Mathematics of Religious vs. Humanist

[DicRoNero]

"Now I'm running out of manpower and its really painful" part. 500k manpower can disappear in a flash.

True, but from my own WC experience, I got low @ manpower (say, below 25%) only due to my laziness - after I stopped caring about how many troops are besieging. 20/4/20 stack rather than 2/0/20 plus 18/4/0 at standby somewhere close? Sure, why not. The attrition became insane, given how I practiced that in tropical lands. Thankfully, I noticed that and few "exceptional years" in quick succession rectified it for me.

 

[LastSalian]

Humanism makes wonders for countries that have a culture threshold NIs like Poland and Ottomans. I would take it with Mughals too. Unlike Religious, the manpower and income provided by culture acceptance is HUGE and enables your nation to be at maximum troops cap, either regulars or mercenaries. It also indirectly provides missionary strength by removing the non-accepted culture penalty for conversions (-2%?).

It's better to take it as first idea, unless you plan to westernize.

Religious is like a must for most nations except for Austria and Castile for all the reason provided so far.

 

[Less]

These are no WCs and still above or close to 1 Mil. manpower. Some of them probably had Quantity but not all, and even if you assume they all had they'd still be close to 1 Mil. manpower if you subtract the bonus. And to be honest, even at 500.000 I haven't managed to run out of it yet.

Those are all virtually WCs.

True, but from my own WC experience, I got low @ manpower (say, below 25%) only due to my laziness - after I stopped caring about how many troops are besieging. 20/4/20 stack rather than 2/0/20 plus 18/4/0 at standby somewhere close? Sure, why not. The attrition became insane, given how I practiced that in tropical lands. Thankfully, I noticed that and few "exceptional years" in quick succession rectified it for me.

Nonetheless, manpower is useful for assaulting forts and thereby quickly getting wars done with. Certainly if you are taking heavy attrition you should be assaulting rather than sieging.

 

[lordelenath]

Those are all virtually WCs.

Sorry, but they're not even close.

 

[Denkt]

Sorry, but they're not even close.

The thing is that they could have easly been WC, the hard thing is the start not the end.

 

[unmerged(291783)]

It's probably too late to get back on the topic of putting some numbers to the religious vs. humanist idea comparison, but let's take a stab at it anyway; I'm trying to figure out which one to choose from in my current game anyway.

We'll have to distill each idea group down to the core ideas and bonuses that tend to have the broadest impact in game first. This will necessarily disregard any synergies with particular nations or religions, but we just want to get a baseline for comparison at this point.

Religious

1. Religious CB
2. +1 missionaries
3. -25% stability cost
4. +3% missionary strength
5. +1 tolerance of the true faith
6. +1 yearly prestige (prestige is too easy to farm in war)
7. +2% missionary strength vs heretics (heathens generally outnumber heretics in the world)
8. -25% cultural conversion cost (waste of diplomacy points no matter how you slice it)

Humanist

1. +25% religious unity
2. -2 unrest
3. +3 tolerance of heretics (heathens generally outnumber heretics in the world)
4. -10 years of nationalism
5. -50% cultural threshold (loses effectiveness as you grow)
6. +33% better relations over time
7. +3 tolerance of heathens
8. -10% idea cost

Most of the remaining ideas above are related to unrest management in one form or another, so let's consider a specific scenario: conquering a heathen province with an unaccepted culture, raising autonomy once, coring it, and then converting it. The basis of comparison will be made in terms of unrest-months. We'll assume that both idea groups have been maxed for simplicity, and some reasonable assumptions will be made about the typical status of a nation.

Unrest modifiers for newly conquered wrong culture heathen province:

• War exhaustion: 0 (often negligible, and can be reduced by Innovative, Defender of Faith, or diplomatic points)
• Overextension: 3 (equivalent to 60% overextension, because you fed half your conquest to vassals)
• Legitimacy: -1 (from +100 legitimacy)
• Stability: -1 (from +2 stability)
• Religious Unity: 0 (too small to matter for religious idea group, and non-existent if humanist)
• Nationalism: +15 for religious, +10 for humanist
• Unaccepted culture: +2 for religious, 0 for humanist (let's categorize the humanist global -2 here since we will never convert cultures)
• Heathen tolerance: +3 for religious, -0.5 for humanist (using roughly 2.5 intolerance as base)
• Raised autonomy: -10

The total unrest to begin with is therefore:

• Religious: +11 unrest
• Humanist: +0.5 unrest

With 36 months of coring time, and nationalism ticking down by 0.5 per year, this period will generate:

• Religious: +378 unrest-months
• Humanist: +6 unrest-months

Now we send in the missionaries (+6 unrest) after 3 years (-1.5 nationalism, -3 overextension), and the unrest will be

• Religious: +12.5 unrest
• Humanist: +2 unrest

If religious can convert in 12 months and humanist in 24 months, because we have to make up the numbers as we go and we might as well pick nice ones, then we get:

• Religious: +150 unrest-months
• Humanist: +48 unrest-months

The final unrest modifier, with increased autonomy still active, is then

• Religious: -1.5 unrest (-1 legitimacy, -1 stability, +13 nationalism, +2 culture, -4.5 true faith, -10 autonomy)
• Humanist: -8 unrest (-1 legitimacy, -1 stability, +7.5 nationalism, 0 culture, -3.5 true faith, -10 autonomy)

Thus in terms of just counting unrest-months, humanist probably has a sufficiently large advantage to give you a choice of either trivializing unrest, or not raising autonomy to begin with and squeezing an extra 25% out of newly conquered provinces. The extra missionary from religious ideas will allow more provinces to be converted at the same time, but that is somewhat balanced by the extra unrest-months that it will generate. Furthermore, conversion is only necessary for humanist so autonomy can be lowered sooner with tolerance of the true faith in effect, so the slower conversion rate of humanist is not a significant detriment in this regard.

Now lets take a second look at the two idea groups, crossing out the ones we just used for comparison:

Religious

1. Religious CB
2. +1 missionaries
3. -25% stability cost
4. +3% missionary strength
5. +1 tolerance of the true faith
6. +1 yearly prestige
7. +2% missionary strength vs heretics
8. -25% cultural conversion cost

Humanist

1. +25% religious unity
2. -2 unrest
3. +3 tolerance of heretics
4. -10 years of nationalism
5. -50% cultural threshold
6. +33% better relations over time
7. +3 tolerance of heathens
8. -10% idea cost

This looks a lot more manageable now, and the remaining ideas appear to give religious ideas a slight edge in terms of monarch points: the savings in monarch points from the religious CB and reduced stability cost are very likely to outweigh the savings from idea costs. If humanist is the first pick and maxed out, it will only save 1960 monarch points over the whole game, provided that all ideas are taken without any refunds. Assuming very conservatively that you can reach religious ideas 3 by 1500, and only have until 1650 to use it, the two ideas would break even once the religious CB and reduced stability cost can be translated into a savings of 13 monarch points per year. That is the equivalent of making one unjustified demand in provinces every two years, and seems like a very reachable target.

The only left over idea now is better relations over time. This is a pretty powerful idea, although its impact has been reduced somewhat in the current version of the game since coalitions dissolve after war, and AI nations cannot join coalitions against an aggressor while a truce is in effect.

In summary, religious and humanist ideas are pretty close to each other under this simple analysis. Humanist is better for unrest management and maintaining good relations, while religious will save you more monarch points if you can use its CB frequently enough. The tie-breaker will probably end up being your choice of other idea groups. For example, a nation that is already maxing out exploration and expansion for the colonial conquest and overseas expansion CB may not need the religious CB for enough provinces to justify its costs, and will likely be better off with humanist instead.

Edit: Forgot better relations over time.

 

[ahyangyi]

It's probably too late to get back on the topic of putting some numbers to the religious vs. humanist idea comparison, but let's take a stab at it anyway; I'm trying to figure out which one to choose from in my current game anyway.

We'll have to distill each idea group down to the core ideas and bonuses that tend to have the broadest impact in game first. This will necessarily disregard any synergies with particular nations or religions, but we just want to get a baseline for comparison at this point.

Religious

1. Religious CB
2. +1 missionaries
3. -25% stability cost
4. +3% missionary strength
5. +1 tolerance of the true faith
6. +1 yearly prestige (prestige is too easy to farm in war)
7. +2% missionary strength vs heretics (heathens generally outnumber heretics in the world)
8. -25% cultural conversion cost (waste of diplomacy points no matter how you slice it)

Humanist

1. +25% religious unity
2. -2 unrest
3. +3 tolerance of heretics (heathens generally outnumber heretics in the world)
4. -10 years of nationalism
5. -50% cultural threshold (loses effectiveness as you grow)
6. +33% better relations over time
7. +3 tolerance of heathens
8. -10% idea cost

Most of the remaining ideas above are related to unrest management in one form or another, so let's consider a specific scenario: conquering a heathen province with an unaccepted culture, raising autonomy once, coring it, and then converting it. The basis of comparison will be made in terms of unrest-months. We'll assume that both idea groups have been maxed for simplicity, and some reasonable assumptions will be made about the typical status of a nation.

Unrest modifiers for newly conquered wrong culture heathen province:

• War exhaustion: 0 (often negligible, and can be reduced by Innovative, Defender of Faith, or diplomatic points)
• Overextension: 3 (equivalent to 60% overextension, because you fed half your conquest to vassals)
• Legitimacy: -1 (from +100 legitimacy)
• Stability: -1 (from +2 stability)
• Religious Unity: 0 (too small to matter for religious idea group, and non-existent if humanist)
• Nationalism: +15 for religious, +10 for humanist
• Unaccepted culture: +2 for religious, 0 for humanist (let's categorize the humanist global -2 here since we will never convert cultures)
• Heathen tolerance: +3 for religious, -0.5 for humanist (using roughly 2.5 intolerance as base)
• Raised autonomy: -10

The total unrest to begin with is therefore:

• Religious: +11 unrest
• Humanist: +0.5 unrest

With 36 months of coring time, and nationalism ticking down by 0.5 per year, this period will generate:

• Religious: +378 unrest-months
• Humanist: +6 unrest-months

Now we send in the missionaries (+6 unrest) after 3 years (-1.5 nationalism, -3 overextension), and the unrest will be

• Religious: +12.5 unrest
• Humanist: +2 unrest

If religious can convert in 12 months and humanist in 24 months, because we have to make up the numbers as we go and we might as well pick nice ones, then we get:

• Religious: +150 unrest-months
• Humanist: +48 unrest-months

The final unrest modifier, with increased autonomy still active, is then

• Religious: -1.5 unrest (-1 legitimacy, -1 stability, +13 nationalism, +2 culture, -4.5 true faith, -10 autonomy)
• Humanist: -8 unrest (-1 legitimacy, -1 stability, +7.5 nationalism, 0 culture, -3.5 true faith, -10 autonomy)

Thus in terms of just counting unrest-months, humanist probably has a sufficiently large advantage to give you a choice of either trivializing unrest, or not raising autonomy to begin with and squeezing an extra 25% out of newly conquered provinces. The extra missionary from religious ideas will allow more provinces to be converted at the same time, but that is somewhat balanced by the extra unrest-months that it will generate. Furthermore, conversion is only necessary for humanist so autonomy can be lowered sooner with tolerance of the true faith in effect, so the slower conversion rate of humanist is not a significant detriment in this regard.

Now lets take a second look at the two idea groups, crossing out the ones we just used for comparison:

Religious

1. Religious CB
2. +1 missionaries
3. -25% stability cost
4. +3% missionary strength
5. +1 tolerance of the true faith
6. +1 yearly prestige
7. +2% missionary strength vs heretics
8. -25% cultural conversion cost

Humanist

1. +25% religious unity
2. -2 unrest
3. +3 tolerance of heretics
4. -10 years of nationalism
5. -50% cultural threshold
6. +33% better relations over time
7. +3 tolerance of heathens
8. -10% idea cost

This looks a lot more manageable now, and the remaining ideas appear to give religious ideas a slight edge in terms of monarch points: the savings in monarch points from the religious CB and reduced stability cost are very likely to outweigh the savings from idea costs. If humanist is the first pick and maxed out, it will only save 1960 monarch points over the whole game, provided that all ideas are taken without any refunds. Assuming very conservatively that you can reach religious ideas 3 by 1500, and only have until 1650 to use it, the two ideas would break even once the religious CB and reduced stability cost can be translated into a savings of 13 monarch points per year. That is the equivalent of making one unjustified demand in provinces every two years, and seems like a very reachable target.

The only left over idea now is better relations over time. This is a pretty powerful idea, although its impact has been reduced somewhat in the current version of the game since coalitions dissolve after war, and AI nations cannot join coalitions against an aggressor while a truce is in effect.

In summary, religious and humanist ideas are pretty close to each other under this simple analysis. Humanist is better for unrest management and maintaining good relations, while religious will save you more monarch points if you can use its CB frequently enough. The tie-breaker will probably end up being your choice of other idea groups. For example, a nation that is already maxing out exploration and expansion for the colonial conquest and overseas expansion CB may not need the religious CB for enough provinces to justify its costs, and will likely be better off with humanist instead.

Edit: Forgot better relations over time.

Now we do have some math!

 

[ChildeR]

In summary, religious and humanist ideas are pretty close to each other under this simple analysis. Humanist is better for unrest management and maintaining good relations, while religious will save you more monarch points if you can use its CB frequently enough. The tie-breaker will probably end up being your choice of other idea groups. For example, a nation that is already maxing out exploration and expansion for the colonial conquest and overseas expansion CB may not need the religious CB for enough provinces to justify its costs, and will likely be better off with humanist instead.

Great post. In addition to those two idea groups, innovative's -50% unjustified demands would also reduce the value of the religious CB. Likewise e.g. being a horde, of course. OTOH, playing e.g. in Europe heathens would not outnumber heretics around you and so the extra +2 conversion strength could be relevant.

I could also quibble with some assumptions (+2 stability?), but I guess NIs, government type and all other disregarded things will affect things much more anyway.

The total unrest to begin with is therefore:

• Religious: +11 unrest
• Humanist: +0.5 unrest

With 36 months of coring time, and nationalism ticking down by 0.5 per year, this period will generate:

• Religious: +378 unrest-months
• Humanist: +6 unrest-months

This period will cause an average of 18.9% rebel progress per province with religious ideas (10.5% * 5% * 36), no progress with humanist (0.3% during the first year, but wiped out later).

Now we send in the missionaries (+6 unrest) after 3 years (-1.5 nationalism, -3 overextension), and the unrest will be

• Religious: +12.5 unrest
• Humanist: +2 unrest

If religious can convert in 12 months and humanist in 24 months, because we have to make up the numbers as we go and we might as well pick nice ones, then we get:

• Religious: +150 unrest-months
• Humanist: +48 unrest-months

This period will cause 7.5% rebel progress with religious and 2.1% with humanist per province. Added to the above, it's 25.9% per province for religious.

I.e. with religious you will on average get a rebellion if you conquer at least four provinces with the same kind of rebels. To avoid it you basically need one harsh treatment per province beyond the first three, which cost 50 military points about 30 military points per province (do it after coring but before conversion for least cost). (Assuming you have enough missionaries for all the provinces. A bit more progress will be made otherwise, but you can get cheaper extra harsh treatment in that case.) Humanist avoids rebellions completely, with these assumptions.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you have strong missionary strength, converting before coring is a real possibility, and will shred the unrest months. It's mostly applicable to nations like Najd or BYZ though.

The other factor is having more TF provinces. When you go into overextension, having +4 or more true faith tolerance is a lot more powerful than having 0 in heathen provinces. It isn't just the areas with nationalism that are a potential rebellion risk. WE, OE, events and more can stack up any non-primary culture province.

 

[ChildeR]

The other factor is having more TF provinces. When you go into overextension, having +4 or more true faith tolerance is a lot more powerful than having 0 in heathen provinces. It isn't just the areas with nationalism that are a potential rebellion risk. WE, OE, events and more can stack up any non-primary culture province.

Unrest-wise it's not -4 vs. +0, though, but -4 in true faith provinces with religious vs. +0 in heretic/heathen with humanist -2 from national unrest. So only a difference of two unrest. I don't think that's really significant, considering there will be less left over nationalism if you have humanist.

Of course, once you bring in religion modifiers like +1/-1 tolerance with Catholicism and originally heretic provinces, it may indeed matter.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

The weakness of the example is that it takes a situation where conversion is basically trivial (12 or 24 months).

If it is 25 months (religious, 4% monthly) versus 100 months (Humanism; 1% monthly) then conversion strength start to factor in more.

 

[ChildeR]

The weakness of the example is that it takes a situation where conversion is basically trivial (12 or 24 months).

If it is 25 months (religious, 4% monthly) versus 100 months (Humanism; 1% monthly) then conversion strength start to factor in more.

Sure, with religious you will get some more rebel progress if it takes longer. With humanism it just means you can't forgo the LA increase, which you sometimes can when conversion is easy and there aren't many provinces with the same rebel type.

If it takes 100 months I probably wouldn't send a missionary at all, with humanist ideas. Just convert easier provinces and you'll stay above 100% unity.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Sure, with religious you will get some more rebel progress if it takes longer. With humanism it just means you can't forgo the LA increase, which you sometimes can when conversion is easy and there aren't many provinces with the same rebel type.

If it takes 100 months I probably wouldn't send a missionary at all, with humanist ideas. Just convert easier provinces and you'll stay above 100% unity.

Religious offer a permanent solution.

 

[Denkt]

Some religions have increased tolerance to true faith and Orthodox Patriarchal authority require state religion in provinces so these have more to gain on conversions then religions that lacks these bonuses like protestantism.
Some countries also get tolerance to true faith.

 

[ChildeR]

Religious offer a permanent solution.

Leaving it be is a permanent solution with humanist ideas. The only downside is the one TMIT referred to above: less negative base unrest, meaning things like large stabhits when you have high WE + OE are more dangerous.

 

[Autoclave]

Leaving it be is a permanent solution with humanist ideas. The only downside is the one TMIT referred to above: less negative base unrest, meaning things like large stabhits when you have high WE + OE are more dangerous.

Pretty much this, it all boils down to how much resilient you want your empire to be. I prefer to convert because sometimes sh.. happens. Also with high enough tolerance of the true faith you can aggressively decrease local autonomy.

 

[Incompetent]

You should eventually convert most of your provinces anyway, even with Humanism. You won't be doing much conversion early on, but it becomes quite easy to convert the majority of provinces once you stack all the conversion strength bonuses from decisions and the occasional Inquisitor. The question is only one of what to do with the hard-to-convert provinces.

A small proportion of heretic/heathen provinces is not going to be a problem for a Humanist empire, especially one with tolerance NIs. With Religious ideas, you'll have fewer of the potentially unstable heretic/heathen provinces, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that the true faith provinces you have (the bulk of provinces in both cases) are less stable than they would be if you'd taken Humanist ideas instead (-2 unrest versus +1 true faith tolerance).

The numbers shift a bit for an Orthodox country with high PA, though. Fully Patriarch'd Orthodox provinces are glorious (even more so if your NIs give a true faith tolerance bonus, e.g. Byzantium), and taking Religious ideas makes it much easier to restore the Pentarchy.

 

[CyberianK]

As I usually take all these other ideas first:
Diplomacy, Offense, Influence, Exploration, Expansion, Innovative

I much prefer Religious over Humanist because it gives its most important bonus first so it still makes an impact when I can only get it as 7th idea.

Some other question: Is unrest really a problem for you? I never found it to matter at all. Especially now with 1.8 it is even less problematic because if you have provinces where you have no troops or that are dangerous you can raise autonomy there. Not that I do this for lots of them but it is nice occasionally and additional option to handle unrest.

 

[Incompetent]

Some other question: Is unrest really a problem for you? I never found it to matter at all. Especially now with 1.8 it is even less problematic because if you have provinces where you have no troops or that are dangerous you can raise autonomy there. Not that I do this for lots of them but it is nice occasionally and additional option to handle unrest.

Depends how you play and who you start as, but I think it's fair to say that Religious and Humanist are the main 'revolt prevention' idea groups in the game, so it's obviously something to talk about if you are comparing the two. If you never face any internal trouble, then neither idea group is likely to be a high priority.

 

[ChildeR]

I much prefer Religious over Humanist because it gives its most important bonus first so it still makes an impact when I can only get it as 7th idea.

You get the 7th idea group at ADM tech 26. Unless you are lagging a lot in DIP tech (which is possible if you go constantly annexing vassals for WC), you will have imperialism CB already from DIP tech 22, so Deus Vult isn't that big a deal IMO.

I don't think either religious or humanist is worth it if you've managed without that far into the game. You'll probably have enough money and manpower to drown any unrest in local authority increases without worry.

Some other question: Is unrest really a problem for you? I never found it to matter at all. Especially now with 1.8 it is even less problematic because if you have provinces where you have no troops or that are dangerous you can raise autonomy there. Not that I do this for lots of them but it is nice occasionally and additional option to handle unrest.

Not really, but it depends on the situation. Try playing expansionist ERE with neither religious nor humanist and you are likely to have problems, unless you take it very slow in the east or feed everything to vassals.