (even if you increase it once to counter-balance nationalism) and if you stack Humanism on top for reduced revolt risk, shorter nationalism and the tolerance it's trivial to do all the conquering by yourself.

However you will still wan't to use vassals for rebels splitting if you want to expand fast, otherwise you would have to pick two admin ideas very early while coring which is pretty hard to do.

 

[lordelenath]

However you will still wan't to use vassals for rebels splitting if you want to expand fast, otherwise you would have to pick two admin ideas very early while coring which is pretty hard to do.

Granted, I'm not far into my Ottoman game (and might not continue, since I'm way to powerful in 1500 already, as is expected) but I have been sitting on 100% OE almost all the time, coring almost everything I own myself and I have not had a single revolt as of yet. Ottomans are ofc amazingly powerful, but once you have a decently sized core territory you can afford to simply increase local autonomy in all newly conquered provinces, which almost guarantees that you will never have an uprising at all even before taking Humanism. It's no WC strategy but that's always an extreme case that weights ideas very differently from almost all other game-play styles.

 

[ktk1212]

I see lot of people saying that Deus Vult save a lot of diplo points but I don't understand how. Could someone explain it to me?

Taking provinces will cost diplo points if they weren't the target of the war. For example, if you declare war for a claim province and want to take some other lands (say, to set up a vassal) , those extra provinces will cost you diplo points. Frequently in the 25-50 range per province, you can see how much in the treaty screen. Holy war is a war against the entire enemy country, so all provinces cost 0 diplo to take. This adds up very very fast if you are frequently warring other religions (and thus don't care about AE) and are setting up/feeding vassals.

 

[Less]

Depends. It's actually pretty efficient to take provinces for yourself if you have a -coring cost NI. As Ottomans coring is insanely cheap and fast, you have lower local autonomy (even if you increase it once to counter-balance nationalism) and if you stack Humanism on top for reduced revolt risk, shorter nationalism and the tolerance it's trivial to do all the conquering by yourself.

Requires an otherwise mostly useless idea group, requires you to constantly fabricate claims, and still doesn't let you take 500% OE worth of provinces like vassals do. Furthermore the majority of nations don't have -coring cost.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Requires an otherwise mostly useless idea group, requires you to constantly fabricate claims, and still doesn't let you take 500% OE worth of provinces like vassals do. Furthermore the majority of nations don't have -coring cost.

Don't forget that once you start involving things like imperialism (DIP 22 everyone gets it now), diplomatic ideas, and administrative efficiency, you can easily grab 100-200% OE for yourself and still feed multiple vassals up to ~100%, so it should be seen as extra expansion on top of the vassal feeding.

Unless you have something better to use the diplomats on, claim spam is a good deal in this patch due to the -10% LA.

 

[Less]

Right, later in the game when you've gotten more important idea groups finished its possible to splurge on Admin even if the rest of the bonuses aren't too hot. I was talking more in terms of the first 3 or 4 idea groups where you have to be much more selective about things. Though even with that said, I'd consider Innovative + the policy that gives +20% infantry combat ability more attractive, but I don't attempt WC or anything.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Unless you have something better to use the diplomats on, claim spam is a good deal in this patch due to the -10% LA.

This is a very good point. I initially didn't think the extra 10% was a big deal since it all burns off eventually, but the extra income over ~50 years for one province is almost worth the cost of a first-level building in that province. To say nothing of the manpower.

 

[Denkt]

Claim also reduce aggressive expansion but that may not matter if you are able to take 100 base tax from every country you DOW.
Mercs are pretty good to which is a big + for picking admistrative, maybe as much as the reduce coring cost.
One thing you could do is to pick religious for the CB only and drop it at diplo tech 22, that would cost you as most 360 admin point but may save you thousend of diplo point and also time becuase you can chaindow with that cb, just take a province next to a country you want war with and instantly dow with cb, then you can sell the province to a vassal if you have one that has core on it.

 

[Achanei]

Right, later in the game when you've gotten more important idea groups finished its possible to splurge on Admin even if the rest of the bonuses aren't too hot. I was talking more in terms of the first 3 or 4 idea groups where you have to be much more selective about things. Though even with that said, I'd consider Innovative + the policy that gives +20% infantry combat ability more attractive, but I don't attempt WC or anything.

you are saying administrative bonuses aren't too hot, and two sentences later talk about innovative? really?
yeah that prestige decay real stronk

seriously though, administrative gives way cheaper mercs, coring cost reduction is awesome and +goods produced is easily as strong as -advisor costs now. the only thing that innovative has going for it is the -WE, and hey, dotf does that too. I still go admin as third idea in most games (except colonist ones).

 

[Denkt]

I think he talked about Innovative Quality policy that give 20% infantry strength which but for that you need to fill two groups for.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Right, later in the game when you've gotten more important idea groups finished its possible to splurge on Admin even if the rest of the bonuses aren't too hot. I was talking more in terms of the first 3 or 4 idea groups where you have to be much more selective about things. Though even with that said, I'd consider Innovative + the policy that gives +20% infantry combat ability more attractive, but I don't attempt WC or anything.

It's too many points into a group you don't need. If you're already a deep runaway with 300+ FL in SP, the only useful military idea is aristocratic, which brings down the cost of reducing WE and gives an extra diplomat/general for split fronts. Everything else you just dump bodies on and you're set.

 

[Incompetent]

If you need dip points, using deus vault saves you tremendous amounts of dip points in the long run.

This depends a lot on what other idea groups you have. Paying the full 50 point cost for unjustified demands all the time is painful, but there are several ways around it. For instance, as a European conquering Africa/Asia, the Overseas Expansion CB is even better than Holy War. Also, you can get a blanket 50% cost reduction on unjustified demands from completing Influence ideas.