Are you factoring in that Admin also gives 10% ADM tech cost reduction? There is no way no how that Innovative compares to Admin in terms of how many Admin points it saves you.
Why innovative ideas are so rare choice?
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Are you factoring in that Admin also gives 10% ADM tech cost reduction? There is no way no how that Innovative compares to Admin in terms of how many Admin points it saves you.
Innovative gets out-competed by other admin groups on both sides of play. If you're going wide you want Admin and either Religious or Humanist first; if you're playing tall you want Economic first. It makes a decent 4th or 5th group in tall play, and it's already been mentioned how good its policies are. Unfortunately that makes it almost uniquely suited to RP runs or lategame situations where there's little pressure on admin. The latter especially is fairly rare.
Yes. It's all very back-of-the-envolope but you're getting little marginal gains from optimism (remember war exhaustion increases coring cost) and events, and depending on how you account reduced advisor cost into mana it may be even better than that. Obviously it doesn't compete with Admin in saving you admin points exclusively but my playstyle happens to allow a more even points saving to work out well. It might not be quite so useful for you if you find you're starving for admin all the time.
The 'don't blob too much' requirement is really pretty stringent: 'all of India' is only about 2k dev - if you've conquered and stated all of France, Britain, and Iberia, or all of Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, you've hit that ball park. The +5 states from Admin makes it even easier to reach the tipping point. (And also note that Admin is better whether you're eating clay yourself or absorbing it via vassals and PUs, because the Admin-Influence policy is so efficient.) There aren't that many games where you won't eat enough land to hit the point at which Admin's better, unless you're either roleplaying (Korea maybe?) or for some reason can expand quickly without needing to core everything as you go (i.e. if you've revoked the privilegia before imperialism). I may be wrong but I'd guess that this is why your intuition is that Admin is so much better - in most circumstances you're quite right.
(Imho Admin could do with a small nerf and Innovative with a small buff to make that balance a bit better; but that's much a separate discussion.)
They are useful for some nations like Prussia.
It feels good to build up space marines with policies
It feels good to build up space marines with policies
So Innovative isn't bad, it's just overshadowed by 'must have' ADM picks. I suppose the real question for the devs is this:
How much/little RCC would Administrative have to give, for Innovative/Economic/Expansion to be competitive with it in a typical single-player campaign? (By 'typical' I'm not thinking WC, just an average player trying to build up their country.)
What if the idea reduced the coring time or the coring cost, but didn't do both? What if it only reduced the territory -> state coring cost, but not the nothing -> territory cost? (You could change some of the other ideas too, to give the idea group a more specialized theme of 'more and better states'.) It seems with the current game balance, -25% RCC is simply too overwhelming a modifier compared to the strength of a typical idea, especially when you stack it with more of the same via cheesy formables such as Mughals.
Religious/Humanist are potentially overpowered too, but they're designed as specialized idea groups for a specific yet popular purpose, so it makes sense that players will take them for that purpose. (There's a possible exception for players who take Religious mainly for Deus Vult, but I think that's mainly a symptom of a deeper malaise with the CB system in EU4, which can't be fixed by tinkering with idea groups.) Administrative on the other hand doesn't have a strong unity of purpose, it just happens to be carried by that single -25% RCC idea.
How much/little RCC would Administrative have to give, for Innovative/Economic/Expansion to be competitive with it in a typical single-player campaign? (By 'typical' I'm not thinking WC, just an average player trying to build up their country.)
What if the idea reduced the coring time or the coring cost, but didn't do both? What if it only reduced the territory -> state coring cost, but not the nothing -> territory cost? (You could change some of the other ideas too, to give the idea group a more specialized theme of 'more and better states'.) It seems with the current game balance, -25% RCC is simply too overwhelming a modifier compared to the strength of a typical idea, especially when you stack it with more of the same via cheesy formables such as Mughals.
Religious/Humanist are potentially overpowered too, but they're designed as specialized idea groups for a specific yet popular purpose, so it makes sense that players will take them for that purpose. (There's a possible exception for players who take Religious mainly for Deus Vult, but I think that's mainly a symptom of a deeper malaise with the CB system in EU4, which can't be fixed by tinkering with idea groups.) Administrative on the other hand doesn't have a strong unity of purpose, it just happens to be carried by that single -25% RCC idea.
I picked it in my last game as a mid-game idea group (along with Admin/Humanist/Exploration=> Diplomatic/Quality/Economic/Influence/Offensive) as I was going for SPAES MARIINEZ and stacking all the modifiers (and for the pulse events)... But that meant I got humanist very late.
(Though I was playing a custom (animist) nation, so I had some of the advantages already baked-in to maximise.)
(Though I was playing a custom (animist) nation, so I had some of the advantages already baked-in to maximise.)
at 15% people would use it (admin that is), at 10% it would be badly nerfed but id still use it, at 7% id use innovative (but then id never use admin).
Id give innovative 10% idea cost reduction (as opener even), and let it stack with humanist for starters. Basically an innovative player can rush the idea slots/techs and then get them completed in no time. In the same vein of a rusher, id perhaps give other rushing boosts if still weak, like idk, unlocking tech unlocks if you own two techs at that level (eg amin and mil at 18 also unlock diplo 18 unlocks like buildings or ships, you dont have diplo 18 though so no ahead of time boost, and penalties with vassals that are on time and such)
Personally, I disagree with the generally accepted notion that Innovative is less desirable than Administrative or Religious/Humanist. I find Innovative more valuable and versatile than Administrative in most games. (I presume it's mostly because I like to play minors in Western and Central Europe, and have little interest in the tedious rebel management you get when doing a WC. But I can't imagine most players are doing WC after WC.)
Key things Innovative offers:
- -10% Tech cost
- Less war exhaustion, which translates to lower coring costs and not wasting diplo points to reduce war exhaustion
- -25% advisor cost, which allows to afford level 3+ advisors much earlier (and policies to double down on this)
- A regular stream of -10% tech cost events
- Several great policies (in particular the ones with Quality, Offensive, and Influence)
It's a good idea group that saves (or gains you) lots of monarch points in practice. My only issue with it is how it gets in the way of Court and Country. Unless you're reducing autonomy all over the place in a large empire you'll usually get Court and Country in the 2nd half of the 17th century. Having Innovative, Humanist, or Plutocratic by then - to say nothing about having all three - gets in the way of having +1 unrest.
Administrative, by contrast, basically invites a blobbing game with:
- -25% core reduction cost
- -10% admin tech cost
- 3 mercenary-related ideas of dubious use if you're aiming for 100% professionalism
- Mostly meh policies (only the ones with Influence and Aristocratic are worth it)
The only time I ever get Administrative is when I intend to core three or more of Europe, the Middle East, India, SE Asia, and China. And it's usually a mid- to late-game idea at that, because unless I start as a large country my early games are usually constrained by military might, siege speed, and AE more than by Admin points.
It might be specific to where and how I like to play, but I've lost count of the number of times I was nearly finished coring Italy, the Low Countries, or a large chunk of Germany without a hint of Admin point shortage by the time I got Administrative's Core Cost Reduction. The real blocker is the long list of countries with 80 AE opinion that you're scrambling to compensate with improved relationships, gifts, and influence nation.
Making matters worse, you subsequently find yourself swimming in so many Admin points that you're basically forced to blob all the way to China just to have something useful to spend those Admin points on. When you take it as Portugal, you'll invariably find yourself coring Maghreb and Egypt in full at some point because AE is so unfathomably high in Africa and Asia (and the diplomats are so slow to return) that you can't continue to warmonger in those regions without risking a worldwide coalition.
As to Religious and Humanist, I've only ever found them useful when painting the map.
IMHO, there are three cases:
- Map painting game as large nation: Get Administrative, and either Humanist or Religious (Russia, Ottomans).
- Map painting game as small nation: The same but Influence and a mil tech are more important in the early game, because AE reduction and military might will be more useful then.
- Casual SP game: None of those groups matter. Consider Innovative and/or Economics. Or for that matter, things like Trade or Espionage.
I've never tried playing MP but my understanding is that Economics and Innovative are solid picks there, alongside the Offensive/Defensive/Quality trinity.
Key things Innovative offers:
- -10% Tech cost
- Less war exhaustion, which translates to lower coring costs and not wasting diplo points to reduce war exhaustion
- -25% advisor cost, which allows to afford level 3+ advisors much earlier (and policies to double down on this)
- A regular stream of -10% tech cost events
- Several great policies (in particular the ones with Quality, Offensive, and Influence)
It's a good idea group that saves (or gains you) lots of monarch points in practice. My only issue with it is how it gets in the way of Court and Country. Unless you're reducing autonomy all over the place in a large empire you'll usually get Court and Country in the 2nd half of the 17th century. Having Innovative, Humanist, or Plutocratic by then - to say nothing about having all three - gets in the way of having +1 unrest.
Administrative, by contrast, basically invites a blobbing game with:
- -25% core reduction cost
- -10% admin tech cost
- 3 mercenary-related ideas of dubious use if you're aiming for 100% professionalism
- Mostly meh policies (only the ones with Influence and Aristocratic are worth it)
The only time I ever get Administrative is when I intend to core three or more of Europe, the Middle East, India, SE Asia, and China. And it's usually a mid- to late-game idea at that, because unless I start as a large country my early games are usually constrained by military might, siege speed, and AE more than by Admin points.
It might be specific to where and how I like to play, but I've lost count of the number of times I was nearly finished coring Italy, the Low Countries, or a large chunk of Germany without a hint of Admin point shortage by the time I got Administrative's Core Cost Reduction. The real blocker is the long list of countries with 80 AE opinion that you're scrambling to compensate with improved relationships, gifts, and influence nation.
Making matters worse, you subsequently find yourself swimming in so many Admin points that you're basically forced to blob all the way to China just to have something useful to spend those Admin points on. When you take it as Portugal, you'll invariably find yourself coring Maghreb and Egypt in full at some point because AE is so unfathomably high in Africa and Asia (and the diplomats are so slow to return) that you can't continue to warmonger in those regions without risking a worldwide coalition.
As to Religious and Humanist, I've only ever found them useful when painting the map.
IMHO, there are three cases:
- Map painting game as large nation: Get Administrative, and either Humanist or Religious (Russia, Ottomans).
- Map painting game as small nation: The same but Influence and a mil tech are more important in the early game, because AE reduction and military might will be more useful then.
- Casual SP game: None of those groups matter. Consider Innovative and/or Economics. Or for that matter, things like Trade or Espionage.
I've never tried playing MP but my understanding is that Economics and Innovative are solid picks there, alongside the Offensive/Defensive/Quality trinity.
The more I read on the subject, the more I think both Administrative and Humanist idea groups could use a nerf (coring cost for Admin and religious unity, unrest reduction, tolerance for heretic and heathens for Humanist). They seem to be causing all the unrealistic blobbing for the AI and facilitating WC for players, which is something I dislike in the game. My friends don't mock me for playing a "map painting game" for nothing, I'm starting to believe these ideas are a large part of it.
I doubt this will be well received by the community, though.
PS: Maybe nerf religious ideas as well, as it would become the no-brainer pick.
I doubt this will be well received by the community, though.
PS: Maybe nerf religious ideas as well, as it would become the no-brainer pick.
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I usually play as Russia (well, Muscovy, but that is easy to fix), so I have Eastern European tech group. Before that could be changed by Westernization, now with all that institutions that is something, impossible to fix, so I always thought about taking innovative as first one. Because, you know, tech cost reduction...
In my last game, failed because of coalition and aggressive Ottoman, expanding North in early 1500-s, I finally tried to take administrative idea group first. And it was goddamn worthy simply because of second idea with coring cost reduction. Still, other ideas are not much great....
In my last game, failed because of coalition and aggressive Ottoman, expanding North in early 1500-s, I finally tried to take administrative idea group first. And it was goddamn worthy simply because of second idea with coring cost reduction. Still, other ideas are not much great....
AI will blob anyway. In Ironman it has pretty good bonuces from luck and everything like that, which annoy me a lot.The more I read on the subject, the more I think both Administrative and Humanist idea groups could use a nerf (coring cost for Admin and religious unity, unrest reduction, tolerance for heretic and heathens for Humanist). They seem to be causing all the unrealistic blobbing for the AI and facilitating WC for players, which is something I dislike in the game. My friends don't mock me for playing a "map painting game" for nothing, I'm starting to believe these ideas are a large part of it.
I doubt this will be well received by the community, though.
PS: Maybe nerf religious ideas as well, as it would become the no-brainer pick.
Innovative is rather nice when playing tall, but a lot of people like to blob quite a lot...
The more I read on the subject, the more I think both Administrative and Humanist idea groups could use a nerf (coring cost for Admin and religious unity, unrest reduction, tolerance for heretic and heathens for Humanist). They seem to be causing all the unrealistic blobbing for the AI and facilitating WC for players, which is something I dislike in the game. My friends don't mock me for playing a "map painting game" for nothing, I'm starting to believe these ideas are a large part of it.
I doubt this will be well received by the community, though.
PS: Maybe nerf religious ideas as well, as it would become the no-brainer pick.
Paradox/The community has bought into the idea that WC is supposed to be a normal way to play the game rather than an extreme edge-case for the top 0.01% or so of players. I'd prefer a game where reaching historical borders as a major country was a reasonable accomplishment rather than trivially easy, but that just isn't in the cards. Any significant nerf to blobbing would only occur with a commensurate buff to blobbing in some other fashion (e.g. more/earlier admin efficiency).
In which case innovative similarly has nothing to offer you. If your wall is the above, idea groups to help manage AE or deter coalitions are going to serve you better. Even if you necessarily had to choose an ADM based group, economic/administrative/humanist are going to be more helpful in the near-term while also giving useful long-term prospects.
Economic is fairly obvious, to improve your ability to sink your spare MPs into dev, build on your existing dev, etc.
Administrative, while you may not have current use for the CCR, has policies for:
-diplomatic annexation cost via Influence, so you can make more use of AE efficient vassal-based conquest; or
-AE / +BROT via Aristocratic.
Humanism directly gives BROT, and has policies for:
+BROT via Influence and Diplomatic
This mediocrety of innovative is even more pronounced for a player not intending to aggressively blob. If you get it early, it gives you slightly more MPs to spend on development, but you'd be better off getting something that makes developing cheaper, something that gets you more out of any development increases, or something that lets you punch above your development weight. By the time you've run through the best of those groups to complement your nation, you're far enough into the game that any "savings" from taking innovative are severely diminished.
I'd say innovative is good on the more... Nontraditional countries that rely on diplomacy to build up- namely, Austria and Ming. Austria doesnt bother coring much, and usually only expands via conquest into poorer areas, relying on PU's for the bulk of their growth- thus, Diplo into Innovative (into Quality) is actually a good choice, as keeping ahead on techs and having good advisors is extremely helpful, as well as high troop quality for claiming thrones and destroying protestantism. Ming obviously benefits from the interactions between innovative and Meritocracy, and the institution embracement cost is very helpful.
Maaaybe economic is better, but with upgradeable advisors it may very well not be.
Maaaybe economic is better, but with upgradeable advisors it may very well not be.
Admin ideas are pretty overrated if you're not doing a WC. I've done without them in several of my casual runs where I only ended up with 5-6K development, and I never felt like they would have helped too much. They're really only necessary if you're pushing your nation to the absolute limit, which is when the mercs + interest bonuses would come in handy. Admin points aren't generally a bottleneck if you're only coring a quarter of the world.
Religious and/or humanist on the other hand feel 100% necessary if you want to do any sort of expansion at all. In fact, going for both of them has been pretty necessary since absolutism hit the game. Religious is great for the CB and early game internal stability, but you need humanist later on since you can't just increase autonomy everywhere anymore.
The problem with innovative is it just doesn't provide anything you can't get somewhere else. The only things it has going for it are the -0.05 war exhaustion and the innovative siege weapons policy. You get get WE reduction from DotF, the policy, and the Rev government so it's only situationally useful. The siege policy is nice to have if you can reliably roll over your enemies, but it's not critical in any way.
If you're doing a normal non-wc game Economic would almost certainly be a better idea group. It's quite powerful for fixing money shortages, and we're getting the point where money can fix almost anything in this game.
The main problem innovative has is it's overshadowed by other groups in the Admin category. The second big problem it has is that it doesn't provide much use. I probably wouldn't even take it if it was in the Military category since it just isn't that good.
Religious and/or humanist on the other hand feel 100% necessary if you want to do any sort of expansion at all. In fact, going for both of them has been pretty necessary since absolutism hit the game. Religious is great for the CB and early game internal stability, but you need humanist later on since you can't just increase autonomy everywhere anymore.
The problem with innovative is it just doesn't provide anything you can't get somewhere else. The only things it has going for it are the -0.05 war exhaustion and the innovative siege weapons policy. You get get WE reduction from DotF, the policy, and the Rev government so it's only situationally useful. The siege policy is nice to have if you can reliably roll over your enemies, but it's not critical in any way.
If you're doing a normal non-wc game Economic would almost certainly be a better idea group. It's quite powerful for fixing money shortages, and we're getting the point where money can fix almost anything in this game.
The main problem innovative has is it's overshadowed by other groups in the Admin category. The second big problem it has is that it doesn't provide much use. I probably wouldn't even take it if it was in the Military category since it just isn't that good.
Innovative is a must pick in your first two ideas as Brandenburg. Yes, even over Admin or Econ or Religious/Humanist. Innovative/Quality/Influence are the opening picks of a Brandenburg game.
It's worth considering in the later stages of a Dutch game as well I find.
It's worth considering in the later stages of a Dutch game as well I find.
That's more or less the point I was making: it's only worth getting mid- to late game, after Economics (which is better by any reasonable measure) and C&C (because the -WE gets in the way of triggering it).
But it gets in the way of C&C, so getting it early is a non-starter if you plan to get the disaster.
Austria with Influence has 40% reduced diplomatic annexation cost, with the admin policy bringing that to 60%. At the margin, that policy means 33% faster and cheaper diplomatic annexations of vassals and PUs. I can't imagine choosing innovative over that...