Religous or humanist idea - reformation strategy

[Restless Native]

Playing as France, it's 1506 and I've grown to include most of modern day France, and also begun colonization in the Caribbean.

I know the reformation is a coming and I'm wondering how best to prepare. I have defensive and exploration ideas already and my next slot will soon open up and i must pick an admin one. I probably want to stay catholic due to the colonization race but i don't know what others think of this strategy.

I was going to pick Religious to defend the state religion and tackle the reformation, however I was looking at Humanist and it seems a more middle ground approach with religious tolerance might be more stable. The French wars of religion disaster is something to keep in mind also.

So two questions

Stay catholic or reform?

Religious or Humanist (hardline state religion or tolerance)

My long term goal is not really a religious war one, just slowly grow a bit into Italy and Belgium while colonizing as much as possible.

 

[Latheloi]

If I remember right, you can get pretty much all the heretic tolerance you want as France just from national ideas and decisions, so you can probably tolerate enough to ignore the reformation without either humanism or religious.
The religious CB is handy for not having mess around fabricating claims in the trade company or new world areas, but then again, you could just hold off till the imperialism cb. Humanism would also be helpful for going on a conquest spree overseas.
Or, you could just go for the classic standby of admin, as it will cut coring costs in the high development italian and low countries provinces.

 

[Restless Native]

Thanks, I don't like the admin idea due to all the merc. focus, I want a fully professional army, although there are some nice bonuses in Amdin also. One thing I'd be worried about is if I get Humanist and get tolerance of Heretics up too high, would I end up encouraging reformation spread in my country. I want to be able to manage them not encourage them.

It might be one of those answer were both have good and bad points. I'm feeling if I go Religious would I just end up fighting the reformation both home and in the HRE for the next 50 years.

I looked to history to see what the real France did, they tried to go tolerant and went full anti reformation very quickly internally, massacred them. Then ended up supporting the protestants in the religious wars in Europe. So basically no help there.

 

[Greene]

I looked to history to see what the real France did, they tried to go tolerant and went full anti reformation very quickly internally, massacred them. Then ended up supporting the protestants in the religious wars in Europe. So basically no help there.

France stayed Catholic during the Reformation and they massacred Protestant populations (see the the Night of St. Bartholomew). It fought on the Protestant side during the Thirty Years War in order to contain the Catholic Austria. It was a political decision to fight along the Protestants (mainly Sweden), not a religious one. This is why the Thirty Years War was as much a political conflict as it was a religious one.

 

[Restless Native]

Yup Cardinal Richelieu the wiley old dog. National interest over religious idealogy.

I'm starting to think I'll go expansion and let the dumb reformation run wild.

 

[qwertzuiop]

Thanks, I don't like the admin idea due to all the merc. focus, I want a fully professional army, although there are some nice bonuses in Amdin also. One thing I'd be worried about is if I get Humanist and get tolerance of Heretics up too high, would I end up encouraging reformation spread in my country. I want to be able to manage them not encourage them.

As far as I know, yes, the activities of reformation centers are affected by your heretic tolerance. So it might encourage the reformation to spread in your country, but from a gameplay perspective you don't care. If you have the maximum of +3 tolerance of heretics, then you won't suffer any kind of malus even if all your provinces were heretic. As France, you can reach that amount easily because your national ideas and the Edict of Nantes give you a lot of additional tolerance. Other countries would need Humanist ideas to achieve that.

It's really a question of preference. If you want to roleplay a Catholic great power, just pick Religious. Gameplay-wise, you don't need either of the groups to deal with the reformation as France.

 

[Badesumofu]

Expansion is a terrible idea group, don't get it.

Humanist is excellent as France, it gets you to +3 tollerence of everything.

If you don't feel the need for it, then Admin is great. Quicker and cheaper coring is lovely. If that doesn't tickle your fancy, Economic is a good group. If you just want to buil a super strong France then Econ's -20% development cost will be significant.

 

[Restless Native]

Expansion is a terrible idea group, don't get it.

Really? Why do you say that? Extra colonist and merchant, extra setters and trade power. It looks ok to me.

 

[Vulkandrache]

Really? Why do you say that? Extra colonist and merchant, extra setters and trade power. It looks ok to me.

Taking Expansion means not taking a group that actually does something usefull.
If you want to colonize take Exploration.
One extra merchant is nothing. Some % tradepower might aswell not exists.

 

[Bibor]

My long term goal is not really a religious war one, just slowly grow a bit into Italy and Belgium while colonizing as much as possible.

Go protestant, get one of the religious centers and kill them all! Deus Vult!

 

[Braan]

I really liked Humanist as France, with the tolerance from your national ideas you can max the tolerances and never need to convert anything, pretty much eliminating unrest in newly conquered provinces. You can probably delay picking the group a bit though if you want to get something else more urgently.

If you want to go through the French Revolution later on, taking the protestant approach can be a good choice, as being the Revolution Target will kill your papal influence.

 

[Restless Native]

Go protestant, get one of the religious centers and kill them all! Deus Vult!

I like your style Bibor

 

[szmik]

I perfectly understand Expansion is not optimal idea, but should everyone play the same meta all the time? especially so for casual games, when player beats AI most of the time despite not taking min-max ideas...
I mean, for WC sure, but for casual blobbing? it doesn't even matter, yet everyone is told not to take Expansion

 

[Restless Native]

I perfectly understand Expansion is not optimal idea, but should everyone play the same meta all the time? especially so for casual games, when player beats AI most of the time despite not taking min-max ideas...
I mean, for WC sure, but for casual blobbing? it doesn't even matter, yet everyone is told not to take Expansion

You make a good point, in fairness I'm playing France so it's not like I'm going to lose. Humanism sounds nice, so might just do that for roll play. Or go with Bibor and go full Dues Vault,

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I perfectly understand Expansion is not optimal idea, but should everyone play the same meta all the time? especially so for casual games, when player beats AI most of the time despite not taking min-max ideas...
I mean, for WC sure, but for casual blobbing? it doesn't even matter, yet everyone is told not to take Expansion

Even for casual blobbing, expansion sucks. It is the same thing as picking maritime or naval ideas as Ottomans. Can you still expand with those? Yes, you could even WC despite taking those. But aside from running some self-gimping variant (which is not the realm of casual play), there is no reason to take these as Ottomans.

Now that you can stack some -adviser cost modifiers and get to +5 points from advisers, even innovative is soundly better than expansion by a margin, and that's a bad SP pick too.

Since it constrains one of admin or humanist/religious for the majority of the game you can make a serious case that expansion ideas are the worst single idea group choice a player could make in SP. The utility is minimal, and the opportunity cost is enormous.

 

[szmik]

@TheMeInTeam you're right, but my point wasn't about it sucking.

It's about mindset, forum is dominated by vocal group of min-maxers which is helpful for learning to play optimally or to do WC quicker, with less tedium, but at the end of the day optimal play doesn't matter that much. It just makes the game even easier than it already is. So Expansion making player waste ton of admin mana due to alternative cost isn't the end of the world, far from it. Yes, it sucks, so what?

 

[Badesumofu]

@TheMeInTeam you're right, but my point wasn't about it sucking.

It's about mindset, forum is dominated by vocal group of min-maxers which is helpful for learning to play optimally or to do WC quicker, with less tedium, but at the end of the day optimal play doesn't matter that much. It just makes the game even easier than it already is. So Expansion making player waste ton of admin mana due to alternative cost isn't the end of the world, far from it. Yes, it sucks, so what?

This is a thread explicitly asking which idea group a player should take.

 

[Restless Native]

I did ask for peoples thoughts in fairness. Got some good insight too. I'm going to go with Humanist. It's good to be nice.

 

[Rashie]

Really? Why do you say that? Extra colonist and merchant, extra setters and trade power. It looks ok to me.

It's not an "awful" idea group if your going to play a primarily colonial game as the likes of Portugal ignoring Europe. For France however there are other idea groups that'll serve you better aside from just picking exploration, such as Administrative, humanist, diplomatic, offensive, quality, innovative etc.

 

[bbqftw]

There are a lot of non wc starts on VH that challenge even people with thousands of hours in this game.

If TTM on normal was the apex of single player difficulty lots of us would have quit already. Luckily there are a lot of start scenarios which make that one look like child's play nowadays.

Anyways as to why expansion sucks is twofold:

Admin idea groups - the groups administrative religious and humanist are basically the most powerful groups in the game. On top of that administrative power is the most scarce type of power and thus most valuable since its needed to unlock idea groups, core, and unlock adm efficiency. So basically you are competing against literal game changer ideas.

Humanist basically disables rebels and enables >100% overextension gameplay.

Religious is a superb aggressive expansion controller, superiority cbs allow you to win wars fast, and basically save you thousands of dip points pre imperialism.

If you don't take administrative you're not really playing eu4, you're playing speed 5 simulator

And these are the gamechanging benefits, not the incremental ones. Expansion doesn't offer anything on that level.

Secondly, it is also crushed in utility by exploration anyways.