The most useless and the best idea

[Cattlehunter]

Best idea trees is easily exploration. With it you can conquer the entire new world (or significant chunks of other parts of the world) before anybody else even gets there, and it lets you sit at 100% prestige for the first couple of hundred years of the game. Never mind how it can turn an OPM into the greatest world power all by itself in under a century. Anyone who disagrees only plays overpowered nations.

Honorable mentions should go to offensive, easily the best military tree, and expansion/diplomacy, who when combined with other bonuses lets you diplovassalize any-sized nations with the same religion as you at +40 trust.

Most useless is aristocracy by far. I'd say espionage too, but I've never actually used it, so I have no clue if it could actually be good... though I dubt it.

 

[hauptman]

I mean, it is possible I misread some of the mathy crap, As i havent even opened a checkbook in 10 years, my math skillz are a tad rusty.

But reading the guys test results coupled with the devs description of how it worked pretty much summed up my fears, that it was all broke. None the less, it gets fixed tomarow and of course, I will start a new Brandenburg (or Tueton) game just as soon as patch goes live to go romping through europe as a conquerer... No more diplo annexing for me thank you very much.

 

[LiberiusX]

Espionage is actually very useful for late game island nations i.e. Britain and Ireland, and other nations depending on their positioning. Sweden/Denmark/Norway can even benefit from it if there is an ascendant France or HRE. The best idea imho in the tree is sabotage reputation. dropping relations bombs on your enemies and their allies with almost 0 likelihood of repercussions is awesome.

I've had a lot of success with it. So while it isn't the best, it definitely isn't the worst.

 

[hauptman]

Best idea trees is easily exploration. With it you can conquer the entire new world (or significant chunks of other parts of the world) before anybody else even gets there, and it lets you sit at 100% prestige for the first couple of hundred years of the game. Never mind how it can turn an OPM into the greatest world power all by itself in under a century. Anyone who disagrees only plays overpowered nations.

Honorable mentions should go to offensive, easily the best military tree, and expansion/diplomacy, who when combined with other bonuses lets you diplovassalize any-sized nations with the same religion as you at +40 trust.

Most useless is aristocracy by far. I'd say espionage too, but I've never actually used it, so I have no clue if it could actually be good... though I dubt it.

so the Hansa is OP? Granted Brandenburg is OP, but that's for different reasons.

I can colonize plenty with the single colonist expansion gives, usually dominate africa with it. And the only americas worth a darn are mexicos goldmines. which dont even require a colonist. The ai is always to slow to jump the indians and I've never not gotten those mines if I wanted them. Last game I purposly ignored the americas to secure my hold on african ivory faster. didnt need exploration to do that, and only lost out on 1 province.

 

[grisamentum]

But reading the guys test results coupled with the devs description of how it worked pretty much summed up my fears, that it was all broke. None the less, it gets fixed tomarow and of course, I will start a new Brandenburg (or Tueton) game just as soon as patch goes live to go romping through europe as a conquerer... No more diplo annexing for me thank you very much.

Ugh, do BBurg. I just did a TO -> Prussia -> Germany game and the beginning was insanely slow because no RMs = no diplo vassalize and you cannot possibly be elected emperor as a Theocracy. And since you don't start as a member of the empire, you can't really attack anyone in the HRE until you are. You're just big enough to get in if you have 185 relations with Austria, you have to wait a couple years for your diplomat to jack up relations, make sure you can ally Austria, and probably pick a rival of theirs as your rival, too.

So the beginning of the game was... slow. It's fine once you hit Prussia at Admin 10 but until then, there's a lot of waiting.

 

[PanH]

so the Hansa is OP? Granted Brandenburg is OP, but that's for different reasons.

I can colonize plenty with the single colonist expansion gives, usually dominate africa with it. And the only americas worth a darn are mexicos goldmines. which dont even require a colonist. The ai is always to slow to jump the indians and I've never not gotten those mines if I wanted them. Last game I purposly ignored the americas to secure my hold on african ivory faster. didnt need exploration to do that, and only lost out on 1 province.

The explorer allows you to explore and begin to colonize much before anyone else (1470-1480) except Portugal. The CB allows to gobble up the natives in one war, which is really nice (and thus won't give you AE from cutting them down to size). And the Americas provinces are seriously too rich in vanilla. Just North America (then switching capital), will make you the most powerful nation in the world, which is ridiculous, since the Americas weren't worth that much for the time period. The base tax for colonies is in general too high, and most of the colony income should come from trade (which isn't enough currently, while colony base tax can add up, it's easily half of what your trade colony gives you, while it should be next to 0).

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

As I recall the calculated value was actually 1+ (unitPowerA*weaponModifierA)-(unitPowerB*weaponModifierB)/20

I don't recall whether the 1/20 factor is correct from my own tests, but the scaling is correct.

In 1.2 the unitpower scales the weaponModifier of both sides when two regiments fight and it is the difference between those two MODIFIED weaponModifiers from tech that determines the impact of weaponModifier on the damage calculations, not the difference between the base weaponModifiers from tech.

I tend to go ballistic when somebody writes nonsense like Grisamentum's "Quality does absolutely nothing if you are at the same tech as your opponent." (meaning the unitpower ideas in Quality), because it as an assertion that can be disproved by the most simple of tests. You can use any country setup to trivially disprove this by testing how the unitpower/combat ability/weaponmodifier modifier actually works.

My own test when I checked 1.2 combat mechanics back in the day was simple - I assigned Burgundy a +400% infantry and cavalry unit power:

	start = {
		merc_maintenance_modifier = -0.25
		cavalry_power = 4.00
		infantry_power = 4.00
	}

Then I started a sequence of 1.2 games at the 1444 start where I split 2 infantry and 1 cavalry regiment, put the prince in charge, and attacked Liege, which it just so happens has a 2 infantry 1 cavalry regiment defending under its monarch, which means that the regiments get matched up perfectly IIC opposite IIC and looked at the two die rolls in the very first combat phase and the resulting casualties. So you've got identical tech, identical regiment types, and identical lineup - all that differs is the unit power and the modified die rolls. As soon as you've done this 4-5 times, you are likely to have seen at least one case where the very first modified die roll for one side (in one test) is the same as the modified die roll for the other side (probably in another test) - noticing that the side with the unitpower advantage inflicts more damage for the same modified initial die roll, you conclude that it affects the damage. End of story. Further tests are/were of course needed to examine the scale of impact of unitpower.

But the end of the story is simple - in 1.2 unitpower (from Quality or elsewhere) helps you throughout the entire game, regardless of your tech level and regardless of whether you are fighting opponents of equal techlevel to yourself or not. Throw that on top of providing more discipline than Offensive does and working for all armies, navies, and garrisons rather than getting bonuses to leaders like Offensive does, and Quality is in 1.2 king of the combat arts. (Just as it was in 1.1, 1.0, and in 1.3)

Now, if people merely wanted to go and run wild because they thought the usefulness of unitpower in 1.2 was too low or the way it affected non-intuitive, that would be one thing and one I could get behind, but ever since anomalacaris began testing this in public based on his incorrect assumptions (that he to his credit corrected once he realized he was wrong, though he'd have had a considerably easier time of it if he tested fixed setups of nation vs nation rather than rebels, as rebels are notoriously screwy in implementation ), the forum has been overrun by people who misunderstood his results or drew erroneous conclusions like Grisamentum here.

 

[Cattlehunter]

so the Hansa is OP? Granted Brandenburg is OP, but that's for different reasons.

I can colonize plenty with the single colonist expansion gives, usually dominate africa with it. And the only americas worth a darn are mexicos goldmines. which dont even require a colonist. The ai is always to slow to jump the indians and I've never not gotten those mines if I wanted them. Last game I purposly ignored the americas to secure my hold on african ivory faster. didnt need exploration to do that, and only lost out on 1 province.

Africa is a waste of time and resources. You get an explorer, sail over to the new world, land your army, do the annex-vassal-thing, conquer and core everything else nearby, then start colonizing everything around as quickly as possible. Move your capital there at some point; rule the world with all of the new world's manpower and forcelimits.

 

[WeissRaben]

Africa is a waste of time and resources. You get an explorer, sail over to the new world, land your army, do the annex-vassal-thing, conquer and core everything else nearby, then start colonizing everything around as quickly as possible. Move your capital there at some point; rule the world with all of the new world's manpower and forcelimits.

If you have a coastline or can get one before the Big Ones get rolling. To Frankfurt, Bavaria or Thuringen, Exploration is as good as an empty Idea set. I don't think that an idea which is completely useless for a decent group of nations can be ranked on top, even if it is very high tier.

 

[cwg9]

If you have a coastline or can get one before the Big Ones get rolling. To Frankfurt, Bavaria or Thuringen, Exploration is as good as an empty Idea set. I don't think that an idea which is completely useless for a decent group of nations can be ranked on top, even if it is very high tier.

It's not useless, it's just highly specialized. Just like trade, or espionage, or quantity, etc, is also specialized. That's the whole point, to specialize your country based on your location, circumstances, and overall strategy. This one-size-fits-all approach to analyzing the usefulness of idea groups makes no sense to me.

 

[WeissRaben]

It's not useless, it's just highly specialized. Just like trade, or espionage, or quantity, etc, is also specialized. That's the whole point, to specialize your country based on your location, circumstances, and overall strategy. This one-size-fits-all approach to analyzing the usefulness of idea groups makes no sense to me.

Few ideas are so universal in its being useless, though - only Naval, probably. Every other group can be used, even if maybe only partly (as Quality for those same landlocked nations).

 

[grisamentum]

I don't recall whether the 1/20 factor is correct from my own tests, but the scaling is correct.

In 1.2 the unitpower scales the weaponModifier of both sides when two regiments fight and it is the difference between those two MODIFIED weaponModifiers from tech that determines the impact of weaponModifier on the damage calculations, not the difference between the base weaponModifiers from tech.

I tend to go ballistic when somebody writes nonsense like Grisamentum's "Quality does absolutely nothing if you are at the same tech as your opponent." (meaning the unitpower ideas in Quality), because it as an assertion that can be disproved by the most simple of tests. You can use any country setup to trivially disprove this by testing how the unitpower/combat ability/weaponmodifier modifier actually works.

My own test when I checked 1.2 combat mechanics back in the day was simple - I assigned Burgundy a +400% infantry and cavalry unit power:

	start = {
		merc_maintenance_modifier = -0.25
		cavalry_power = 4.00
		infantry_power = 4.00
	}

Then I started a sequence of 1.2 games at the 1444 start where I split 2 infantry and 1 cavalry regiment, put the prince in charge, and attacked Liege, which it just so happens has a 2 infantry 1 cavalry regiment defending under its monarch, which means that the regiments get matched up perfectly IIC opposite IIC and looked at the two die rolls in the very first combat phase and the resulting casualties. So you've got identical tech, identical regiment types, and identical lineup - all that differs is the unit power and the modified die rolls. As soon as you've done this 4-5 times, you are likely to have seen at least one case where the very first modified die roll for one side (in one test) is the same as the modified die roll for the other side (probably in another test) - noticing that the side with the unitpower advantage inflicts more damage for the same modified initial die roll, you conclude that it affects the damage. End of story. Further tests are/were of course needed to examine the scale of impact of unitpower.

But the end of the story is simple - in 1.2 unitpower (from Quality or elsewhere) helps you throughout the entire game, regardless of your tech level and regardless of whether you are fighting opponents of equal techlevel to yourself or not. Throw that on top of providing more discipline than Offensive does and working for all armies, navies, and garrisons rather than getting bonuses to leaders like Offensive does, and Quality is in 1.2 king of the combat arts. (Just as it was in 1.1, 1.0, and in 1.3)

Now, if people merely wanted to go and run wild because they thought the usefulness of unitpower in 1.2 was too low or the way it affected non-intuitive, that would be one thing and one I could get behind, but ever since anomalacaris began testing this in public based on his incorrect assumptions (that he to his credit corrected once he realized he was wrong, though he'd have had a considerably easier time of it if he tested fixed setups of nation vs nation rather than rebels, as rebels are notoriously screwy in implementation ), the forum has been overrun by people who misunderstood his results or drew erroneous conclusions like Grisamentum here.

I'm certainly open to the idea that I'm wrong, I'm curious what the actual results were. How much did the combat power advantages actually help?

Also I'll note that your design is also potentially flawed in that you mentioned using leaders but then neglect to mention how you accounted for their differing stats, if at all.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I'm certainly open to the idea that I'm wrong, I'm curious what the actual results were. How much did the combat power advantages actually help?

Very little at low tech tech levels, more at higher. To take the lowtech 1444 example which is what I recall best (because that's where unitpower made me feel most like an idiot ), a modified die roll of 6 resulted in a difference in causalties of about +10 out of around 150 when comparing whether it was the +400% unitpower side that rolled a 6 against the +0% unitpower or the reverse on the very first tick of the first combat phase.

Let me be clear about this: in 1.2. unitpower is not an awesome ability when compared with discipline. +10% infantry power is pitifully weak when compared with +10% discipline, for instance, even if all you use is infantry. But +unitpower is not competing with discipline. It is a bonus in its own right, that is separate from and multiplicative with discipline and, like discipline, it helps throughout the game in all situations where the unittype involved is fighting, regardless of leadership, and it is well worth having for that reason.

For those wanting to squeeze the most out of their armies, navies, and garrisons regardless of whether they have leaders or not, Quality is therefore the ideagroup of choice under 1.2 as it has been since launch, as it combines higher discipline than Offensive with unitpower. For those having other priorities, Offensive might be the better choice.

Also I'll note that your design is also potentially flawed in that you mentioned using leaders but then neglect to mention how you accounted for their differing stats, if at all.

I thought I had made that clear, but I guess not. I looked at the modified die rolls (die roll + leader modifier + terrain modifiers) for both sides in the very first combat phase, not the unmodified die rolls, as the modified die rolls are what is indexed against the combat damage in the combat calculations (as it has been since EU1).

 

[grisamentum]

Very little at low tech tech levels, more at higher. To take the lowtech 1444 example which is what I recall best (because that's where unitpower made me feel most like an idiot ), a modified die roll of 6 resulted in a difference in causalties of about +10 out of around 150 when comparing whether it was the +400% unitpower side that rolled a 6 against the +0% unitpower or the reverse on the very first tick of the first combat phase.

Let me be clear about this: in 1.2. unitpower is not an awesome ability when compared with discipline. +10% infantry power is pitifully weak when compared with +10% discipline, for instance, even if all you use is infantry. But +unitpower is not competing with discipline. It is a bonus in its own right, that is separate from and multiplicative with discipline and, like discipline, it helps throughout the game in all situations where the unittype involved is fighting, regardless of leadership, and it is well worth having for that reason.

I'm sort of baffled here. You just explained that even an insane, unachievable unitpower differential (400%?) resulted in a relatively insignificant difference in casualties on a roll. (+6.7%?)

How do you then figure that unitpower is "well worth having"? What I inferred from that is that if you had done the test with a mere +10% combat ability (as say, provided by the Quality group), you would not have been able to detect any difference at all.

For those wanting to squeeze the most out of their armies, navies, and garrisons regardless of whether they have leaders or not, Quality is therefore the ideagroup of choice under 1.2 as it has been since launch, as it combines higher discipline than Offensive with unitpower.

You haven't accounted for the relative value of having larger and more numerous armies with Offensive, so your conclusion is invalid. And consideration of what happens "whether [one] has leaders or not" is irrelevant to actual practice. People can and do have leaders, and you're essentially rigging the comparison in advance by discounting the existence of leaders and thus eliminating 3 ideas from Offensive.

You have just explained that the value of 400% unitpower is barely detectable, while advocating for an Idea group that provides +10%. While my understanding of how the combat ability Ideas were implemented was wrong, what you've explained to me is consistent with my conclusion: combat ability modifiers are a complete waste, and Quality is a poor tree.

I thought I had made that clear, but I guess not. I looked at the modified die rolls (die roll + leader modifier + terrain modifiers) for both sides in the very first combat phase, not the unmodified die rolls, as the modified die rolls are what is indexed against the combat damage in the combat calculations (as it has been since EU1).

My apologies, I missed that. Your writing is quite... verbose.

 

[spyroware1]

Innovative has to be the idea group I always want to take but never actually do. By the time I'm confident enough to commit to administrative ideas (as my 3rd group or so) it's the time I feel that I need Religious. I love Religious ideas, you can have a huge coalition formed against you and you just hold your breath for a couple years and boom we're all friends again. After Religious I rarely touch admin ideas again.

I think administrative ideas suck in general, I feel point per point they give very minor benefits and the good ones always come so late in their groups you feel like you're wasting tons of points on meh ideas for benefits very far in the future, I don't like that. Especially given that rushing a few lvl 5-6 adm buildings is a much better alternative for your economy

 

[RakeWorm]

I'm a pretty terrible player, so I can't really debate about the ins and outs of all the ideas. But Exploration/Expansion (depending on country), Religious, and Quantity are usually my first three. After reading a lot of the posts here, I think I'll try out Defensive. Sounds like it is a better choice than Quantity.

 

[brifbates]

I'm a pretty terrible player, so I can't really debate about the ins and outs of all the ideas. But Exploration/Expansion (depending on country), Religious, and Quantity are usually my first three. After reading a lot of the posts here, I think I'll try out Defensive. Sounds like it is a better choice than Quantity.

Pending the changes in 1.3 I'd personally give defensive the edge as the best military NI group (haven't tried plutocracy though). Expansion or diplomacy depending on your situation should probably be the first choice although I suppose some nations might be able to make exploration work before they have tech 7. Religious and Innovative are the only admin groups I'll even consider unless playing one of the high inflation gold nations.

 

[C.N.]

I think administrative ideas suck in general, I feel point per point they give very minor benefits and the good ones always come so late in their groups you feel like you're wasting tons of points on meh ideas for benefits very far in the future, I don't like that. Especially given that rushing a few lvl 5-6 adm buildings is a much better alternative for your economy

Really? I feel that the two first points in Economic ideas are great.

EDIT:
Wait, we are talking about two different things, right? You talk about the one pick that is labelled "Administrative ideas", and I talk about the group of five that are called "Administrative ideas"?

 

[EvilEmpire]

Its funny to read this thread. So clear to read what kind of nation and playing style each opinion brings.

Best idea: (still) Diplomatic

I usually play crap nations that wants to enslave all their neighbors, so I favour Diplomatic as a first idea each and every time, because it really ramps up your power much more than a war idea at the start (new unit type before your neighbors spells doom for them).
And those extra vassals adds up and its free land when you want it plus the idea keeps AE down from the extra diplomat and reputation (more alliances are also key). I have an idea that at least half of those that laments AE are the same people that think the Diplomatic idea is useless.

Diplomatic may have been nerfed but it will need quite some more nerfing before its not my go-to.

 

[Schleisen]

Most useless: Espionage.

Espionage is pretty useful in very late game since 1.2 patch.