Ah yes, that great oriental philosophy, "confusion".
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What ideas should be buffed?
- Thread starter Vapiritapiri
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The comments on inno not being strong have me completely lost, like I'm wondering if I'm playing a different game.
Inno over the course of a game gives you an extra 1800 of each monarch point (not including extra gain from innovativeness.). Getting tech faster is massive (helps with wars, keeping vassals happy, etc.), having excess mil helps you barrage sieges, excess adm coring, excess diplo for annexing and dev'ing gold mines, etc. Lower tech cost, lower cost to institution embracement, and the bonus of reduced advisor costs are all very good.
Inno also has pretty solid policies, diplo gives you even cheaper advisors and diplo rep; influence gives cheaper advisors and lower ae; offensive gives seige ability and leader siege
It is an extremely strong idea group. With how easy it is to gain innovativeness without it, it's no longer as strong as it used to be, but it absolutely does not need to be buffed.
Inno over the course of a game gives you an extra 1800 of each monarch point (not including extra gain from innovativeness.). Getting tech faster is massive (helps with wars, keeping vassals happy, etc.), having excess mil helps you barrage sieges, excess adm coring, excess diplo for annexing and dev'ing gold mines, etc. Lower tech cost, lower cost to institution embracement, and the bonus of reduced advisor costs are all very good.
Inno also has pretty solid policies, diplo gives you even cheaper advisors and diplo rep; influence gives cheaper advisors and lower ae; offensive gives seige ability and leader siege
It is an extremely strong idea group. With how easy it is to gain innovativeness without it, it's no longer as strong as it used to be, but it absolutely does not need to be buffed.
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It is a timing and type of mana issue. On the type admin in a lot of games is the bottle neck. In that case admin ideas can be better - cheaper coring and -10% admin tech. Innovation is only any good if you are not going to fall behind on tech (probably European) and you have to spend a load of admin to get back over a long time. Given mana points are more important in the early game (or a lot of games don't get to 1800) the payback is more limited. If you get a better economy (or bigger) and so can afford an extra level of advisor you get 1800 in 150 years. There are also a couple of ideas that a just duds in there - prestige in a lot of games is not an issue and leaders without upkeep is available from about 5 places and not that often needed anymore and +1 advisor is weak too. If it was a diplo group I would probably consider it a lot more but I find there are always a couple of other admin ideas I need more and it takes out the spot.
Move the bonus to be part to be part of dynamic court so cheaper advisors are earlier, put in a finisher for faster government progress reform (which can be a pain for republics) or more instatution progress from deving and it becomes a more interesting option.
Move the bonus to be part to be part of dynamic court so cheaper advisors are earlier, put in a finisher for faster government progress reform (which can be a pain for republics) or more instatution progress from deving and it becomes a more interesting option.
I think the power of Deus Vult cannot be overstated.
I've not done a single World Conquest (and I've done a few) without using Deus Vult except for my one horde WC. In my last World Conquest, the Deus Vult CB let me conquer all of Europe during the Reformation.
This being said, when it comes to unrest/religious unity, Religious is pure trash compared to Humanist. I would only ever take Religious as an Orthodox nation from that perspective. Otherwise, Religious is vastly inferior.
Like I legitimately think the only way Religious could compare to Humanist is if you could send a missionary to convert a whole state at once, but most people would consider that broken (yet having no rebels from conquering provinces with Humanist is not
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Admin is a good idea group, I almost always take it 4th or 5th. inno gives 10% discount to all tech, not just admin so I'm not sure how 10% admin is an upgrade, especially as inno's discounted idea is 3rd, while admin's is 7th. If admin mana is an issue, being able to save on mana through reduced tech costs, and cheaper advisors helps.
I'm not saying that there aren't cases where Inno isn't as strong as some other admin ideas, what I'm saying is that it is already a strong idea group and doesn't need buffed. Inno gives large returns when taken as 1st or 2nd idea group, after that it really doesn't make sense. And imo that's fine, there are plenty of starts where its returns are strong to warrant that trade off vs another group.
I used to take innovative a lot when playing tall. 100% innovativeness is really, really good and the group got you there a lot faster and more cheaply.
But the nerf was a big deal. I think you’re overestimating tech cost reduction. It’s 180 mana every ~15 years. That’s about a point per month. It’s certainly quite nice but far from game-changing. The issue is you can’t lean into it with your gameplay; you take the same number of techs no matter what. With coring or vassals or deving you can leverage the idea groups you choose with the way you play. That’s why admin is pretty weak for tall play but the best group for wide play, and vice-versa for Econ. Inno doesn’t allow that kind of leverage with any of its ideas except sort of advisor cost, but that’s just not good enough.
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With that description it falls into the category of "well it's good, but there are better options". When selecting idea groups we need to consider "are they worth it compared to others?" and inno usually falls into that category of a "no". Unless you play a niche nation, like tall florence gameplay, which is extremely crazy how fast you stack innovativeness, tech cost and advisor cost.
Now you may argue innovativeness is good and I wont go into that rabbit hole, my problem comes is that innovativeness is not a mechanic locked behind inno and even before the buff I was able to get 70 innovativeness by 1600s from events alone (now im at 100). Idk about other people, but I fail to understand how people think the only way to get innovativeness at good rate is with the idea group. It's a side bonus from inno getting it faster, not it's main focus.
Moving into the examples you gave, inno is all about the efficiency of mana usage which I agree. And thats the problem, -10% tech cost alone can't compete with economic or adm ideas. I had a game where economic saved more than 6000 mana points of just mil from deving by 1550, more if I consider dip dev. And my last game adm would had saved me 1,4k adm on just coring, and Im only in 1500's. So the 1800 over the course of the entire game is nothing, you had to pay 3200 adm on the idea group alone.
Now the advisor cost, it really doesn't matter to me that much bc the game has too much money. The only moment where i would find it useful is early game where money is lacking to generate more mana. Possibility the only thing good in the group left.
So, lest recap. it's under powered in most nations, you have to take the idea group in the most crucial part of the game (early game) to try and be worth it (it isn't mid to late game). One of its "features" (innovativeness) you can get at very good rate without the idea group (i can go eco and get innovativeness) and the tech cost is not enough to pay itself. The leader upkeep has been "nerfed" with the addition of more leader slots from force limit, in the policies department its outclass by adm and eco and the advisor cost while really powerful early game, by mid-late game you will have so much money that it wont matter (same thing goes for institution embracement cost).
Yeah, it's why people are asking to buff it or do something about it.
I remember when Inno was somewhat part of the MP meta, still debated idea group for mana eff but it still offered somewhat good policies, but in 1.30 it stopped, its military policie card got nerfed ,PDX buffed the base innovativenesss gain and the advisor cost could now be substitute by estate privilegies...inno was no longer needed. If I want to be efficient with my mana, I go economic for deving, adm for coring and use the advisor cost privilegies.
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Prussia, PLC slightly, Mewar to start off. IMHO, I don't think completing a mission should buff military. Cheaper or faster reinforcement, sure. But no more military buffs.
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This is off-topic. The thread is about idea groups.
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My ranking of idea group usefulness in normal games goes like this:
S tier: Admin, Humanist, Diplo
A tier: Explo, Influence
B tier: Religious, Quantity, Offensive, Espionage
C tier: Defensive, Expansion, Economic, Trade, Horde, Indigenous, Divine, Aristo, Pluto, Innovative
D tier: Quality, Naval
F tier: Maritime
Exploration could use some bigger bonuses to make it worth keeping long term. Religious still needs some bigger buffs so that conversion is more worthwhile outside one faith runs. The massive blob of C tier idea groups could all use buffs to specialize them more, or should be made more powerful overall so they can compete with the B tier groups at least. Quality and Naval need a lot of work to be useful in SP. Maritime probably won't ever be useful without a fundamental rework of the game.
S tier: Admin, Humanist, Diplo
A tier: Explo, Influence
B tier: Religious, Quantity, Offensive, Espionage
C tier: Defensive, Expansion, Economic, Trade, Horde, Indigenous, Divine, Aristo, Pluto, Innovative
D tier: Quality, Naval
F tier: Maritime
Exploration could use some bigger bonuses to make it worth keeping long term. Religious still needs some bigger buffs so that conversion is more worthwhile outside one faith runs. The massive blob of C tier idea groups could all use buffs to specialize them more, or should be made more powerful overall so they can compete with the B tier groups at least. Quality and Naval need a lot of work to be useful in SP. Maritime probably won't ever be useful without a fundamental rework of the game.
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I find people trash talking innovative and economic incredibly funny because they're completely broken overpowered in multiplayer to the point of other admin ideas being completely fake choices that will get you killed. I get that they're non-viable in SP, but this is entirely because the AI is such a pushover, and major powers don't screw you over constantly when you're trying to destroy weak AIs. If you had to deal with continuous wars against great powers at all times, suddenly -CCR% and better rebel management looks like joke useless modifiers. Basically by the time you reach admin tech 5, the "fighting for your dear life" phase of even the most brutal challenge run is generally over.
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TBH I wouldn't mind a nerf to Quantity ideas. It is too powerful considering you can have a huge army that can trump neighbouring powers if you are playing tall. Imagine having half your population at your disposal ready to fight an army, there should be consequences to that like lower production because who is going to deal with the companies when nobody is working?
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Last time I talked about idea groups with MP in mind I basically got excommunicate. So you best grab an umbrella. Anyhow innovative in MP's stop being viable since 1.30 excluding certain niche cases like florence, you can tell by the meta. And from what I know, no one is shit talking economic ideas in this thread.
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100% Agreed on the nerf to quantity ideas. A nerf to manpower and troops numbers is extremely needed in eu4 so starting with quantity is very much needed.
In regards to "having half your population as a fight army" it's a bit of topic, I would agree for eu5, eu4 doesn't have pops and dev is too abstract for that.
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The 50% FL boost is enormous. I wouldn't be opposed to lowering it to +33%. Maybe pairing it with a manpower drop to +33% and lowering aristocratic's manpower boost to +20%?
The issue is that those are really important modifiers, enough so that they can overwhelm a lot of other ways of constructing an army once you get large enough. It become self-reinforcing very quickly
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Single player is more popular, therefore more people have it as their frame of reference. Obviously idea balance means something very different in multiplayer. For that matter it means something very different when you're talking about playing tall vs. playing wide or serious optimizing play vs. semi-rp (yes, idea group balance still matters). These discussions would definitely be more clear and probably less contentious if everyone defined the type of game they're playing. But I wouldn't take it too personally if people default to single player.
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Do you still find defensive as a debatable equal to quantity, as you said in your guide? Did quantity just get even better since then?
If you are going to nerf Prussia, then you are going to have to nerf all the others as well.
Sweden especially comes to mind, since they have almost the same bonuses as Prussia...
Anyway, as others have said, this is about idea groups, not national ideas.
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