So basically the same situation as with Espionage ideas before the latest couple buffs. Court Ideas don't outright give you anything ground breaking, but the way they interact with other mechanics means you actually can get more out of them than some of the "meta" ideas.
Agreed. Court ideas fall into the situationally good camp along with Espionage ideas. Espionage work really well when playing in the HRE where AE and faster sieges ot level 3 forts matters more then province warscore cost. Economic, Mercenary, and Defensive ideas also fit here.
No, Espionage since the changes are just the best anti AE tool. Court gives... reform progress and 2 policies ? Sounds absolutely horrible. I dont see how you dont get a better game with lets say Inno here.
I've found Court ideas are actually even stronger when you have a nation with more then 3 estates. It really helps when playing as the Emperor of China, Mughals, Indian states, even Russia with the Cossack. Meanwhile Infrastructure ideas are great for colonial games due to the policies and the state governing cap bonus. It helps on tall games or games where you are colonising a lot. GB and Japan can really benefit from it.
EU 4 is so great because every idea group can actually be really helpful in certain situations. There really is no downright bad idea, some are just universally more useful like quantity or economic. Love this game so much.
I took court ideas for one of my first runs on the new patch and was surprised how useful they ended up being. Taking them early for some countries can provide a nice boost.
When I first saw the three new idea groups, I was initially underwhelmed. Then I discovered the easy 5% ccr from Admin-Court and decided to give Court a try. I was pleasantly surprised by the qol you mentioned in the video, along with the absolutism impact (helps justify keeping more of the mana and gov cap privileges) and its situationally useful completion bonus for HRE / EOC runs. Infrastructure is a bit less useful, but movement speed, construction cost, and lowering the gov cost of states are all incredibly nice to have. Infra-Offensive and Infra-Court are also pretty good policies. I agree that merc ideas are awful because mercenaries suck to use. If I'm at the point where I'm considering using mercs outside of the free company to help get going, something has gone horribly wrong.
Try Swiss with Merc ideas. It's so strong that it's filthy. By 2nd complete idea group your mercs can be way cheaper than normal troops and you can rack up some merc discipline at the same time.
If for some forsaken reason you've gone innovative and mercenary ideas you get a pretty obscene policy synergy though. 33% Mil advisor cost down, 20% all advisor down from inno, 25% mil advisor down from base Mercenary ideas and then 30% total mil tech price reduction. What you'll use all those extra milpoints for who knows. Maybe strengthen legitimacy 50 times so your citizens don't lose confidence in your government for taking these ideas?
I think court has relatively more value in a very hard difficulty run under specific circumstances. In normal mode its insanely easy to blob and its hard to justify delaying influence or diplo ideas. Getting 50 PP for example is absolutely trivial on normal mode, but in a no balls run it could take 20-30 years depending on the start.
@@yusufardagures5490 If you do a no-balls (very hard difficulty, no allies, no loans, no birding) world conquest run on a non overpowered nation (like France/Ottomans/Austria etc) the campaign will probably be at least 100 years longer. Obviously, diplomatic/influence ideas will also have significantly less value because you can't even ally countries (or PU them). In those situations espionage and court suddenly become very appealing. In normal mode you can literally just ally any GP right from day 1, and instantly declare on every neighbour and expand as fast as possible. Having -20% province war score cost from Diplo ideas is just too strong to pass on. It's also reflected in the idea choice of speedrunners, which is mostly exclusively diplo and admin ideas.
Largely agree with this video, I have found that Infrastructure had some good use cases if you're playing less wide though. I had a campaign with a couple of friends where I was basically restricted to only owning Germany + Poland and I didn't have enough governing capacity to state all the good land with just Admin ideas. Taking infra-ideas I ended up having gov-cap left over to abuse expand infrastructure instead of struggling with gov-cap. Being able to core hundreds of more dev led to quite a powerspike, so it's by no means a bad idea in some cases, dev cost also makes sense when you're more restricted in expansion, don't think I'd ever take it singleplayer though
Infrastructure is actually meta in serious MP lobbies rn. In MP you are forced to do a mix of tall and wide or you get outpaced by everyone else. Infrastructure plays into that really well and can be really strong even in SP on nations like Netherlands or Great Britain that get a lot of bonuses to deving from Ideas and Missions. I've done a Tall Colonial Netherlands campaign recently where pretty much the only land in Europe I took was the Lowlands and developed the hell out of it. I ended up having nearly as much dev in the Lowlands as there was in the entire Indian Subcontinent. The state of Holland had more dev than entirety of Bohemia with all of Silesia...
@xRozmarzony especially in a mp, you can very quickly run over gov cap before statehouses are unlocked or before you can build them everywhere, especially with prussia govmt if he did that.
Monk is wrong about Quantity being the best mil idea though. It literally gives your enemy a higher national supply limit on your country, helping them with attrition. A shot to your own knee
Love Court, also had a great game as Japan with Infastructure going for the Stardust Crusader achievement, the ideagroup feels they it fits them extremely well due to their mission tree wanting them to go isolationist for awhile to bring down your autonomy.
@@JohnsonPadder killing heirs and buying down subject loyalty is usually what I use it for. Even with these though it still always remains above 50 at least with constant warfare.
I tried court ideas today after having seen your video. Did nothing special, Hussite Bohemia doing nothing, growing strong and being in spectate mode. Court feels great. I saw the nice little bonuses and didnt think much of it, but when the second idea group hit my estates were like little kitten. The flexibility it offered felt amazing. I was able to more or less freely adjust estate policies, never fear a coup, have more policies and the ones i had didnt even lower absolutism that much. My second group was aristocratic because sending your monarch to death without stab cost felt like the cherry on top. Wouldnt have tried it without your video, will never give up on it again and you are right with first or second group. You want it comfy real early and can build your coming ideas around i quite well.
Court is a missleading idea set, it seems like a good idea set to manage your estates easily and for the emperors, but then when you take a look at the policies you realise it comboes insanely well with Admin and Religious which are the two best idea sets in the game alongside diplomatic. This also makes court one of the best idea set to finish your world conquest, depending if you need Quantity/Offensive/Influence it can be picked as 4th/5th/6th or 7th idea set. That combo with Plutocratic is kinda hilarious tough.
Court ideas allows a gov reform that allows you to sell land to specific estate -> Sell the crownland to nobility to get higher manpower -> Sell crownland to get low crownland to tick autonomy during age of absolutism to immediately lower autonomy -> Get to 10 crownland and force Estate statutory rights to fire to remove 30 crownland -> Switch a government reform to parliament to remove nobility estate -> You should have 70-80 crownland ownership while getting tons of money from selling crownland
Although I agree with you that court is a luxury, I would disagree with it having no gap closer, because I think Reform Progress is a gap closer. I have been experimenting with chasing down reform progress, and so far it seems very powerful. Starting as Teutonic Order you have access to 2 wonders in your expansion path that give bonus to reform progress, so in my current game I tried stacking crownlands instead of giving out mana privs - which kinda goes against every previous meta in the game. However I was able to achieve a very powerful Archbishopric in the HRE by advancing my government. I think getting access to these government reforms faster has actually become a really strong strategy especially if you get access to a bunch of advisor cost reduction, because if you get advisor costs down you can make up for the mana privs and get those juicy reform bonuses for high crownlands plus court ideas has been really powerful for me recently.
Infurstructure and offensive gives one of the best policies in games which is plus 2 siege bonus even crazier in end game where you can stack the added plus 3 from splendor abilities and even level 8 forts feel easy to siege. Also i used court with my last ming playthrough and yes it made it a whole lot easier.
@@JohnsonPadder I'm not saying to be able to make new merc armies out of thing air. Just the ability to use an army's manpower to increase/decrease it's troop count by paying more into them, like an investment. This could also have a mechanic in which if you remove troops from the army it will make the army have a debuff for a few months, but you could get buffs for increasing the size of them.
Mercenary ideas can be really fun if you also take the elite mercenary government reform and have mercenary bonuses in your national ideas. It's probably not min-max at all, but it's interesting.
The annoying part is that reform also gives the bonus that mercs no longer cost professionalism. That said its still a lot of fun to play something like an italian minor or the netherlands and buy a massive army of mercs to fight wars with way bigger nations.
I’ve recently started playing with quantity again because I’ve found attrition to be particularly strong recently. As a more casual player not min maxing my armies and wars, quantity allows me to recover from a big war faster. It’s also strong as the change to slow burn professionalism for manpower has meant when fighting strong nations you can’t reinforce your armies as quickly when you’re low or out of manpower.
Back before policies defensive was almost always my first pick because of the attrition modifier, as when you opened the ledger in 1550 you'd see army losses and attrition was a third of all the major countries army losses. Less army losses = less reinforcement costs.
Merc ideas can be fun if you have a merc focused nation. Playing Switzerland right now, amd I have 140k troops costing 50 Ducati, with 45% infantry combat and 120%+ discipline. The only troops i built are cannon stacks.
I found mercenary ideas helpful for running colonial empire, the ability to deploy a fully fledged army quickly instead of either maintaining a strong presence or relying on transports
On the topic of infrastructure: Don´t sleep on the movement speed. it is so good for large nations. You save more time with 10% movementspeed than with siege ability, especially when conquering unfortified land in russia.
One thing that I don't see people talking about is taking Estate Staturory rights in the early game, other than Free Cities or OPM's in general. It's generally a "bad thing", because it gives more influence to an estate that is hard to counteract, meaning if You end up doing it You have to neglect that estate for 20 years. 25% minimum autonomy is not the best, but it can be just ignored, since Your expansion is limited by AE reduction in the biggest part, and You as a player can just use Your brain to outsmart AI. Court ideas basically allow You to take the privilege for free, while also using nobility (in most cases) to their fullest extend
Court ideas are fine, actually. The bonuses from loyal estates are actually quite good, especially in the early game. The additional splendour helps rushing age abilities too.
Two ideas that have grown on me a lot is court and innovative. Court for the reasons that you said but mainly because it buffs your estates soo much. Tax and stab from clergy, manpower recovery and maintenance from nobility, trade efficiency and dev from burghers etc etc. I also think that getting the manpower privilege has a lot of synergy with parliament. Makes it so nobles take more and more land and then you take it back from parliament. The other idea is innovative where i just think that it saves soo much mana which can then be put to devving. Yeah construction cost is nice and all but it doesnt really do anything if i dont have building slots. And infra only gives extra mana if i want to dev but inno gives innovativeness which is extra mana for anything. Yeah sure you can build it up normally aswell, but building it up normally means that you are getting techs ahead of time so you dont have extra mana to dev. Both idea groups also have fantastic policies and hey innovative lets you have double the policies so while inno buffs may not be insane let me tell you that 15% infrantry combat from quality or all the other policies are pretty much just extra free ideas (usually policies are better than single ideas). Plus because you save so much mana and dev so much you get crownland for free and innovative allows you to just delete the clergy estate for 25% inno gain. I too used to call them luxury ideas but now i realise that these ideas just take the most basic mechanics and buff them to where they are actually quite strong. Trade buffs your trade income, quality buffs your army quality, inno buffs mana generation and mana cost effectiveness and court buffs your estates and reforms
Also would like to say that merc ideas are absolutely busted early game especially if you are burgundy or some other nation with merc buffs but they fall off so hard mid to late game because merc discipline isnt actual discipline (it only multiplies famage dealt and doesnt block damage taken like real discipline so its more like infrantry combat) and merc cost goes up +8% every mil tech instead of +2% for regular units which means that even if you stack buffs by the mid game you are not gonna have that insane advantage that you had early game. If you plan on stopping at 1530s or so you are probably better off going merc ideas tho. Also they are a pain to micro correctly
@@afridge8608 Conquered France, HRE and most of Itally before 1530 as Switserland using mercs. The merc discipline might not be normal disciple, but they are still strong.
Court ideas also have some strong military policies that buff your army quite a lot. Used court/offensive policy in my Ming campaign and my army was strong enough even against such powerhouses as Spain and France, even though Ming has no combat ideas except +5 discipline.
i think infraestructure ideas may be better for big countries or playing in america or very tall gameplay, it is useful when you have a very big provinces to take care. i like court ideas, but they feel there is something could be instead of court, court are good and gives a lot on the long run, but nothing in specific in a moment where you need something.
Personally I'm still not completely sold on them yet. I don't think the idea group is bad. Within the diplo idea groups it has to compete with diplo and espionage ideas though, which are both better imo. Aside from the diplo idea groups you are also locked by 8 groups total anyway. When going wide admin is a must, religious/ humanist is a strong pick, expansion is strong (the finisher alone can give you a lot more eco and manpower), last time I checked (which is before quantity was buffed a bit) offensive ideas was the best mil group for various reasons, quantity and divine are both very strong picks as well. I can see court ideas have a place in countries that have special units that get buffed by estates.
I have yet to take court but I am planning on grabbing it for my first Russia game this patch almost entirely for the core creation cost & ae reduction policies. I also absolutely agree economic is better than infrastructure except in the tallest of games
It's 1510 and I got these ccr reduction bonuses, eunuchs -10%, policy -5%, admin -25%, imperial decree -10% I never change it because of development reduction, celestial reform -10%.
I never seize land, I just dev estate land share out. It takes longer, but when I started playing I always forgot to seize land and I just fell into handling crown land this way.
great video I will have to give court a try. I just find that my games are easier if I use espionage, Offensive and Innovative as my first 3 as every nation getting the -20 percent aggressive expansion and the + 30% siege ability and the free siege pip making every base race a breeze. Just have a hard time keeping interest after cause the game gets to easy.
I want to see an inno/merc run because you're triple stacking military advisor and military tech discount with the policy and the two idea groups all combined. Should be a tremendous mil-point savings, although I'm not sure what you'd use that on...
All depends what difficulty and what nation you're playing. I'm playing Milan hard level ironman and the most important is eveything which lower aggressive expansion.
I play on 4-5 speed because even if it’s not optimized, the game is simply tedious and boring on lower speeds. With that said, I like Mercenaries, dislike Court, and absolutely hate how Aristocratic doesn’t reduce military tech cost anymore. Attrition should not have been moved to Quantity, makes Defensive not worth it.
@@Gaetano2005 mercenary armies aren’t ideally ratio’s, true, but like… so what? They save manpower, early in the game, who doesn’t rely on the free company? Then you just extend that outwards. If you’re playing tall or even if you’re colonizer & headed for India, mercs are the way to go. This isn’t to say mercenary ideas are always what you want, I mean, if you’re going for a WC game when you’re playing on 1-2 speed then ok, or if you’re playing as Poland or Russia, then sure they suck. But mostly, they’re really good.
@@carlg7190 perhaps they are in the ealry game, and in some niche situations. 90% of time they're just a very expensive replacement for your troops, it would be far more efficient to just use those. Also you can split your armies to carpet siege or for sea transport while you cannot do that with a mercenary army
@@Gaetano2005 You don’t use just mercenaries, the idea here is that you use mercs for pitch battles+stand on forts and then use regular troops to carpet siege. When the war is over you reduce the number mercs you have, but not your regulars. Again, mercs are all about saving manpower and being able to quickly reinforce regions over a large colonial empire. If you’re playing Russia/Austria/etc then yeah you probs don’t need them except in extreme circumstances.
Very strong. The are the best "luxury ideas". When playing really try hard and going wide, Diplo Admin are "crucial ideas" Depending on your goal, Inoo Esp can be way stronger.
Yeah they nerfed the crap out of quantity before and it was so bad that stacking attrition reduction was more effective than getting Quantity. Florryworry explained this on his Florry Cog channel. Quantity was so good, I miss the old Quantity. Old Quantity was S+ always take. Nerfed Quantity was B tier. However it's still an A to S tier idea group now.
Thous far i am not intrested in court it doesn't really give me enough compared to espionage or diplo. So definitely luxury idea but honestly I would rather grab another mil idea group at that point. But i have enjoyed none the less
Early I had Plutocratic which gives 10% morale. Now have Quantity/Religious policy giving 10%. I am currently struggling myself on very hard difficulty, in the late game with some of the great powers. The short answer is experience. However it can be hard, unpleasant and even inefficient. No shame in taking other mil idea groups if you can fit it in.
@BudgetMonk must be highly draining on manpower and $$$ monk. But I guess a discipline advisor, some mountain forts (you started in balkans) and some experience could see you through.
@@1993Redemption discipline advisor is good, but morale is better. 10% morale > 5% discipline same for unit pips morale > fire/ shock. Morale vs discipline works out as discipline wins the trade, but morale wins the battle. When fighting on a fort (offensively or defensively) you want to win the fight, not the trade.
It's also my prefered choice. That +1 fire and shock pip on generals is stronger that 10% combat ability on all units. So basically offensive gives the best quality armies, it gives force limit and siege ability. Divine ideas is also very good though.
I had the feeling you are gonna be the one person to shill for those ideas. Its like they are made for exatcly your type of Gameplay. I pesonaly prefer infrastracture.
I think paradox developers thought like that: We love espionage so much we buffed it but it is still worst idea in game what can we do? Developer: Add Worse idea than espionage so espionage won't be worst no more.
@@ilyaserenkaradag3710 it allows you to: 1) steal vassals at half cost 2) claim entire states instead of 1 province at a time 3) gives 10% siege ability 4) gives an extra diplomat and 15% advisor cost 5) -.20 yearly corruption 6) increased chance to capture ships (which is meh) 7) increased visualization acceptance chance which allows you to vassal way more countries for free 8) and of course, the best idea in the whole group, -20% AE. allowing you conquer alot more alot faster without getting the whole world in a coalition. Especially if you pair it with religious for even more AE reduction. It also has some very strong policies. So all in all, it is one of the best idea groups in the game
8:08 Again, BudgetMonk can't do math... Giving up let says 10% of your admin income for a 5% discount it is a bad business. You need at least 20 admin income for to worth the exchange.
Depends on how much CCR you already have. Going from 50 to 55 CCR is 10% effective reduction in coring costs. 75 to 80 is a 25% reduction. Reducing coring time is also a big part, not just the points themselves.
I think the absolute numbers saved/spent are more relevant here. 5% off say 400 admin worth of unmodified coring costs saves 20 admin. So in that case if you are coring more than that amount of dev every 20 months, it's worth it. That's ignoring of course the ~400 admin you spent on the idea itself though. Point is it depends on your rate of expansion, and as he mentioned it also affects coring speed, which is important for hitting 9 month coring times for rebel-less blobbing.
The compesition usually sucks. You get like 42 infantry, 5 cav and 3 cannon in late game. That's too much frontline and too few cannon. You usually have to add your own stack to it.
espionage and innovative ideas are basically for casuals in eu4. good for noobs becuase you will scale easily and dont need to micromanage aggressive expansion. but dont get me wrong, they are good, strong ideas. but all ideas that you should choose depend on your nation and what your goals for the campaign are
It's bad. Really bad, nothing it gives is good (maybe the resource for emperor of china could be good, idk), the only thing it gives which is good is the policies. Now do the policies justify taking it? No. Reform progress is not so good, especially if it is not fixed amount. Just build the monuments and you will swim in it having all the reforms done in like1650. The estates stuff is useless as it doesn't matter if your easte has 100 influence or 40 and you can always get the loyalty very high and is easy to keep 60+. Powe projection you say? Do one show of strengh and you get 100 of each mana... I truly don't understand how you cab say it's good. Atleast infrastructure is good for playing tall and mercs are pretty broken with something like swiss and any other country which buffs them. If you wanna take is as flavour in late game, maybe, but for early pick there are way better options... Diplo, admin, religious and so on.
I mostly agree, but I can see a use for court ideas in countries that have special units that get stronger with estates. For sure it's a bit roleplay, but not a waste.
@@jarvee9407 Both can be taken. Some of the special units get stronger with estate privileges. Units this applies to would be janissaries, rajputs, cossacks, caroleans and cawa.
I would argue they are never good. Dont see a point, just go explo, inno or whatever really. 20% reform progress(also gimmick with republics dont count) and 2 policies doesnt make sense, if you need the ccr just take it as 5th or 6th one. This just seems absolutely horrible since nothing it has is of value rn expect for the 5% ccr you are paying 1 admin monthly for lol
Рік тому
Day 384 of not knowing why core-creation cost is abbreviated CCR Anyway, you look tired. I hope you are not neglecting yourself.
It's more like core creation cost reduction, but CCCR is a bit more of a mouthful and kinda reminds one of all the East Bloc country name abbrevations.
So basically the same situation as with Espionage ideas before the latest couple buffs. Court Ideas don't outright give you anything ground breaking, but the way they interact with other mechanics means you actually can get more out of them than some of the "meta" ideas.
Agreed. Court ideas fall into the situationally good camp along with Espionage ideas. Espionage work really well when playing in the HRE where AE and faster sieges ot level 3 forts matters more then province warscore cost.
Economic, Mercenary, and Defensive ideas also fit here.
Yeah Monk said Court ideas are just a luxury, not a must have
No, Espionage since the changes are just the best anti AE tool. Court gives... reform progress and 2 policies ? Sounds absolutely horrible. I dont see how you dont get a better game with lets say Inno here.
@@KCCOmug I wouldn't say economic falls into this category. It's still prety meta I think
@@speedyx3493 It's really handy for nations with lots and lots of gold provinces (Aztec, Inca, Mali, and Ethiopia)
I've found Court ideas are actually even stronger when you have a nation with more then 3 estates. It really helps when playing as the Emperor of China, Mughals, Indian states, even Russia with the Cossack. Meanwhile Infrastructure ideas are great for colonial games due to the policies and the state governing cap bonus. It helps on tall games or games where you are colonising a lot. GB and Japan can really benefit from it.
Court was *designed for* Emperor of China gameplay. It really smooths off a ton of rough edges.
Its also good for hre emperor
Infrastructure is important for prussia for that state maintenance bonuse
EU 4 is so great because every idea group can actually be really helpful in certain situations. There really is no downright bad idea, some are just universally more useful like quantity or economic. Love this game so much.
Is it really a BudgetMonk video if he doesn't say: "Lo and behold".
I took court ideas for one of my first runs on the new patch and was surprised how useful they ended up being. Taking them early for some countries can provide a nice boost.
When I first saw the three new idea groups, I was initially underwhelmed. Then I discovered the easy 5% ccr from Admin-Court and decided to give Court a try. I was pleasantly surprised by the qol you mentioned in the video, along with the absolutism impact (helps justify keeping more of the mana and gov cap privileges) and its situationally useful completion bonus for HRE / EOC runs. Infrastructure is a bit less useful, but movement speed, construction cost, and lowering the gov cost of states are all incredibly nice to have. Infra-Offensive and Infra-Court are also pretty good policies. I agree that merc ideas are awful because mercenaries suck to use. If I'm at the point where I'm considering using mercs outside of the free company to help get going, something has gone horribly wrong.
Try Swiss with Merc ideas. It's so strong that it's filthy. By 2nd complete idea group your mercs can be way cheaper than normal troops and you can rack up some merc discipline at the same time.
If for some forsaken reason you've gone innovative and mercenary ideas you get a pretty obscene policy synergy though. 33% Mil advisor cost down, 20% all advisor down from inno, 25% mil advisor down from base Mercenary ideas and then 30% total mil tech price reduction.
What you'll use all those extra milpoints for who knows. Maybe strengthen legitimacy 50 times so your citizens don't lose confidence in your government for taking these ideas?
I think court has relatively more value in a very hard difficulty run under specific circumstances.
In normal mode its insanely easy to blob and its hard to justify delaying influence or diplo ideas.
Getting 50 PP for example is absolutely trivial on normal mode, but in a no balls run it could take 20-30 years depending on the start.
Out of curiosity, how?
@@yusufardagures5490 If you do a no-balls (very hard difficulty, no allies, no loans, no birding) world conquest run on a non overpowered nation (like France/Ottomans/Austria etc) the campaign will probably be at least 100 years longer.
Obviously, diplomatic/influence ideas will also have significantly less value because you can't even ally countries (or PU them). In those situations espionage and court suddenly become very appealing.
In normal mode you can literally just ally any GP right from day 1, and instantly declare on every neighbour and expand as fast as possible. Having -20% province war score cost from Diplo ideas is just too strong to pass on. It's also reflected in the idea choice of speedrunners, which is mostly exclusively diplo and admin ideas.
Largely agree with this video, I have found that Infrastructure had some good use cases if you're playing less wide though. I had a campaign with a couple of friends where I was basically restricted to only owning Germany + Poland and I didn't have enough governing capacity to state all the good land with just Admin ideas. Taking infra-ideas I ended up having gov-cap left over to abuse expand infrastructure instead of struggling with gov-cap. Being able to core hundreds of more dev led to quite a powerspike, so it's by no means a bad idea in some cases, dev cost also makes sense when you're more restricted in expansion, don't think I'd ever take it singleplayer though
Infrastructure is actually meta in serious MP lobbies rn. In MP you are forced to do a mix of tall and wide or you get outpaced by everyone else.
Infrastructure plays into that really well and can be really strong even in SP on nations like Netherlands or Great Britain that get a lot of bonuses to deving from Ideas and Missions.
I've done a Tall Colonial Netherlands campaign recently where pretty much the only land in Europe I took was the Lowlands and developed the hell out of it.
I ended up having nearly as much dev in the Lowlands as there was in the entire Indian Subcontinent. The state of Holland had more dev than entirety of Bohemia with all of Silesia...
You couldnt state everything while building State Houses and Courts? It should be enough to state those areas
@xRozmarzony especially in a mp, you can very quickly run over gov cap before statehouses are unlocked or before you can build them everywhere, especially with prussia govmt if he did that.
Monk is wrong about Quantity being the best mil idea though. It literally gives your enemy a higher national supply limit on your country, helping them with attrition. A shot to your own knee
Love Court, also had a great game as Japan with Infastructure going for the Stardust Crusader achievement, the ideagroup feels they it fits them extremely well due to their mission tree wanting them to go isolationist for awhile to bring down your autonomy.
Court ideas also gives yearly prestige which adds to estate loyalty also 😁
Why do you need yearly prestige? You’ll always be at 100 prestige due to wars all the time.
@@britishemperor9170 Do you really not know how prestige is spent?
@@JohnsonPadder Pls enlighten me, is it just kicking heirs or is there something else?
@@JohnsonPadder killing heirs and buying down subject loyalty is usually what I use it for. Even with these though it still always remains above 50 at least with constant warfare.
@@britishemperor9170same what do they mean what else can you spend it on
I tried court ideas today after having seen your video. Did nothing special, Hussite Bohemia doing nothing, growing strong and being in spectate mode.
Court feels great. I saw the nice little bonuses and didnt think much of it, but when the second idea group hit my estates were like little kitten.
The flexibility it offered felt amazing. I was able to more or less freely adjust estate policies, never fear a coup, have more policies and the ones i had didnt even lower absolutism that much.
My second group was aristocratic because sending your monarch to death without stab cost felt like the cherry on top.
Wouldnt have tried it without your video, will never give up on it again and you are right with first or second group. You want it comfy real early and can build your coming ideas around i quite well.
Coptic Italy with Cossacks and Parliament. You're the best, Monk)))
Always something knew to learn in your vids that I didn’t even remotely think of
Court and Divine also have a -10% construction cost policy, which is crazy good for snowballing as for example crusading horde teutonic order
Court is a missleading idea set, it seems like a good idea set to manage your estates easily and for the emperors, but then when you take a look at the policies you realise it comboes insanely well with Admin and Religious which are the two best idea sets in the game alongside diplomatic.
This also makes court one of the best idea set to finish your world conquest, depending if you need Quantity/Offensive/Influence it can be picked as 4th/5th/6th or 7th idea set.
That combo with Plutocratic is kinda hilarious tough.
Court ideas allows a gov reform that allows you to sell land to specific estate ->
Sell the crownland to nobility to get higher manpower ->
Sell crownland to get low crownland to tick autonomy during age of absolutism to immediately lower autonomy ->
Get to 10 crownland and force Estate statutory rights to fire to remove 30 crownland ->
Switch a government reform to parliament to remove nobility estate ->
You should have 70-80 crownland ownership while getting tons of money from selling crownland
Although I agree with you that court is a luxury, I would disagree with it having no gap closer, because I think Reform Progress is a gap closer. I have been experimenting with chasing down reform progress, and so far it seems very powerful. Starting as Teutonic Order you have access to 2 wonders in your expansion path that give bonus to reform progress, so in my current game I tried stacking crownlands instead of giving out mana privs - which kinda goes against every previous meta in the game. However I was able to achieve a very powerful Archbishopric in the HRE by advancing my government. I think getting access to these government reforms faster has actually become a really strong strategy especially if you get access to a bunch of advisor cost reduction, because if you get advisor costs down you can make up for the mana privs and get those juicy reform bonuses for high crownlands plus court ideas has been really powerful for me recently.
Infurstructure and offensive gives one of the best policies in games which is plus 2 siege bonus even crazier in end game where you can stack the added plus 3 from splendor abilities and even level 8 forts feel easy to siege. Also i used court with my last ming playthrough and yes it made it a whole lot easier.
It's too bad that Merc Ideas don't allow you to edit merc armies to the specs you want.
Wouldn't make any sense. The merc army is what it is, you can't just create new mercs from thin air.
I think he is talking about transporting troops, its a PITA because they can't split/divide to transport them@@JohnsonPadder
@@JohnsonPadder I'm not saying to be able to make new merc armies out of thing air.
Just the ability to use an army's manpower to increase/decrease it's troop count by paying more into them, like an investment.
This could also have a mechanic in which if you remove troops from the army it will make the army have a debuff for a few months, but you could get buffs for increasing the size of them.
New Venetian government with that strategy sounds good.
Mercenary ideas can be really fun if you also take the elite mercenary government reform and have mercenary bonuses in your national ideas. It's probably not min-max at all, but it's interesting.
The annoying part is that reform also gives the bonus that mercs no longer cost professionalism. That said its still a lot of fun to play something like an italian minor or the netherlands and buy a massive army of mercs to fight wars with way bigger nations.
BM, where is the followup to the Austria Guide and the Shadow Kingdom? My fingers hurt from pushing F5.. :(
I’ve recently started playing with quantity again because I’ve found attrition to be particularly strong recently. As a more casual player not min maxing my armies and wars, quantity allows me to recover from a big war faster.
It’s also strong as the change to slow burn professionalism for manpower has meant when fighting strong nations you can’t reinforce your armies as quickly when you’re low or out of manpower.
Back before policies defensive was almost always my first pick because of the attrition modifier, as when you opened the ledger in 1550 you'd see army losses and attrition was a third of all the major countries army losses.
Less army losses = less reinforcement costs.
Merc ideas can be fun if you have a merc focused nation. Playing Switzerland right now, amd I have 140k troops costing 50 Ducati, with 45% infantry combat and 120%+ discipline. The only troops i built are cannon stacks.
I found mercenary ideas helpful for running colonial empire, the ability to deploy a fully fledged army quickly instead of either maintaining a strong presence or relying on transports
Nice!
I just finished my tall Italy campaign.
I opened with court and had a ball!
(Pun intended 😉)
On the topic of infrastructure: Don´t sleep on the movement speed. it is so good for large nations. You save more time with 10% movementspeed than with siege ability, especially when conquering unfortified land in russia.
One thing that I don't see people talking about is taking Estate Staturory rights in the early game, other than Free Cities or OPM's in general. It's generally a "bad thing", because it gives more influence to an estate that is hard to counteract, meaning if You end up doing it You have to neglect that estate for 20 years. 25% minimum autonomy is not the best, but it can be just ignored, since Your expansion is limited by AE reduction in the biggest part, and You as a player can just use Your brain to outsmart AI. Court ideas basically allow You to take the privilege for free, while also using nobility (in most cases) to their fullest extend
Court ideas are fine, actually. The bonuses from loyal estates are actually quite good, especially in the early game. The additional splendour helps rushing age abilities too.
Two ideas that have grown on me a lot is court and innovative. Court for the reasons that you said but mainly because it buffs your estates soo much. Tax and stab from clergy, manpower recovery and maintenance from nobility, trade efficiency and dev from burghers etc etc. I also think that getting the manpower privilege has a lot of synergy with parliament. Makes it so nobles take more and more land and then you take it back from parliament. The other idea is innovative where i just think that it saves soo much mana which can then be put to devving. Yeah construction cost is nice and all but it doesnt really do anything if i dont have building slots. And infra only gives extra mana if i want to dev but inno gives innovativeness which is extra mana for anything. Yeah sure you can build it up normally aswell, but building it up normally means that you are getting techs ahead of time so you dont have extra mana to dev. Both idea groups also have fantastic policies and hey innovative lets you have double the policies so while inno buffs may not be insane let me tell you that 15% infrantry combat from quality or all the other policies are pretty much just extra free ideas (usually policies are better than single ideas). Plus because you save so much mana and dev so much you get crownland for free and innovative allows you to just delete the clergy estate for 25% inno gain. I too used to call them luxury ideas but now i realise that these ideas just take the most basic mechanics and buff them to where they are actually quite strong. Trade buffs your trade income, quality buffs your army quality, inno buffs mana generation and mana cost effectiveness and court buffs your estates and reforms
Also would like to say that merc ideas are absolutely busted early game especially if you are burgundy or some other nation with merc buffs but they fall off so hard mid to late game because merc discipline isnt actual discipline (it only multiplies famage dealt and doesnt block damage taken like real discipline so its more like infrantry combat) and merc cost goes up +8% every mil tech instead of +2% for regular units which means that even if you stack buffs by the mid game you are not gonna have that insane advantage that you had early game. If you plan on stopping at 1530s or so you are probably better off going merc ideas tho. Also they are a pain to micro correctly
@@afridge8608 Conquered France, HRE and most of Itally before 1530 as Switserland using mercs. The merc discipline might not be normal disciple, but they are still strong.
Court ideas also have some strong military policies that buff your army quite a lot. Used court/offensive policy in my Ming campaign and my army was strong enough even against such powerhouses as Spain and France, even though Ming has no combat ideas except +5 discipline.
i think infraestructure ideas may be better for big countries or playing in america or very tall gameplay, it is useful when you have a very big provinces to take care. i like court ideas, but they feel there is something could be instead of court, court are good and gives a lot on the long run, but nothing in specific in a moment where you need something.
You still hanging around UA-cam doing EU4 stuff? I thought you went off to fight for the far-right/neo-fascist cause in the culture war?
Personally I'm still not completely sold on them yet. I don't think the idea group is bad. Within the diplo idea groups it has to compete with diplo and espionage ideas though, which are both better imo. Aside from the diplo idea groups you are also locked by 8 groups total anyway. When going wide admin is a must, religious/ humanist is a strong pick, expansion is strong (the finisher alone can give you a lot more eco and manpower), last time I checked (which is before quantity was buffed a bit) offensive ideas was the best mil group for various reasons, quantity and divine are both very strong picks as well.
I can see court ideas have a place in countries that have special units that get buffed by estates.
I have yet to take court but I am planning on grabbing it for my first Russia game this patch almost entirely for the core creation cost & ae reduction policies. I also absolutely agree economic is better than infrastructure except in the tallest of games
Playing Ming, it's essential especially with power projection bufs. I am going court, admin, expansion and 4th will be influence.
It's 1510 and I got these ccr reduction bonuses, eunuchs -10%, policy -5%, admin -25%, imperial decree -10% I never change it because of development reduction, celestial reform -10%.
I never seize land, I just dev estate land share out. It takes longer, but when I started playing I always forgot to seize land and I just fell into handling crown land this way.
There are too many good Admin idea groups. Admin, Human , Religious and Inno.
The uber heir event you can get from court ideas is a potential meme game maker.
Personally, I'd prefer a third option to the Hunting Accident Event, something like "Loyal Court Member takes the hit instead".
@@gabrielclark1425LOL bro you reminded me that video by black guys parodying anime "anime friendships be like"
great video I will have to give court a try. I just find that my games are easier if I use espionage, Offensive and Innovative as my first 3 as every nation getting the -20 percent aggressive expansion and the + 30% siege ability and the free siege pip making every base race a breeze. Just have a hard time keeping interest after cause the game gets to easy.
Court is also really useful for HREmperor and EoC.
I want to see an inno/merc run because you're triple stacking military advisor and military tech discount with the policy and the two idea groups all combined. Should be a tremendous mil-point savings, although I'm not sure what you'd use that on...
Blasting more forts apart, obviously.
All depends what difficulty and what nation you're playing. I'm playing Milan hard level ironman and the most important is eveything which lower aggressive expansion.
The king analysis 🎉
Merc ideas have to be my favorite
Could you comment on the new 0% influence meta for estates?
I play on 4-5 speed because even if it’s not optimized, the game is simply tedious and boring on lower speeds.
With that said, I like Mercenaries, dislike Court, and absolutely hate how Aristocratic doesn’t reduce military tech cost anymore. Attrition should not have been moved to Quantity, makes Defensive not worth it.
idk man, mercs suck quite a lot, therefore why would you need an idea buffing them?
@@Gaetano2005 mercenary armies aren’t ideally ratio’s, true, but like… so what?
They save manpower, early in the game, who doesn’t rely on the free company? Then you just extend that outwards.
If you’re playing tall or even if you’re colonizer & headed for India, mercs are the way to go.
This isn’t to say mercenary ideas are always what you want, I mean, if you’re going for a WC game when you’re playing on 1-2 speed then ok, or if you’re playing as Poland or Russia, then sure they suck.
But mostly, they’re really good.
Really depends on your rig. Speed 5 on one PC can be way, way faster than on another.
@@carlg7190 perhaps they are in the ealry game, and in some niche situations. 90% of time they're just a very expensive replacement for your troops, it would be far more efficient to just use those. Also you can split your armies to carpet siege or for sea transport while you cannot do that with a mercenary army
@@Gaetano2005 You don’t use just mercenaries, the idea here is that you use mercs for pitch battles+stand on forts and then use regular troops to carpet siege.
When the war is over you reduce the number mercs you have, but not your regulars.
Again, mercs are all about saving manpower and being able to quickly reinforce regions over a large colonial empire.
If you’re playing Russia/Austria/etc then yeah you probs don’t need them except in extreme circumstances.
Thoughts on Inno-Esp these days?
Very strong. The are the best "luxury ideas". When playing really try hard and going wide, Diplo Admin are "crucial ideas" Depending on your goal, Inoo Esp can be way stronger.
Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I was just asking because it seemed like your praise of Court might have unseated them, @@BudgetMonk.
Yeah they nerfed the crap out of quantity before and it was so bad that stacking attrition reduction was more effective than getting Quantity. Florryworry explained this on his Florry Cog channel. Quantity was so good, I miss the old Quantity. Old Quantity was S+ always take. Nerfed Quantity was B tier. However it's still an A to S tier idea group now.
Thous far i am not intrested in court it doesn't really give me enough compared to espionage or diplo. So definitely luxury idea but honestly I would rather grab another mil idea group at that point. But i have enjoyed none the less
court is always my 2nd idea. always.
Court looked garbage at first glance but its policies look op
How does one get by with no military ideas increasing discipline or morale? Legit looking for some tips and answers
Early I had Plutocratic which gives 10% morale. Now have Quantity/Religious policy giving 10%. I am currently struggling myself on very hard difficulty, in the late game with some of the great powers.
The short answer is experience. However it can be hard, unpleasant and even inefficient. No shame in taking other mil idea groups if you can fit it in.
@BudgetMonk must be highly draining on manpower and $$$ monk. But I guess a discipline advisor, some mountain forts (you started in balkans) and some experience could see you through.
@@1993Redemption discipline advisor is good, but morale is better. 10% morale > 5% discipline same for unit pips morale > fire/ shock. Morale vs discipline works out as discipline wins the trade, but morale wins the battle. When fighting on a fort (offensively or defensively) you want to win the fight, not the trade.
I feel like espionage is op
you can keep estate loyal without it. it's overkill.
the rest isn't worth an idea group (unlles you are emperor of china/hre)
Offensive ideas for me, Good for World conquest
It's also my prefered choice. That +1 fire and shock pip on generals is stronger that 10% combat ability on all units. So basically offensive gives the best quality armies, it gives force limit and siege ability. Divine ideas is also very good though.
I take it for the siege ability but all the stuff you mentioned is really good too@@Vincrand
I had the feeling you are gonna be the one person to shill for those ideas. Its like they are made for exatcly your type of Gameplay.
I pesonaly prefer infrastracture.
I think paradox developers thought like that: We love espionage so much we buffed it but it is still worst idea in game what can we do?
Developer: Add Worse idea than espionage so espionage won't be worst no more.
Youre not as wrong as you can possibly be, but you are pretty close to it.
espionage is an extremely powerful idea group.
@@ThatGuy-bz2in no except aggressive expension it's trash
@@ilyaserenkaradag3710 it allows you to:
1) steal vassals at half cost
2) claim entire states instead of 1 province at a time
3) gives 10% siege ability
4) gives an extra diplomat and 15% advisor cost
5) -.20 yearly corruption
6) increased chance to capture ships (which is meh)
7) increased visualization acceptance chance which allows you to vassal way more countries for free
8) and of course, the best idea in the whole group, -20% AE. allowing you conquer alot more alot faster without getting the whole world in a coalition. Especially if you pair it with religious for even more AE reduction.
It also has some very strong policies. So all in all, it is one of the best idea groups in the game
8:08 Again, BudgetMonk can't do math...
Giving up let says 10% of your admin income for a 5% discount it is a bad business.
You need at least 20 admin income for to worth the exchange.
Depends on how much CCR you already have. Going from 50 to 55 CCR is 10% effective reduction in coring costs. 75 to 80 is a 25% reduction.
Reducing coring time is also a big part, not just the points themselves.
I think the absolute numbers saved/spent are more relevant here. 5% off say 400 admin worth of unmodified coring costs saves 20 admin. So in that case if you are coring more than that amount of dev every 20 months, it's worth it. That's ignoring of course the ~400 admin you spent on the idea itself though. Point is it depends on your rate of expansion, and as he mentioned it also affects coring speed, which is important for hitting 9 month coring times for rebel-less blobbing.
Why are Mercs miserable to play with ?
The compesition usually sucks. You get like 42 infantry, 5 cav and 3 cannon in late game. That's too much frontline and too few cannon. You usually have to add your own stack to it.
court is a joke idea group. im still not on board with espionage or innovative
espionage and innovative ideas are basically for casuals in eu4.
good for noobs becuase you will scale easily and dont need to micromanage aggressive expansion.
but dont get me wrong, they are good, strong ideas. but all ideas that you should choose depend on your nation and what your goals for the campaign are
It's bad. Really bad, nothing it gives is good (maybe the resource for emperor of china could be good, idk), the only thing it gives which is good is the policies. Now do the policies justify taking it? No.
Reform progress is not so good, especially if it is not fixed amount. Just build the monuments and you will swim in it having all the reforms done in like1650.
The estates stuff is useless as it doesn't matter if your easte has 100 influence or 40 and you can always get the loyalty very high and is easy to keep 60+.
Powe projection you say? Do one show of strengh and you get 100 of each mana...
I truly don't understand how you cab say it's good. Atleast infrastructure is good for playing tall and mercs are pretty broken with something like swiss and any other country which buffs them.
If you wanna take is as flavour in late game, maybe, but for early pick there are way better options... Diplo, admin, religious and so on.
Yeah who cares about getting ccr reform slightly earlier when you can take admin and receive 25% right away
I mostly agree, but I can see a use for court ideas in countries that have special units that get stronger with estates. For sure it's a bit roleplay, but not a waste.
I don't know how that would work or with what special units. It seems to be offensive would be better, but maybe not?
@@jarvee9407 Both can be taken. Some of the special units get stronger with estate privileges. Units this applies to would be janissaries, rajputs, cossacks, caroleans and cawa.
@@Vincrand yeah, but idk why would you want to buff those units, seems like other mil ideas would be way better
I would argue they are never good. Dont see a point, just go explo, inno or whatever really. 20% reform progress(also gimmick with republics dont count) and 2 policies doesnt make sense, if you need the ccr just take it as 5th or 6th one. This just seems absolutely horrible since nothing it has is of value rn expect for the 5% ccr you are paying 1 admin monthly for lol
Day 384 of not knowing why core-creation cost is abbreviated CCR
Anyway, you look tired. I hope you are not neglecting yourself.
Coring Cost Reduction is why it's called CCR.
@@larskaiser8131 Makes sense I guess. Although I don't remember seeing "core-creation reduction" in the game.
It's more like core creation cost reduction, but CCCR is a bit more of a mouthful and kinda reminds one of all the East Bloc country name abbrevations.
@@larskaiser8131 ahah, I see. Thanks!
Coring Cost Reduction. It's not in the game, rather it's an acronym used by players.