Super Tall Nations: Defensive or Quantity?

[Vampiresbane]

Playing as the very rarely played Sicily.

Hold Sicily, Balareas, Gibraltar, and the southern most province of Morocco. My colonies are mostly in the Caribbean with one on the South American coast. Unfortunately it may be difficult to distinguish me from Portugal-our colors are really similar.

My plan is build up Sicily and eventually sell off any other territories in Europe and build tall, very tall.

Here's the question: Defensive for all its bonuses? Or Quantity for the 50% FL and the 25% more mercs?

I'm leaning towards Defensive so I have time to bring troops back to defend Sicily and to make sieges as long as possible. Big picture I'm allied to Portugal (finally gave up trying to fight him, at least for now), Spain, and Hungary.
Port and Hungary are both alliances of convenience. I do plan on staying allied to Spain indefinitely.

Oh and on a side note, England is just beating the absolute piss out of France.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Why not both?
Or are you asking which one you should choose first?
In that case, I would suggest going with quantity first

 

[Jules Brunet]

Super tall? Quantity. If you got Economic, you can grab an other -10% dev cost from the policies.

 

[Vampiresbane]

Why not both?
Or are you asking which one you should choose first?
In that case, I would suggest going with quantity first

I'm doing somewhat crazy things this run - like picking ideas I would never normally have.

Exploration (dropping for Quality at some point) -> Expansion (dropping for Innovation at some point) -> Military Idea -> Trade -> Economic -> Maritime -> Naval -> Espionage

Though eventually I might be dropping exploration for something else and that could be Quantity or Defensive. I may not though.

Super tall? Quantity. If you got Economic, you can grab an other -10% dev cost from the policies.

Yup, I have noticed that. What may determine what military idea I take is how often armies actually are able to attack Sicily via the land bridge. So far it's only happened when I let it (and then the attacker typically gets roflstomped because mountains AND land bridge crossing malus) because my navy or Castile's has been there to block passage. So I may not need the fort defense bonus from Defensiveness. At that point, only the army tradition, leader maneuver, and morale are that attractive.

 

[gia257]

I'm doing somewhat crazy things this run - like picking ideas I would never normally have.

Exploration -> Expansion (dropping for Innovation at some point) -> Military Idea -> Trade -> Economic -> Maritime -> Naval -> Espionage

Though eventually I might be dropping exploration for something else and that could be Quantity or Defensive. I may not though.



Yup, I have noticed that. What may determine what military idea I take is how often armies actually are able to attack Sicily via the land bridge. So far it's only happened when I let it (and then the attacker typically gets roflstomped because mountains AND land bridge crossing malus) because my navy or Castile's has been there to block passage. So I may not need the fort defense bonus from Defensiveness. At that point, only the army tradition, leader maneuver, and morale are that attractive.

then naval? why do you want land ideas

 

[Vampiresbane]

then naval? why do you want land ideas

Because my current, measly 18 troop force limit won't get me very far unless they're either really strong 18 units or get more in number. I basically need enough FL to give each of my merc armies cannon and cavalry, which ideally wouldn't be mercenaries themselves.

I could completely avoid Naval in this run honestly, but I'm keeping it because one point of this run is to use ideas I never, ever use.

 

[gia257]

well quantity is more used than defensive, although defensive is picked every once in a while, innovative is the only one underused you are missing

 

[TenshiN]

Quantity is great for tall play. You usually wage less wars in tall-games, so more troops is usually more important than better troops.
Also, Quantity+Economic policy is pretty good for more -devcost and +forcelimit

 

[Rocketskates]

How do you plan on keeping Spain happy if you settle in the Carib region, everyone eventually will want your land there.

 

[Kergan]

How do you plan on keeping Spain happy if you settle in the Carib region, everyone eventually will want your land there.

Portugal is already settled there from the looks of it, so there's a near-zero chance Spain (also catholic) will colonize the islands.

 

[True_Heir_of_Rome]

I would suggest defensive if you were going to stack a ton of modifiers. There is something really great about watching three times your number of troops melt away to god tier space marines. With your other planned idea groups, I would absolutely go Quantity, you're going to need the troop count for military alliances, and you're going to want the policy that reduces dev cost.

 

[Vampiresbane]

How do you plan on keeping Spain happy if you settle in the Carib region, everyone eventually will want your land there.

Portugal is already settled there from the looks of it, so there's a near-zero chance Spain (also catholic) will colonize the islands.

Most the colonies in the Carib region are mine; it's just really hard to tell the difference between myself and Portugal because our colors are so similar. I control 2 CoT, he controls 1, and I'll make a CN and get ToT long before he does.

From my more recent gameplay, Spain is tending to colonize only West African coast. But it's early. That might change.

 

[Vampiresbane]

I would suggest defensive if you were going to stack a ton of modifiers. There is something really great about watching three times your number of troops melt away to god tier space marines. With your other planned idea groups, I would absolutely go Quantity, you're going to need the troop count for military alliances, and you're going to want the policy that reduces dev cost.

I hear you on the Quantity bit. That'll probably be my 3rd idea slot. I'm leaning towards Quality to replace Exploration with at some point for the Inno-Quality +Quality 30% infantry combat bonus. I could get Inno-Def + Def for 30% more fort defense, but honestly, I'm finding either A) I have troops in place already to take advantage of the -2 Mountain + -2 Crossing Strait penalty -OR- I have a naval blockade in place to prevent any troop crossing regardless. It'd be great if I could get all 3, but I've resigned myself to taking Naval no matter what for this run because I won't take it in any other run regardless.

Side Question:
What's better?
30% infantry combat bonus
-or-
10% artillery combat bonus
(or even 20% artillery combat bonus)