So can somebody tell me whats so good about Plutocratic?

[fleetothemoon]

With a 4-year election cycle, without the policy it costs 10 RT to re-elect and you gain 4 back over the years, so 6 per cycle. With it, it's 5,2. This means eight re-elections is 48 RT or 42, giving you an extra re-election for the same RT. That's 32 years, not a completely unreasonable lifespan for a ruler who starts at 30, which quite a few of them do (I have no numbers regarding ruler age, though). 12*32 is 384, the amount of mana you spend keeping the policy in place but one cycle of a 6/6/6 brings in 18*12*4=864 mana, earning you 864-384=480 mana, plus 32 years of 10% increased taxes, which the policy also gives you (though that's not part of the question).

Other than what has already been said, I think the calculation needs to take into the account of opportunity costs as it would be misleading otherwise.

Using your example of a 4-year election cycle:

6/6/6 for four years earn you 864 total mana.
Policy costs is 384 mana in sword or paper (pluto-admin is paper).
Thus, total gain in this instance would be 864 - 384 = 480 mana as you mentioned.

However, the alternative to not reelecting, is getting a 4/1/1 ruler for 4 years.

4/1/1 for four years earn you 288 total mana.
There are no policy costs, since that is the reason you don't get another election.
Thus, the total gain would be 288 total mana.

Thus, the difference between taking the policy and not taking the policy is actually 192 total mana in 32 years (480-288) or 6 mana PER YEAR. This is all assuming that everything goes according to plan where your ruler never dies before reelection and you balance out roughly the negative and positive RT events and modifiers.

That is not to say that this is completely insignificant: 6 mana per year (under perfect planning), can mean about 600 total mana in about 100 years. You also get a +10% tax, so might as well, right?

But in consideration that you pretty much have to have get an ideal scenario just to get some minor gains in mana and other points mentioned by other posters, notably by TheMeInTheTeam, I really think that this policy doesn't elevate the value of plutocracy at all.

EDIT: Corrected miscalculations, the policy is better than I had stated previously.

 

[yls3431]

To be able to compansate one extra reelecting for a merchant republic you have to run that policy for 50 years. It means 50*12=600 MPs points required.

Considering that you use that for an already 6/6/6 ruler you get 18*12*4=864 MPs with the reecting bonus its 864+50=914 MPs in total.
Now if you havent relected you were gonna get a 1/4/1 ruler for the next 4 years already which gives 6*12*4=288 MPs in total.

So runing that policy for 50 years only gives 914-600-288=26 monarch points in total.

But if that extra 10% global tax would buy you a +1 advisor for each category you gain an additional 3*12*50=1800 MPs.

So it all comes down to how much blobed you are. Unfortunatelly like everything else.

 

[Ilightmaster]

JUST Pluto-administrative policies. You all forgot the stab cost ... ADM is EU4 101

 

[MiniaAr]

I'm playing a MP game as Switzerland and took Plutocratic as my first military idea (and Defensive as my second). I thus have Administrative, Plutocratic, Defensive and plan to take Economic afterwards.

I take it from this thread that I shouldn't really bother to activate the +.2RT Policy. What about the +10%MP and +10%Taxes from Admin/Pluto? This seems like it could be useful (if I have a lot of ADM to burn). Or should I forget about policies with Plutocratic?

 

[moyang]

The only policy I like with plutocratic is plutocratic-influence. ( -10% annexation cost, -1 unrest)
While DIP cost saving might be small, it still saves diplomat time and -unrest is always good to have.

 

[BaddoSpirito]

Plutocratic is crap unless you are playing single player. In single player, it's pretty good taken early as it both reduces tech cost and national unrest.

 

[hashinshin]

I'm playing a MP game as Switzerland and took Plutocratic as my first military idea (and Defensive as my second). I thus have Administrative, Plutocratic, Defensive and plan to take Economic afterwards.

I take it from this thread that I shouldn't really bother to activate the +.2RT Policy. What about the +10%MP and +10%Taxes from Admin/Pluto? This seems like it could be useful (if I have a lot of ADM to burn). Or should I forget about policies with Plutocratic?

Dang, multiplayer with Switzerland? Were Austria, Bberg, Hansa, Italy, and Netherlands already taken?

 

[MiniaAr]

Dang, multiplayer with Switzerland? Were Austria, Bberg, Hansa, Italy, and Netherlands already taken?

Jup, all taken and still played. It's quite fun to navigate between everybody (and I can die every session).

 

[Yxklyx]

I believe Plutocratic was designed with Colonial Nations in mind - since they all get it on the later starts.

 

[fleetothemoon]

I take it from this thread that I shouldn't really bother to activate the +.2RT Policy. What about the +10%MP and +10%Taxes from Admin/Pluto? This seems like it could be useful (if I have a lot of ADM to burn). Or should I forget about policies with Plutocratic?

You'll have to decide for yourself.

Let's say, for example, that you earn say, 50 ducats monthly from taxes at baseline (pre modifiers bonuses), then this policy would increase your monthly ducats gained by 5. The question you ask yourself then, is whether 120 papers for 6000 ducats (1:50 ratio) is worth the trade

Same for manpower. If you have 100,000 total manpower premodifiers, you need to consider whether having an additional 9000 manpower (base manpower of 10,000 is not affected by modifiers) at the cost of 120 swords for 10 years is worth it (1:75 ratio).

I would think that policies that provides tax or mp modifiers are more beneficial, the blobbier you are. The examples I've just listed are for major blobs. For smaller blobs these modifiers are probably less useful.

Example:
5 monthly taxes at baseline -> 120 papers for 600 ducats total, traded at a monthly basis (1:5 ratio).

20,000 total manpower -> 120 swords for 1,000 manpower (roughly 1:8 ratio or 3:25 exactly)

TL;DR the bigger you are, the better policies become.

 

[Victory5]

If you're an MR, its hands down the best idea to take first since it does so many broad things.

If you have no pressing needs early game, take it

 

[LastSalian]

Not an expert on republics, but currently playing a Venice campaign. I preferred Quantity over Plutocratic as it immediately boosts my manpower and FL. Rebels and autonomy is a pain in the ass, and I need tons of troops to handle them and also to carpet siege. Also the extra colonist will surely be very helpful later. Gosh I was forgetting that it also increases your naval FL, decreases naval maintenance and MP for buildings. Hope no one in PDX is reading , but if there is a OP military idea nowadays, that is Quantity.

As everyone already said, prolly Plutocratic is best in nations like Hansa due to the caravan bonus and extra merchant, so it's very situational.

 

[gall]

Well Manpower recovery is good if you max out maximal manpower first. Say you have 200% max manpower (something like Quantity, Aristocratic Russia or Ming), then 10% manpower recovery gives you the same manpower recovery as +20% max manpower.
Plutocracy is just cheap and much less effective substitute to Administrative/Humanism/Defensive/Trade combo. It's mostly for good start. If don't really need full trade, humanism or defensive, you need just small buff then it's for you. It does help you significantly in most cases. It's IG for everything so it have to be worse than parts of specialized IGs.
On at least two occasion bonuses from pluto stack well with other IGs:
Influence+Administrative+Plutocratic is really strong in expansionist game based on vassal feeding or PUs. DIP cost (-60%) and annexation time start to really matter if you have Spain, HRE or fully grown Russia under PU. The problem i encounter in this combination was almost permanent lack of vassal (5 at once wasn't problem) to annex, so i even start to improve my DIP tech..
On full Piety (Sunni, not Shia) with defensive+plutocratic you could assault same tech fort lvl 1 province at most every 1-2 months using 25k mercs. The bigger problem are reinforcements than morale. Morale advantage allow you to win battles despite huge losses, due to generals, terrain or small technological gap. 35% is way better than 25%. Against Human morale isn't probably that useful as Human opponent will probably just bleed your manpower, but against AI it is good especially for mass assaults (for quick wars, without much fighting).

 

[flyingchicken]

humanity has the -50% culture acceptance.

It's annoying that you can't review the possible policy effects from idea groups without an outside reference (AFAIK), but Humanist-Plutocratic gives a nice -10% cultural acceptance threshold bonus if you're interested in that.

 

[RobRoy3]

It's annoying that you can't review the possible policy effects from idea groups without an outside reference (AFAIK),...

Sure you can. From your Ideas screen, click on the next empty slot (different shade of gray). You'll then be able to see all the Idea Groups available to you. Mouseover on the sword, the bird, or the paper and you'll see the various policy options asscocated with that Idea Group, including their effects and the required sister Group.

 

[Ilightmaster]

different shade of gray

I SAW what you did here

 

[slv]

Some consideration regarding reptrad policy.

First of all, let's determine what is the reptrad/MP conversion rate in a republic. Don't want to repeat the calculations for all republics, let's do them for trade/oligarchic. So it's 4year election cycle with 10 reptrad per relection.

If you reelect optimally you will have two kinds of rulers: "Dictators" which are reelected till their death and 411 guys "Trash guy" which are reelected immediately.

"Dictator" on average will live 40 years (=9 reelections) and be 6/4.5/4.5 ruler. "Trash" is 411. Dictators decreases reptrad, trash increases it.

In the long run you will have close to 0 reptrad change across the whole game. If you instead were magically gifted 10 reptrad in the process i=of playing, these 10 reptrad will go into having one more "dictator" term instead of trash term. This term will give you 2/3.5/3.5=9 points per month = 9*48=432 points. Adding 50 points you get from reelection itself you get conversion rate of 1 reptrad = 43.2 points.

Policy gives 3 reptrad (=129.6) after ten years consuming 120 MP.

Well, so it is actually even. Though I might be wrong with average 40years length of ruler's life. If he lives 32 years on average it is 8 points per month -> 1 reptrad = 38.6 MP. Note that PDX decreased republican rulers age in 1.11.

So policy is ok? Not good, not bad, just breaks even?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You get two trad per ten years, not three.

 

[Atlanteax]

For those of you arguing the math, are you taking into account the random 50 bonus points to A/D/M at each re-election?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For those of you arguing the math, are you taking into account the random 50 bonus points to A/D/M at each re-election?

Similar to some others, you have to operate on the assumption that you get an extra election that you wouldn't have otherwise, and that is a very large assumption.