Dear Darkfireslide, Your channel is a hidden gem. I am honestly surprised you don't have tens of thousands of subscribers as the quality and the quantity (heh) of your content are both extraordinary! I hope you keep on with your great work for a long time. Also, do you stream? If so, I'd really love to watch it :)
Your Vassals increase your own force limit by one. If you got that idea it will be increased additionally by 100% of that. So it gets doubled and your own force limit is increased by 2 per vassal
To be more technically precise, "improve relations" actually means that all negative opinion modifiers that you see when you mouseover someone's opinion about you or another country, will now either decay at that increased rate. For example, in the Diplomatic idea group you get +25% improve relations. This means that if there is a modifier giving someone else -50 opinion of you and its base decay rate is 2 per year, then now it will decay at 2.50 (because it decays 25% faster due to +25% improve relations modifier). The most common example and reason why you want the maximum possible improve relations modifier is because it affects Aggressive Expansion decay. As you know, AE decays a certain amount per year. Improve relations modifiers INCREASE the rate at which it will decay each year. This makes it super important to maximise so that you can get countries out of coalition opinion range by the time truces are finished. For reference, prestige will also give you an improve relations modifier depending on if you have positive or negative prestige, so its important to keep it high if you are playing a nation focused on conquest, in addition to the other benefits prestige gives such as reduced institution embracement cost and morale of armies.
Espionage is kinda weird. As an idea group it's [usually] pretty bad; although it's got upsides and can actually make it nigh impoissible to fabricate claims on you. However it has some of the best policies in the game; and the -Corruption really lets you abuse Debase Currency. In the Common Sense patches; it wasn't a ad idea to ake Espionage and Innovative on a RotW nation. Faster spy network = more study tech; and Inno+Espionage = cheaper tech and much cheaper advisors; which combined with the study tech qhich you built faster; could let RotW keep up with West.
Economic vs. Trade. In my experience Economic is useful early game when you actually need more gold, but trade is way more useful later on. In most playthroughs I go trade late game and i never really pick economic. Would love to hear your more informed opinion :P
I usually do both. Economic early on, some conquest for better trade nodes, then full trade. I like economic for better loans and better inflation control combined with lower build costs and higher taxes + production.
+ita-eng subber hmmmm interesting. to what extend do you get buildings in your country or more like when do you think it is worth it? actually i only cherrypick the provinces in which i construct buildings because it doesnt feel worth it in provinces with low developement or do you spend a lot of points on development?
@5:00 it just increases your vassals force limit that's it. THE REASON it looks like it does nothing is because 9.99/10 they cannot afford to make a larger army.
Improve Relations also increases the positive decay of negative diplomatic actions. So for example, if you annex a member of the HRE, the rest of the HRE hates you for a while and you get a negative diplomatic modifier. This goes away faster if you have better Improve Relations.
Improve Relations in Diplomatic Ideas affects Aggressive Expansion (and other negative diplo action) decay, since it's a flat modfier to your natiional "Improve Relations" bar, same with the diplomat adviser. You can even test this out extremely easily: a nation with 100% overextension and -100 prestige has a -100% stat for "Improve Relations", which means there's no decay on negative diplo opinions and AE. Base AE decay is -2.0 a year (25 years to recover from 50 AE), so when you get +100 prestige, you have 50% Improve Relations, or a base decay of -3.0 (or 16 years 8 months to recover from 50 AE). Having Diplomatic and a Diplomat Advisor is 45% Improve Relations, which is equivalent to sitting at 95 prestige in terms of AE reduction. There's going to be diminishing returns in terms of how the time scales for "AE to 0", but if you do a combo of ideas like Humanist/Diplomatic, have Protestant, and take some extra Improve Relations policies (there are 5, 3 are tied to Diplomatic [though odd combos like Naval and Plutocratic, 2 to Humanist, and 1 to Administrative/Aristocratic), you can fairly reasonably hit 150+% Improve Relations with high prestige, or 5.0+ AE reduction/year, which can get extremely silly. Overall, it essentially makes Diplomatic roughly on par with Influence, actually, in terms of AE management, if you go for smaller chunks and multiple wars, and even potentially superior in terms of pure territorial expansion with the -20 warscore cost. In addition to that, Improve Relations is super important if you are in (or need to expand into) the HRE to get around the Unlawful Territory opinion modifier, which otherwise decays painfully slowly when you accumulate enough of it. Diplo also has a whole slew of nice bonuses, notably the early diplomat and early extra relations slot which can be amazing early . Really, all of them besides that terrible war exhaustion reduction cost ( every idea group has a weak idea somewhere, however). That being said, Influence outstrips Diplomatic in terms of pure blobbing and for WC runs due to the -diploannex cost, both in the ideas (-20%) and in policies (-20%, another -10% for republics), and also -50% cost to unjustified demands. It just makes integrating via vassal feeding farm more efficient, in both time and diplo-points. For expansionist nations that don't start in Europe/HRE and don't need either the early diplomat or relations slots, Influence is thus very appealing. That being said, Diplomatic is still a very powerful group in Europe, and nearly mandatory if you start in the HRE: if you aren't going to be doing much vassal feeding, I would almost certainly consider Diplomatic as a viable option, if you'r'e only taking one. As you say, taking both has a great deal of synergy. The +dip reputation alone, in conjunction with the -diplo-annex cost, makes integrations a breeze.
video suggestion: Plutocratic as a republic. Not only "if" but also "when". Imo a really interesting idea group, especially since you only get to use it so often, mostly when going for those custom nation achievements or in late game when you become a republic. But I don't really know how to rate it since I have to spend those military points on trade power
In my Austria playthru, I just picked them both! :P PU with France, Milan, Bohemia and Hungary, alliance with Castile, big Savoy and big Cologne. And one slot free for freelancing. And now it's boring because noone dares to touch ze Keiser. :(
In a really good Teutonic Order run, aiming for Germany. At this point thinking about Defensive, or Offensive Ideas first. Keeping all my Admin slots up waiting to pop muh Prussia. Then I am stuck, if I go Off/humanist separatism isn't a thing practically. Or Do I pick up Diplo/Influance to get to Unification faster?
Hey Darkfireslide, the Improve Relations from diplomatic is extremely powerful!! Not only it speeds up the improve relations action, but it also makes negative relations modifiers go away faster, per example if you have alot of aggressive expansion it can take alot of time for the agressive expansion to go away, but it takes less time if you have high improve relations, thats a another reason to grab a humanist-diplomatic combo
I suppose there are countries where expansion is adequate, depending on how you play. I myself consider Exploration>expansion, as you would have to give up other great admin idea groups to have it. Atleast I go exploration, or both. Not only expansion. :)
Normally, the +25% Improve Relation also improve the amount of relation points you get back every year from hostiles actions, which is nice because your agressive expansion will disappear faster, for example. Oh, and very nice video, thanks you !
It's not. Improve Relation doesn't affect the decay over time, it works only for improving relations faster. Better relations over time works on decay though
They changed the way that Improve Relations works and MAJORLY buffed Diplomatic. Diplomatic Reputation also makes it significantly easier to keep vassals in line, integrate them, and remain Emperor of the HRE, so I tend to take both groups.
it was my understanding that benign diplomats also improved you max improve relations, so for independant countries, you can improve up to 125, and vassals up to 250, but perhaps im wrong on that
Influence really shine with the administrative policy where you get -20% diplo annex cost. With the -25% from influence itself, you integrate vassal for nearly half the price and half the time.
Does the +25% improve relations in diplomatic NI's also improves the decay rates of opinion modifiers just like the "improve relations guy" advisor does? If yes its essentially 25% faster AE decay, which is really damn good.
I also usually take influence over diplomatic mainly for the Unjustified demands, diplomatic annexation cost, and the aggression expansion cost. The only reason I ever take diplomatic ideas is if I am playing the eu4 version of game of thrones for the 0 stability hit from breaking Royal Marriages
great episode, good job on explaining :D (also, if you're wondering... i am getting alot better and might leave the hospital this week, or the next one)
In our eu4 league (a regular 20+ weekly game) we limit players to their diplolimit: to limit hugboxing, but also to make diplo ideas slightly more viable.
Look out for high liberty desire though. In my current play-through my vassals have a combined development that is nearly half of mine (5 vassals, 1 (with 400 dev) has a lot more than the others) and the liberty desire of the largest is difficult to get below 50%.
I was just surprised that nobody wants to talk about this game despite how complex it is and how many options you have as a player that aren't explained
Hey, I play an older version of the game (1.14 I think), and I can say that the second slot is -33% time to fabricate a claim. Not that it matters too much, but now you know.
Diplomatic and Influence have a little bit of negative synergy: Province Warscore cost does nothing to vassalising. That works better with Administrative [RCC]
Espionage vs Innovation? Aristocratic vs plutocratic? Innovation vs administration? Which religion(IN THE GAME!) do you believe has the most beneficial modifiers for that region? Top 3 worst disasters? Top 3 worst and/or best game events?
Thing with innovative and espionage ideas is that they are not bad, but admin, religious, humanist and influence > innovative and espionage. With the last patch (one that focus around India) religious got nerfed again though so maybe you can scrap that one out of the list.
I noticed you didn't pick innovative ideas in your Tibet campaign. It's funny cause personally that's what I would have picked based on what you said some time ago, that nation that start remote and will have technology issues, can do well to start off with that idea to make up for it.
Colin Davis Playing tall is a phrase that means making what you have better, rather than getting more. It is opposed to 'playing wide'. I've heard it used by players of many strategy games, most notably Civilization, but I don't know its origin.
Colin Davis In EU it is actually more viable since there are no winning conditions. In Civ you will get crushed if you play against high difficulty AI (or you have a lot of luck).
Actually, I bought my friend EU4 for Christmas a while ago. With my help, he was able to learn most of the game mechanics in around 2 weeks. He hasn't been the same since.... Spread the word.- winners don't do heroin, unless it's digital.
improve relations over time is a lot better than you think. it lets your aggressive expansion cool down 25% faster and can be great for expanding quickly without worrying about coalitions as much. it's the same as the modifier you get for humanist ideas. I'd say both influence and diplomatic are good ideas. vassal feeding is great up until you get to the age of absolutism, once you get that boost to your admin efficiency it's just so much better to take land yourself rather than feeding vassals. so i'd say early game influence is better, but late game diplomatic gets better for the extra diplomat, reduced warscore cost and no stability cost for certain diplomatic actions
I've always saw it as Influence is to make everyone want to be your vassal and Diplomatic is to make everyone want to be your ally haha. This is kind of an exaggeration but it gets the point across in my opinion.
I'll take a ~900 development march over an ally any day: no need for favors, gives you bonus force limit (even if it is only a little), and they don't get AE. Allies are completely useless late game. :(
My personal opinion: Any time you are in a position so that you have a good reason to take diplomatic, it's a good idea to pick up influence as well. And in that case, go for influence first because of the ae impact (which is more important in the early game). Diplomatic is extremely good in some circumstances, but I don't see how it would ever be better than influence. Only with the combination of both you can get the maximum number of free cities later in the game as the emperor, so if you want to be the emperor as suggested in this video, you should still pick up influence. If someone can tell me a situation where diplomatic is just straight up better than influence please let me know. (unless you really don't want to expand - which falls under role playing imo, I talked about how I think playing tall is completely misunderstood in another comment on some video here, unless I'm asked to, I'm not gonna repeat that)
Cheaper province warscore cost should not be underestimated as an idea. The AE reduction from Influence, while powerful, is only useful as long as you're worried about a coalition, which sometimes isn't a problem. Cheaper diplo tech saves you points to do other things with them, and the cheaper stability cost means you can declare no-CB proxy wars (attacking a weak ally) to take down big nations. While I would hesitate to call it better, it does allow you to do different things than Influence.
darkfireslide Very strong idea group at times, no doubt about that. But still, I'd argue if AE isn't a problem, then taking Diplo or Influence won't be a strong pick either. If you are not in a situation where coalitions are a serious problem, you are also not in a situation where strong allies and deep diplomatic webs (that need breaking) are desired. And the no-CB war could be most useful when already dealing with a coalition (because you have to be quick before they attack you), in that case, once again, Influence should've been the first choice. However, I can see that for an isolated nation, this might be a good pick - but how do you get to those ideas then? Most of the time, I guess Exploration should be the 1st pick and you stop being isolated. Maybe Diplo as a 5th+ idea group to really get going and take a lot of provinces? But I'd rather go with a military one or Admin/Humanist then - me personally. So let's construct a situation where Diplo is clearly better: You don't have military/admin points to spare, are in the mid - early late game and want to conquer a lot of land. Then you still have to go through 5 more early game oriented policies until you get to the good stuff? Maybe it's viable, but if you don't have Adm points to spare for Humanist/Admin or even Economic (and if you've taken all of them, you do have military points to spare), you also don't have the ability to core a lot of land.
I think for the current "metagame" of EU4, Influence is probably clearly better, since vassal-spamming and blobbing are still by and large the best ways to play the game, but if you do play tall for whatever reason, I think diplomatic is a much stronger group. But then again, you might as well just take Trade or Exploration at that point. Overall though, yeah, you're probably right about Influence being the superior group.
On the top of my head, starting as Austria and going for WC makes me feel like I have cancer with only two diplomats early game, of course you get another one when you do the 2nd HRE reform but until then you are stuck with 2 diplomats which sucks.. That brings me to my point, diplomatic ideas for that early diplomat is what I go for when I play that specific playtrough, early PU forcing make you get -100 opinion towards your new PU which makes you lose said PU if your monarch dies unless relations are positive, so you MUST improve relations with them until positive.. Not to mention improving relations with electors, fabricating claims on Venice/Papal State for shadow kingdom etc etc.. Aggressive expansion as Austria HRE game is meh as you DONT want to expand into HRE, what you want instead is only up to Rome ( in which case -20%AE from Influence Ideas either wont help you much or you wont even get them yet) and then expand from Balkans and beyond.. The way I play it is by making myself pretty much in a state of perpetual war so even that idea from Diplo that reduces War Exhaustion cost is very handy.. On the other hand Influence ideas come into play when you do Revoke Privilegia reform, getting that vassal income boost and force limit contribution can be HUGE if you do 100+ princes WC. In any case Ill end my rant by saying that Influence ideas are more of a early game type idea group and they are usually better in early game than Diplomatic unless you are playing Austria HRE Emperor or any other HRE Emperor game.. Diplomatic ideas are straight up better for late game mostly cuz of that -20% WS cost (coupled with Imperialism CB is crazy).. Hope I help anyone with this.
Thank you for your comment. I disagree with some of it, with some of it I agree. Agreement (or indifference) is implied, here are some things I disagree with: a) as mentioned earlier, to get those free cities, I think both influence and diplomatic should be on your list if you want to be emperor b) I don't think either one is strong in late game unless you do not really grow much. But I was talking about which one is better and not some role playing aspect. Maybe the best thing those groups offer for the late game is the heir chance - which you get via influence. I like the aspect of influence is good in early game, diplomatic good in late game. I would say diplomatic is better in mid game for a number of reasons, and influence gives you a power boost early followed by some moderate benefit. What I'm about to say has something to do with it, but isn't meant as a reply to Andy's post. I forgot all about this discussion, but by now I have also found a place for diplomacy early before or instead of influence, which was my initial concern, in this case it's instead: I used to go diplo ideas, admin ideas and then military ideas which means a lot of aggression before the 3rd idea group, let's call it "early game". Lately I've found that diplo -> military -> admin (if even that) is really strong as well. You fall behind in military a little bit, but the surplus in admin allows you to straight up core instead of doing a lot of fancy vassal action - which also gives you more free slots for alliances. It's less aggressive, but I think it gives you a more balanced mid game. One of the nicest things about influence imo is that you get the integration cost reduction just about when you actually want to integrate slightly larger vassals. If you instead have those extra monarch points for coring land directly, diplomatic seems relatively strong, at least for a diplomatic idea group.
It's also good in the Indies. Maritime ideas is also a good idea if you have a lot of merchants from colonies and need more light ships for trade steering (whole idea group is centered around naval trade).
SteveOwnsMC If I were your friend I would have the police at my door XD. When playing online games I just don't ask what the age is, because it doesn't matter.
"competitive" eu4 sp pretty much always involve vassalising and vassal feeding, which makes influence a prime pick. If you're blobbing like crazy, it's even useful in mp to easier integration of your massive vassals. The decreased also reducing time spent (eating 150 dev by diplo annex is like 30 years).
Influence use to be really nice for Prussia as it allowed reckless expansion in the HRE; however, the new government type kind of kills expanding wide which is a shame.
Most of us probably don't play it multiplayer because we've all got a 50% bonus to internet privateering.
Lol, good one. :D
Dear Darkfireslide,
Your channel is a hidden gem. I am honestly surprised you don't have tens of thousands of subscribers as the quality and the quantity (heh) of your content are both extraordinary! I hope you keep on with your great work for a long time. Also, do you stream? If so, I'd really love to watch it :)
If my internet were faster I would absolutely love to stream. Unfortunately, I have to deal with my circumstances, such as they are.
I totally agree. I love you Channel Darkfireslide.
Thank you! :D
darkfireslide You got a subscription by the original comment posted and ofc by the couple of vides I've seen so far!
Your Vassals increase your own force limit by one. If you got that idea it will be increased additionally by 100% of that. So it gets doubled and your own force limit is increased by 2 per vassal
Thank you for the clarification!
Hey at least Marches give you 2 more!
Not every idea has to be good.
marches give you 2 so it should increase to 4.
Improve Relations also increases the decay of all negative opinion debuffs, like aggressive expansion.
correct me if im wrong but dosnt improve relations affects AE decay
scott cornford Correct! Relations over time and Improve relations (as a modifier, not the action) is the same.
To be more technically precise, "improve relations" actually means that all negative opinion modifiers that you see when you mouseover someone's opinion about you or another country, will now either decay at that increased rate. For example, in the Diplomatic idea group you get +25% improve relations. This means that if there is a modifier giving someone else -50 opinion of you and its base decay rate is 2 per year, then now it will decay at 2.50 (because it decays 25% faster due to +25% improve relations modifier).
The most common example and reason why you want the maximum possible improve relations modifier is because it affects Aggressive Expansion decay. As you know, AE decays a certain amount per year. Improve relations modifiers INCREASE the rate at which it will decay each year. This makes it super important to maximise so that you can get countries out of coalition opinion range by the time truces are finished. For reference, prestige will also give you an improve relations modifier depending on if you have positive or negative prestige, so its important to keep it high if you are playing a nation focused on conquest, in addition to the other benefits prestige gives such as reduced institution embracement cost and morale of armies.
Espionage vs shit. NOW!
One could argue, that you are able to use dung as manure.
Espionage is kinda weird. As an idea group it's [usually] pretty bad; although it's got upsides and can actually make it nigh impoissible to fabricate claims on you.
However it has some of the best policies in the game; and the -Corruption really lets you abuse Debase Currency.
In the Common Sense patches; it wasn't a ad idea to ake Espionage and Innovative on a RotW nation. Faster spy network = more study tech; and Inno+Espionage = cheaper tech and much cheaper advisors; which combined with the study tech qhich you built faster; could let RotW keep up with West.
Man, improve relations is op, as it accelerates aggressive expansion decay. 25% faster decay is almost 25% aggressive expansion less.
Economic vs. Trade.
In my experience Economic is useful early game when you actually need more gold, but trade is way more useful later on. In most playthroughs I go trade late game and i never really pick economic. Would love to hear your more informed opinion :P
I usually do both. Economic early on, some conquest for better trade nodes, then full trade. I like economic for better loans and better inflation control combined with lower build costs and higher taxes + production.
+ita-eng subber hmmmm interesting. to what extend do you get buildings in your country or more like when do you think it is worth it? actually i only cherrypick the provinces in which i construct buildings because it doesnt feel worth it in provinces with low developement or do you spend a lot of points on development?
None are worth picking as long as Admin, Humanist and Religious exists.
Both are weak. Eco has that 20% dev cost that is good, but not in single player
@5:00 it just increases your vassals force limit that's it. THE REASON it looks like it does nothing is because 9.99/10 they cannot afford to make a larger army.
Improve Relations also increases the positive decay of negative diplomatic actions. So for example, if you annex a member of the HRE, the rest of the HRE hates you for a while and you get a negative diplomatic modifier. This goes away faster if you have better Improve Relations.
Vassal tax and vassal contribution to force limit is super strong when playing HREmperor.
Improve Relations in Diplomatic Ideas affects Aggressive Expansion (and other negative diplo action) decay, since it's a flat modfier to your natiional "Improve Relations" bar, same with the diplomat adviser.
You can even test this out extremely easily: a nation with 100% overextension and -100 prestige has a -100% stat for "Improve Relations", which means there's no decay on negative diplo opinions and AE. Base AE decay is -2.0 a year (25 years to recover from 50 AE), so when you get +100 prestige, you have 50% Improve Relations, or a base decay of -3.0 (or 16 years 8 months to recover from 50 AE). Having Diplomatic and a Diplomat Advisor is 45% Improve Relations, which is equivalent to sitting at 95 prestige in terms of AE reduction. There's going to be diminishing returns in terms of how the time scales for "AE to 0", but if you do a combo of ideas like Humanist/Diplomatic, have Protestant, and take some extra Improve Relations policies (there are 5, 3 are tied to Diplomatic [though odd combos like Naval and Plutocratic, 2 to Humanist, and 1 to Administrative/Aristocratic), you can fairly reasonably hit 150+% Improve Relations with high prestige, or 5.0+ AE reduction/year, which can get extremely silly.
Overall, it essentially makes Diplomatic roughly on par with Influence, actually, in terms of AE management, if you go for smaller chunks and multiple wars, and even potentially superior in terms of pure territorial expansion with the -20 warscore cost. In addition to that, Improve Relations is super important if you are in (or need to expand into) the HRE to get around the Unlawful Territory opinion modifier, which otherwise decays painfully slowly when you accumulate enough of it. Diplo also has a whole slew of nice bonuses, notably the early diplomat and early extra relations slot which can be amazing early . Really, all of them besides that terrible war exhaustion reduction cost ( every idea group has a weak idea somewhere, however).
That being said, Influence outstrips Diplomatic in terms of pure blobbing and for WC runs due to the -diploannex cost, both in the ideas (-20%) and in policies (-20%, another -10% for republics), and also -50% cost to unjustified demands. It just makes integrating via vassal feeding farm more efficient, in both time and diplo-points. For expansionist nations that don't start in Europe/HRE and don't need either the early diplomat or relations slots, Influence is thus very appealing. That being said, Diplomatic is still a very powerful group in Europe, and nearly mandatory if you start in the HRE: if you aren't going to be doing much vassal feeding, I would almost certainly consider Diplomatic as a viable option, if you'r'e only taking one. As you say, taking both has a great deal of synergy. The +dip reputation alone, in conjunction with the -diplo-annex cost, makes integrations a breeze.
I could be wrong (I haven't tested it), but I recall unjustified demands also reduce war cost cost for provinces that aren't part of the war goal.
video suggestion: Plutocratic as a republic. Not only "if" but also "when". Imo a really interesting idea group, especially since you only get to use it so often, mostly when going for those custom nation achievements or in late game when you become a republic. But I don't really know how to rate it since I have to spend those military points on trade power
In my Austria playthru, I just picked them both! :P
PU with France, Milan, Bohemia and Hungary, alliance with Castile, big Savoy and big Cologne. And one slot free for freelancing. And now it's boring because noone dares to touch ze Keiser. :(
you can still unite the HRE
In a really good Teutonic Order run, aiming for Germany. At this point thinking about Defensive, or Offensive Ideas first. Keeping all my Admin slots up waiting to pop muh Prussia.
Then I am stuck, if I go Off/humanist separatism isn't a thing practically.
Or Do I pick up Diplo/Influance to get to Unification faster?
Hey Darkfireslide, the Improve Relations from diplomatic is extremely powerful!! Not only it speeds up the improve relations action, but it also makes negative relations modifiers go away faster, per example if you have alot of aggressive expansion it can take alot of time for the agressive expansion to go away, but it takes less time if you have high improve relations, thats a another reason to grab a humanist-diplomatic combo
Exploration vs. Expansion...?
Economic vs. Trade?
pls spread the knowledge
both if you plan on colonazing much
pretty stupid question cause you first need exploration to colonize sensefull and without colonization expanion ideas arent good
I suppose there are countries where expansion is adequate, depending on how you play. I myself consider Exploration>expansion, as you would have to give up other great admin idea groups to have it. Atleast I go exploration, or both. Not only expansion. :)
Relations over time boosts agressive expantion returning to 0, it is rather good for many countrys.
Normally, the +25% Improve Relation also improve the amount of relation points you get back every year from hostiles actions, which is nice because your agressive expansion will disappear faster, for example.
Oh, and very nice video, thanks you !
No that is Better Relations Over Time if I'm correct.
It's not. Improve Relation doesn't affect the decay over time, it works only for improving relations faster. Better relations over time works on decay though
Oh thanks, my bad, my bad !
"So unprofessional !!"
Damn I love this guy :-D
They changed the way that Improve Relations works and MAJORLY buffed Diplomatic. Diplomatic Reputation also makes it significantly easier to keep vassals in line, integrate them, and remain Emperor of the HRE, so I tend to take both groups.
it was my understanding that benign diplomats also improved you max improve relations, so for independant countries, you can improve up to 125, and vassals up to 250, but perhaps im wrong on that
Influence really shine with the administrative policy where you get -20% diplo annex cost. With the -25% from influence itself, you integrate vassal for nearly half the price and half the time.
Does envoy travel time only apply to diplomats or also missionaries, colonists, etc. ?
Does the +25% improve relations in diplomatic NI's also improves the decay rates of opinion modifiers just like the "improve relations guy" advisor does? If yes its essentially 25% faster AE decay, which is really damn good.
Tested it myself and it indeed effects the decay rates of opinion modifiers. The dip NI improved the AE decay from 1.3 per year to 1.8 per year.
Nice video, Although I have almost 400 hours in EU4, I still learn from these.
Also RIP Portugal:
Cause of death: The baguette warriors of the north.
Your Vs. Series is great! I love it!
No one ever mentions that vassals also give a host of extra generals to your war.
OriginalSoulbourne
And autonomous armies, which is really nice.
I also usually take influence over diplomatic mainly for the Unjustified demands, diplomatic annexation cost, and the aggression expansion cost. The only reason I ever take diplomatic ideas is if I am playing the eu4 version of game of thrones for the 0 stability hit from breaking Royal Marriages
Which option do you think is better for spamming PUs
Diplo for reduced stability impact.
i'd say diplomatic is far better for getting PU's than Influence
TheBandOfBastards Thank you!
Hail Our Great Lord Gaben Thank you!
great episode, good job on explaining :D (also, if you're wondering... i am getting alot better and might leave the hospital this week, or the next one)
I'm super happy to hear that! :D
I know right! Im already sick of this place hahaha random question: whats your favorite idea group?
Overall, I really love Defensive when I take it. The better morale and cheaper troops are so nice.
In our eu4 league (a regular 20+ weekly game) we limit players to their diplolimit: to limit hugboxing, but also to make diplo ideas slightly more viable.
Please do more of these Idea vs Idea
I love being a smaller nation with bigger vassals. It's funny.
Look out for high liberty desire though. In my current play-through my vassals have a combined development that is nearly half of mine (5 vassals, 1 (with 400 dev) has a lot more than the others) and the liberty desire of the largest is difficult to get below 50%.
Dark, nice videos, you're making eu 4 videos that are easily accessible and that differ from all the eu 4 videos on UA-cam that are just lets plays.
I was just surprised that nobody wants to talk about this game despite how complex it is and how many options you have as a player that aren't explained
Hey, I play an older version of the game (1.14 I think), and I can say that the second slot is -33% time to fabricate a claim. Not that it matters too much, but now you know.
Diplomatic and Influence have a little bit of negative synergy:
Province Warscore cost does nothing to vassalising. That works better with Administrative [RCC]
Out of curiosity, ever since Mare Nostrum came out and changed the espionage idea group, is it still worthless or does it have some value now?
Espionage vs Innovation?
Aristocratic vs plutocratic?
Innovation vs administration?
Which religion(IN THE GAME!) do you believe has the most beneficial modifiers for that region?
Top 3 worst disasters?
Top 3 worst and/or best game events?
Thing with innovative and espionage ideas is that they are not bad, but admin, religious, humanist and influence > innovative and espionage. With the last patch (one that focus around India) religious got nerfed again though so maybe you can scrap that one out of the list.
could you do HRE members good strategies? OPM guide, how to deal with imperial austria ect. swell video.
I noticed you didn't pick innovative ideas in your Tibet campaign. It's funny cause personally that's what I would have picked based on what you said some time ago,
that nation that start remote and will have technology issues, can do well to start off with that idea to make up for it.
It definitely helps, but Religious seemed more fun because my faith was really unique so I always had a CB basically. Haha
what exactly is the "playing tall" reference? JW
Colin Davis Playing tall is a phrase that means making what you have better, rather than getting more. It is opposed to 'playing wide'. I've heard it used by players of many strategy games, most notably Civilization, but I don't know its origin.
I could see it being way more viable in Civ than in EU, but its a pretty cool idea. Thanks boo
Colin Davis In EU it is actually more viable since there are no winning conditions. In Civ you will get crushed if you play against high difficulty AI (or you have a lot of luck).
Actually, I bought my friend EU4 for Christmas a while ago. With my help, he was able to learn most of the game mechanics in around 2 weeks. He hasn't been the same since.... Spread the word.- winners don't do heroin, unless it's digital.
improve relations over time is a lot better than you think. it lets your aggressive expansion cool down 25% faster and can be great for expanding quickly without worrying about coalitions as much. it's the same as the modifier you get for humanist ideas.
I'd say both influence and diplomatic are good ideas. vassal feeding is great up until you get to the age of absolutism, once you get that boost to your admin efficiency it's just so much better to take land yourself rather than feeding vassals. so i'd say early game influence is better, but late game diplomatic gets better for the extra diplomat, reduced warscore cost and no stability cost for certain diplomatic actions
Influence is Austria the Idea Group.
Correction: playing EU4 multiplayer doesn't take much skill, if you just play it badly
Wise Words
Its nice to do diplo and influence with Austria. '-'
I've always saw it as Influence is to make everyone want to be your vassal and Diplomatic is to make everyone want to be your ally haha. This is kind of an exaggeration but it gets the point across in my opinion.
I'll take a ~900 development march over an ally any day: no need for favors, gives you bonus force limit (even if it is only a little), and they don't get AE. Allies are completely useless late game. :(
DraconicEpic True shit.
My personal opinion: Any time you are in a position so that you have a good reason to take diplomatic, it's a good idea to pick up influence as well. And in that case, go for influence first because of the ae impact (which is more important in the early game). Diplomatic is extremely good in some circumstances, but I don't see how it would ever be better than influence.
Only with the combination of both you can get the maximum number of free cities later in the game as the emperor, so if you want to be the emperor as suggested in this video, you should still pick up influence.
If someone can tell me a situation where diplomatic is just straight up better than influence please let me know. (unless you really don't want to expand - which falls under role playing imo, I talked about how I think playing tall is completely misunderstood in another comment on some video here, unless I'm asked to, I'm not gonna repeat that)
Cheaper province warscore cost should not be underestimated as an idea. The AE reduction from Influence, while powerful, is only useful as long as you're worried about a coalition, which sometimes isn't a problem. Cheaper diplo tech saves you points to do other things with them, and the cheaper stability cost means you can declare no-CB proxy wars (attacking a weak ally) to take down big nations. While I would hesitate to call it better, it does allow you to do different things than Influence.
darkfireslide Very strong idea group at times, no doubt about that. But still, I'd argue if AE isn't a problem, then taking Diplo or Influence won't be a strong pick either. If you are not in a situation where coalitions are a serious problem, you are also not in a situation where strong allies and deep diplomatic webs (that need breaking) are desired. And the no-CB war could be most useful when already dealing with a coalition (because you have to be quick before they attack you), in that case, once again, Influence should've been the first choice.
However, I can see that for an isolated nation, this might be a good pick - but how do you get to those ideas then? Most of the time, I guess Exploration should be the 1st pick and you stop being isolated.
Maybe Diplo as a 5th+ idea group to really get going and take a lot of provinces? But I'd rather go with a military one or Admin/Humanist then - me personally.
So let's construct a situation where Diplo is clearly better:
You don't have military/admin points to spare, are in the mid - early late game and want to conquer a lot of land. Then you still have to go through 5 more early game oriented policies until you get to the good stuff? Maybe it's viable, but if you don't have Adm points to spare for Humanist/Admin or even Economic (and if you've taken all of them, you do have military points to spare), you also don't have the ability to core a lot of land.
I think for the current "metagame" of EU4, Influence is probably clearly better, since vassal-spamming and blobbing are still by and large the best ways to play the game, but if you do play tall for whatever reason, I think diplomatic is a much stronger group. But then again, you might as well just take Trade or Exploration at that point. Overall though, yeah, you're probably right about Influence being the superior group.
On the top of my head, starting as Austria and going for WC makes me feel like I have cancer with only two diplomats early game, of course you get another one when you do the 2nd HRE reform but until then you are stuck with 2 diplomats which sucks.. That brings me to my point, diplomatic ideas for that early diplomat is what I go for when I play that specific playtrough, early PU forcing make you get -100 opinion towards your new PU which makes you lose said PU if your monarch dies unless relations are positive, so you MUST improve relations with them until positive.. Not to mention improving relations with electors, fabricating claims on Venice/Papal State for shadow kingdom etc etc.. Aggressive expansion as Austria HRE game is meh as you DONT want to expand into HRE, what you want instead is only up to Rome ( in which case -20%AE from Influence Ideas either wont help you much or you wont even get them yet) and then expand from Balkans and beyond.. The way I play it is by making myself pretty much in a state of perpetual war so even that idea from Diplo that reduces War Exhaustion cost is very handy.. On the other hand Influence ideas come into play when you do Revoke Privilegia reform, getting that vassal income boost and force limit contribution can be HUGE if you do 100+ princes WC. In any case Ill end my rant by saying that Influence ideas are more of a early game type idea group and they are usually better in early game than Diplomatic unless you are playing Austria HRE Emperor or any other HRE Emperor game.. Diplomatic ideas are straight up better for late game mostly cuz of that -20% WS cost (coupled with Imperialism CB is crazy).. Hope I help anyone with this.
Thank you for your comment. I disagree with some of it, with some of it I agree. Agreement (or indifference) is implied, here are some things I disagree with:
a) as mentioned earlier, to get those free cities, I think both influence and diplomatic should be on your list if you want to be emperor
b) I don't think either one is strong in late game unless you do not really grow much.
But I was talking about which one is better and not some role playing aspect. Maybe the best thing those groups offer for the late game is the heir chance - which you get via influence.
I like the aspect of influence is good in early game, diplomatic good in late game. I would say diplomatic is better in mid game for a number of reasons, and influence gives you a power boost early followed by some moderate benefit. What I'm about to say has something to do with it, but isn't meant as a reply to Andy's post.
I forgot all about this discussion, but by now I have also found a place for diplomacy early before or instead of influence, which was my initial concern, in this case it's instead:
I used to go diplo ideas, admin ideas and then military ideas which means a lot of aggression before the 3rd idea group, let's call it "early game". Lately I've found that diplo -> military -> admin (if even that) is really strong as well. You fall behind in military a little bit, but the surplus in admin allows you to straight up core instead of doing a lot of fancy vassal action - which also gives you more free slots for alliances. It's less aggressive, but I think it gives you a more balanced mid game. One of the nicest things about influence imo is that you get the integration cost reduction just about when you actually want to integrate slightly larger vassals. If you instead have those extra monarch points for coring land directly, diplomatic seems relatively strong, at least for a diplomatic idea group.
If DDR can become a paradox dev you can too :3
QUALITY AND QUANITY? YOU TOOK MY ADVICE? :O
Mm, I actually played this campaign ages ago. Haha
awhhh feelsbadman
why would you ever pick maritime?
even in multiplayer only England benefits from preventing invasion of island
It's also good in the Indies. Maritime ideas is also a good idea if you have a lot of merchants from colonies and need more light ships for trade steering (whole idea group is centered around naval trade).
quote: "look at the policies yourself" --- deabo XD
I miss when state propaganda was part of the influence tree :( espionage is so weak
I really like your videos =3
I don't play multiplayer because I have no friends that play EU4. I'm also almost 16 so it would be weird to play with a 20 something year old.
not really, i''m 14 and i play with people who are 18 or older regularly
that didnt sound the way i wanted it to sound.
I'm 20 and none of my friends play eu4. Now that I think about it, I don't have that many friends.
SteveOwnsMC If I were your friend I would have the police at my door XD.
When playing online games I just don't ask what the age is, because it doesn't matter.
Desmond deserves better
GWALIOR MAN WHAT ARE YOU DOING
yay my suggestion
NONE of this rubbish when i play as allmighty Prussia, mwahahaha!
No, but for real, i usually dont take these ideas, unless im like HRE Emperor.
"competitive" eu4 sp pretty much always involve vassalising and vassal feeding, which makes influence a prime pick. If you're blobbing like crazy, it's even useful in mp to easier integration of your massive vassals. The decreased also reducing time spent (eating 150 dev by diplo annex is like 30 years).
Influence use to be really nice for Prussia as it allowed reckless expansion in the HRE; however, the new government type kind of kills expanding wide which is a shame.
darkfireslide, buddy, multiplayer is not that hard. If you want to play a game I'll show ya ;)
first my dude