What ideas should be buffed?

[PDXJon]

If you include the Prussian government and the military bonuses through the mission tree, Prussia completely outclasses Sweden when comparing military buffs. There is a huge issue that isn’t being mentioned when discussing how OP Prussia is. The way Prussia outclasses other tags militarily is through their special government that comes with a huge nerf, the 50% reduction in government capacity. The nerf is already there.

 

[Reman]

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?

Nah, Offensive = Quantity > Defensive > Quality. Offensive and Quantity are debatable as to which one's better, and there are good arguments for both. Defensive used to be on par with them from a combination of morale, -50% attrition (25% from ideas, 25% from policy), and -0.05 war exhaustion. The impact of attrition got reduced quite a bit a few patches back and war exhaustion reduction isn't as necessary as it once was now that Pagans + Eastern religion groups can get it from the EoC, while Hindus have Pura Besakih. Quality is hard to recommend since one of its best policies is tied to Religious which got nerfed a bunch, and overall Quality doesn't have much to recommend besides a pure focus on killing enemies, which has more limited utility that what other groups provide.

 

[Nostalgium]

Amusing. I had the opposite development with the same end result. At first I thought Humanist was OP, then I realised that with a good religion, religious ideas is significantly better at reducing unrest due to huge true faith bonuses some religions offer. Even if it came with a delay between conquest and zero rebels, being immune to the effects of massive overextension, rebel sentiment, autonomy decreased, etc was very huge. Nowadays, I've reached the enlightenment that they both kinda suck and most religions already offer tools to deal with wrong religion that don't need either idea group to assist them.

I see this sentiment a lot, but honestly, the main draw of Humanist isn't the Tolerance it offers - which is actually kinda meagre - it's the reduced years of separatism. -10 YOS is HUGE, as each YOS contributes -0.5 unrest. This effectively means you get a -5 Unrest in any freshly conquered province on top of the -2 National and +2 Tolerance of Heathens/Heretics for a whooping -9 Unrest on all fresh conquests, instantly. That's in addition to anything you might get from your National Ideas, advisors, decisions and other modifiers. The YOS modifier will also hold against conquests of your own faith, making rebellions a complete non-issue there with -5 from YOS and +However much you get from Tolerance, where Religious won't help you nearly as much.

If the YOS modifier was changed to a faster decay from the same floor (i.e. it'd start at 30 still, but decay at 2 per year - which, granted, would look weird as hell from a GUI perspective but whatever), I think Religious might be a bit more competitive, as it'd then "only" have to compete with the -4 unrest from Tolerance and National Unrest, and not the culminative -9 right off the bat.

 

[Triplebassist]

I see this sentiment a lot, but honestly, the main draw of Humanist isn't the Tolerance it offers - which is actually kinda meagre - it's the reduced years of separatism. -10 YOS is HUGE, as each YOS contributes -0.5 unrest. This effectively means you get a -5 Unrest in any freshly conquered province on top of the -2 National and +2 Tolerance of Heathens/Heretics for a whooping -9 Unrest on all fresh conquests, instantly. That's in addition to anything you might get from your National Ideas, advisors, decisions and other modifiers. The YOS modifier will also hold against conquests of your own faith, making rebellions a complete non-issue there with -5 from YOS and +However much you get from Tolerance, where Religious won't help you nearly as much.

If the YOS modifier was changed to a faster decay from the same floor (i.e. it'd start at 30 still, but decay at 2 per year - which, granted, would look weird as hell from a GUI perspective but whatever), I think Religious might be a bit more competitive, as it'd then "only" have to compete with the -4 unrest from Tolerance and National Unrest, and not the culminative -9 right off the bat.

Humanist + offensive adds an extra -1 and -5 years of separatism. That combo boosts your military and grants a whopping -12.5 unrest from newly conquered land. That's enough to ignore rebels for life unless you go crazy

 

[Blackmoore]

In EU4 for everything you need to do, there is almost always at least one other way of achieving that goal. Income is the most obvious example of this. You can make money with trade, tax, production, razing, looting, forcing money out of vassals and forcing other nations to pay you through direct payments or war reparations and finally by dev'ing gold mines (which is a kind of pseudo production income). There are probably other ways that I'm forgetting.

Given this dynamic of substitution, one way that you can look at idea groups is to examine what they give you that is difficult to replicate in some other way.

For example, Religious is somewhat mediocre because the main draw for a normal SP game is the CB. In today's game, there are rando claims from estates, much more developed and extensive mission trees that you can directly or indirectly leverage, etc. In short, there are ways to work around the lack of CB.

Ultimately, this is why certain idea groups are much better than others -- they give you something valuable that is difficult to replicate.

The best example that I can give you is Offensive Ideas -- every player needs to siege things down, and Offensive ideas is the only set that grants you directly Siege Ability. Certainly, you can gain more Siege ability in other ways, such as improved professionalism. However, having Offensive's Siege ability and a bonus from Professionalism is better still. In fact, the only thing in an idea set that helps you with Sieges is the extra siege pip in Aristo (which is one reason I think it is under-rated).

Admin gives you that gov cap and, of course, some CCR -- but, there is some (a lot possibly) dead weight in their. Mercs are great early, but decrease in value as the game progresses.

This, of course, can change as the mechanics of the game change.

Diplomatic Ideas is perhaps the most valuable idea set in the game because it grants you two diplomats, which are much more powerful than they used to be, given the new favor system. Diplo gives you two diplomats, improved relations, improved reputation, an extra relation and -20% warscore cost. This whole idea group in today's game is essentially fat-free -- not one idea here is dead weight.

The flip side of this is Trade ideas. Once upon a time, the extra merchants that you got from trade were great, because it was hard to have merchants. Now, even a relatively land-locked power like Russia can have tons and tons of merchants without trade because of trade companies. You might think trade is good for other reasons, such as the policies, but it is objectively not as good as it used to be.

If you view ideas through this lens substitutability lens, then your tiers are something like:

S -- Diplo, Humanist, Offensive
A -- Admin, Exploration*
B -- Quantity, Influence, Religious*
C-- Aristo, Expansion*, Defensive
D -- Econ*, Trade, Quality, Espionage, Innovative
F -- Naval, Maritime,

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I actually don't mind Admin having its dead weight, because the CCR really is that powerful that it's worth it. If you made Admin more rounded, you'd have the temptation to nerf the CCR. Governing Capacity is also useful if you're blobbing aggressively. Or Prussia.

 

[necro84]

@PDXJon you can make topic about prussian government not to mix this with idea groups. And remember that you don't need to have prussian ideas, you can keep your original when forming Prussia so nerfing ideas could lead to people having Prussia with Polish, Swedish or some other ideas.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

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.

I think if you nerf Quantity ideas, there's almost no point in taking them.

I'm a big supporter of the 'slacken professionalism for manpower' approach and thus almost never take Quantity. I don't see the point of wasting a whole idea group on something that can be bought via buildings (for manpower/forcelimit) or mil points hiring generals. Offensive is the only military idea I ever take.

I know I'm in the minority here. The only countries that benefit from Quantity are small countries that need to punch above their weight, and even then they can never afford a full forcelimit army anyway.

 

[brantodb01]

give religious an extra true faith tolerance or two and then either give it separatism reduction or reduce the separatism reduction in humanist

 

[Xary Moft]

I think if you nerf Quantity ideas, there's almost no point in taking them.

I'm a big supporter of the 'slacken professionalism for manpower' approach and thus almost never take Quantity. I don't see the point of wasting a whole idea group on something that can be bought via buildings (for manpower/forcelimit) or mil points hiring generals. Offensive is the only military idea I ever take.

I know I'm in the minority here. The only countries that benefit from Quantity are small countries that need to punch above their weight, and even then they can never afford a full forcelimit army anyway.

Eeeh, everyone benefits from quantity. Like I said, eu4 has a great problem with too much manpower and force limit, and quantity does not help. An idea group that provides more than double your effective manpower and force limit is crazy powerful for warfare. Especially because attrition barely matters in this game. So quantity needs to change, at minimum halving their force limit.
I know everyone defaults to only SP here, and like you said and many people here too, the only military idea they ever take is offensive. And I dont think thats going to change. SP doesn't require you to go heavy on military bonuses. So lests change perspetive, lests hear the people who take more than 1 military idea group, who use/require them for combat. MP. And in MPs quantity is the most powerful idea group you take. It's literally the first one. And it's a bit frustrating seeing nations like France by 1500's with an army size as big as the Napoleonic wars and 1600's the size of ww1 armies.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

Eeeh, everyone benefits from quantity. Like I said, eu4 has a great problem with too much manpower and force limit, and quantity does not help. An idea group that provides more than double your effective manpower and force limit is crazy powerful for warfare. Especially because attrition barely matters in this game. So quantity needs to change, at minimum halving their force limit.
I know everyone defaults to only SP here, and like you said and many people here too, the only military idea they ever take is offensive. And I dont think thats going to change. SP doesn't require you to go heavy on military bonuses. So lests change perspetive, lests hear the people who take more than 1 military idea group, who use/require them for combat. MP. And in MPs quantity is the most powerful idea group you take. It's literally the first one. And it's a bit frustrating seeing nations like France by 1500's with an army size as big as the Napoleonic wars and 1600's the size of ww1 armies.

I will concede that point, I was referring to SP and in MP I can absolutely understand that Quantity is essential. I cannot imagine how broken the MP meta of Economic/Quantity is with devving mil for ridiculously low cost. So yes, I can concede there that Quantity is too powerful.

For the sake of an SP argument, I maintain that wars are won primarily on sieges and then on strategic battles. I also think, as mentioned before, the benefits of Quantity can be acquired through other means. Therefore in SP I will always heavily favour Offensive ideas.

 

[currylambchop]

If you include the Prussian government and the military bonuses through the mission tree, Prussia completely outclasses Sweden when comparing military buffs. There is a huge issue that isn’t being mentioned when discussing how OP Prussia is. The way Prussia outclasses other tags militarily is through their special government that comes with a huge nerf, the 50% reduction in government capacity. The nerf is already there.

Prussia can just remove it’s government reform and keep its god tier ideas.

 

[csward53]

I think every idea group has a place for certain playstyles and I am fine with some idea groups being less powerful than others. Innovative ideas is probably the one I use the least, simply because I feel I usually have other ways of getting what it offers. Also, Admin, Human, and Religious Ideas are more useful and expansion if you're going colonization. Economic is arguably better at getting you ahead in tech and make you be able to afford an army if you're playing a poor/low tech country. I don't think Innovative really needs an buffs. It's there for those like that that playstyle.

The only ones that might need buffs are maritime and naval, simply because they're too navy focused. More sailors/marines could be useful in some niche circumstances, but those idea groups might be more interesting if they were like Quality ideas in that they had mostly navy improvements, but had like 3 non-naval ideas. Like replace the first 3 ideas in Maritime with anything else and it would be buffed sufficiently imo. I think you could combine some ideas for Naval and add some new non-navy ideas as well.

As for the much-maligned Espionage and Aristocratic, I take these fairly often, so I'm okay with these as-is. I think people view them in the wrong light, so they're perceived worse than they are. Aristocratic is great for dumping excess sword mana if you're powerful enough militarily already and need to catch up on admin/diplo tech. Idk, I like aristocratic for what is is. Espionage is great for HRE countries or to reduce aggressive expansion. Support rebel and privateer efficiency might be fun for role playing pirate nations or other scenarios. Maybe just for the AI to differentiate itself and protect itself as a smaller nation. Could they be more useful? Sure. Do they need to be? I don't think so. Some ideas should be there for historical flavor.

How about adding some new idea groups Paradox? ^^

 

[Triplebassist]

I don't think new idea groups are needed. Right now, we take 8 of 18* idea groups and are limited to 4 of 6 in a category by default. That means that there is room for strategic choices to be made in every game, assuming the groups are relatively well-balanced, of course. I feel like the addition of new groups would just exacerbate the problem of some groups being better enough than others that we see more idea groups go unused

*Counting Divine, Aristocratic, Plutocratic, Indigenous, and Horde as one, since they're mutually exclusive

 

[csward53]

No, people take humanist because diplo is almost never the bottleneck. For what do you want to save up diplo points? After integrating vassals there aren't many uses for dip point. For maximal expansion devving is even a bad use of dip points because of governing costs. Admin points have way more use with coring and stability.

Not necessarily true. I like going over the relations limit to play PU game or to have more allies if I sense a coalition war is incoming, for example. I also like to do peace deals that are not part of the CB, so diplo is used for that. I also like to convert cultures which needs diplo. You can use it to increase output of goldmines. You can also take an extra diplo policy as well...

There are ways to use bird mana, just sayin'.

 

[csward53]

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 )

They allow the nobles to fabricate claims on entire states at once. If it took slightly longer it may be balanced somehow.

 

[Aloraand]

The first thing to fix about ideas are the policies, and removing the useless ones. Compare admin espionage - 0.1 corruption 20% spy detection, to econ quantity - 10% dev cost 10% force limit. You would pick the former to get a lot of claims and blob early, the second to play tall, but while the first policy does not complement the idea groups' purpose, the second one plays right into its strengths.

The second thing to fix would be to remove the useless/barely noticeable parts of idea groups, I think the contenders are:

Admin - mostly fine, for expansion mercs are usually a trap post 1500, but that's a different topic (remove the professionalism cost and remove generals giving professionalism and they become a real option again as manpower for gold). (Why is this not called expansion btw?)
Econ - Everything is useful for money.
Expansion - Fort maintenance on border with rival/centre of trade upgrade probably needs replacing. Colonial nations usually don't have large borders with rivals, and the COT upgrade cost is kinda minor.
Humanist - Everything useful for unrest reduction and conquest. (Also, why is it humanist, when it's best utilised by conquerors?)
Innovative - Leaders without upkeep is now useless.
Religious -Missionary maintenance seems rather useless,
Diplo - Everything makes you better at diplomacy
Espionage - Rebel support, yearly corruption, and privateer efficiency are surely replaceable.
Exploration - I am yet to click expel minorities tbh
Influence - envoy travel time is probably stronger than I think it is, but it seems very niche.
Maritime - Leaders without upkeep
Trade - trade range seems weak, if a trade node is out of your reach, you probably don't really need a merchant there.

The mil ideas are almost all useful, besides 10% recruitment time in offensive, also quality would probably benefit from being refocused onto land only ( give it army drill gain/regiment drill loss and yearly army professionalism and merge the navy ideas into naval). It's mostly about policies being imbalanced with the mil ideas.

When all of them provide useful bonuses coherent with the reasons you would want to pick them, then the different playstyles can be balanced using numbers.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

I'm going to say something that is probably quite controversial.

I think in any 'optimal' run, Exploration is a totally useless idea set. You can simply annex colonisers and get all of their colonial nations for free. What's the point of getting colonies, wasting a whole idea set on them when you can just beat someone in a war and steal all their colonies from them?

Expansion at least has some uses outside of colonisation, Exploration has none.

One way these ideas could be made more attractive is by giving them so policies that impact gameplay generally. Otherwise, unless you are RPing or doing an achievement that specifically requires you to go colonial, there's absolutely no justifiable reason why someone would take Exploration from the 'meta' perspective.

 

[dD_ShockTrooper]

I'm going to say something that is probably quite controversial.

I think in any 'optimal' run, Exploration is a totally useless idea set. You can simply annex colonisers and get all of their colonial nations for free. What's the point of getting colonies, wasting a whole idea set on them when you can just beat someone in a war and steal all their colonies from them?

Expansion at least has some uses outside of colonisation, Exploration has none.

One way these ideas could be made more attractive is by giving them so policies that impact gameplay generally. Otherwise, unless you are RPing or doing an achievement that specifically requires you to go colonial, there's absolutely no justifiable reason why someone would take Exploration from the 'meta' perspective.

Exploration is useful because sometimes steal maps is not a viable option, you want to spawn colonialism for a cheaper price than dev pushing it, and/or you need additional coring range fast.

 

[Jespoke]

I don't think Innovative really needs an buffs. It's there for those like that that playstyle.

My biggest problem with Innovative is exactly that it should be there for people that like to hoard mana to put into development, but unless I'm playing RP levels of tall i have still found it hard to justify over Admin for the governing capacity, because developed land takes up so much of it and makes so much money. Especially so when playing republics. I'm hoping the buffs to Expand Administration and Centralize State at least reduce the need for Admin when playing tall, though i would like to see Innovative be more attractive for tall play as well.

I'm going to say something that is probably quite controversial.

I think in any 'optimal' run, Exploration is a totally useless idea set. You can simply annex colonisers and get all of their colonial nations for free. What's the point of getting colonies, wasting a whole idea set on them when you can just beat someone in a war and steal all their colonies from them?

Expansion at least has some uses outside of colonisation, Exploration has none.

One way these ideas could be made more attractive is by giving them so policies that impact gameplay generally. Otherwise, unless you are RPing or doing an achievement that specifically requires you to go colonial, there's absolutely no justifiable reason why someone would take Exploration from the 'meta' perspective.

"Optimal" is not the only nor necessarily the most fun way to play though. Exploration is probably the most RP-friendly idea group of them all. And someone has to take it for the colonization you want to conquer to happen in the first place.