Mathematics of Religious vs. Humanist

[CyberianK]

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.

that is of course totally right... did not consider this change with 1.8, thanks

and yes I am lagging behind but with Innovative, 3 full Dip Ideas groups, Neighbour bonus and Events I often get down to crazy reduction which should bring me to 22 with not much cost by that time

 

[Denkt]

It is hard to resist not to pick religious just because of the cb.
If you are powerful then military ideas aren't so intressting, vassals can make rebelions and overextension trivial, the only thing you really lack is good cbs and for 400 adm point that problem can be mostly solved.

 

[bbqftw]

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

There is a big difference between "2000 base tax left to conquer at 1820" and "world subjugated at 1650-1700", which is the current pace of WC given the new AoW revoke strategies. Of course, with vassalswarm, low manpower is not as bad, but you will still feel it being the main limiter to expansion. Even more than monarch points.

The latter is invariably going to give you manpower problems, purely due to policing the amount of rebels that get vomited forth from a rapid clip of expansion. Even terrible nomad tech vassals are going to produce a threatening rebel count when you stuff 200% OE of wrong-religion provinces down their throat. But that's what you gotta do.

To be on topic - religious is a better long-term solution to unrest issues, and every bit of 'perm anent' RR reduction matters if you're ever in a situation where you have to trucebreak a bunch of people. -3 stab lifestyle is the best lifestyle

 

[Haccoude]

When comparing idea groups, it's not just the ideas themselves that are important, their events are too. So, here are the events for Humanist:
Positive:

Spoiler

Freethinkers Not Persecuted:
Option a: Idea costs -10% for 5 years
Fair Laws Embraced By All:
Option a: -2 unrest for 5 years
The Honest Broker:
Option a: Every neighouring country you are neither at war with, nor have a truce with, +20 opinion
Cabinet Co-operation:
Option a: +25 mil, +25 adm, +25 dip
Acceptance of all is the road to progress:
Option a: Random province with accepted culture gets +1 BT
A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath:
Option a: Random heretic province without missionary active converts to state religion
A Light Unto the World:
Option a: Random heathen province without missinary active converts to state religion

Negative:

Spoiler

The Reins Are Too Loose:
Option a: Random province with nationalism gains +5 years of nationalism
Option b: -50 mil
Freethinking Leads Away From God:
Option a: Random state religion province converts to heresy
Option b: -50 dip
Ineffective Missionary Work:
Option a: Random province with active missionary gets -25% local missionary strength
We Fight the Past, It Fights Back:
Option a: Random neighbouring country without humanist ideas get -20 opinion

Note the difference between "The Honest Broker" and "We Fight the Past, It Fights Back":
Every neighouring country you are neither at war with, nor have a truce with, +20 opinion
Random neighbouring country without humanist ideas get -20 opinion

 

[Denkt]

You should also compare the policies the two idea groups unlock.

Mercs will solve manpower problem.

 

[CyberianK]

If you are powerful then military ideas aren't so intresting, vassals can make rebellions and overextension trivial, the only thing you really lack is good cbs and for 400 adm point that problem can be mostly solved.

So with which pick do you take Religious? I would really like to have it but it is really difficult.
As a colonizer you will always take Exploration and Expansion first and they are valid for other countries too. As HRE state you want Diplo and Influence. Then if I do not take Offense (my only mil. Idea) my army and general is so bad that I loose even with 3:1 numbers and allies don't always go where I want them too so I have to have some army of myself.

 

[Beagá]

If you play an England or Spain that wants to get involved in the continent going Expansion as first ADM isn´t exactly good. There is never a "right" idea group.

 

[Haccoude]

You should also compare the policies the two idea groups unlock.

Mercs will solve manpower problem.

The events of religious aren't as neatly ordered on the wiki as the humanist events, but here are the policies:
Humanist:

Spoiler

With Trade: +0.5 prestige, -10% cost of ideas
With Aristocratic: +10% Production efficiency, +20% Religious unity
With Offensive: −1 National unrest, −5 Years of nationalism (Having this policy active completely removes the event granting additional Years of nationalism)
With Quality: +0.5 Yearly prestige, −1% Yearly prestige decay
With Plutocratic: −10% Accepted culture threshold, −10% Stability cost modifier
With Diplomatic: −10% Accepted culture threshold, +20% Better relations over time
With Exploration: +10 Global colonial growth, +1 Tolerance heathen
With Espionage: +25% Rebel support efficiency, -1 National unrest
With Influence: +20% Improve relations, +1 Diplomatic reputation
With Maritime: -50% Naval attrition
With Quantity: +1 Land leader shock, +0.50 Yearly army tradition
With Naval: +5% Ship durability, +5% Recover navy morale speed
With Defensive: −25% Land attrition, +5% Recover army morale speed

Religious

Spoiler

With Defensive: −1 National unrest, +20% Religious unity
With Espionage: +1% Missionary strength, +20% National spy defense
With Plutocratic: +2 Tolerance heretic
With Aristocratic: −1 National unrest, +1% Missionary strength
With Diplomatic: +20% Religious unity, +1% Missionary strength
With Exploration: +10% Global tariffs, +20% Religious unity
With Trade: +10% Goods produced nationally, +1% Missionary strength
With Maritime: +10% Morale of navies, +5% Recover navy morale speed
With Influence: -20% Culture conversion cost
With Offensive: +20% Religious unity, +3% Missionary strength vs heretics
With Quality: +2.5% Discipline, +10% Morale of armies
With Quantity: +10% Morale of armies, +5% Recover army morale speed
With Naval: +5% Recover navy morale speed, +1 Naval leader shock

Personal notes on the policies: Both Religious and Humanist have a "Monarch Point saving" policy, that really doesn't end up saving points. Decreased culture conversion cost and decreased cost of ideas are both pretty useless to pay a monarch point a month for. Also, if you are willing to enact policies for the purpose, Religious actually has better Religious unity than Humanism, with 4 policies granting +20% each, adding up to +80% for all of them together. Granted, this may not be particularly useful, and the benefit from the large amount of these policies lie more in the assurance that you never need to go far out of your to have access to a temporary +20% religious unity, which (as a policy) can be turned off the moment everything is converted, rather than taking up an idea slot as it does for Humanism.

Personally I vastly prefer Humanist ideas, not solely because of mechanics, but also because reading through both the events and policies reaffirms my belief that if NIs were a thing in real life, I would only live in a country that has Humanist.

 

[ChildeR]

Personal notes on the policies: Both Religious and Humanist have a "Monarch Point saving" policy, that really doesn't end up saving points. Decreased culture conversion cost and decreased cost of ideas are both pretty useless to pay a monarch point a month for.

The humanism one does save points. If you can buy more than three ideas in the 10 years you have to keep the policy active you end up winning (120 points for 40 saved per idea). Just hoard some points, set it on, then buy. And don't forget to remove it when you can and there are no ideas you'd get in the next couple of years.

One thing you didn't mention is the type of points the policies consume. That can be important: for example I prefer the religious+trade policy for missionary strength because it uses diplo points rather than admin, which I'm more often short on. The -10% idea cost policy also allows you to "spend" admin points on a diplo or military idea.

 

[yerm]

Not sure how much math is needed. Humanism is better in a vacuum, while religious is better when you have a specific reason for it.

- If you go reformed, the +2 and the cb vs basically everyone without exception makes religious a must-have.

- If you are orthodox, byz especially, you want to paint the map your true faith so humanism makes little sense.

These are the two situations where I don't see why you'd take humanist over religious. The rest are up to debate. If you are catholic, you may want it to stack totf base and the +2 bonus. I consider the points for a catholic weaker than for reformed, but they're something, so that religious vs humanism becomes a real question. The CB doesn't usually appeal to me since it's not going to help me vs the big powers / colonizers, and without the best part of the idea group being put to good use, I can't justify it at least in single player. I don't think I ever take religious as a non-Christian. Not sure of the point really. I mean, maybe if I plan to convert at some point?

So yeah, there are definitely cases (orthodox and reformed) where religious just seems far and away better, but by and large I can't see without a specific application how it even comes close to the same advantages as humanism in some general/abstract math without specific applications.

My most recent games I went neither. I failed both times, but not due to unrest, and am not sure either (or both) would have helped in any way. Humanism seems to end up just giving me less LA, more or less. Religious without making heavy use of the CB etc. strikes me as a waste of an idea group.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Nations with heavy TTF and religions with it built in (don't forget less common stuff like Coptic, or that Sunni has +1 TTF built in) will want religious for sure. Nations with +heretic/heathen tolerance (especially the latter) will want humanist because you're basically full unity at all times and always get some tolerance bonuses, even the instant you take a province.

You can also make a case for getting neither if doing heavy vassal feeding, for example in my Taberestan --> Persia game I opened mil focus and wound up taking aristocratic. Most of that start you're under an existential threat, and that takes priority over conquest stability. However, now that I've annexed Iraq and am feeding Persia I have to deal with Ibadi, Sunni, Coptic, and Orthodox. I have a few Sunni provinces I can't convert until I get an inquisitor because I'm a republic lol. For the rest, Persia is Shia and takes religious so I'll let them hammer some of that stuff away before annexing. I forced Najd into Shia and will feed them the Bedouin lands; they'll make short work of Mecca and some of the harder Egyptian stuff. For the Ottomans, I'll use BYZ if I can beat them in time, otherwise I'll convert a low tax Syrian province and release them since I know they take religious and will get it as accepted.

I once converted the entire Middle East to Orthodox w/o religious or humanist as Georgia (when it had generic ideas) this way, in fact this entire thing is 100% unity:



You can make a strong case this patch for just going influence/diplomatic and tearing things up that way (doing so gives enough diprep to overcome the negative), and simply eating the occasional direct rebellion.

 

[Santoes]

Not sure how much math is needed. Humanism is better in a vacuum, while religious is better when you have a specific reason for it.

- If you go reformed, the +2 and the cb vs basically everyone without exception makes religious a must-have.

- If you are orthodox, byz especially, you want to paint the map your true faith so humanism makes little sense.

These are the two situations where I don't see why you'd take humanist over religious. The rest are up to debate. If you are catholic, you may want it to stack totf base and the +2 bonus. I consider the points for a catholic weaker than for reformed, but they're something, so that religious vs humanism becomes a real question. The CB doesn't usually appeal to me since it's not going to help me vs the big powers / colonizers, and without the best part of the idea group being put to good use, I can't justify it at least in single player. I don't think I ever take religious as a non-Christian. Not sure of the point really. I mean, maybe if I plan to convert at some point?

So yeah, there are definitely cases (orthodox and reformed) where religious just seems far and away better, but by and large I can't see without a specific application how it even comes close to the same advantages as humanism in some general/abstract math without specific applications.

My most recent games I went neither. I failed both times, but not due to unrest, and am not sure either (or both) would have helped in any way. Humanism seems to end up just giving me less LA, more or less. Religious without making heavy use of the CB etc. strikes me as a waste of an idea group.

I agree with you that you need to have a reason to have religion, but the same goes for humanist. I don't think denomination is a good reason to pick one or the other. It could be a good reason though. For instance, you don't actually need to convert when you are reformed as the bonuses are not directly territory related.

Also you are kind of downplaying the catholic mechanics by not recognizing the bonus papal points it gets by converting, and how it grows in strength as you grow. Religion for say Poland or Lithuania could give you tons of papal points from all those orthodox lands in the common wealth, and more yet to the east.

 

[Nassau]

Took religious as Ethiopia. Moving North and converting all those muslims is a must.

 

[yerm]

I agree with you that you need to have a reason to have religion, but the same goes for humanist. I don't think denomination is a good reason to pick one or the other. It could be a good reason though. For instance, you don't actually need to convert when you are reformed as the bonuses are not directly territory related.

Also you are kind of downplaying the catholic mechanics by not recognizing the bonus papal points it gets by converting, and how it grows in strength as you grow. Religion for say Poland or Lithuania could give you tons of papal points from all those orthodox lands in the common wealth, and more yet to the east.

Have they fixed that? Last I played the points for converting were not giving anything.

 

[Santoes]

Have they fixed that? Last I played the points for converting were not giving anything.

:unsure: You got me there. It's probably not good to argue something when it's bugged atm.

 

[yerm]

:unsure: You got me there. It's probably not good to argue something when it's bugged atm.

I imagine it needs to be balanced; 5/conversion would be heavily overpowered as it stands, but giving like 1/5 of BT would probably be fine... they'd need to adjust the exact number. If they do just add 5/convert back in, yeah, I'd probably go religious EVERY game, and find a way to convert to catholic!

 

[Santoes]

I imagine it needs to be balanced; 5/conversion would be heavily overpowered as it stands, but giving like 1/5 of BT would probably be fine... they'd need to adjust the exact number. If they do just add 5/convert back in, yeah, I'd probably go religious EVERY game, and find a way to convert to catholic!

Yeah, that'd be fun to do. Converting to a different religion right now is kind of random, and hard to do. You need to have a majority of the religion for one to accept the demands to switch, and the whole getting a zealot going and not a patriot/nationalist/peasant. I tried going from totemist to buddhist for the hell of it but I gave up after 10 years of nothing but nationalists.

They mite nerf how much it gives, who knows.

 

[Squirrelloid]

All the 'why administrative, just vassal feed' enthusiasts here seem to be ignoring that the Influence-Administrative policy is now *-20%* diploannexation costs. With the new mechanics, not only is that a potentially large savings (easily worth the 1 admin point per month with good vassal feeding), it's also *faster* diploannexation.

I consider Influence and Administrative essential ideas, and usually 2 of my first 3. Their other bonuses are just cake (and very good cake), but the reduced coring and annexation costs are indispensable. Especially annexation costs.

(I do tend to take Humanism more often than Religious, although frequently both together. Fewer years of nationalism is the key ability on Humanism for me, although there's a lot of goodness besides that. I think it's Influence-Humanism that has an idea which further decreases nationalism and does something else... -1 RR I think, which would be very useful if it cost diplo points instead of admin points... but is certainly strong enough it could see use).

Another reason to take administrative: Admin + Exploration has the best colonization idea in the game. (+10 settlers, +5% settler chance). Sure, it eats an admin point, but I found it quite worthwhile during early colonization to overcome those nasty tropical penalties.

 

[Squirrelloid]

I imagine it needs to be balanced; 5/conversion would be heavily overpowered as it stands, but giving like 1/5 of BT would probably be fine... they'd need to adjust the exact number. If they do just add 5/convert back in, yeah, I'd probably go religious EVERY game, and find a way to convert to catholic!

Most of the nations who are going to benefit from it are outside Europe, and therefore don't get cardinals. 5/conversion is completely fine in that case - they can't control the curia, but they can grab some stability or mercantilism or whatever. Otherwise Catholicism is awful for westernizing africans/americans/asians and CNs.

 

[DominusNovus]

I just want to say that, even though we've gotten nowhere near what I actually was asking for, this whole conversation is fantastic. Keep up the comparisons, everyone!