Policies which need to be rethought

[durbal]

1. Aristocratic-Diplomatic: +1 yearly legitimacy
This amounts to 120 MIL spent to raise legitimacy by 10 over 10 years. Why does this policy exist when you can use strengthen government for an immediate 10 legitimacy for 100 MIL? It's completely inferior in every single way and shouldn't exist at all.

2. Aristocratic-Maritime: -1% naval tradition decay
Okay, so Maritime itself is pretty much useless but that doesn't mean this policy shouldn't be changed too.

3. Administrative-Maritime: +1 naval tradition/year
See above.

4. Any policy with vassal force limit modifier since it's the maybe the most useless stat besides stability cost modifier.

 

[Zaddy]

4. Any policy with vassal force limit modifier since it's the maybe the most useless stat besides stability cost modifier.

No disagreement that these policies are garbage and need changed, but there is MUCH worse ideas in the game than vassal forcelimit and stab cost (ESPECIALLY stab cost)

Light Ship Combat Ability (lol)
Ship Durability
Cost of Reducing Inflation (makes me cringe whenever I'm messing around and take innovative)
Institution Spread Modifier

and so on.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

@Zaddy do you know how vassal FL works? every vassal gives you +1 FL, so from the policies you get a whopping further +1 for every vassal. The only time this makes a noteworthy difference is if you revoked privilegia, but if you're at that point I don't think the additional FL will make or break your game

Income from vassal modifiers have a similar problem, since they refer to the 10% base value, so +25% means you're now getting 12,5%. Again only noteworthy with a very large number of vassals

Stab cost is also funny because there's only one policy and it costs...admin. So you pay admin to reduce admin cost for buying stab. Well I suppose at least you can directly calculate if it's worth it, say if you plan a lot of truce breaking in last stage of a WC

Overall policies really need to be looked at. Some are so laughably bad you should get an achievement for actually using them. Others like vassal integration act can save you an ungodly amount of points

 

[Zaddy]

I am well aware, yes. +1 FL per vassal is STILL much, much better than garbage like ship durability or Light Ship CA, especially early game where using marches in OPM situations to punch above your weight is a valid tactic. Vassal Force Limit has some marginal utility; Ship Durability has none at all.

I'm not arguing Vassal Forcelimit is GOOD, mind you, all I was saying was that it's definitely better than what I listed.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

yeah but policies need two filled out idea groups, so we're talking early 16th century here. Not sure why anyone would want to stay an OPM for so long. I mean okay if you roleplay something like Lübeck without expanding directly this might have some use, but such scenarios should not be considered for balancing purposes. At the same time naval related policies are only bad because the whole naval aspect is bad. If this would be improved naval policies might have some use too, just like land warfare policies have a use. But I agree at the moment it's useless

Btw if you think Light Ship CA is trash have a look at that awesome Expansion-Naval policy giving +50% Transport CA (+50% from almost nothing is still almost nothing)

 

[Zaddy]

Sure, you're right. I for some reason was thinking more of ideas (aka Marcher Lords in Influ) as opposed to policies. I'm not a role player by any stretch of the imagination, but yeah on a policy Vassal FL is a joke pretty much.

 

[durbal]

Income from vassal modifiers have a similar problem, since they refer to the 10% base value, so +25% means you're now getting 12,5%. Again only noteworthy with a very large number of vassals

No, they're additive so it means you're getting 35% and those modifiers are actually pretty badass. They're especially great for hordes since the Tribes estate takes so much income away, so having huge taxes on vassals works great for income.

 

[Anatur]

It would be better if the policies were simply free.

We can already make decisions that are free of charge and grant bonuses after the preconditions are meet,i see no reason why we couldnt have policies and exchange them at will without paying anything once we got the idea groups.

 

[Zephyrum]

No, they're additive so it means you're getting 35% and those modifiers are actually pretty badass. They're especially great for hordes since the Tribes estate takes so much income away, so having huge taxes on vassals works great for income.

I can see usage in that, but trading out valuable admin points for it?! Absolutely heretical.

Personally, though, the worst offenders are:

Administrative-Influence: Paying Admin points for cheaper diplomatic annexation. Basically, using the points you're trying to save by diplo-annexing to diplo-annex. Fantastic.
Innovative-Espionage: Spy defense and offense.
Humanist-Quality: Trading monarch points for prestige and decay reduction. Like, is anyone ever having trouble with Prestige past the 1500s? By the time you have the two groups full, the only reason to ever be under 50 is when you need to do something about your 60 year old 1/1/0.
Naval-Espionage: Why is recover navy morale speed even a thing?
Humanist-Maritime: -50% sea attrition. I really can't come up with an excuse to use this, other than trying really hard to circumnavigate the globe.
Expansion-Naval: Mentioned above; +50% transport combat. Absolute must have if you're too lazy to split your damn transports out of your main fleet.

 

[durbal]

I can see usage in that, but trading out valuable admin points for it?! Absolutely heretical.

Personally, though, the worst offenders are:

Administrative-Influence: Paying Admin points for cheaper diplomatic annexation. Basically, using the points you're trying to save by diplo-annexing to diplo-annex. Fantastic.

wut. This is one of the best policies since it allows a very rapid integration of multiple vassals at a discount. You can spend 120 admin to get a 20% discount on multiple vassals all at once. Why would you not think that's amazing?

 

[YuriiH]

1. Agree.
2. and 3. PDX rarely touches everything related to naval warfare. So, I don't think it will ever be changed.
4. IMHO, its not bad only for roleplaying games, where you don't expand much. In other 90% of games, its useless because of the Liberty Desire: your beneficial vassals eventually will need to be annexed to create new vassals.
Also,
5. Innovative-Espionage +10% Spy network construction and +20% Spy detection for -1 ADMIN? Ridiculous!

Administrative-Influence: Paying Admin points for cheaper diplomatic annexation. Basically, using the points you're trying to save by diplo-annexing to diplo-annex. Fantastic.

You have never integrated two-three 200-300 dev vassals in one go. This is an awesome policy giving you incredible discounts (like 120 admin for 500 diplo). Moreover, you can activate it anytime and it may deduct the rest of diplopoints resulting in immediate annexation.
And it becomes even more valuable when you have four-five vassals integrated at once; thus you may not fully benefit from diplo reduction, but avoid -3 reputation malus.

 

[Badesumofu]

Administrative-Influence: Paying Admin points for cheaper diplomatic annexation. Basically, using the points you're trying to save by diplo-annexing to diplo-annex. Fantastic.

Bad example. Other than that you can save a ton of points overall by using the policy, I believe you are misunderstanding a key reason to diplo-annex in the first place. It's not so much to save on admin points but rather to be able to use both diplo and admin points in order to core away OE and thereby make the process as efficient as possible. A subtle but important difference. This policy, along with the idea groups that it requires, is key to maximizing coring efficiency and throughput.

 

[PhoenixG]

I can see usage in that, but trading out valuable admin points for it?! Absolutely heretical.

Personally, though, the worst offenders are:

Administrative-Influence: Paying Admin points for cheaper diplomatic annexation. Basically, using the points you're trying to save by diplo-annexing to diplo-annex. Fantastic.
Innovative-Espionage: Spy defense and offense.
Humanist-Quality: Trading monarch points for prestige and decay reduction. Like, is anyone ever having trouble with Prestige past the 1500s? By the time you have the two groups full, the only reason to ever be under 50 is when you need to do something about your 60 year old 1/1/0.
Naval-Espionage: Why is recover navy morale speed even a thing?
Humanist-Maritime: -50% sea attrition. I really can't come up with an excuse to use this, other than trying really hard to circumnavigate the globe.
Expansion-Naval: Mentioned above; +50% transport combat. Absolute must have if you're too lazy to split your damn transports out of your main fleet.

Admin-Inf. Well lots of people already said it's one of the top tier policies and I agree with that. Besides saving lots of dip points, you save also lots of time integrating stuff.

Inn-Esp. While espionage is quite situational. Playing lot of mid to late game non-blobbing games. I start to see some value in spy defense/offense. No more pesky rivals sabotaging your dip rep and other annoying stuff. Getting counter espionaged while trying to fabricating a claim. Having spy offensive is nice. But is it worth to pay MP for it? Maybe.

 

[Dominion]

@Zaddy do you know how vassal FL works? every vassal gives you +1 FL, so from the policies you get a whopping further +1 for every vassal. The only time this makes a noteworthy difference is if you revoked privilegia, but if you're at that point I don't think the additional FL will make or break your game

Marches give 2.
Colonies give 5 if they have more than 10 provinces.
Vassals used to give a certain forcelimit based on their base tax.

It makes sense in historical context. Just outdated.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

No, they're additive so it means you're getting 35% and those modifiers are actually pretty badass. They're especially great for hordes since the Tribes estate takes so much income away, so having huge taxes on vassals works great for income.

damn, thanks for correcting me. Should better check facts and not rely on my memory before posting stuff

Still I find it hard to justify most policies which trade monarch points for money and now we also have Scutage to extract extra money from vassals without having to pay monarch points (plus the additional benefit of preventing vassals from totally collapsing due to constant warfare). When stacking all vassal income modifiers to +190% I get around 20 ducats from Ming, not that much for such an hefty investment (4 policies) and such a huge vassal. Well at least I can keep them loyal by constantly paying off their debt because I steal so much of their income

 

[durbal]

damn, thanks for correcting me. Should better check facts and not rely on my memory before posting stuff

Still I find it hard to justify most policies which trade monarch points for money and now we also have Scutage to extract extra money from vassals without having to pay monarch points (plus the additional benefit of preventing vassals from totally collapsing due to constant warfare). When stacking all vassal income modifiers to +190% I get around 20 ducats from Ming, not that much for such an hefty investment (4 policies) and such a huge vassal. Well at least I can keep them loyal by constantly paying off their debt because I steal so much of their income

Scutage is a multiplicative 50% on whatever your total Income from Vassals modifier is, so those policies and ideas actually enhance the income you receive when you do scutage.

If you do something like Admin-Offensive for +50% income from vassals it's pretty easy to get an extra 5+ ducats/month even for just medium-sized vassals, so I'd say that can be worth it especially if you're diplo-annexing most land anyway (so reduced ADM points usage).

 

[Zephyrum]

Bad example. Other than that you can save a ton of points overall by using the policy, I believe you are misunderstanding a key reason to diplo-annex in the first place. It's not so much to save on admin points but rather to be able to use both diplo and admin points in order to core away OE and thereby make the process as efficient as possible. A subtle but important difference. This policy, along with the idea groups that it requires, is key to maximizing coring efficiency and throughput.

Points reserve have always been a much bigger problem for me than handling overextension, honestly. I often find myself blobbing faster than my admin sources can sustain, much more so than having absurd amounts of OE. Maybe I haven't realised it can be effective, but I still don't like the thought much.

 

[FleetingRain]

Vassal Forcelimit also works with CNs so it has some usage.

And the wiki says Light Ship Combat Ability affects trade power.

 

[hwoosh]

Points reserve have always been a much bigger problem for me than handling overextension, honestly. I often find myself blobbing faster than my admin sources can sustain, much more so than having absurd amounts of OE. Maybe I haven't realised it can be effective, but I still don't like the thought much.

That's exactly why the policy is useful. If you're annexing 2–3 large vassals at once, or later in the game even more, the policy will save you the diplo points on many, many more development than the measly 120 adm to enact the policy could core you—all without suffering OE.

 

[ecrurudesby]

Vassal Forcelimit also works with CNs so it has some usage.

Came here to post this. The below screenshot was taken while having +400% vassal force limit from ideas and policies. I posted a thread in the bug report section last month but there's been no word from the devs on whether or not this is intentional.