+1 spy... yeah it is useless aspecialy with the new spy adding buildings...
EDIT: I think good thing would be a boost to spy effenciency... 10% at least, but 20% would not be bad...
Worst National Ideas
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+1 spy... yeah it is useless aspecialy with the new spy adding buildings...
EDIT: I think good thing would be a boost to spy effenciency... 10% at least, but 20% would not be bad...
Agreed. There are many situations in which it's just insanely handy.
I would say Divine Supremacy, or perhaps one of the other church ideas or perhaps the prestige ones.
Do not temptate me...
Anyway NB is quite best NI IMHO. Or one of the best. So no reason why it could be worse...
Anyway NB is quite best NI IMHO. Or one of the best. So no reason why it could be worse...
MP and SP:
Naval Glory, Glorious Arms, National Bank, Merchant Adventures, Land of Opportunity, Engineer Corps, Viceroys are downright bad.
Bureaucracy, Colonial Ventures, Vetting, Espionage, Naval Fighting Instruction, Bill of Rights, Humanist Tolerance, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Ecumenism, Divine Supremacy are very situational.
Naval Provisioning System is a very powerful NI, but irrelevant in SP since naval wars are not really a challenge (well, MP games don't tend to go that long, but if you unlock it it's strong). Naval Fighting Instruction is actually a lot stronger than you might think, albeit situational.
Naval Glory, Glorious Arms, National Bank, Merchant Adventures, Land of Opportunity, Engineer Corps, Viceroys are downright bad.
Bureaucracy, Colonial Ventures, Vetting, Espionage, Naval Fighting Instruction, Bill of Rights, Humanist Tolerance, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Ecumenism, Divine Supremacy are very situational.
Naval Provisioning System is a very powerful NI, but irrelevant in SP since naval wars are not really a challenge (well, MP games don't tend to go that long, but if you unlock it it's strong). Naval Fighting Instruction is actually a lot stronger than you might think, albeit situational.
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Only Naval glory and glorious arms are bad. And maybe Merchant adventures, but they give a good decision.
But national band is one of the best NI's, Land of Opportunity is best NI for any colonial nation with more than like 3 colonies.
Engineer Corps are not bad, they are one of the best NI in the game - +1 to siege, and +25% deffensiveness are making your forts hard to crack, and boost up your sieges, if you use generals. It is no way bad NI. Combined with max deffensiveness, you got 3 siege generals, and +50% deffensiveness.
And viceroys are quite good, if you go colonial, even after you move to americas(as you still get tarrifs, just you get them from europe).
The main factor you are neglecting is that each NI you pick is another NI you don't.
You forget the fact some NI's are not worth to pick in certain situations, which make place for use of other ones.
Land of Opportunity sort of works if you're in an SP situation where you can afford to dump 100% of your economy into colonies (that said, mass colonizing is suboptimal), but for a riskier situation and/or for any other of those NIs there are just better alternatives. Trade NIs, QFTNW (for mercantilists), tradition NIs, morale NIs, forcelimit NIs, Press Gangs, Excellent Shipwrights, Patron of the Arts, Smithian Economics, Technological Revolution, etc, etc. Give me a generic situation and I bet I can produce a list of NIs which has no room for any of those (except, once again, maybe Land of Opportunity in a very safe situation).
1. National Bank can be useful if you really need money, which should be particular the case in MP, since you can hold a way stronger army that way, especially if combined with a MoM. So it can be a quite good decision, especially for land-warfare-focused countries that don't care about colonisation (Austria, BBurg etc.) after the obvious Military drill (lets say 2-4 slot-idea).
2. Land of Opportunity isn't a bad NI for colonizers in any way, in most cases it's better than Colonial Ventures (speaking about Christians ofc). Especially good in SP since you don't care that hard about building your colonies up to cities as fast as possible, so you will have more colonies at a time.
3. Viceroys can be quite good for colonizers who still have many provinces on several continents (Spain, GB), but it's more a mid/lategame idea, when you have the place for it and your colonies are starting to really make money.
4. While Engineer Corps isn't that bad, you have way stronger military ideas, so it's not worth taking most times.
5. You're certainly right with the prestige-ideas and Merchant Adventures.
If you start in 1399, the tolerance ideas are also quite bad (Ecumenism/Humanist Tolerance/Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité), since you should just convert everything. Bill of Rights is only for special cases where you have a severe lack of CB's or your revolt risk is incredible high.
Vetting can be nice if you really are getting bombarded with spies, most of the time it's crap. You should get enough spies from sliders and, later in the game, buildings, that you don't need Espionage, although it can be nice early in the game for some powers (Free Trade/Aristocracy countries especially), but you have more important ideas than.
Bureaucracy is not straight bad, but outdone by almost every other economical NI.
Naval Provisioning is quite unimportant, as is Naval Fighting Instructions. I'd say, all other naval NI's are just better and you won't pick them all, even as a naval oriented power.
2. Land of Opportunity isn't a bad NI for colonizers in any way, in most cases it's better than Colonial Ventures (speaking about Christians ofc). Especially good in SP since you don't care that hard about building your colonies up to cities as fast as possible, so you will have more colonies at a time.
3. Viceroys can be quite good for colonizers who still have many provinces on several continents (Spain, GB), but it's more a mid/lategame idea, when you have the place for it and your colonies are starting to really make money.
4. While Engineer Corps isn't that bad, you have way stronger military ideas, so it's not worth taking most times.
5. You're certainly right with the prestige-ideas and Merchant Adventures.
If you start in 1399, the tolerance ideas are also quite bad (Ecumenism/Humanist Tolerance/Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité), since you should just convert everything. Bill of Rights is only for special cases where you have a severe lack of CB's or your revolt risk is incredible high.
Vetting can be nice if you really are getting bombarded with spies, most of the time it's crap. You should get enough spies from sliders and, later in the game, buildings, that you don't need Espionage, although it can be nice early in the game for some powers (Free Trade/Aristocracy countries especially), but you have more important ideas than.
Bureaucracy is not straight bad, but outdone by almost every other economical NI.
Naval Provisioning is quite unimportant, as is Naval Fighting Instructions. I'd say, all other naval NI's are just better and you won't pick them all, even as a naval oriented power.
I don't know if I've missed anyone mentioning this yet, but another consideration in NIs is the events they confer. A large part of why I often take Patron of the Arts as non-Western nations is the free 'Innovative' slider move it gives in a certain event.
The only time I have ever taken Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité was in the Death and Taxes mod, since the 0.1 reduction from active missionaries makes converting large empires to a single religion untenable, at least in my particular game (orthodox religion, innovation vs. narrow-minded at no more than 0). But other than that, I think the tolerance ideas need a serious overhaul to become truly useful.
Viceroys is fantastic if you say own a large portion of South America and all North America. It can make your tariffs become your biggest winner.
If you can't get enough money without it, you're mismanaging your economy. National Bank's effect should read "Reduces tech speed by 10%".
The only reason I did not list Colonial Ventures under "Bad" is because of non-christians, so their relative strength isn't all that relevant. Yes, if you can afford to dump 100% of your income into colonies it's ok. Otherwise, it is not.
Poor planning. Move your capital.
And is thus bad. Glorious Arms and such don't actually have negative effects, they just don't have worthwhile positive effects. Engineer Corps falls into the same category.
There are cases in which converting everything is not as good as a tolerance NI, but it's usually better.
In multiplayer, which I specified, it is a very powerful NI. In singleplayer it is pretty irrelevant.
You, and most other people, severely underestimate blockades.
Move your capital.
And the tooltip of a MoM should read the same? At least in the 5.1 patch, players go over their forcelimits. Hard. So more money => more soldiers. There is no real point of "enough money". I don't really know how you can build up an army 3 times over your forcelimit, have a money reserve to build up destroyed regiments again and still use agents, especially magistrates. And later you say, you shouldn't pump all your money to colonization. Well, NB gives you money. Quite a lot of it.
Even in your mentioned multiplayers, there are some nations, that are usually quite safe. Venice, Brittany, Portugal, sometimes Holland have usually a protector. And England has his fleet.
So, let's say we have a Spain, owning all of Iberia and maybe a little bit more in Europe (e.g. Italian holdings) and a not so little chunk of South or North America, which is not uncommon, neither in SP (well, it would probably be all of America there) nor in MP. Either way, if the capital is in America or in Europe, the player would still have some quite high tariff income.
Glorious Arms offers little to no bonus, Engineer Corps is actually not that bad. But, as you and I before said, there are way more important NIs, so it wont be picked until quite late in the game.
What do you mean by "enough money?" Enough to do what?
Just because tech money and spendable money are both called "ducats" doesn't mean they are the same thing or an interchangeable resource. Tech money is inflated money, as evidenced by the huge amounts of it running around compared to spendable money. Any chance you can get to convert tech money into spendable money is hugely profitable.
Saving your money into tech investments is not the best way to get tech. The best way to get tech is to fully develop all of your provinces and build manufacturies on as many as possible. Do that well enough and you can win the tech race even with a blob country. Magistrates and spendable money are what wins the tech race, and you can get a lot of spendable money with NB and a good MOM.
Take my current game, for example, and look at the math:
Netherlands, 1515, annual (profit) income 680, of which around 550 is from MoM and NB. Well, that's 550 straight off my research budget, which sucks, because that's about 25% of my research budget.
But actually, it doesn't suck at all. Say for the sake of argument that I take the rest of my income and use it on whatever I would've used it on anyway, and devote all the NB/MOM money to manufacturies. Well, I'll buy approximately 2 manufacturies every 7 years. After 35 years, my 10 manufacturies will be producing 600 a year in research, plus a grunchbucket of income. I have more than replaced the lost research and I am still raking in all that money and still building manufacturies with my NB and MoM.
In fact, I wouldn't save it all for manufacturies, but I would certainly wind up building lot more manufacturies than I would otherwise, plus being able to do stuff like afford the army, navy, diplomacy and buildings that I need right now. And the richer you get, the more you are getting from your NB/MOM, and the more manufacturies you can build.
You have to be really, really really rich not to have a vast preference for money in hand over tech money. There's so much you can do with it, and that definitely includes building up your tech.
Ive used those Colonial NI to absolutly blitz Colonies to full in atleast one MP game, they are great at getting it all out of the way and blocking off opponents, its not like you cant change your NI later anyways.
Well considering I had large European holdings too that was neither desirable nor practical. The other disadvantage of course is that your provinces in Europe are now distant overseas as well. Why would I move my capital to America and lost 75% of my tax income - lots of low base tax provinces over there as well as my 100+ European provinces losing 90% of their tax? Manpower as well drops dramatically.
Not to mention that tariffs would still be a large part of my income...just from Europe instead of America.
Observe this picture:
That's from my AAR (where I didn't want to move my capital for story reasons as an aside) but I would be much weaker if I moved my capital to America. Much, much weaker. For a start my tax would drop, my manpower would fall, my production and tariffs wouldn't reverse since I'd concentrated on building certain buildings in different areas and my land force limits would fall too.
If I had few provinces in Europe then maybe...but in this case Tariffs gave a VERY nice boost without the problem of moving my capital twice (once to Madeira, then again to America) for little gain!
Well, I lost my awesome post. So I'll restate briefly. In a nutshell, Pewt killed it earlier in the thread - it's opportunity cost, guys!
We must first consider the costs of a Master of Mint. The first Master of Mint you get will cost you quite a few magistrates to produce; but as you have no use for the first decade-ish of Magistrates (after enacting Expand the Bureaucracy), you have enough magistrates to spend on one Advisor. The Master of Mint is hands down the best Advisor which only uses Cultural Tradition, and I'd even go so far as to argue that the MOM is the best in the game, so it should be your first pick. Even if it's not the best in the game, your Army/Navy Traditions will be so low for the first decade that you're really comparing a 5-6* MOM to a 2-3*, at best, other Advisor. So it certainly remains the best Advisor for that pick. And assuming you're doing anything at all to keep Cultural Tradition from dropping off the face of the Earth, you should easily be able to spare the additional 4-5 Magistrates, tops, every ~20 years (median age is 23, average 25). You'll be doing it anyway (or should be!) to keep your Court stocked with great advisors, why not the best of all?
So the opportunity cost in terms of magistrates, money and an advisor slot is negligible compared to the benefits of minting 10% of your monthly income. This remains true even later on in the game, when National Idea slots outnumber Advisor slots, because the Master of Mint, still being the best single Advisor in the game, is still going to get one of those slots - or at least until you're able to mint so much not factoring him *or* the National Bank that you're not doing anything with it. Which brings me nicely to the next point...
We then need to consider the possibility of stacking National Bank and the Master of Mint. At this point I'm going to bring in a crucial note from my study of economics in real life: a penny saved is NOT a penny earned. A penny lying around unused in real life is wasted value that continues declining from inflation. The inflation bit isn't modeled here (and thank God, because if this game's inflation system were more accurate and the ducat's value was tied to everyone's minting instead of just yours, the game would be screwed over), but the first part is, especially as applied to EU3, where, unlike real life (where your income from work's default position is lying around uninvested in a checking account or a piggy bank), the default position of income is investment. To mint at all, you need a compelling justification - a justification that supersedes tech investment. There must be something better for you to do than invest in tech.
In most cases, there is at least *something.* Military maintenance is a big one for larger states, as that begins to take a toll on your census taxes even when maintenance is minimized. Colonialism is a HUGE one. I know some people say they never mint, but I'm certainly not one of them. The question is how much to mint. I think that if you're a small country with existential threats for neighbors - the Ottomans to your Byzantium, Burgundy to your Brabant, Lithuania or Novgorod or Muscovy to your Tver - then you pretty much throw the minting slider to full for the first 5-6 years so you can make it to 1410 with something to be proud of and to take out of the century. In that case, National Bank is perfectly justifiable. In any other circumstance, though, I cannot see a probable situation where your non-tech expenses are so big that you truly need to mint more than 10% of your income, and I'd set 15% at the absolute cut-off point, typically for later when you've got multiple huge rivals and probably need to keep your own huge army at almost-full or full maintenance at all times.
The litmus test is this: If, after factoring in money you are explicitly earmarking for large investments (say a new Manufactory) and a small rainy-day fund for negative events, you find yourself earning more money than you spend on maintenance and building expansion, gifts, merchants, colonies, etc., reduce your minting. Any surplus money at that point is wasted, because you could have invested it at a 1:1 ratio into tech and now it's not doing anything (and the only way to appropriate it now is to spend it at an inefficient 2:1 ratio in immediate tech investments). And I posit that there is essentially no circumstance where this should be the case, and that in most circumstances National Bank and Master of Mint will put you here; thus the National Bank and Master of Mint should not be stacked, because together they're worse for you than either one individually by costing you tech investment for no gain.
Now we need to assess the National Bank's opportunity cost. This is the defining reason, taken with the above, as to why the Master of Mint is better and the Idea is in most cases one of the worst choices.
The National Bank costs you a National Idea. That means that you're not taking Military Drill, National Trade Policy, Quest for the New World, Land of Opportunity/Colonial Ventures, Patron of the Arts, Unam Sanctam, etc. And you're electing not to take it for sake of taking, as argued previously, a benefit made redundant by the Master of Mint. Unless someone would like to argue that, say, having Grand Captain and National Bank (for +.3 morale and 10% inflation reduction) is better than Military Drill and Master of Mint (+1 morale and 12% reduction)... it should be clear why this is not a good choice. If you can name at least 12 Ideas out of 35 that you would like more than a redundant inflation reduction bonus in a given game, then congrats, you have proved National Bank to be pointless. The effect is even more exaggerated early in the game, when choosing National Bank *literally* means no Military Drill or NTP or QftNW, etc. Later on that's not necessarily the choice because you might already have those Ideas and be comparing NB to decidedly second-tier ideas like, say, Grand Army, but early on you're literally costing yourself the best ideas for a redundant benefit.
So to summarize:
Premise 1: The opportunity cost of a Master of Mint is minimal, as one does not use magistrates in the first decade, 4 magistrates every 20+ years is negligible, and the Master of the Mint is the best Advisor in the game;
Premise 2: Combining the Master of the Mint with the National Bank and actively using both (and thus minting 20-22% of your income) is in most cases actually worse than either one individually, as one usually accumulates annual surpluses, a sign of economic inefficiency;
Premise 3: The opportunity cost of the National Bank is very high, as using NB means not using another NI, which tend to have very good effects;
Conclusion: The Master of Mint makes the National Bank redundant and therefore useless in the vast majority of games.
The only time National Bank isn't useless is when you are a small country with either no income (in which case you mint to avoid loans) or existential threats for neighbors, in which case you (or at least I) mint all your income for 5-6 years, go jump those neighbors quickly and then stabilize your economy from there (in which case any amount of inflation reduction, Bank included, is invaluable to the stabilization process). That's it.
I'll go ahead and reply to criticisms of my nominations - I'm not ignoring y'all!
I would actually then conclude that your later argument that this doesn't apply for rich countries in false. In fact, it's the opposite. It's poor countries that might want to consider this strategy. You're specifically citing a manufactory blitz strategy to maximize your research gains and implying that you can't do this with just a Master of Mint. I think this assumption is wrong because I find that usually the bottleneck to buildings-based expansion of the economy is magistrates, not disposable income. If you're minting at 10% with a 5* MOM (or, later, 15% with no MOM, Full Centralization, Tax Assessor and Gold Standard) and are reasonably wealthy, you should find yourself limited not by money but magistrates.
We must first consider the costs of a Master of Mint. The first Master of Mint you get will cost you quite a few magistrates to produce; but as you have no use for the first decade-ish of Magistrates (after enacting Expand the Bureaucracy), you have enough magistrates to spend on one Advisor. The Master of Mint is hands down the best Advisor which only uses Cultural Tradition, and I'd even go so far as to argue that the MOM is the best in the game, so it should be your first pick. Even if it's not the best in the game, your Army/Navy Traditions will be so low for the first decade that you're really comparing a 5-6* MOM to a 2-3*, at best, other Advisor. So it certainly remains the best Advisor for that pick. And assuming you're doing anything at all to keep Cultural Tradition from dropping off the face of the Earth, you should easily be able to spare the additional 4-5 Magistrates, tops, every ~20 years (median age is 23, average 25). You'll be doing it anyway (or should be!) to keep your Court stocked with great advisors, why not the best of all?
So the opportunity cost in terms of magistrates, money and an advisor slot is negligible compared to the benefits of minting 10% of your monthly income. This remains true even later on in the game, when National Idea slots outnumber Advisor slots, because the Master of Mint, still being the best single Advisor in the game, is still going to get one of those slots - or at least until you're able to mint so much not factoring him *or* the National Bank that you're not doing anything with it. Which brings me nicely to the next point...
We then need to consider the possibility of stacking National Bank and the Master of Mint. At this point I'm going to bring in a crucial note from my study of economics in real life: a penny saved is NOT a penny earned. A penny lying around unused in real life is wasted value that continues declining from inflation. The inflation bit isn't modeled here (and thank God, because if this game's inflation system were more accurate and the ducat's value was tied to everyone's minting instead of just yours, the game would be screwed over), but the first part is, especially as applied to EU3, where, unlike real life (where your income from work's default position is lying around uninvested in a checking account or a piggy bank), the default position of income is investment. To mint at all, you need a compelling justification - a justification that supersedes tech investment. There must be something better for you to do than invest in tech.
In most cases, there is at least *something.* Military maintenance is a big one for larger states, as that begins to take a toll on your census taxes even when maintenance is minimized. Colonialism is a HUGE one. I know some people say they never mint, but I'm certainly not one of them. The question is how much to mint. I think that if you're a small country with existential threats for neighbors - the Ottomans to your Byzantium, Burgundy to your Brabant, Lithuania or Novgorod or Muscovy to your Tver - then you pretty much throw the minting slider to full for the first 5-6 years so you can make it to 1410 with something to be proud of and to take out of the century. In that case, National Bank is perfectly justifiable. In any other circumstance, though, I cannot see a probable situation where your non-tech expenses are so big that you truly need to mint more than 10% of your income, and I'd set 15% at the absolute cut-off point, typically for later when you've got multiple huge rivals and probably need to keep your own huge army at almost-full or full maintenance at all times.
The litmus test is this: If, after factoring in money you are explicitly earmarking for large investments (say a new Manufactory) and a small rainy-day fund for negative events, you find yourself earning more money than you spend on maintenance and building expansion, gifts, merchants, colonies, etc., reduce your minting. Any surplus money at that point is wasted, because you could have invested it at a 1:1 ratio into tech and now it's not doing anything (and the only way to appropriate it now is to spend it at an inefficient 2:1 ratio in immediate tech investments). And I posit that there is essentially no circumstance where this should be the case, and that in most circumstances National Bank and Master of Mint will put you here; thus the National Bank and Master of Mint should not be stacked, because together they're worse for you than either one individually by costing you tech investment for no gain.
Now we need to assess the National Bank's opportunity cost. This is the defining reason, taken with the above, as to why the Master of Mint is better and the Idea is in most cases one of the worst choices.
The National Bank costs you a National Idea. That means that you're not taking Military Drill, National Trade Policy, Quest for the New World, Land of Opportunity/Colonial Ventures, Patron of the Arts, Unam Sanctam, etc. And you're electing not to take it for sake of taking, as argued previously, a benefit made redundant by the Master of Mint. Unless someone would like to argue that, say, having Grand Captain and National Bank (for +.3 morale and 10% inflation reduction) is better than Military Drill and Master of Mint (+1 morale and 12% reduction)... it should be clear why this is not a good choice. If you can name at least 12 Ideas out of 35 that you would like more than a redundant inflation reduction bonus in a given game, then congrats, you have proved National Bank to be pointless. The effect is even more exaggerated early in the game, when choosing National Bank *literally* means no Military Drill or NTP or QftNW, etc. Later on that's not necessarily the choice because you might already have those Ideas and be comparing NB to decidedly second-tier ideas like, say, Grand Army, but early on you're literally costing yourself the best ideas for a redundant benefit.
So to summarize:
Premise 1: The opportunity cost of a Master of Mint is minimal, as one does not use magistrates in the first decade, 4 magistrates every 20+ years is negligible, and the Master of the Mint is the best Advisor in the game;
Premise 2: Combining the Master of the Mint with the National Bank and actively using both (and thus minting 20-22% of your income) is in most cases actually worse than either one individually, as one usually accumulates annual surpluses, a sign of economic inefficiency;
Premise 3: The opportunity cost of the National Bank is very high, as using NB means not using another NI, which tend to have very good effects;
Conclusion: The Master of Mint makes the National Bank redundant and therefore useless in the vast majority of games.
The only time National Bank isn't useless is when you are a small country with either no income (in which case you mint to avoid loans) or existential threats for neighbors, in which case you (or at least I) mint all your income for 5-6 years, go jump those neighbors quickly and then stabilize your economy from there (in which case any amount of inflation reduction, Bank included, is invaluable to the stabilization process). That's it.
I'll go ahead and reply to criticisms of my nominations - I'm not ignoring y'all!
I've never played as Sweden, but my gut reaction is surprise that it qualifies as aforementioned small state. In any case, yes, if you must mint more than the Master of Mint allows without inflation in order to avoid taking on loans, and you need it on a consistent basis, then you should take the National Bank. I'm curious, though, what is Sweden's problem, specifically, that would cause such a situation?
...easily reachable? Forgive me if this sounds like an attack on your economic skills, knul, but in what situations could you possibly need to mint to 15% inflation? 10% I could see, maybe; my current Byzantium run saw me getting to 7% inflation before jumping the Ottomans, and I only pulled it off at 7% because I got really lucky and had nine Greek Patriot rebel regiments spawn in Europe while the Ottomans were already set up for the attack, so it saved me the 3 planned years of infantry buildup. I'd say 10% is understandable in the two special cases I mentioned at the end of my argument earlier, so if you're there, then yes, it is useful. I would counter by positing that these situations are uncommon enough that in most cases, NB is worthless, and therefore meritorious of the "worst NIs" pile.
I'm not saying minting isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. I love minting. But good management of your economy should lead you never to need to mint more than 10-15% of your income sans the two exceptions cross-referenced earlier.
Yes, having one or the other is good. No, having both is not good. If you're stockpiling money without an explicit purpose for doing so then you're wasting it when it could have gone into tech (and you're still wasting half of it, relative to investing into tech instead of minting, if you use the spend-200-to-get-100 option).
Sorry, but I think this post is all backwards. The only major sink for magistrates with regard to advisors is in the first decade, when thankfully they have no other use anyway. Once you get that first set of moves to 100, you're still going to be able to keep CT around 75% even with decay if you do anything at all to maintain it, so it then becomes one magistrate every 4-5 years (given average life expectancy of advisors) to maintain. Dirt cheap on magistrate costs. Meanwhile, National Bank is taking up a valuable NI spot, where the Master of Mint, while taking a valuable Advisor slot, is also clearly superior to all its alternatives (where NB, especially factoring the MOM's existence, isn't clearly superior to a host of other ideas, like Military Drill or Quest for the New World). Finally, I would say that large countries, mercantilist or free trade, are the worst options for taking National Bank, because they aren't in need of constant military buildup to beat existential threats across the border, and their census tax income is higher than their annual budgetary expenses. You are certainly right to say that 10% minting w/o inflation is a no-brainer, but you're wrong to say that the National Bank is the way to get that ability.
Like which?
What rationale do you have for this claim?
Maybe I should make an exception in addition to the previous ones. If you're in a case in multiplayer where you know your neighbors, or otherwise your main threats, are planning to combine a National Bank and Master of Mint to build a much bigger military than you, and you suspect that you won't be able to get a tech advantage fast enough to negate it, then it might be worthwhile to replicate the strategy. In singleplayer the AI doesn't do this, though (rather it ineffectively mints everything without regard for anything and hits an inflationary spiral and dies), so it's not as applicable.
As noted before, the key difference between MOM and NB is that where NB has a lot of damn good alternatives in rival NIs, MOM pretty much stands alone as the best advisor, bar none. Like I said to your previous comment though, if others are combining MOM and NB with the express purpose of outfunding you militarily and destroying you, then you can make that exception.
This is not true, I'm sorry. They are the same kind of money, and they are an interchangeable resource. Converting tech money to buildings is definitely profitable depending on the building, yes.
I'll point to my litmus test earlier: If, post-buildings, you are in the black, your economy is less efficient than one which is at zero. Stockpiled money that isn't being directly earmarked for big spending projects (like your magistrates bit) is wasted. You don't seem to disagree, I think, since you're just talking about spending stockpiled money on buildings, so the argument is a bit different - you seem to be saying that in order to maximize your building capacity you need more than a Master of Mint.
I would actually then conclude that your later argument that this doesn't apply for rich countries in false. In fact, it's the opposite. It's poor countries that might want to consider this strategy. You're specifically citing a manufactory blitz strategy to maximize your research gains and implying that you can't do this with just a Master of Mint. I think this assumption is wrong because I find that usually the bottleneck to buildings-based expansion of the economy is magistrates, not disposable income. If you're minting at 10% with a 5* MOM (or, later, 15% with no MOM, Full Centralization, Tax Assessor and Gold Standard) and are reasonably wealthy, you should find yourself limited not by money but magistrates.
You usually find yourself limited by magistrates and not money for regular province improvements, but I've never had enough money to continuously build manufacturies or to build a manufactury in every province of a good-sized empire.
My #1 priority is to milk the game for every fraction of a magistrate I can get up to spending 90 prestige on a sphere, but #2 is to make as many ducats as possible. I agree that stockpiled money is wasted money--in theory at least, although in practice a small-to-medium stockpile is invaluable to deal with unexpected problems and to cover your mistakes--but I'm talking about spending, not stockpiling/ There's always a better way to spend your money than to leave it in tech investment, like manufacturies and the high-end government buildings, and of course military/diplomacy/cultural specials, etc.
A question: when you say tech money and spendable money are an interchangeable resource, are you talking about minting or something else?
My #1 priority is to milk the game for every fraction of a magistrate I can get up to spending 90 prestige on a sphere, but #2 is to make as many ducats as possible. I agree that stockpiled money is wasted money--in theory at least, although in practice a small-to-medium stockpile is invaluable to deal with unexpected problems and to cover your mistakes--but I'm talking about spending, not stockpiling/ There's always a better way to spend your money than to leave it in tech investment, like manufacturies and the high-end government buildings, and of course military/diplomacy/cultural specials, etc.
A question: when you say tech money and spendable money are an interchangeable resource, are you talking about minting or something else?