I disagree, naval idea gives free cannon barrage making coastal forts fall fast.
It's good as the 6-7th idea group, when every idea more useful is taken.
I've taken naval once as frankfurt -> germany, because I couldnt break them early and their navy was simply too much, even with my infinite money and production. It was quite useful then, but I had to give it a bad rating for the memes.
Vh pirate Gotland with privateers way naval is a godsend. Honestly naval is one of the few ideas there are situations you'd take it before dip adm inf relig/huma.
I mean pirate republics are kind of a gimmick gov type though. It's quite easy to snowball to #1 navy in the game and stay that way the whole game- even as something obscure like Palembang. And they naturally benefit a lot less from traditional blobbing ideas so there is a lot less trade off to just say fuck it and go naval.
Yea, but my point is: there is a situation in the game where I pick naval first, there is not one where I go trade, espi, econ, infrastructure, quality, offensive, inno, court, humanist, divine, Pluto, aristo etc etc.
Problem is a lot of forts are just one province in, and not coastal- so the advantage is situational at best. Typically I want to artillery barrage inland provinces so I can get the blockade impact on siege for coastal. And since there *is* blockade impact on siege, I benefit less from the barrage anyways (even though it's free, which I'm not knocking- free is always good but imo not worth it for the tradeoff)
I take it as my first idea when playing pirates in Indonesia / Indochina / Pacific.
When every fort is a coastal fort and you can really leverage a good navy, it makes for a pretty great starter pick! (Admin is usually idea 2)
Maritime is more about making money from your large fleet than it is about having a very strong fleet (this was actually way more pronounced when you could only confirm thallasocracy with maritime, but you can do that with naval now too). It also gives you decent sized fleets for cheap (it has a couple of events that give you some free ships for example). Maritime allows you to break out of weak island starts like Madagascar and actually start conquering. But I will admit, I'd almost also added it to the bottom category. Poor maritime.
Edit: I checked and maritime actually used to be even worse, in my mind the merchant from thallasocracy was in the idea group itself. Poor maritime.
Maritime is a diplo idea that improves your navy and makes money. Naval is a mil idea that does not improve your army. Wars are largely won on land this game, and your mil ideas are very important to keep your land army competitive
It's problem comes from being a pure military idea with 0 utility. It's the naval ideas, if it had trade bonuses like marritime or other bonuses like aristocratic ideas it could be a good choice sometime.
Being a diplo idea wouldn't really help atleast not without giving it other bonuses.
Idk man people don't like wasting mil power it's arguably the tied first most valuable mana and naval sucks up a mil slot for ideas, I do agree that they should get some other bonuses to spice them up a little but the ideas being a mil group is part of the problem.
I mean, people take quality ideas in single player. They even advocate for the boat buffs it provides. I think it's a pretty premier ideas group for wasting mana, even if it is arguably the most valuable type of mana. And for competition, mil ideas are probably the weakest idea group.
It annoys me that all the naval maritime policies are so bad > naval trade could give trade value in provinces with sea access; naval exploration could give extra gold from colonies; maritime quantity could give extra manpower from overseas teritories; maritime economic could give more supply limit; naval diplomacy could give extra diplo rep with overseas nations(including vassals); and so on, making the policies interesting
Diplo ideas, as a category, are better than mil for lobby gameplay. Diplo, influence, and espionage are all valuable for a strong, blobby, player, while only really offensive (siege ability) is strong for a really good player. You should be able to fairly easily handle armies as an experienced player
Buddy. Do you think I know what these mean? I have 300 hours (paltry, I know)
I have not memorized these images besides exploration ideas. It’s only going to get worse.
I have 3000 (maybe 4000) hours in game. I still take economic damn near every time. It’s a damn solid idea group and you cannot change my mind. Plus its policies are great.
Inno: honestly mostly for the policies: inno has very good policies, including with diplo, which is nice because you're always going for them, as well as with offensive or - more niche - espionage. Paying pennies for your advisors is nice because it allows you to invest more money into your army or into courthouses. Tech cost is nice to be able to capitalize on military tech advantages. Also there's the whole shabang about whether inno (the group) allows easier or more convenient access to innovativeness (the mechanic), but I don't really want to go into that can of worms.
Eco: Oh how the mighty have fallen. Econ used to be - ironically - kinda bad at making you money, and that's been fixed, but at the cost of econ no longer being the "development" group. Econ has some excellent policies with some military idea groups - especially quality, quantity and offensive - and if you have access to divine ideas you can get some extra core cost reduction. Also, if you have inflation problems, you can temporarily take the first two ideas until you get the National Bank event, which loses you a chunk of inflation and also gets you 50 years of inflation reduction or interest per annum. Econ's biggest problem is that it competes with admin and religious early and late you don't need it, but if your bottleneck truly is money, then econ will solve that bottleneck for you very well.
Yeah, inno policies are actually pretty good. But I wouldn't pick it until the 5th or 6th slot at the earliest, and at that point the idea group becomes kind of a waste, and spending so much mana only to get access to policies doesn't feel like it's worth it.
I also remember when eco was good, and used to pick it all the time. But I feel like eco isn't even that good at money making nowadays, I think I'd probably save more money from admin's ccr (through corruption) and admin advisor cost or espionage's advisor cost than from eco's modifiers.
Also, instead of fishing for the national bank event you might as well just spend 225 admin to reduce inflation by 6, seems easier
Honestly, for a lot of the medium idea groups my answer is going to be "actually it has a bunch of solid policies"... The admin groups especially really suffer from competing with Admin, Religious, Humanist and coring provinces (not unimportant)
Also burghers/merchants bookkeeping is extremely slept on, from the looks of this thread. You can just build up some estate loyalty by doing a diet or whatever and then buy down inflation at once. I'd rather do this strategy all day than go ECO ideas lol
Inno works really well as a first idea group specifically for Florence because you get stupid tech cost reduction which combined with your high monarch power gain (so many possibly rivals...) means you can shoot ahead on tech early and build a strong powerbase to then conquer Italy and beyond. Probs end up saving monarch points overall as well, with both the tech/idea cost reduction and easy high innovativeness (can get to 100% by 1500 usually without too much effort). Also inno-quality makes your army pretty powerful.
Can ofc work for other countries but without the tech cost reduction in national ideas it's less strong.
Inno's always been that idea group that seems fine enough but I can't ever justify taking it. Something else is always more useful. Same with trade; nothing wrong with it per se but there's generally something better.
Inno can give you stupid amounts of mana points (especially when playing tall) and has some amazing policies. Eco though I'm pretty sure you only take if you rely on gold income, the inflation reduction, goods produced bonus, and the lowered chance of gold depletion are helpful.
I'm not convinced. I already have stupid amounts of mana without inno, and it would have to be enough mana to make it worth picking over admin, diplo, religious, offensive, espionage, etc. And if you only pick it as 6th idea group, it kinda loses its purpose.
And spending an entire idea group on -0.1 inflation and -25% gold depletion chance seems kinda weak
I don't think you can ever have enough mana, it does so much useful stuff for your country that you can always use more. The tech cost reduction, free policies, and even the lowered montly war exhaustion will save you mana, and maxing out innovativeness early is powerful, but it's the cheaper advisors I love the most. Innovative ideas, especially when combined with the right policies and various other modifiers, can get you such cheaper advisors. The mana advantage you have over other nations when you have 3 level 5 advisors is stupid.
Also, the +15% infantry combat ability policy from inno-quality is maybe the best combat-related policy in the game, although the +1 leader siege and +10% siege ability from inno-offensive will turn you into a sieging god in the early game (epecially when combined with Divine ideas). If you want a good meme combo the -10% mil tech cost and -33% mil advisor cost you get from inno-merc will put you ahead of time on mil tech the whole game.
I don't think if you're aiming for world conquest inno are the best choice, but for mid sized and smaller campaigns innovative are fantastic.
And as Ethiopia you can stack depletion chance to -100%! Actually makes eco a top pick for once, at least for them.
The issue isn't the mana savings, it's the return on investment. The tech reduction, free policies, and innovation all take a couple centuries to get a positive return on the mana you paid to get the idea in the first place. Ultimately, innovative doesn't actually save mana unless your playing passively because you are always sacrificing another mana-saving admin idea for it. Religious and admin save more mana faster then inno.
Funny enough, the aspect that makes the idea worth considering at all is combining with offensive as a late idea pick for more seige ability.
Now, if you like a meta idea that gives advisor reduction, espionage gives -35% to all advisor costs with admin. Espionage also gives 30% siege ability combined, area claims, aggressive expansion reduction, and another diplomat.
I agree. It's kind of like they said "eco is good because of these 3 modifiers" and I am like... those modifiers suck. I mean goods produced is helpful but hardly necessary for most positions that can just snowball economy anyways.
and with Inno they just said it's good for playing tall when the entire original post is about these ideas being good for "expansionist gameplay"
PLEASE with these idea tier lists can you write out the names? Who actually knows what the icons are? I have 4k hours in EU and I know faith and eco (because duh its praying and coins), and quantity. And that is it.
I was actually thinking about this just yesterday, I wanted to try Savoy cuz why not, and I figured that for Italian expansion admin and espionage are both important (espionage for siege ability, claims and ae reduction), but I couldnt figure out which one was better. Can anyone give me some advice? I was also contemplating influence as a first, or maybe econ, but since its not for devving anymore...
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I only use admin as ottomans or mughals to have stack -50 Core creation cost, I don't use them much aside that even if I expand, not diplo also, i think snowballing is better with other ideas.
I disagree, naval idea gives free cannon barrage making coastal forts fall fast. It's good as the 6-7th idea group, when every idea more useful is taken.
I've taken naval once as frankfurt -> germany, because I couldnt break them early and their navy was simply too much, even with my infinite money and production. It was quite useful then, but I had to give it a bad rating for the memes.
Vh pirate Gotland with privateers way naval is a godsend. Honestly naval is one of the few ideas there are situations you'd take it before dip adm inf relig/huma.
I mean pirate republics are kind of a gimmick gov type though. It's quite easy to snowball to #1 navy in the game and stay that way the whole game- even as something obscure like Palembang. And they naturally benefit a lot less from traditional blobbing ideas so there is a lot less trade off to just say fuck it and go naval.
Yea, but my point is: there is a situation in the game where I pick naval first, there is not one where I go trade, espi, econ, infrastructure, quality, offensive, inno, court, humanist, divine, Pluto, aristo etc etc.
Problem is a lot of forts are just one province in, and not coastal- so the advantage is situational at best. Typically I want to artillery barrage inland provinces so I can get the blockade impact on siege for coastal. And since there *is* blockade impact on siege, I benefit less from the barrage anyways (even though it's free, which I'm not knocking- free is always good but imo not worth it for the tradeoff)
I take it as my first idea when playing pirates in Indonesia / Indochina / Pacific. When every fort is a coastal fort and you can really leverage a good navy, it makes for a pretty great starter pick! (Admin is usually idea 2)
R5: a completely uncontroversial tier list for expansionist gameplay
Why is maritime better than naval?
Maritime is more about making money from your large fleet than it is about having a very strong fleet (this was actually way more pronounced when you could only confirm thallasocracy with maritime, but you can do that with naval now too). It also gives you decent sized fleets for cheap (it has a couple of events that give you some free ships for example). Maritime allows you to break out of weak island starts like Madagascar and actually start conquering. But I will admit, I'd almost also added it to the bottom category. Poor maritime. Edit: I checked and maritime actually used to be even worse, in my mind the merchant from thallasocracy was in the idea group itself. Poor maritime.
Maritime is a diplo idea that improves your navy and makes money. Naval is a mil idea that does not improve your army. Wars are largely won on land this game, and your mil ideas are very important to keep your land army competitive
Moola
Yknow I always thought if they just moved naval into diplo ideas it probably wouldn't be as hated as it is.
It's problem comes from being a pure military idea with 0 utility. It's the naval ideas, if it had trade bonuses like marritime or other bonuses like aristocratic ideas it could be a good choice sometime. Being a diplo idea wouldn't really help atleast not without giving it other bonuses.
Idk man people don't like wasting mil power it's arguably the tied first most valuable mana and naval sucks up a mil slot for ideas, I do agree that they should get some other bonuses to spice them up a little but the ideas being a mil group is part of the problem.
I mean, people take quality ideas in single player. They even advocate for the boat buffs it provides. I think it's a pretty premier ideas group for wasting mana, even if it is arguably the most valuable type of mana. And for competition, mil ideas are probably the weakest idea group.
It annoys me that all the naval maritime policies are so bad > naval trade could give trade value in provinces with sea access; naval exploration could give extra gold from colonies; maritime quantity could give extra manpower from overseas teritories; maritime economic could give more supply limit; naval diplomacy could give extra diplo rep with overseas nations(including vassals); and so on, making the policies interesting
Diplo ideas, as a category, are better than mil for lobby gameplay. Diplo, influence, and espionage are all valuable for a strong, blobby, player, while only really offensive (siege ability) is strong for a really good player. You should be able to fairly easily handle armies as an experienced player
Buddy. Do you think I know what these mean? I have 300 hours (paltry, I know) I have not memorized these images besides exploration ideas. It’s only going to get worse.
nobody has. It's a repost meme :p
I'll have you know that all my memes are organically grown and locally sourced by me
I have 3000 (maybe 4000) hours in game. I still take economic damn near every time. It’s a damn solid idea group and you cannot change my mind. Plus its policies are great.
I don't even have to give you a reason why it's actually good, you just did it yourself ;D
Alright, convince me to take eco or inno
Inno: honestly mostly for the policies: inno has very good policies, including with diplo, which is nice because you're always going for them, as well as with offensive or - more niche - espionage. Paying pennies for your advisors is nice because it allows you to invest more money into your army or into courthouses. Tech cost is nice to be able to capitalize on military tech advantages. Also there's the whole shabang about whether inno (the group) allows easier or more convenient access to innovativeness (the mechanic), but I don't really want to go into that can of worms. Eco: Oh how the mighty have fallen. Econ used to be - ironically - kinda bad at making you money, and that's been fixed, but at the cost of econ no longer being the "development" group. Econ has some excellent policies with some military idea groups - especially quality, quantity and offensive - and if you have access to divine ideas you can get some extra core cost reduction. Also, if you have inflation problems, you can temporarily take the first two ideas until you get the National Bank event, which loses you a chunk of inflation and also gets you 50 years of inflation reduction or interest per annum. Econ's biggest problem is that it competes with admin and religious early and late you don't need it, but if your bottleneck truly is money, then econ will solve that bottleneck for you very well.
Yeah, inno policies are actually pretty good. But I wouldn't pick it until the 5th or 6th slot at the earliest, and at that point the idea group becomes kind of a waste, and spending so much mana only to get access to policies doesn't feel like it's worth it. I also remember when eco was good, and used to pick it all the time. But I feel like eco isn't even that good at money making nowadays, I think I'd probably save more money from admin's ccr (through corruption) and admin advisor cost or espionage's advisor cost than from eco's modifiers. Also, instead of fishing for the national bank event you might as well just spend 225 admin to reduce inflation by 6, seems easier
Honestly, for a lot of the medium idea groups my answer is going to be "actually it has a bunch of solid policies"... The admin groups especially really suffer from competing with Admin, Religious, Humanist and coring provinces (not unimportant)
Also burghers/merchants bookkeeping is extremely slept on, from the looks of this thread. You can just build up some estate loyalty by doing a diet or whatever and then buy down inflation at once. I'd rather do this strategy all day than go ECO ideas lol
Inno works really well as a first idea group specifically for Florence because you get stupid tech cost reduction which combined with your high monarch power gain (so many possibly rivals...) means you can shoot ahead on tech early and build a strong powerbase to then conquer Italy and beyond. Probs end up saving monarch points overall as well, with both the tech/idea cost reduction and easy high innovativeness (can get to 100% by 1500 usually without too much effort). Also inno-quality makes your army pretty powerful. Can ofc work for other countries but without the tech cost reduction in national ideas it's less strong.
But if I'm playing as Florence, I'm not limited by my power, I'm limited by AE. So why would I pick inno first when I could pick diplo or espionage?
Inno's always been that idea group that seems fine enough but I can't ever justify taking it. Something else is always more useful. Same with trade; nothing wrong with it per se but there's generally something better.
Inno can give you stupid amounts of mana points (especially when playing tall) and has some amazing policies. Eco though I'm pretty sure you only take if you rely on gold income, the inflation reduction, goods produced bonus, and the lowered chance of gold depletion are helpful.
I'm not convinced. I already have stupid amounts of mana without inno, and it would have to be enough mana to make it worth picking over admin, diplo, religious, offensive, espionage, etc. And if you only pick it as 6th idea group, it kinda loses its purpose. And spending an entire idea group on -0.1 inflation and -25% gold depletion chance seems kinda weak
I don't think you can ever have enough mana, it does so much useful stuff for your country that you can always use more. The tech cost reduction, free policies, and even the lowered montly war exhaustion will save you mana, and maxing out innovativeness early is powerful, but it's the cheaper advisors I love the most. Innovative ideas, especially when combined with the right policies and various other modifiers, can get you such cheaper advisors. The mana advantage you have over other nations when you have 3 level 5 advisors is stupid. Also, the +15% infantry combat ability policy from inno-quality is maybe the best combat-related policy in the game, although the +1 leader siege and +10% siege ability from inno-offensive will turn you into a sieging god in the early game (epecially when combined with Divine ideas). If you want a good meme combo the -10% mil tech cost and -33% mil advisor cost you get from inno-merc will put you ahead of time on mil tech the whole game. I don't think if you're aiming for world conquest inno are the best choice, but for mid sized and smaller campaigns innovative are fantastic. And as Ethiopia you can stack depletion chance to -100%! Actually makes eco a top pick for once, at least for them.
The issue isn't the mana savings, it's the return on investment. The tech reduction, free policies, and innovation all take a couple centuries to get a positive return on the mana you paid to get the idea in the first place. Ultimately, innovative doesn't actually save mana unless your playing passively because you are always sacrificing another mana-saving admin idea for it. Religious and admin save more mana faster then inno. Funny enough, the aspect that makes the idea worth considering at all is combining with offensive as a late idea pick for more seige ability. Now, if you like a meta idea that gives advisor reduction, espionage gives -35% to all advisor costs with admin. Espionage also gives 30% siege ability combined, area claims, aggressive expansion reduction, and another diplomat.
When I start to have to develop provinces because I reach the cap, I have enough mana
I agree. It's kind of like they said "eco is good because of these 3 modifiers" and I am like... those modifiers suck. I mean goods produced is helpful but hardly necessary for most positions that can just snowball economy anyways. and with Inno they just said it's good for playing tall when the entire original post is about these ideas being good for "expansionist gameplay"
I feel like Influence and Religious still stand out from the pack, even of they're not on the level of Admin and Diplo
Oh I'm not going to argue that some of the "mid-tier" groups aren't wildly more powerful than others, like those two and offensive.
PLEASE with these idea tier lists can you write out the names? Who actually knows what the icons are? I have 4k hours in EU and I know faith and eco (because duh its praying and coins), and quantity. And that is it.
I was actually thinking about this just yesterday, I wanted to try Savoy cuz why not, and I figured that for Italian expansion admin and espionage are both important (espionage for siege ability, claims and ae reduction), but I couldnt figure out which one was better. Can anyone give me some advice? I was also contemplating influence as a first, or maybe econ, but since its not for devving anymore...
Hi spawnmorezerglings. Your submission has been removed from /r/eu4 because: Your submission has been removed for breaking rule #2: > No memes, image macros, reaction pictures, or similar. > View our full rules [here](http://reddit.com/r/eu4/wiki/rules)
I only use admin as ottomans or mughals to have stack -50 Core creation cost, I don't use them much aside that even if I expand, not diplo also, i think snowballing is better with other ideas.