What ideas should be buffed?
- Thread starter Vapiritapiri
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The problem with relying on Religious to help convert is that good players can conquer stuff far faster than they can convert it. Missionary throughput still just isn't good enough to be viable, unless perhaps you're playing a low CCR tag with a religion that's a conversion juggernaut like Sunni. The vast majority of setups will see lots of unconverted land, which means true faith tolerance isn't particularly useful for things like exceeding 100% OE.
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Exploration is good for establishing new fronts that are easier to expand into. The +50% colonial range is also functionally +50% coring range, and the +1 colonist essentially acts as a CB generator by allowing you to flash a colony --> claim a province --> revoke colony --> declare war. This makes it the best idea group for AE control in the game by far. A nation like Genoa can try bashing into the HRE and France early on, OR it can spend a few decades slingshotting around Africa to absorb the gold mines of Kilwa, and attack Indonesia with it's 1000 dev that's split between 4 religion groups.
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You're correct. I dunno why I was thinking about NIs. Anyways, I don't think any ideas are way OP per se. But I do think that Admin ideas need to be tweaked. WTF does merc maintenance have to do with running an administration? I think they should get rid of all merc BS, split it into 2 and give 10% CCR each. Or they should just change the name to WC ideas. When picking ideas, I don't even consider it or look at it. Why not a slight reduction in state maintenance or a small autonomy reduction? It makes more sense than mercs.
As far as espionage goes, it will has some nice bonuses. BUUUUT, with the ledger and all of the information that is given to the player, it'll never be as useful as it could. I think it's wierd that in WW2/HOI4 you look at see, "hey they have 225k-567k troops. But in EU4, you're alien tech spies know exactly how much they have for everything, including reserves.
Naval and mercantile are pretty awesome. I RARELY use naval, but when I play Genoa, I love mercantile ideas. So those ideas will prolly never be OP, but they have their place.
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I 100% agree. The merc ideas being in administrative is kind of odd, especially since admin ideas give no bonuses to regular army despite this clearly falling under the purview of the administration. I pretty much exclusively take admin for the CCR and gov cap modifier, but I end up waiting until mid-late game to grab this idea group because its benefits are so underwhelming outside of those specific ideas.
I probably just break even on the admin I spend on the ideas vs. the admin the ideas save me. For merc-based countries and back when mercs were the meta, admin ideas were S-tier but now their benefits have leveled off a bit since professionalism is arguably more useful than mercs in the late game and the paths are fairly mutually exclusive.
None.
Honestly, I'd rather they add some new ones instead. New policies that come with the new idea groups could end up buffing the existing ones anyway.
Honestly, I'd rather they add some new ones instead. New policies that come with the new idea groups could end up buffing the existing ones anyway.
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Naval ideas should have +1 artillery fire so they actually have a use. and maybe other artillery modifiers since improving your naval cannons would improve your normal cannons
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I think it would make more thematic sense to pile Admin full of cost reduction modifiers to double down on being about gaining and maintaining a wide realm. But then where do you put the mercenary stuff? I highly doubt they want to make any new idea groups at this point. Though it might be nice to see an idea group about using mercenaries for war and levies for infrastructure.
@Reman for me exploration is useful until I get tech 11 and still I only take first 3 ideas. How often do you need reduction in expel minority cost, global tariffs or envoy travel time? At this point I prefer switching to expansion because I don't need to explore more, can have more colonists, bigger settler growth and colonial range from tech allows me to core everything I need.
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Maybe they could add all of the mercs bonus to espionage, that makes more thematic sense than being in admin.
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The merc cost reduction is actually convenient when placed in admin.
Admin is an idea group taken in SP usually in the first three if not first idea group. This is also a phase of the game where you're most bottlenecked by manpower (at least for most countries). The cost savings aren't much, but personally it is the only phase of the game where I pay much attention to mercs anyway.
Admin is an idea group taken in SP usually in the first three if not first idea group. This is also a phase of the game where you're most bottlenecked by manpower (at least for most countries). The cost savings aren't much, but personally it is the only phase of the game where I pay much attention to mercs anyway.
You definitely should never keep Explo long-term unless you're doing a deliberately suboptimal RP run. The standard operating procedure is to take the first 3, maybe 4 ideas in Explo to get to where you need to go, then you dump the idea group for something better since you'll keep the main benefits for the rest of the game regardless. This is part of why Explo is so powerful: it doesn't monopolize an idea slot forever, just for a few decades.
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The thing is that yeah for mp everyone basically stacks combat modifiers and we have all probablly built spacemarines for fun in a sp game but if you go for a mass conquest or world conquest game you rarely go anything other than quantity ideas in the military group.
I could admittedly see quantity ideas getting nerfed since it's op both for playing tall and going wide but the rest of the military ideas are borderline weak for sp unless you go spacemarines for the fun factor.
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The main nerf Quantity needs is to Levée en Masse, TBH. 50% is just plain obscene. I think it might even be the largest single permanent modifier in the game, with the exception of 100% innovativeness gain? Both relative to what it gives, and relative to other modifiers. I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, at any rate. Reducing it to 33%, or even 25% would still be significant, and the other goodies in the group, like MP recovery and army cost, would still keep it a strong group.
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The actual solution is to make navies matter, but that would require changing military access, and attrition. Why get more ships or better ships when I can just make super troops and march them across the map for no additional cost, and actually take less attrition because I can stay under the supply limit and take no attrition versus the small attrition from boarding ships. The only real reasons to use ships is to move between the old and new worlds and for Britain.
As for space marines versus quantity, I almost always go space marines. If my armies are not head and shoulders better than the enemy, I'm going to lose, or my victories are pyrrhic. Quantity just means I get to have more men die in my lost battles. With space marines, my armies can withstand all the terrible die rolls until the game accidentally gives me a number greater than 4. In previous versions of the game I'd also stack siege modifiers, including siege pips, so that I could reduce the time it took 40k artillery to siege a fort below 48 months.
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I think there should be a separate idea group for mercenaries. Call it "Mercenary Ideas"
Put it under military ideas (we already have a glut of those) and give it some bonuses to merc maintenance, cost, manpower, discipline, and maybe morale or manpower recovery or reinforcement. You could also throw in some discounts to advisor cost (perhaps for advisors of non-primary cultures), condotierri, and maybe a boost to institution spread or military tech discount to reflect the synergy of foreign militaries. Perhaps throw in some general pips, idk. For completing the whole idea set, perhaps you get access to some special mercenary companies.
I think the admin ideas should give bonuses to a country's professional army and perhaps supply limit instead of mercs.
I think the best way to buff both mercs and admin ideas is to make them separate idea groups.
Put it under military ideas (we already have a glut of those) and give it some bonuses to merc maintenance, cost, manpower, discipline, and maybe morale or manpower recovery or reinforcement. You could also throw in some discounts to advisor cost (perhaps for advisors of non-primary cultures), condotierri, and maybe a boost to institution spread or military tech discount to reflect the synergy of foreign militaries. Perhaps throw in some general pips, idk. For completing the whole idea set, perhaps you get access to some special mercenary companies.
I think the admin ideas should give bonuses to a country's professional army and perhaps supply limit instead of mercs.
I think the best way to buff both mercs and admin ideas is to make them separate idea groups.
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This is a major exaggeration. There are areas of the world where navies are pretty essential, for example Indonesia. Outside of that, controlling the sea is super useful even though it's not strictly necessary. Ships are many times faster, especially in the Mediterranean. There is a huge strategic and tactical cost to moving your armies long distances over land if you're in a region with useful sea access. Blockades don't do a ton economically but they do make a significant difference in sieges. Strait crossings are situational but very powerful when used.
Now, is it in absolutely the ideal place? No, and I agree with you that tweaks to military access, attrition and navies could improve the game. But it's nowhere near as bad as you're making it out to be. The real reason no one takes naval ideas in single player isn't that navy doesn't matter, it's that you can beat the AI at sea without them. It's the same reason good players don't take many military ideas in general, but even more so because while naval power is relevant it's still quite a bit less important than land power.
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Quality bonuses may seem smaller but they are completely free. Bigger army on the other hand has a cost.
Half of the idea group is useless for someone who doesn't want to use mercenaries.
Similar, but even worse is Quality with its 3 naval ideas. It's attractive, as the only way to get combat ability bonus (and to all three units at that), but also half of it is useless for many, if not most countries.
How and why would a landlocked country develop naval drills and copper bottoms?
I guess you may look at the name "Quality" and consider it sensible, it sounds generic enough to apply to both armies and navies equally. But hey, "Quantity" doesn't have any naval ideas.
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