Innovative is clutch for opening with Espionage and Offensive for siege meta. This is especially useful for achievements that require conquering a general area where wars slow you down. Big QoL improvement.
@@thewalpa3369 I could definitely see it being useful for pushing through the HRE if you need to, or need to conquer italy later in the game or something else similar.
I think it's a good idea to re-do your 'best military in the game' series too. With the new idea sets and the mission trees for some of the big players, also considering the many new special units, I wonder as of this patch, who has the strongest military.
A good followup series might be showcasing how to pick and combine ideas for certain gamestyles. Like what ideas to consider when playing tall, wide or multiplayer and what to pick in scenario's like playing in HRE, colonizing, Far east, India, Hordes, Africa etc.
For me, Offensive + Innovative + Espionage (in no particular order) is one of the most fun combinations for SP. You get ridiculous siege ability, so right click forts and forget about them. And you get ridiculous advisor cost, making you drown in mana quite regularly :)
I agree that its fun, but the fact that something is fun does not make it good in any way. I think its fun to pick a pirate republic, go maritime + naval and use marines but that doesn’t make it a good strategy, and it doesnt mean that any tier list should put maritime and naval anywhere but the bottom
@@austin20248 I mean the point of a game is to have fun, no? That's "good" enough for me :D And well, cutting down siege time in two (75% siege ability at 100 spy network) and running around with perma -90% cost advisors is pretty objectively nifty, as well :) Mana and sieges, two of the more difficult or annoying things to manage. This build turns EU4 into easy mode. And it gives you +3 diplomats. It's not the strongest build for sure, but most of my most _fun_ campaigns have been with this build. For a casual playstyle, in cases where it's appropriate, I think it's perfect. That's enough to push Inno up to A for me. The sheer fun :)
What i love about innovative ideas is the abundance of mana points you end up with after stacking advisor cost and tech cost which lets me develop a ton to get stronger and most importantly for crownland and developing institutions. Also after the first successful wars in a run i become lazy so stacking siege ability and having good generals by having in combination offensive ideas lets me just take my standard stacks and right click enemy forts without bothering with micromanagement
The problem with inno and why advanced players tend to think about it as a bait is because inno don't actually "save mana" in an impactful way as people's first impression might suggest. You see, advisor cost cannot really be translated into saving mana, it is in fact saving money. And money is almost never the most significant bottleneck of any challenging runs. Gaining more innovativeness is also much less impactful than it sounds like. The thing is, you don't have to have inno idea to gain access to innovativeness mechanic or reach 100 innovativeness. You just reach there a bit quicker, like maybe 25 years earlier than a normal run. After that, it's literally nothing. Tech cost is certainly good, no complain there. But all in all, inno has to compete with admin or religious for early game admin idea group, it's hard justifying going for it unless you don't plan to expand quickly, which is the optimal way to become stronger in sp. So I totally see why he put inno very low in the tierlist. It sounds great but its opportunity cost is actually massive.
Admin/ religious/ humanist (idea cost, that translates to 2% tech cost of that type per idea)/ anything economy-related helps you save/ generate more mana than innovative could ever do. You take institutions or new technologies more rarely than you conquer stuff, so it is way smaller bonus, than you think.
And advisor cost doesn't matter as long as you can just... maintain level 5 advisors without that bonus. So when you have a good economy or don't care about being in debt. So you can just blob, get more lands and income, then get higher tier advisors instead of trying to make them cheaper. Good rebalance to the innovative ideas would be, if they increased the maximum advisor level (ofc with enough money to maintain him) to 6 or even 7. Eventually, if you could upgrade advisors of non-accepted culture (small thing, but would always be a plus). This would make them worth it, but still requiring a good economy to make it work.
@@ZlewikkTV I mostly agree with your list but I generally never bother with going as far as unlocking 4th idea (I never play that long) so you know more than me here. Religious is a must have for deus vult if you play wide but I never pick it besides for the moral policies, innovative has the best idea (tech+idea cost) but on its own, without the 20% infantry combat ability policy it is useless I feel like special-case ideas such as expansion and economic are useless besides maybe for their policies. With the new update, infrastructure ideas took the place of economic. You can pick exploration instead of expansion as well because if you want early colonization you would most likely move your capital to bermuda and own everything directly anyways and you sometimes need to discover terra cognita for world conquest. I also never pick humanist because I feel like unrest bonuses start to stack anyways so I would only pick it much later (like 5-6th idea) but its policies, especially minus separatist bonuses, are pretty good
@@mandarin48 inno gives you a permanent 10% all power cost, it gives you a lot of innovativeness. Advisor cost is amazing Tech cost 10%.. Inno is just way better when it comes to saving points my man
If you take Innovative+Diplo or Innovative+ Influence among your three starting ideas you can run level 3 or 4 advisors from near the beggining of the game. Snag a monument that gives advisor cost reduction and level 5 advisors are trivial. That is a lot of mana over time
If you combine it with a nation with advisor cost reductions in their NI, you have a powerful synergy, which is the most important thing when picking idea groups.
@@martinvokurka6153 that is the interesting thing, it highly depends on the situation, unlike in previous metas. The differences of a defensive, offensive or quantity build are all minor, but can be big at certain stages of the game. I personally would advise qual-eco, no brainer opener with 10% disc. In richer regions you can also go mercenary ideas instead, no joke they are viable. You can no longer slacken like you used to, the days of infinite manpower are over so good mercs are viable, even as a long term strategy. For the third it depends on your region again. I personally would gravitate towards offensive in most cases, followed by infrastructure on the fourth slot, but you can also go defensive instead. Offensive is better than defensive, learned that after extensjve testing. AND then, no joke, quantity is also a phenomenal third pick. It has amazing policies with eco and quality and you can go religious on the fourth with 10% morale policy if you made a good usage of tradecompanies so far and are not in need of going infrastructure/trade ideas on the fourth. Religious goes amazing with most military policies. Defensive is also a great third pick as you get that morale advantage only 2 clicks into the idea over everyone else. Until nations use a full artillery backline you even have an advantage over offensive builds, it falls of later on though. To sum up Merc-infrastructure-Quality-Religious Or Qual-Eco-Quan/Off/Def- depending on the situation, scaling and nation building, a scaling alternative, in my opinion the strongest but risky early on: Quan-Trade-Religious-offensive Caution, divine ideas are total garbage. Morale damage received scales terribly in compariso to max morale. Then there are also outliers like Poland aristorcatic, or Oirat horde ideas etc.
The big reasons i love innovative is that it easily helps you up with all monarch power cost. and then helps to get a 100 innovatives as soon as possible and works great with offensive and espionage. To give 40% sigde ability. Which to me means super short wars and being able to easily expand like crazy. This usually ends up with nations such as france, spain and russia who become super strong late game means that I have eigher outexpanded them or crushed them already. These as the first three ideas really makes everything super easy to blob but also to have an easy start with advisor cost - 35 can easily help you get strong advisors early and therefore live in mana generation
Very much appreciate these guides. I'm a classic EU4 player. Been playing 1.25 and 1.29 for years now and jumping into the newer patches to play Anbennar is a little overwhelming and it feels like all the idea groups are all new with how much theyve changed lol. Look forward to getting the crash course for all the idea sets!
Idea groups and policies especially, really depend on the situation. Stacking reduction bonuses w/ national ideas can be key to building a nation (since effective reduction stacks stronger additively). So for example, as portugal, going exploration/expansion/aristo gets you an insane -55% construction cost, and +20% manpower. Aristo really gets buffed when paired w/ colonial portugal specifically. In the same vein, CCR works especially well when you already have CCR in your NI's, etc.
That construction cost modifier makes the manufactory +1 from economics way more useful, seeing as you have a much easier time spamming them out. Honestly a bit unreal.
@@phatogdaphantom7495 -15% from NI's, -15% from aristo/explo, -5% from renaissance, -10% from papal interaction (or protestant dev icon, if you're based and play protestant portugal) -10% in every state w/ the jesuits. And you could also throw the burgher privilege and the infrastructure idea, but at that point it's kinda overkill
I’m quite happy that they changed admin. I was never a fan of it before since I didn’t utilize mercs at all. But the ccr and governing cap are so good for map painters!
Hey Zlewikk! Thanks a lot for this video! here is my case for innovative :P I think that, as you said, most idea groups are very "specific" for one type of gameplay. Infrastructure for tall, Admin for wide, etc. But Innovative IMO is a "jack of all trades". It is never the best pick in a given situation, but it is never a shit pick either, and i would say in most cases it is a solid pick. As you mentioned, many policies are really good, I would give a shoutout to +1 leader siege and +10% siege ability, it's really strong for single player (dunno about MP), so it means you can combine it with many different other idea groups, whereas, say Admin kinda forces you to pick influence as well, because most other policies are just meh. so, you could say, in a sense, innovative is also "enabling" to get more out of your other idea groups by getting really good policies on top. I'd say, if Admin ideas are worth it simply because of the CCR and Gov cap for wide gameplay, then Inno are worth it simply because of tech cost and advisor cost for tall gameplay. :)
Great Britain can get four or five parliament issues that give colony development boosts. You get the debates from missions, so in theory you could click the missions at the same time, so with those bonuses, the exploration-infrastructure policy, and the age bonus, all of your colonies will start at something like 21 development minimum. Great Britain also gets to choose which trade goods their colonized provinces will have, so in theory you could get several 20+ dev cloves or gold provinces really easily.
inno ideas are my favorite 1st idea group (at least it was before 1.35, lets see how that changes), especially when playing as brandenburg or so, because it just lets you save a lot of mana, which imo is very important early
Nice tier list! Very good explanations. Hope the complete one comes soon! I wanna see where do you place Divine Ideas. For my tall Japan runs (simulating MP) I believe it is the best 3rd idea group. It has dev cost, army quality and manpower all in one. And a 10% morale policy with religious.
I think all the government-specific idea groups are pretty good. Aristo, pluto, divine, horde. They don't focus solely on military and have some all-around nice bonuses.
I find innovative helps You punch above Your weight advisor-wise. Earlier lvl 3s mean more access to lvl 3 advisor events and more mana generation. It then allows to be ahead of time a lot faster, thus have more mana for devving up. Also I play the long game so +1 policy is ace
If you can manage to finish the innovative idea group really early, it feels amazing to have. No war exhaustion, dirt cheap advisors, good policies, and cheaper technologies. Even the 1+ advisor can be a surprisingly nice QoL feature. But I think there are two issues. There are already too many "must have" admin idea groups, and the bonuses becomes less useful if the country is already very powerful. So B is fair. Would also note that the infrastructure + aristocratic policy is really nice, and the two together are probably the best starting idea groups overall.
In my colonial games I almost always take aristocratic idea as the third (the first two are explo and expa) because it has one of the few holy trinity of the policies (which means with 3 idea group you unlock 1 bird, 1adm and 1 mil policies So you can enact each of them), and all of them are strong: +20 settlers as explo-expan is self explanatory +20% manpower as explo-arist (used to be +33% but its still pretty strong) -15 const cost as expan-arist (its huge, especially if you have another bonus és for ex as portugal which has another -15 in its nat ideas and -10 from chatolic edict)
Have to agree on all of your picks. I really wanted to put Humanist in S tier, but you're right it's not quite there. Religious was an EZPZ pick for S tier. At least they got rid of all the mercenary crap from Admin ideas, but the stuff other than Gov cap and CCR cost is pretty meh. Expansion is niche, essential if you're colonizing, but not really useful otherwise. Eco is pretty situational now, and Inno isn't worth the point spend at all. I would have C tiered it personally, but I understand boosting it for its decent policies.
Only in the context of MP, I think for your second idea group you have three choices, Eco, Inno and Infrastructure. IMO Infrastructure is the worst choice because it has no military quality policy (unless you're going Merc-Infra). So you have a choice between eco with its bonuses to scaling your economy and 5% disc vs inno with its mana saving (advisor cost is mana gen in the early game, tech cost is very strong) and 15% ICA. I think its pretty close, but probably Eco is still best for helping you stay alive.
Discipline is a late game modifier, because it affects cannons. You can think of ICA almost like discipline just for infantry. In the early/mid game before cannons come in, ICA is much better.
@@romegypt5675 Well discipline is better in the late game yes but early game 5% disc ~= 10% ICA so its still pretty good. The reason eco keeps you alive is not because disc > ica but because more money means being able to field a bigger army, go more over the FL, hire more mercs etc.
As someone who really likes Innovative ideas, I agree with its B rating. One thing you did not mention which is massively underrated is the Offensive+Innovative Policy, it gives you +10% Siege Ability(30% with offensive), but most importantly 1 Siege Pip on your generals. Which is massive because the Siege Pip generation for generals is way lower than for the other pips. But i do agree atm Innovative ideas doesn't work well, i think they should replace the +1 Free Policies with something else.
Is something that cannot be used for most of the game 'one of thee best ideas'? Strong doubt here 😅. Especially that it's just free policy so you only use that during war and only in late game. Possible policies +1 is far superior and it's in gov reforms (same with +1 free policies)
@@ZlewikkTV maybe for single player, but for MP when ADM, DIP, and MIL production is more important, any way to save those points from being wasted is very strong in my opinion, especially since you get innovative as a later idea group
@@ZlewikkTV sorry I didnt mean to sound rude, I'm just thinking that if you want the monetary benefits, i.e., goods produced, trade efficiency etc while not sacrificing DIP points, then having free policies can be very nice. Possible policies is 100% better than free policies, but I still think that the importance of free policies shouldn't be understated
I think inno is best as part of an inno-espionage-offensive/divine core, especially on small nations. inno-offensive is giving you siege ability and leader siege, which stacks extremely well with the siege from espionage and offensive, and means you're winning siege races that you wouldn't be otherwise, making your wars faster, saving manpower, and just all around expanding more effectively. Divine also accomplishes this to some extent but I think offensive is generally better. While a single advisor cost reduction isn't the biggest thing in the world, being able to stack it like you're doing with espionage makes it so you're going to be getting your higher level advisors a lot sooner than you'd otherwise be able to afford to, especially if you can also get external sources like national ideas/estates/whatever. The possible advisor doesn't scale super well later, but it does make getting the advisor you want early a lot less painful, when you don't have the money to be cycling all of them every month. With the combo of those 3 you're also immediately getting 2 extra diplomats, which can help to deal with your AE quite a bit, or can be used to get spy networks and more improved siege ability to continue stacking that. All of this also stacks with the fact that you're opening it early to actually make effective use of that innovativeness gain, and if you don't want it later then you can always swap it out what with the super strong base you've built for yourself opening with these. I opened the divine variant of this on my teutonic order > KHAAAAAAAAN run and I genuinely had more monarch points than I knew what to do with even before flipping holy horde, which helped a lot dealing with pushing through a strong ottomans and muscovy to actually get the horde reform. I don't think it's S tier by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it offers the potential for a uniquely strong opening here that other combinations aren't able to match.
5:35 Surprised you didn't at least mention the Economic-Quantity policy of +10% Land Force Limit, and -5% land maintenance. Either bonus on their own isn't much, but both together and the fact it's an admin policy (so it doesn't take up a spot for a better mil policy) makes it really good imo.
i pick economic in my last game, i wasn't too thrill about it, but the policy are really good, and i mean the policy you can get with the top tier idea group are really good Quantity:as you said influence: +1 diplo relation, +100% land force limit from vassal offensive: 10% artillery combat ability quality: 5% discipline
Main exploration bonus is - 10 min autonomy, it give a lot potential for trade companies and territories. 90 percent territory gives 2 times less than 80 percent one. Plus dharma monument and gov reform. You can have 75 percent territory without buildings.
As Great Britain you can potentially get +9 development. +3 from age bonus, +3 from the policy and +3 from either Sugar, Gold or Spice Act from the parliament.
Innovative is great when paired with diplo, and you play for HRE. Feels great to have 3x 5* advisors in early 1500s. the mana generation&low cost of them + 10% cost cut on everything from innovativeness is very OP. You don't conquer as much early on as Emperor(tested as Provence), and you can easily take admin 3rd to pair it with 25% war score vs other religions age bonus and finish WC by early 1600s if you push hard. I'm not saying it's the most optimal setup, but it worked for me just fine.
Innovative is an all in or all out idea group. You either grab it first (or second if you're crimped on admin) or not at all. The tech cost reduction helps you stay ahead of other nations in tech, and if you are playing prussia inno->quality is a must for prussian space marines. I still feel like its the best idea group in the game, but the opportunity cost is really really high.
Worth noting that for Confucian countries Humanist is S++ tier, as their version of the Deus Vult CB, External Perfectionism, is not only gained from completing Religious ideas, but is also gained from completing Humanist ideas. Plus Humanist obviously synergizes wonderfully with how Confucian works.
I think Inno is a B tier idea group in Europe, I think it’s better out of Europe, where innovativeness is harder to come by and getting the institutions faster is a bigger deal.
For a no dlc player like me the +1 advisors Is accually really good since you can't Fire advisors nord promote them. From a no DLC perspective where innovativness doesn't exist, you can buy or sell institutions and things like that innovative can be occasionally super useful. Admin too since playing tall whit no DLC usually Isn't an option.
Stacking cost reductions is vary powerful because when you already have a large modifier you get more than it appears on your modifiers. ex adviser cost you already have stacked up -50% so an adviser with base cost of 16 turns in to 8 but if you add another -25% it now turns in to 4. which is 1/2 the price. which means you are getting twice the bang for your buck as it would get in isolation. this affect can get more extreme as you approach 0.
Stacking modifiers that increase a stat cannot achieve the same kind of critical mass. ex you Have +50% manpower modifier. Base manpower 50k after +50% 75k now you get another 25% 50k + 75% = 87.5k which means you are getting +16.7 % which is close to half of what that modifier would have done in isolation.
which is why when I am picking modifiers I try to stack reductions (aggressive expansion, core creation cost, province war score cost, dev cost, construction cost). and I try to collect some of each of the modifiers that increase a stat (tax, trade efficiency, manpower, force limit, moral of armies).
For infra ideas, i think you undersold the expand administration cost reduction a bit. Imho its easier to just think of it as "costs -20 reform progress", which is huge for the first few clicks.
In single player, I think inno is good if you are ahead in mil tech in the early game, since it will allow you to take it first UpTo the reduced tech bonus, then get admin 7 and take your mil idea with a big tech lead. Being ahead of time in mil tech is where inno is best since you have a big tech cost penalty for being 5+ years ahead, and can punch ahead of your weight as a middle size country that needs to fight against ming or something, like horde or Korea.
I take innovation most games i love the policies and the fact that I do not have min max my monarchs because it basically makes monarch point generation so easy. Personally I think its A tier because it is so versatile unlike other idea groups which many are niche.
What do I like about Innovative Ideas: Inno + Espionage + Offensive opening. It lets you stack advisor costs, as well as the benefits of innovativeness and prestige EARLY. Espionage helps with less aggressive expansion impact, as well as saving you admin points from coring because you get more claims.
Inno is not good. You are so much better off going something like admin to help you actually corr your territory. Or something like diplomatic to help you manage AE. The important thing to think about is what is your bottleneck and whst idea group could help. for me, in the early game I usually run out of admin for coring and gov capacity. this mskes admin ideas a necessity
The thing I find is if you take those 3 and you expand hard you’ll just be limited by admin or governing capacity. So you would have been better of talking admin ideas anyway.
@@stephenbernard3003 Sigh. The correct way to play in the vast majority of Europeans runs is to take Religious, Admin, Diplo, and Influence as your first four ideas. But I just can't play like that, man.
@@sld1776 hehe you named my first 4 idea groups from my Austria run 👍 I know what type of player I am, I’m a degenerate blobber and I’ve just accepted that. I can’t have more than 50% manpower and not go to war. Nothing wrong with playing other ways. I loved stacking siege at the end of my 3 mountains. I full sieged a 4400 development ottomans in less than 2 years. I would break lvl 8 mountain forts in 27 days 😂
18:32 Before the inno nerf and before zwelikk, Florry, or lambda; we had arumba. He is, to this day, as far as I can tell, an avid, if not fanatic, proponent of inno ideas. As mob mentality dictates, we follow the most charismatic and arumba, for all the new euiv utubers' "shtaaken wipens", arumba is still a pretty charismatic person. Also, I personally tend to play longer games (easily 1650 and beyond) so the fact that inno gets stronger mid-late game isn't a bad thing at all. Unfortunately, I've never picked inno because colonizing had always been such an easy way to expand and make money. Which is why I'm really confused expansions not in s tier. You essentially "win" the game by clicking a couple buttons every few years. (Admittedly, not necessarily a fun campaign if you never do anything else)
I think Innovative/Offensive/Diplo (switch first 2 depending on nation), is the best for new players (less than 3000 hours?), it lowers the micro and the "invisible" stuff. You See advisor count, See advisors monthly pay, you See general pips, you See and Get extra diplomat, Relation, you get Tech cost (bad rulers), Siege, Discpline, Improved, War Exhauiston, and Diprep (offset dishonor Call to arms, or annex vassal) as the "invisible". There is just overall less micro and "stuff" that is the web of many other ideas. Its kind of easy mode for good players (SP) (5k hours+), and can help hybrid tall/war for medium players (whatever that means, 3-6k hours?). I mean all these things are stuff everyone just *have* to deal with, the construction cost, dev cost and the economy fools, it will come later with hours and experience. This combo is more forgiving, and less micro. Its not "bad" to go mana cap for new players as it is not having any mana for tech.
Eco is op with tall and expand infastructure . +1 dev is op when you can spam all the differente manifacturies in the same spot . Also 500 ducats are cheaper than devving a tall province
Can you spoil which ideas you would rate as S-tier (including diplo+mil)? Specifically, my favorite wide nations are otto's and france and my favorite tall nations are england and netherlands if you need that context. Love your videos btw, please keep making them!
@@ZlewikkTV Ok, more straightforward then ( :) ): I'm probably gonna start my second France playthrough on 1.35 soon (First was semi-serious, got BBB, but still adjusting to the new mission tree): which idea group would you recommend as the first one for this specific tag?
I realise Innovatives is a B tier group but i'm just in love with the -0.05 monthly war exaustion. Really helpful if you don't want to sit there and birdwatch and to spare admin points to core provinces.
innovative for me has great policies but bad ideas other than the advisor cost and free policies, the tons of advisor cost from policies are super nice and it pairs well with other idea groups i like to take like offensive in singleplayer for fast sieges, but its normal bonuses definitely need a big buff
I do find Innovative ideas do work better without DLC, as the innovativeness bonus replaced an idea cost reduction, though the free policy is just replaced by another 10 advisor discount, which stacks with the last bonus. It does also work better outside of Europe, especially if you do not want to take Infrastructure ideas, if you are playing wide and a loss of bonuses without DLC. I still feel it is B, but it can work pretty well, the bigger problem is just strong competition.
Innovative basically lets me get to 100 inno really fast, like with good nations such as Florence you can get to 100 within like 40 years if not faster with humiliate rival wars and being efficient with mana
If u pick innovative your War exhaustion will be 0 always. Also tech cost is nice. And the free policies, and paired with offensive is a good policy for siege. I typically pick innovative every run at some point
donno if it's worth it but, i'd like a 4th video. about idea combinations. i always find myself wonder "what should i pick as a 4th, 5th idea??" donno how i horded 1.4k hours in this game xD
If you playing wide OUTSIDE of europe getting new instutions is pain in the ass even with deving. Innovative ideas is a must be if you play outside of europe for me. Also the policy with offensive that gives you 10% siege ability is very very useful as well as 15% inf combat.
Inno Bad Inno Bad Inno Bad. If I am playing outside of europe I am taking expansion focused idea groups such as Admin + Influence, acquiring more land is almost always more effective than marginal improvements to military quality.
Oh wow, I agree on all these picks. I do consider moving innovative into the C tier however. I used to like it as an out of meta pick for mp that can be viable on certain builds. That usage has now been taken away with the military changes in my opinion.
@@ZlewikkTV yeah I already had an intensive debate on that idea group yesterday. I don't get it. Any other admin group is better. It's not strong in tall or wide singleplayer games, it's not good in mp either. 😅 kinda just meh on all fronts.
@@Arathreas right know in the current game they are strong due to their policies and bonuses. They offer quite a lot of bonuses needed for gameplay. Additionaly you must remember that in this patch there are more cav nations and it is easier to get good cav.
I like innovative ideas, just for the guaranteed siege pips, otherwise it's kind of a bad idea group. However I think it's must if you are playing a theocracy, because if you go inno, religious, espionage, divine, and offensive, towers melt like butter. On one of my play throughs I was at 86% siege didn't care about mil mana because i was ahead in tech so i was able to full carpet siege the ottomans plus their allies extremely quickly. This was in patch 1.34. also helps to have 100 spy Network too, but you're economy is not the best if you go with those idea groups.
Eco ideas look like a good first or second idea group, for the early tax and loans boost. However, winning wars and conquering provinces is still generally a more efficient investment, and military ideas never decline in importance. Maybe it's good for like, colonial Portugal? Edit: also, possible advisors is not entirely useless, if you have tons of cash you can shuffle advisors in and out depending on immediate need, you can buy some mana and win some wars that way
I am confused on why you didn't mention the NEW humanist Holy War CB "External Perfectionism"... I think its huge if starting in the east and planing on going Confucian. makes holy war vs everyone who isn't Confucian even targets who you have accepted their religion.
Having played mostly monarchies, I wanted to start my recent ambrosian republic Milan campaign with a combination of pluto + inno. That was my plan. But I don't know if they changed innovative in the recent patch, but it didn't seem to be that good when it came to picking it. So my opener changed to aristo + admin + pluto. I think all the government specific idea groups are pretty good, so I'm always happy when I can cheese it like that and take both aristo as a monarchy and later pluto as a republic. And I never liked admin that much, because it had too much mercenary stuff, but it's one of my favourite groups now.
Inno is terrible in Italy, especially if you're playing as a Republic. One of the major advantages of Innovative ideas is to stack Innovativeness. But if you're playing in Italy, you'll stack Innovativeness super fast regardless.
@@davidweller483 Yeah, I'm glad with the choices I made. On the other, I see many people in the comments saying that 'you'll get to 100 innovativeness anyway, inno ideas just make it faster'. The thing is, I didn't. I still play that campaign and around 1650 I have about 60-70 innovativeness. But I very rarely took technologies ahead of time, unless they were crucial in some way. If I have excess mana points, I prefer spending them on deving rather than taking a technology ahead of time. I usually pick them when they're like 15% more expensive, but someone else usually has it at that point.
Personally, my tops here are admin and religious. If you have enough coring cost and speed (and ofc govcap), you can outsnowball any coalition with good truce management and core before rebels spawn, as you said. With Florrynomics, it is also a huge loan capacity to keep you going. Religious, on the other hand, help you stabilise already conquered provinces of your faith (in contradiction to humanist, that empathise freshly acquired ones; especially heretics/ heathens) and focus on fighting rebels in the region you are currently occupied with. They also provide a god tier (literally lmao) casus belli, that help you save TONES of diplo mana and reduce AE taken by 1/4. That means, if you border any heretic or heathen, you can blob without caring at all and snowball fast af. Opinion of same faith helps with coalitions as well and culture convertion cost may be nice for tall gameplay or roleplay (or just not wanting to deal with rebels while on 100+ overextension, once you have no separatists for a while). My third choice would be ofc humanist, but I do preffer admin/ rel. Dying to see two following parts of the video, have a good evening and peace to your family.
I'd love to take humanist often, but i never know when. I always end up getting something else over it and I never end up taking it even if I want it. And often I take religious, and it feels redundant to take both. Also I love taking innovative ideas. Taking super cheap techs just saves me so much mana in the end, plus the extra policy, advisor costs, and the policies with other idea groups are super good. I hate sieging, so Inno Offensive is a must for me in every game
16:42 i play almost every campaign to the end because of having not other purpose than wc, so free policies is very good. Except that I almost never took inno in that type of campaigns
Well, i'd always start with a military idea group first - barring special cases like ex. Portugal. With that said most of the time its Religious or Humanist in second or third slot. Humanist for places like western europe or middle east(w/e persian region) and Religious for anything else. Of course there are times where fitting diplo or influ in the second slot is necessary. The only other thing i want to comment on: i only take Inno later in the game, exclusively for the advisor cost and consider the other stats from it as a bonus
I think for me innovative is nostaglic. Years ago when I played my favorite nation Prussia, Inno-Quality was almost a must, so I always got it primarily for the policy. I agree now, it's ok
Personally, I think new Economic is slightly overhated. It has good early into mid/lategame transition. Early on, you get a decent tax modifier when it's still relevant (tax really sucks later on, but is important before all the production bonuses from technology, building workshops and manufactories; consolidating tradenodes etc; especially on theocracies that scale tax income with devotion), but also an emphasis on inflation, repaying loans (that help you blob faster and snowball quicker; you take a few more loans, conquer more, get more tradepower in your nodes, get massive income fast) and gold income (that means A LOT in the 1400s or early 1500s). On the other hand, later on they have good policies economic- or military-wise. They have 10% goods produced, that is HUGE for production and trade. They have dev from manufactories (when you can afford them), out of which you can burn tax to get back like 20-60 gold from each manufactory and afford new buildings faster. And they have a merchant, that can help you both in dealing with coalitions (place on even useless tradenode, but a popular one, then improve relations) or just build a long network of trade steering. imho still very good idea group, but it may be just my point of view.
Totally agreed with this ranking. I always went for religious & admin in my first 4 idea groups and filled in humanist as the 6 or 7th. I really like the concept of innovation but the problem is religious, admin and humanist are just too good, and most of the time, unconditionally for all nations.
Expansion is much better because of the new privileges. You can get explorers from burghers now which means that expansion is just better. You can't explore ocean tiles if you don't have the first exploration idea but that's not really a problem since you can still get to new world by discovering north atlantic -> American coast -> Caribbean. Once you get Caribbean you can even go down to Brazil and then connect to Africa making only the center of the atlantic not discovered. If you want to go to Asia and Africa you don't need to explore any ocean either. You should only take exploration if you are portugal where you want to rush towards Asia and Africa. In any other case just expansion
Honestly I'm not sure how leader siege +1 works but it feels like without it on 90-100 army tradition you constantly get 1-2, rarely 3 or 4 siege pips on a general. While with leader siege +1 you keep getting those 4-5 siege pip guys
It is additive to whatever the game rolls for siege. So, when the general is created, if the dice rolls a 0 for siege, you will be guaranteed a 1 siege general. If it rolls a 3, you would start with 4 pips.
Innovative is good for its policies, plus early game. Like you said in the video it’s even better if you play long games. I like to play till 1700’s most games so I probably see a lot more usefulness with it. But it’s policies are some of the best. Combined with espionage and offensive, you have killer siege bonuses and you get extra diplomats so it helps with keeping AE in check, also you can manage relations much better. On its own it’s not great, but combined with its policies is where it shines. Also with the bonus free policies you can worry less about sacrificing mana for strong policies.
I think innovative must be an a tier because getting your innovativiness to 100 early is very but very important. %10 ALL power cost is just the best thing to have. + you get %1 navy and army tradition decay, which is very useful to get better generals. And that %10 tech cost is another one of the best modifiers in the game. So, I would say it is not good for s tier but definitely an A tier. Btw I think admin idea group is a s tier, because of the ccr and gov capacity. Gov capacity is not for only wide gameplay anymore, since infrastructuring provence's makes them take more governing capacity, it is very useful while playing tall as well.
Inno is okish for tall (basically causual) game style. It is super unworthy for normal wide expansionist game style. Cuz most of inno's ideas require you to actually not play the game in the most efficient way in terms of getting stronger, which is to blob in most cases. Army tradition decay is worthless for a blober because it's at is always 100. Advisor cost is relevant until you can afford lvl5 advisors easily, which happens quite early for blobing game style. Same goes for prestige and innovativeness gain. Problem with that is you are reaching that -10% power cost a bit earlier than others, by maybe 30-40 years. But after that, it is completely useless. Institution spread and embracement cost is whatever. So all in all, inno actually requires you to play the game in a not very min-max, not very efficient way to get the most out of it. You don't win wars and sign treaties every month, so prestige and at decay is useful. You don't have enough money, so advisor cost and institution modifiers are relevant for longer. You take a longer time to reach 100 innovativeness, so innovativeness gain is relevant. Compare it to admin and religious, which have things that are simply irreplaceable (ccr and dv), inno is really not very good on the advance level. And if you prefer playing tall, econ is actually better at developing your nation than inno. And now we take into consideration that inno is an admin idea group that you have to take first. Because most of inno's useful ideas are actually better in the early game and completely useless in the late game as I have explained. So this doubles down on not being able to blob early, working against snowballing efficiently at the very beginning.
@@bartekkrzysik7730 Explo so that you get there first or at least competitive with Spain and Portugal. You should still open with explo in a fully committed colonial game. Abandoning idea groups is also a thing. You don't HAVE to stay with either Exploration and Expansion after finishing colonization. May trade Exploration for either Trade or Maritime to help you exploit your empire better.
@@sld1776 why? you had an explorer from estate, colonial range advisor, but expansion is in every case stronger that explo. more colonist, more settlers increase etc.
@@bartekkrzysik7730 You... don't get an explorer from estate, unless it's something new. Portugal starts with an explorer and Norway gets the ability to explore from its national ideas. But you almost always have to go Exploration if you want a fast colonial game.
@@sld1776 you get. burghers privilege Grant New World Charters give you decision, that one in 10 years you can get explorer. to unlock this decision you need to have colonist i think
9:50 i dont wanna hate on you, so pls dont take it that way, but thats why you usually have an S-F list, so you have more tiers to choose from, making the decision you had make, easier.
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LOL I literally just searched "EU4 domination idea groups tier list" and this popped up having been uploaded 6 minutes ago.
This was meant to be.
Perfection
Innovative is clutch for opening with Espionage and Offensive for siege meta. This is especially useful for achievements that require conquering a general area where wars slow you down. Big QoL improvement.
Agreed. Only time I go innovative is if I'm also going espionage and offensive. Getting weekly siege ticks is great, lol
arumba our lord and savior teached us Inno-Offensive-Espionage
Completely agree here.
You need three idea groups but forts are slowing you down?
@@thewalpa3369 I could definitely see it being useful for pushing through the HRE if you need to, or need to conquer italy later in the game or something else similar.
I think it's a good idea to re-do your 'best military in the game' series too. With the new idea sets and the mission trees for some of the big players, also considering the many new special units, I wonder as of this patch, who has the strongest military.
A good followup series might be showcasing how to pick and combine ideas for certain gamestyles. Like what ideas to consider when playing tall, wide or multiplayer and what to pick in scenario's like playing in HRE, colonizing, Far east, India, Hordes, Africa etc.
For me, Offensive + Innovative + Espionage (in no particular order) is one of the most fun combinations for SP.
You get ridiculous siege ability, so right click forts and forget about them. And you get ridiculous advisor cost, making you drown in mana quite regularly :)
I agree that its fun, but the fact that something is fun does not make it good in any way. I think its fun to pick a pirate republic, go maritime + naval and use marines but that doesn’t make it a good strategy, and it doesnt mean that any tier list should put maritime and naval anywhere but the bottom
@@austin20248 I mean the point of a game is to have fun, no? That's "good" enough for me :D
And well, cutting down siege time in two (75% siege ability at 100 spy network) and running around with perma -90% cost advisors is pretty objectively nifty, as well :)
Mana and sieges, two of the more difficult or annoying things to manage. This build turns EU4 into easy mode.
And it gives you +3 diplomats.
It's not the strongest build for sure, but most of my most _fun_ campaigns have been with this build. For a casual playstyle, in cases where it's appropriate, I think it's perfect.
That's enough to push Inno up to A for me. The sheer fun :)
Here's hoping someone will finally put Espionage Ideas on S tier and give it the recognition it deserves
We will see :>
Modern espio is great, compared to what it used to be.
Only Diplo deserves S in diplomatic
Espionage + horde + aristo = Horse go BRRRRR
No, don't put it on S tier or PDX will nerf it back into oblivion!
Yes, I definitely learned from this. I want to see the other idea group videos right now!!
What i love about innovative ideas is the abundance of mana points you end up with after stacking advisor cost and tech cost which lets me develop a ton to get stronger and most importantly for crownland and developing institutions. Also after the first successful wars in a run i become lazy so stacking siege ability and having good generals by having in combination offensive ideas lets me just take my standard stacks and right click enemy forts without bothering with micromanagement
The problem with inno and why advanced players tend to think about it as a bait is because inno don't actually "save mana" in an impactful way as people's first impression might suggest. You see, advisor cost cannot really be translated into saving mana, it is in fact saving money. And money is almost never the most significant bottleneck of any challenging runs. Gaining more innovativeness is also much less impactful than it sounds like. The thing is, you don't have to have inno idea to gain access to innovativeness mechanic or reach 100 innovativeness. You just reach there a bit quicker, like maybe 25 years earlier than a normal run. After that, it's literally nothing. Tech cost is certainly good, no complain there. But all in all, inno has to compete with admin or religious for early game admin idea group, it's hard justifying going for it unless you don't plan to expand quickly, which is the optimal way to become stronger in sp. So I totally see why he put inno very low in the tierlist. It sounds great but its opportunity cost is actually massive.
@@basileusfang811+1
Admin/ religious/ humanist (idea cost, that translates to 2% tech cost of that type per idea)/ anything economy-related helps you save/ generate more mana than innovative could ever do. You take institutions or new technologies more rarely than you conquer stuff, so it is way smaller bonus, than you think.
And advisor cost doesn't matter as long as you can just... maintain level 5 advisors without that bonus. So when you have a good economy or don't care about being in debt. So you can just blob, get more lands and income, then get higher tier advisors instead of trying to make them cheaper.
Good rebalance to the innovative ideas would be, if they increased the maximum advisor level (ofc with enough money to maintain him) to 6 or even 7. Eventually, if you could upgrade advisors of non-accepted culture (small thing, but would always be a plus). This would make them worth it, but still requiring a good economy to make it work.
Inno Bad Inno Bad Inno Bad Inno Bad
I haven't watched the video yet but for me, administrative is a must have (along with influence for the influence + admin policy)
Let me know what you think about my tiers :)
@@ZlewikkTV I mostly agree with your list but I generally never bother with going as far as unlocking 4th idea (I never play that long) so you know more than me here.
Religious is a must have for deus vult if you play wide but I never pick it besides for the moral policies, innovative has the best idea (tech+idea cost) but on its own, without the 20% infantry combat ability policy it is useless
I feel like special-case ideas such as expansion and economic are useless besides maybe for their policies. With the new update, infrastructure ideas took the place of economic. You can pick exploration instead of expansion as well because if you want early colonization you would most likely move your capital to bermuda and own everything directly anyways and you sometimes need to discover terra cognita for world conquest.
I also never pick humanist because I feel like unrest bonuses start to stack anyways so I would only pick it much later (like 5-6th idea) but its policies, especially minus separatist bonuses, are pretty good
@@mandarin48 Actually inno does not have idea cost on 1.35
@@ZlewikkTV wow it is worthless then especially considering admin saves so much admin mana points AND government reforms
@@mandarin48 inno gives you a permanent 10% all power cost, it gives you a lot of innovativeness.
Advisor cost is amazing
Tech cost 10%..
Inno is just way better when it comes to saving points my man
If you take Innovative+Diplo or Innovative+ Influence among your three starting ideas you can run level 3 or 4 advisors from near the beggining of the game. Snag a monument that gives advisor cost reduction and level 5 advisors are trivial. That is a lot of mana over time
If you combine it with a nation with advisor cost reductions in their NI, you have a powerful synergy, which is the most important thing when picking idea groups.
I've spent dozens of hours testing all kind of idea groups the past few days for MP. Really excited for your mil video.
What do u reckon are first 3 meta ideas for mp now?
@@martinvokurka6153 that is the interesting thing, it highly depends on the situation, unlike in previous metas. The differences of a defensive, offensive or quantity build are all minor, but can be big at certain stages of the game.
I personally would advise qual-eco, no brainer opener with 10% disc. In richer regions you can also go mercenary ideas instead, no joke they are viable. You can no longer slacken like you used to, the days of infinite manpower are over so good mercs are viable, even as a long term strategy.
For the third it depends on your region again. I personally would gravitate towards offensive in most cases, followed by infrastructure on the fourth slot, but you can also go defensive instead. Offensive is better than defensive, learned that after extensjve testing. AND then, no joke, quantity is also a phenomenal third pick. It has amazing policies with eco and quality and you can go religious on the fourth with 10% morale policy if you made a good usage of tradecompanies so far and are not in need of going infrastructure/trade ideas on the fourth. Religious goes amazing with most military policies. Defensive is also a great third pick as you get that morale advantage only 2 clicks into the idea over everyone else. Until nations use a full artillery backline you even have an advantage over offensive builds, it falls of later on though.
To sum up
Merc-infrastructure-Quality-Religious
Or
Qual-Eco-Quan/Off/Def- depending on the situation, scaling and nation building,
a scaling alternative, in my opinion the strongest but risky early on:
Quan-Trade-Religious-offensive
Caution, divine ideas are total garbage. Morale damage received scales terribly in compariso to max morale. Then there are also outliers like Poland aristorcatic, or Oirat horde ideas etc.
The big reasons i love innovative is that it easily helps you up with all monarch power cost. and then helps to get a 100 innovatives as soon as possible and works great with offensive and espionage. To give 40% sigde ability. Which to me means super short wars and being able to easily expand like crazy. This usually ends up with nations such as france, spain and russia who become super strong late game means that I have eigher outexpanded them or crushed them already. These as the first three ideas really makes everything super easy to blob but also to have an easy start with advisor cost - 35 can easily help you get strong advisors early and therefore live in mana generation
Very much appreciate these guides. I'm a classic EU4 player. Been playing 1.25 and 1.29 for years now and jumping into the newer patches to play Anbennar is a little overwhelming and it feels like all the idea groups are all new with how much theyve changed lol. Look forward to getting the crash course for all the idea sets!
Idea groups and policies especially, really depend on the situation. Stacking reduction bonuses w/ national ideas can be key to building a nation (since effective reduction stacks stronger additively).
So for example, as portugal, going exploration/expansion/aristo gets you an insane -55% construction cost, and +20% manpower. Aristo really gets buffed when paired w/ colonial portugal specifically.
In the same vein, CCR works especially well when you already have CCR in your NI's, etc.
That construction cost modifier makes the manufactory +1 from economics way more useful, seeing as you have a much easier time spamming them out. Honestly a bit unreal.
From where does portugal get another -40% construction cost? NI?
@@phatogdaphantom7495
-15% from NI's,
-15% from aristo/explo,
-5% from renaissance,
-10% from papal interaction (or protestant dev icon, if you're based and play protestant portugal)
-10% in every state w/ the jesuits.
And you could also throw the burgher privilege and the infrastructure idea, but at that point it's kinda overkill
It is always something I learn for your viedos. You got great knoweledge of this game.
happy to hear that!
Love these videos Ziewikk!! So great to hear your thoughts on all these new changes!
You just had your questionnaire about abc format like a day ago and you already dropped a long format abc? DAYUMMM! You're a madman 😀
I already had it recorded :D
@@ZlewikkTV you sly dog! 🐕
early innovative ideas makes you cozy
i like the combo Innovation + offensive + espionage , did my first WC with that setup :)
I’m quite happy that they changed admin. I was never a fan of it before since I didn’t utilize mercs at all. But the ccr and governing cap are so good for map painters!
Hey Zlewikk! Thanks a lot for this video!
here is my case for innovative :P I think that, as you said, most idea groups are very "specific" for one type of gameplay. Infrastructure for tall, Admin for wide, etc. But Innovative IMO is a "jack of all trades". It is never the best pick in a given situation, but it is never a shit pick either, and i would say in most cases it is a solid pick. As you mentioned, many policies are really good, I would give a shoutout to +1 leader siege and +10% siege ability, it's really strong for single player (dunno about MP), so it means you can combine it with many different other idea groups, whereas, say Admin kinda forces you to pick influence as well, because most other policies are just meh. so, you could say, in a sense, innovative is also "enabling" to get more out of your other idea groups by getting really good policies on top. I'd say, if Admin ideas are worth it simply because of the CCR and Gov cap for wide gameplay, then Inno are worth it simply because of tech cost and advisor cost for tall gameplay. :)
love this type of content
Great Britain can get four or five parliament issues that give colony development boosts. You get the debates from missions, so in theory you could click the missions at the same time, so with those bonuses, the exploration-infrastructure policy, and the age bonus, all of your colonies will start at something like 21 development minimum. Great Britain also gets to choose which trade goods their colonized provinces will have, so in theory you could get several 20+ dev cloves or gold provinces really easily.
Love this video Zlewikk!
inno ideas are my favorite 1st idea group (at least it was before 1.35, lets see how that changes), especially when playing as brandenburg or so, because it just lets you save a lot of mana, which imo is very important early
inno and then aristo, spreedrunning that mil tech
Nice tier list! Very good explanations. Hope the complete one comes soon! I wanna see where do you place Divine Ideas. For my tall Japan runs (simulating MP) I believe it is the best 3rd idea group. It has dev cost, army quality and manpower all in one. And a 10% morale policy with religious.
I think all the government-specific idea groups are pretty good. Aristo, pluto, divine, horde. They don't focus solely on military and have some all-around nice bonuses.
I find innovative helps You punch above Your weight advisor-wise. Earlier lvl 3s mean more access to lvl 3 advisor events and more mana generation. It then allows to be ahead of time a lot faster, thus have more mana for devving up. Also I play the long game so +1 policy is ace
Splitting up the videos per mana group is a good call. Looking forward to the others!
If you can manage to finish the innovative idea group really early, it feels amazing to have. No war exhaustion, dirt cheap advisors, good policies, and cheaper technologies. Even the 1+ advisor can be a surprisingly nice QoL feature. But I think there are two issues. There are already too many "must have" admin idea groups, and the bonuses becomes less useful if the country is already very powerful. So B is fair.
Would also note that the infrastructure + aristocratic policy is really nice, and the two together are probably the best starting idea groups overall.
Aristo and infra? For roleplay maybe
@@maras3naraz actually infra+ aristo are now meta. Best 2 idea groups probably.
@@oliwierbroda2575 na multi chyba
@@maras3narazit is a meta bro
"The idea group is less useful when you've already won the game" lol
In my colonial games I almost always take aristocratic idea as the third (the first two are explo and expa) because it has one of the few holy trinity of the policies (which means with 3 idea group you unlock 1 bird, 1adm and 1 mil policies So you can enact each of them), and all of them are strong:
+20 settlers as explo-expan is self explanatory
+20% manpower as explo-arist (used to be +33% but its still pretty strong)
-15 const cost as expan-arist (its huge, especially if you have another bonus és for ex as portugal which has another -15 in its nat ideas and -10 from chatolic edict)
Have to agree on all of your picks. I really wanted to put Humanist in S tier, but you're right it's not quite there. Religious was an EZPZ pick for S tier. At least they got rid of all the mercenary crap from Admin ideas, but the stuff other than Gov cap and CCR cost is pretty meh. Expansion is niche, essential if you're colonizing, but not really useful otherwise. Eco is pretty situational now, and Inno isn't worth the point spend at all. I would have C tiered it personally, but I understand boosting it for its decent policies.
You better check 50 other commenters yelling about Inno being A/S tier 🙃
And no comments defending economics... :(
Only in the context of MP, I think for your second idea group you have three choices, Eco, Inno and Infrastructure. IMO Infrastructure is the worst choice because it has no military quality policy (unless you're going Merc-Infra). So you have a choice between eco with its bonuses to scaling your economy and 5% disc vs inno with its mana saving (advisor cost is mana gen in the early game, tech cost is very strong) and 15% ICA. I think its pretty close, but probably Eco is still best for helping you stay alive.
Movement speed and siege bonus is HUGE in multiplayer.
@@PsYDaniel move speed sure but siege is not that relevant esp compared to disc or ica
Discipline is a late game modifier, because it affects cannons. You can think of ICA almost like discipline just for infantry. In the early/mid game before cannons come in, ICA is much better.
@@romegypt5675 Well discipline is better in the late game yes but early game 5% disc ~= 10% ICA so its still pretty good. The reason eco keeps you alive is not because disc > ica but because more money means being able to field a bigger army, go more over the FL, hire more mercs etc.
As someone who really likes Innovative ideas, I agree with its B rating. One thing you did not mention which is massively underrated is the Offensive+Innovative Policy, it gives you +10% Siege Ability(30% with offensive), but most importantly 1 Siege Pip on your generals. Which is massive because the Siege Pip generation for generals is way lower than for the other pips.
But i do agree atm Innovative ideas doesn't work well, i think they should replace the +1 Free Policies with something else.
+1 free policies is one of the best ideas in the whole game though, cutting it out obliterates the idea group in MP
Is something that cannot be used for most of the game 'one of thee best ideas'? Strong doubt here 😅. Especially that it's just free policy so you only use that during war and only in late game.
Possible policies +1 is far superior and it's in gov reforms (same with +1 free policies)
@@ZlewikkTV maybe for single player, but for MP when ADM, DIP, and MIL production is more important, any way to save those points from being wasted is very strong in my opinion, especially since you get innovative as a later idea group
I have 3k+ hours in mp so I'm well aware.
Now read my previous message again and tell me why would I take inno for that particular bonus?
@@ZlewikkTV sorry I didnt mean to sound rude, I'm just thinking that if you want the monetary benefits, i.e., goods produced, trade efficiency etc while not sacrificing DIP points, then having free policies can be very nice. Possible policies is 100% better than free policies, but I still think that the importance of free policies shouldn't be understated
you are a legend
Military ideas tierlist when? Really wanna see your opinion on whether offensive, quality, or quantity is better
Never tooked innovative ideas before
I think inno is best as part of an inno-espionage-offensive/divine core, especially on small nations. inno-offensive is giving you siege ability and leader siege, which stacks extremely well with the siege from espionage and offensive, and means you're winning siege races that you wouldn't be otherwise, making your wars faster, saving manpower, and just all around expanding more effectively. Divine also accomplishes this to some extent but I think offensive is generally better. While a single advisor cost reduction isn't the biggest thing in the world, being able to stack it like you're doing with espionage makes it so you're going to be getting your higher level advisors a lot sooner than you'd otherwise be able to afford to, especially if you can also get external sources like national ideas/estates/whatever. The possible advisor doesn't scale super well later, but it does make getting the advisor you want early a lot less painful, when you don't have the money to be cycling all of them every month. With the combo of those 3 you're also immediately getting 2 extra diplomats, which can help to deal with your AE quite a bit, or can be used to get spy networks and more improved siege ability to continue stacking that. All of this also stacks with the fact that you're opening it early to actually make effective use of that innovativeness gain, and if you don't want it later then you can always swap it out what with the super strong base you've built for yourself opening with these.
I opened the divine variant of this on my teutonic order > KHAAAAAAAAN run and I genuinely had more monarch points than I knew what to do with even before flipping holy horde, which helped a lot dealing with pushing through a strong ottomans and muscovy to actually get the horde reform. I don't think it's S tier by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it offers the potential for a uniquely strong opening here that other combinations aren't able to match.
5:35 Surprised you didn't at least mention the Economic-Quantity policy of +10% Land Force Limit, and -5% land maintenance. Either bonus on their own isn't much, but both together and the fact it's an admin policy (so it doesn't take up a spot for a better mil policy) makes it really good imo.
i pick economic in my last game, i wasn't too thrill about it, but the policy are really good, and i mean the policy you can get with the top tier idea group are really good
Quantity:as you said
influence: +1 diplo relation, +100% land force limit from vassal
offensive: 10% artillery combat ability
quality: 5% discipline
Main exploration bonus is - 10 min autonomy, it give a lot potential for trade companies and territories. 90 percent territory gives 2 times less than 80 percent one.
Plus dharma monument and gov reform. You can have 75 percent territory without buildings.
Love such videos
I really enjoy inno as a complementary idea group. It really synergies with quality/influence. I wish more groups could synergize better.
As Great Britain you can potentially get +9 development. +3 from age bonus, +3 from the policy and +3 from either Sugar, Gold or Spice Act from the parliament.
Seems that you missed inovative offensive policy combo? stacking siege speed is great getting one more point in seige for leaders is very good aswell.
Innovative is great when paired with diplo, and you play for HRE. Feels great to have 3x 5* advisors in early 1500s. the mana generation&low cost of them + 10% cost cut on everything from innovativeness is very OP. You don't conquer as much early on as Emperor(tested as Provence), and you can easily take admin 3rd to pair it with 25% war score vs other religions age bonus and finish WC by early 1600s if you push hard. I'm not saying it's the most optimal setup, but it worked for me just fine.
inno+offensive has two rare modifiers - siege ability and leader siege. late game all you're doign is sieges so late game super powerful idea
Innovative is an all in or all out idea group. You either grab it first (or second if you're crimped on admin) or not at all. The tech cost reduction helps you stay ahead of other nations in tech, and if you are playing prussia inno->quality is a must for prussian space marines. I still feel like its the best idea group in the game, but the opportunity cost is really really high.
Worth noting that for Confucian countries Humanist is S++ tier, as their version of the Deus Vult CB, External Perfectionism, is not only gained from completing Religious ideas, but is also gained from completing Humanist ideas. Plus Humanist obviously synergizes wonderfully with how Confucian works.
i just recently realized how good espionage ideas are when i was playing as emperor of HRE (milan, interesting story)
My favorite is in the S tier.. Good to see💪🏻
I think Inno is a B tier idea group in Europe, I think it’s better out of Europe, where innovativeness is harder to come by and getting the institutions faster is a bigger deal.
The first time I chose innovative first outside of Europe felt like I'd used a cheat code!
Korean or Ethiopian inno is actually quite cool
@@NiceBoaT_98 yep it is, absolutely S tier with Korean rushing for that -20% advisor cost reduced combined with korean ideas and confucianism.
Never considered this aspect. What an S-tier comment c:
For a no dlc player like me the +1 advisors Is accually really good since you can't Fire advisors nord promote them. From a no DLC perspective where innovativness doesn't exist, you can buy or sell institutions and things like that innovative can be occasionally super useful. Admin too since playing tall whit no DLC usually Isn't an option.
Infra ideas is a must for wide gameplay too thanks to the policy with aristrocratic & the gov cost reduction
I see alot of people trashing on inno but i will always love it for tall play
Stacking cost reductions is vary powerful because when you already have a large modifier you get more than it appears on your modifiers.
ex adviser cost you already have stacked up -50%
so an adviser with base cost of 16 turns in to 8
but if you add another -25% it now turns in to 4. which is 1/2 the price.
which means you are getting twice the bang for your buck as it would get in isolation.
this affect can get more extreme as you approach 0.
Stacking modifiers that increase a stat cannot achieve the same kind of critical mass.
ex you Have +50% manpower modifier.
Base manpower 50k
after +50% 75k
now you get another 25%
50k + 75% = 87.5k
which means you are getting +16.7 % which is close to half of what that modifier would have done in isolation.
which is why when I am picking modifiers I try to stack reductions (aggressive expansion, core creation cost, province war score cost, dev cost, construction cost).
and I try to collect some of each of the modifiers that increase a stat (tax, trade efficiency, manpower, force limit, moral of armies).
For infra ideas, i think you undersold the expand administration cost reduction a bit. Imho its easier to just think of it as "costs -20 reform progress", which is huge for the first few clicks.
You oversetimate it. Gov reforms are far more important while it's hyper easy to manage gov capacity nowadays
Great video!
In single player, I think inno is good if you are ahead in mil tech in the early game, since it will allow you to take it first UpTo the reduced tech bonus, then get admin 7 and take your mil idea with a big tech lead. Being ahead of time in mil tech is where inno is best since you have a big tech cost penalty for being 5+ years ahead, and can punch ahead of your weight as a middle size country that needs to fight against ming or something, like horde or Korea.
I take innovation most games i love the policies and the fact that I do not have min max my monarchs because it basically makes monarch point generation so easy. Personally I think its A tier because it is so versatile unlike other idea groups which many are niche.
What do I like about Innovative Ideas: Inno + Espionage + Offensive opening. It lets you stack advisor costs, as well as the benefits of innovativeness and prestige EARLY. Espionage helps with less aggressive expansion impact, as well as saving you admin points from coring because you get more claims.
Inno is not good. You are so much better off going something like admin to help you actually corr your territory. Or something like diplomatic to help you manage AE. The important thing to think about is what is your bottleneck and whst idea group could help. for me, in the early game I usually run out of admin for coring and gov capacity. this mskes admin ideas a necessity
The thing I find is if you take those 3 and you expand hard you’ll just be limited by admin or governing capacity. So you would have been better of talking admin ideas anyway.
@@stephenbernard3003 Sigh.
The correct way to play in the vast majority of Europeans runs is to take Religious, Admin, Diplo, and Influence as your first four ideas. But I just can't play like that, man.
@@sld1776 hehe you named my first 4 idea groups from my Austria run 👍
I know what type of player I am, I’m a degenerate blobber and I’ve just accepted that. I can’t have more than 50% manpower and not go to war.
Nothing wrong with playing other ways. I loved stacking siege at the end of my 3 mountains. I full sieged a 4400 development ottomans in less than 2 years. I would break lvl 8 mountain forts in 27 days 😂
18:32 Before the inno nerf and before zwelikk, Florry, or lambda; we had arumba. He is, to this day, as far as I can tell, an avid, if not fanatic, proponent of inno ideas. As mob mentality dictates, we follow the most charismatic and arumba, for all the new euiv utubers' "shtaaken wipens", arumba is still a pretty charismatic person.
Also, I personally tend to play longer games (easily 1650 and beyond) so the fact that inno gets stronger mid-late game isn't a bad thing at all.
Unfortunately, I've never picked inno because colonizing had always been such an easy way to expand and make money. Which is why I'm really confused expansions not in s tier. You essentially "win" the game by clicking a couple buttons every few years. (Admittedly, not necessarily a fun campaign if you never do anything else)
17:55 average monarch livespan is extremely useless it does not do what it says. It might increase it by a year max but not much more.
you can pretty easily get 90% fort maintanance now. petty funny to have a lvl 8 fort in every province if you ask me.
I think Innovative/Offensive/Diplo (switch first 2 depending on nation), is the best for new players (less than 3000 hours?), it lowers the micro and the "invisible" stuff. You See advisor count, See advisors monthly pay, you See general pips, you See and Get extra diplomat, Relation, you get Tech cost (bad rulers), Siege, Discpline, Improved, War Exhauiston, and Diprep (offset dishonor Call to arms, or annex vassal) as the "invisible". There is just overall less micro and "stuff" that is the web of many other ideas. Its kind of easy mode for good players (SP) (5k hours+), and can help hybrid tall/war for medium players (whatever that means, 3-6k hours?). I mean all these things are stuff everyone just *have* to deal with, the construction cost, dev cost and the economy fools, it will come later with hours and experience. This combo is more forgiving, and less micro. Its not "bad" to go mana cap for new players as it is not having any mana for tech.
Eco is op with tall and expand infastructure . +1 dev is op when you can spam all the differente manifacturies in the same spot . Also 500 ducats are cheaper than devving a tall province
Can you spoil which ideas you would rate as S-tier (including diplo+mil)? Specifically, my favorite wide nations are otto's and france and my favorite tall nations are england and netherlands if you need that context. Love your videos btw, please keep making them!
We will get there soon :)
@@ZlewikkTV Ok, more straightforward then ( :) ): I'm probably gonna start my second France playthrough on 1.35 soon (First was semi-serious, got BBB, but still adjusting to the new mission tree): which idea group would you recommend as the first one for this specific tag?
Diplo: diplo
Mil: offensive
@@Rosemarie_and_tomatothis!
@@Rosemarie_and_tomato reasons as to why diplo over the others? (compared to espi. for siege + AE, infl. for vassals, court for priviliges etc)
So if i understand it correctly expansion is S tier if you are going colonial, but since its use is so limited it is B tier, right?
Correct
I realise Innovatives is a B tier group but i'm just in love with the -0.05 monthly war exaustion.
Really helpful if you don't want to sit there and birdwatch and to spare admin points to core provinces.
I always take offensive and quality as my military ideas so innovative is a must have, the policies are insanely good
innovative for me has great policies but bad ideas other than the advisor cost and free policies, the tons of advisor cost from policies are super nice and it pairs well with other idea groups i like to take like offensive in singleplayer for fast sieges, but its normal bonuses definitely need a big buff
I do find Innovative ideas do work better without DLC, as the innovativeness bonus replaced an idea cost reduction, though the free policy is just replaced by another 10 advisor discount, which stacks with the last bonus. It does also work better outside of Europe, especially if you do not want to take Infrastructure ideas, if you are playing wide and a loss of bonuses without DLC. I still feel it is B, but it can work pretty well, the bigger problem is just strong competition.
Innovative basically lets me get to 100 inno really fast, like with good nations such as Florence you can get to 100 within like 40 years if not faster with humiliate rival wars and being efficient with mana
inno bad and ur bad
@@austin20248 its not like i take it every game lol. but its a nice idea group
If u pick innovative your War exhaustion will be 0 always. Also tech cost is nice. And the free policies, and paired with offensive is a good policy for siege. I typically pick innovative every run at some point
Humanist now also has a CB as a finisher for Confucians: External Perfectionism...
donno if it's worth it but, i'd like a 4th video. about idea combinations. i always find myself wonder "what should i pick as a 4th, 5th idea??" donno how i horded 1.4k hours in this game xD
If you playing wide OUTSIDE of europe getting new instutions is pain in the ass even with deving. Innovative ideas is a must be if you play outside of europe for me. Also the policy with offensive that gives you 10% siege ability is very very useful as well as 15% inf combat.
Inno Bad Inno Bad Inno Bad. If I am playing outside of europe I am taking expansion focused idea groups such as Admin + Influence, acquiring more land is almost always more effective than marginal improvements to military quality.
Oh wow, I agree on all these picks. I do consider moving innovative into the C tier however. I used to like it as an out of meta pick for mp that can be viable on certain builds. That usage has now been taken away with the military changes in my opinion.
You better check 50 other comments saying it's A or S tier 🙃
@@ZlewikkTV yeah I already had an intensive debate on that idea group yesterday. I don't get it. Any other admin group is better. It's not strong in tall or wide singleplayer games, it's not good in mp either. 😅 kinda just meh on all fronts.
@@Arathreas in my experience humanist and religious are the most useless. You never need unless you rp.
@@oliwierbroda2575 Those 2 are arguably the only S tier contenders for this tier list... What?
@@Arathreas right know in the current game they are strong due to their policies and bonuses. They offer quite a lot of bonuses needed for gameplay. Additionaly you must remember that in this patch there are more cav nations and it is easier to get good cav.
I like innovative ideas, just for the guaranteed siege pips, otherwise it's kind of a bad idea group. However I think it's must if you are playing a theocracy, because if you go inno, religious, espionage, divine, and offensive, towers melt like butter. On one of my play throughs I was at 86% siege didn't care about mil mana because i was ahead in tech so i was able to full carpet siege the ottomans plus their allies extremely quickly. This was in patch 1.34. also helps to have 100 spy Network too, but you're economy is not the best if you go with those idea groups.
Inno is S tier in my mod because I allow more than eight idea groups and promoting advisors past level 5, so its bonuses compound harder
Eco ideas look like a good first or second idea group, for the early tax and loans boost. However, winning wars and conquering provinces is still generally a more efficient investment, and military ideas never decline in importance. Maybe it's good for like, colonial Portugal?
Edit: also, possible advisors is not entirely useless, if you have tons of cash you can shuffle advisors in and out depending on immediate need, you can buy some mana and win some wars that way
I am confused on why you didn't mention the NEW humanist Holy War CB "External Perfectionism"... I think its huge if starting in the east and planing on going Confucian. makes holy war vs everyone who isn't Confucian even targets who you have accepted their religion.
Having played mostly monarchies, I wanted to start my recent ambrosian republic Milan campaign with a combination of pluto + inno. That was my plan. But I don't know if they changed innovative in the recent patch, but it didn't seem to be that good when it came to picking it. So my opener changed to aristo + admin + pluto. I think all the government specific idea groups are pretty good, so I'm always happy when I can cheese it like that and take both aristo as a monarchy and later pluto as a republic. And I never liked admin that much, because it had too much mercenary stuff, but it's one of my favourite groups now.
Inno is terrible in Italy, especially if you're playing as a Republic. One of the major advantages of Innovative ideas is to stack Innovativeness. But if you're playing in Italy, you'll stack Innovativeness super fast regardless.
@@davidweller483 Yeah, I'm glad with the choices I made. On the other, I see many people in the comments saying that 'you'll get to 100 innovativeness anyway, inno ideas just make it faster'. The thing is, I didn't. I still play that campaign and around 1650 I have about 60-70 innovativeness. But I very rarely took technologies ahead of time, unless they were crucial in some way. If I have excess mana points, I prefer spending them on deving rather than taking a technology ahead of time. I usually pick them when they're like 15% more expensive, but someone else usually has it at that point.
Personally, my tops here are admin and religious.
If you have enough coring cost and speed (and ofc govcap), you can outsnowball any coalition with good truce management and core before rebels spawn, as you said. With Florrynomics, it is also a huge loan capacity to keep you going.
Religious, on the other hand, help you stabilise already conquered provinces of your faith (in contradiction to humanist, that empathise freshly acquired ones; especially heretics/ heathens) and focus on fighting rebels in the region you are currently occupied with. They also provide a god tier (literally lmao) casus belli, that help you save TONES of diplo mana and reduce AE taken by 1/4. That means, if you border any heretic or heathen, you can blob without caring at all and snowball fast af. Opinion of same faith helps with coalitions as well and culture convertion cost may be nice for tall gameplay or roleplay (or just not wanting to deal with rebels while on 100+ overextension, once you have no separatists for a while).
My third choice would be ofc humanist, but I do preffer admin/ rel. Dying to see two following parts of the video, have a good evening and peace to your family.
I'd love to take humanist often, but i never know when. I always end up getting something else over it and I never end up taking it even if I want it.
And often I take religious, and it feels redundant to take both.
Also I love taking innovative ideas. Taking super cheap techs just saves me so much mana in the end, plus the extra policy, advisor costs, and the policies with other idea groups are super good.
I hate sieging, so Inno Offensive is a must for me in every game
16:42 i play almost every campaign to the end because of having not other purpose than wc, so free policies is very good. Except that I almost never took inno in that type of campaigns
Well, i'd always start with a military idea group first - barring special cases like ex. Portugal.
With that said most of the time its Religious or Humanist in second or third slot. Humanist for places like western europe or middle east(w/e persian region) and Religious for anything else.
Of course there are times where fitting diplo or influ in the second slot is necessary.
The only other thing i want to comment on: i only take Inno later in the game, exclusively for the advisor cost and consider the other stats from it as a bonus
I think for me innovative is nostaglic. Years ago when I played my favorite nation Prussia, Inno-Quality was almost a must, so I always got it primarily for the policy. I agree now, it's ok
Personally, I think new Economic is slightly overhated. It has good early into mid/lategame transition.
Early on, you get a decent tax modifier when it's still relevant (tax really sucks later on, but is important before all the production bonuses from technology, building workshops and manufactories; consolidating tradenodes etc; especially on theocracies that scale tax income with devotion), but also an emphasis on inflation, repaying loans (that help you blob faster and snowball quicker; you take a few more loans, conquer more, get more tradepower in your nodes, get massive income fast) and gold income (that means A LOT in the 1400s or early 1500s).
On the other hand, later on they have good policies economic- or military-wise. They have 10% goods produced, that is HUGE for production and trade. They have dev from manufactories (when you can afford them), out of which you can burn tax to get back like 20-60 gold from each manufactory and afford new buildings faster. And they have a merchant, that can help you both in dealing with coalitions (place on even useless tradenode, but a popular one, then improve relations) or just build a long network of trade steering.
imho still very good idea group, but it may be just my point of view.
Totally agreed with this ranking. I always went for religious & admin in my first 4 idea groups and filled in humanist as the 6 or 7th. I really like the concept of innovation but the problem is religious, admin and humanist are just too good, and most of the time, unconditionally for all nations.
Humanist is S+ tier for Confucian nations. They get yearly harmony, harmonization speed and the external perfection casus beli.
Expansion is much better because of the new privileges. You can get explorers from burghers now which means that expansion is just better. You can't explore ocean tiles if you don't have the first exploration idea but that's not really a problem since you can still get to new world by discovering north atlantic -> American coast -> Caribbean. Once you get Caribbean you can even go down to Brazil and then connect to Africa making only the center of the atlantic not discovered. If you want to go to Asia and Africa you don't need to explore any ocean either. You should only take exploration if you are portugal where you want to rush towards Asia and Africa. In any other case just expansion
Honestly I'm not sure how leader siege +1 works but it feels like without it on 90-100 army tradition you constantly get 1-2, rarely 3 or 4 siege pips on a general. While with leader siege +1 you keep getting those 4-5 siege pip guys
It is additive to whatever the game rolls for siege. So, when the general is created, if the dice rolls a 0 for siege, you will be guaranteed a 1 siege general. If it rolls a 3, you would start with 4 pips.
Zlewikk what idea groups would you recomment for an tall Italy mp Game?
Innovative is good for its policies, plus early game. Like you said in the video it’s even better if you play long games. I like to play till 1700’s most games so I probably see a lot more usefulness with it.
But it’s policies are some of the best. Combined with espionage and offensive, you have killer siege bonuses and you get extra diplomats so it helps with keeping AE in check, also you can manage relations much better. On its own it’s not great, but combined with its policies is where it shines. Also with the bonus free policies you can worry less about sacrificing mana for strong policies.
S tier: Admin, humanist, Influence, Quantity
A tier: Religious, Trade, Diplomatic, Exploration, Offensive, Defensive
B tier: Economic, Infrastucture, Espionage, Aristocratic, Quality, Naval
C tier: Expansion, Maritime
D tier: Court,
E tier: Innovative, Mercenary
Inno bad inno bad
I think innovative must be an a tier because getting your innovativiness to 100 early is very but very important. %10 ALL power cost is just the best thing to have. + you get %1 navy and army tradition decay, which is very useful to get better generals. And that %10 tech cost is another one of the best modifiers in the game. So, I would say it is not good for s tier but definitely an A tier. Btw I think admin idea group is a s tier, because of the ccr and gov capacity. Gov capacity is not for only wide gameplay anymore, since infrastructuring provence's makes them take more governing capacity, it is very useful while playing tall as well.
Inno is okish for tall (basically causual) game style. It is super unworthy for normal wide expansionist game style. Cuz most of inno's ideas require you to actually not play the game in the most efficient way in terms of getting stronger, which is to blob in most cases. Army tradition decay is worthless for a blober because it's at is always 100. Advisor cost is relevant until you can afford lvl5 advisors easily, which happens quite early for blobing game style. Same goes for prestige and innovativeness gain. Problem with that is you are reaching that -10% power cost a bit earlier than others, by maybe 30-40 years. But after that, it is completely useless. Institution spread and embracement cost is whatever.
So all in all, inno actually requires you to play the game in a not very min-max, not very efficient way to get the most out of it.
You don't win wars and sign treaties every month, so prestige and at decay is useful. You don't have enough money, so advisor cost and institution modifiers are relevant for longer. You take a longer time to reach 100 innovativeness, so innovativeness gain is relevant.
Compare it to admin and religious, which have things that are simply irreplaceable (ccr and dv), inno is really not very good on the advance level. And if you prefer playing tall, econ is actually better at developing your nation than inno. And now we take into consideration that inno is an admin idea group that you have to take first. Because most of inno's useful ideas are actually better in the early game and completely useless in the late game as I have explained. So this doubles down on not being able to blob early, working against snowballing efficiently at the very beginning.
Lol no
can you do that with dip and mil ideas too?
Explo + Expansion + Aristo is one of the best Colonial openings. You get three very useful policies as well as three colonists.
why explo? only expansion ideas is enough.
@@bartekkrzysik7730 Explo so that you get there first or at least competitive with Spain and Portugal. You should still open with explo in a fully committed colonial game.
Abandoning idea groups is also a thing. You don't HAVE to stay with either Exploration and Expansion after finishing colonization. May trade Exploration for either Trade or Maritime to help you exploit your empire better.
@@sld1776 why? you had an explorer from estate, colonial range advisor, but expansion is in every case stronger that explo. more colonist, more settlers increase etc.
@@bartekkrzysik7730 You... don't get an explorer from estate, unless it's something new. Portugal starts with an explorer and Norway gets the ability to explore from its national ideas. But you almost always have to go Exploration if you want a fast colonial game.
@@sld1776 you get. burghers privilege Grant New World Charters give you decision, that one in 10 years you can get explorer. to unlock this decision you need to have colonist i think
9:50
i dont wanna hate on you, so pls dont take it that way, but thats why you usually have an S-F list, so you have more tiers to choose from, making the decision you had make, easier.
I love using innovativnes ideas... For country that can stack infantry ca + gaining money from trade