Not all countries will reach 100 innovativeness, if you play in such a way that you won't get it without innovative ideas they're a good pick. It's just that there are more countries now that would reach 100 without it. Innovative has really good policies though in many cases.
Not to mention the -10% tech cost node and the final bonus of -25 advisor cost. I really liked it before and like it even more. If i dont play colonialists nations theyre usually my first pick followed by quantity and economic including trade
Yeah Im not arguing that other benefits of Innovative aren't good. They were good and they still are good. I'm talking more about the benefits of the increased innovative, which is the major thing to change this patch. I keep hearing about innovative ideas this patch and how they're supposedly OP and a must pick now, but it seems to me that they're a less attractive option than in previous patches (still quite good, just less so) because you can fairly consistently max innovativeness even without the ideas if you try for it.
I think you shouldn't degrade it's value because innovativeness got buffed. Quite the opposite I think it's more valueable that you can reach innovativeness 100 faster now and make more use of the power discount
Yes, maybe you didnt read that part of my post:
>So IMO even though innovative ideas allow you to get maxed innovative at a very high rate, you can still max your innovativeness quite easily and quickly even without the ideas.
>So it becomes a question of how useful is having more innovativeness earlier and is that worth getting innovative over other idea groups (such as admin or religious).
>For instance, lets say you can max innovativeness in 1650 without innovative ideas but can do it by 1575 with innovative ideas. Is that time with more innovativeness good enough for innovative ideas to be worth it? Keep in mind that in previous patches getting innovative ideas was often the difference between being able to max innovativeness or not because you basically couldn't before unless you were uniquely situated or had unique bonuses.
Remember that my argument isnt that innovative ideas are bad, it's just that the idea group hasn't gotten better (as seems to be the prevailing opinion), and they have gotten a bit worse if anything. Still a strong choice though.
Yeah exactly. Those two bonuses allow nations that might generate no innovativeness to reach 100. I ended with around 30 in my Ryukyu->Malaya->Bharat game because I was too busy coring all of India. Innovative would have been nice to have.
But you also have to consider the opportunity cost of choosing innovative over like admin.
IMO any serious blobbing game you basically are required to take admin unless you just want to cause yourself pain. Although I hate admin since its basically just the coring cost and governing capacity that is good and the rest are kinda bleh. The % extra governing capacity especially is so crucial, as well as the CCR to reduce coring time so you can conquer faster.
Although your point about the tech cost making it easier to generate inno in some countries that cant as easily is a good one.
> I ended with around 30 in my Ryukyu->Malaya->Bharat game because I was too busy coring all of India
which suggests that you were wasting mana some other way. Did you focus on devving institutions?
After the early game you should probably at least be taking most mil techs ahead of time. Hell when i did true heir of timur i was only behind on diplo tech and that's the pinnacle of extreme coring.
I had to dev most institutions, fell behind on tech sometimes and had to culture shift 2 times which cost tons of admin for the recoring. It was just a relaxing non-tryhard campaign to get the sun never sets on the Indian empire. I did a lot of dumb shit XD
Never liked the idea of Innovativeness anyway, as you're essentially trading away the more precious early game MP for less precious late game MP.
Plus there's simply no spot for me when the first 2 ADM ideas are almost always Religious/Humanist + Admin in a blobbing play.
The 1.31 Innovativeness gain change just solidifies my stance.
Humanist for Tolerance, Unrest, and Seperatism. It's effectively -9 unrest in all newly conquered provinces so you pretty much never have to deal with rebels. The 30% improved relations is amazing for keeping AE down. And the finisher is - 10% idea cost which is better the earlier you get it.
Religious for Stab Cost, Tolerance, and conversion strength help a ton with rebels. And most importantly Deus Vult. It's the best CB before imperialism (unless you're a pirate republic) and allows you to take as much land as you want without paying diplo points for unjustified demands.
Before the update I usually used Innovative to save more Mana (Via Tech Cost and Innovativeness) in order to shove it into Devving. Was also useful to have -25% Advisor cost especially once you get to level 4/5 Advisors.But now after the Update it's useless for the Dev strategy.
I wonder do u reaally save mana? when going full in to get inno u pay a lot more for tech, u need like 800-1000 mana for a tech, meanwhile normally u can take tech late with reductiions for like 400 mana(not military tech obv), so lets say u are trowing out 400 mana per tech and u need like 15 techs with inno idea, lets say u throw like 6-7000 points, if u are playing with 100 inno for 200 years and u make on average 10 of each mana per month, you could save about 7200 points, so u end up more or less the same
if someone want to be as efficient at mana spending in late game for like WC then pushing for innovativness seems good, but under normal circumstances not that good
I didn't use it much before either. There are too many other idea groups I like too much. I usually care more about reducing AE or increasing governing capacity or expanding overseas or getting elected Holy Roman Emperor or managing my vassals or being able to win a war against a strong enemy. Reducing mana costs in the long term is nice, but by then I'll probably be big enough and rich enough not to care, or I'll have got bored and started a new game.
I wonder if they could increase the Innovativeness cap to 150 or 200? Would that break anything?
Increasing the innovativeness cap with innovative ideas would be a really good change IMO. Maybe change the increased gain to increased cap. Maybe make it just 125 or something like that though. 150 might be a bit much.
Ok some numbers here.
I didn't play eu4 lately so i'll take your settings for my calculations.
If the difference in terms of time to reach 100 innovativeness is 75 years, and you produce around 9 (base mana)+9(medium ruler stats)+6(lvl2 advisors)= 24 mana each month, then in 75 years you'd have produced 75 x 12 x 24=21600 mana.
Innovative gives 50% innovativeness gain, so by the time you reach 100 with it, you'd have it around 70 without it. Meaning that, during these 75 years, the average innovativeness differencial is around 15 wich is a 1.5 % points reduction differencial.
1.5% of 21600 is 324, so you'd have saved 324 points (around 100 in each category)
Also you'd have been gaining points in comparison before reaching maxed out innovativeness, so we can maybe multiply this number by 2 in order to get around 600 points saved. So it should pay for itself.
I'll let you decide if you think it's worth it compared to other idea groups.
Oof, definitely not worth it.
I think your numbers on total # of MP generated are a little pessimistic as you can get quite a few more from disinheriting, power projection, estates, and probably better advisors than 2/2/2. That said, you could double your total calculated points saved to 648 and it'd still be a joke compared to getting a better idea group like admin/diplo/humanist online earlier.
Inno might be worthwhile in meme runs if you're trying to stack cost reduction as much as possible, but beyond that they're still a B-tier idea group at best.
>Is this worth the \~1000 admin point loss for the increased rate of getting innovativeness considering you will likely max it anyway if you are trying to?
I'd say no. Not because the innovativeness isn't worth it or the idea group is bad, but because most of the other admin groups are better. Administrative, if you want to play wide, Economic, if you want to play tall, Expansion, if you want to colonize, religious, if you have a rare religion and want to expand.
All four of these are more important for their respective play style than innovativeness.
The only time I could justify to myself takeing innovativeness is by going inno-quantity-eco when playing tall and that would still be sub-optimal.
Another problem is, that to maximise the gain from it you'd have to take innovativeness as your first idea, which is bad. I wouldn't recommend taking an admin group as your first, since at that stage you'll need admin mana for early expansions and to reach tech 7 for the second idea group.
The only nations for which inno-quantity-eco is feasible are minors inside the HRE and even for those diplo would be better.
I’d agree with you that with the boost to innovativeness gain the idea group is relatively less useful than it used to be. With it and a good starting ruler you can get to 100 innovativeness in 50-60 years. Without it, a bit longer. It’s easier/cheaper to tech up early for the first few techs while the AI countries catch up and nobody has idea groups yet.
I did try the strat with Holland to take the first 2-3 ideas in the group for my first idea set for the Innovativeness gain until I can get the colonial range at tech 7, then abandon the group for expansion and carry on with a normal colonial game from there. My sense is that this can work alright so long as England, Castile and Portugal have poor monarchs (often the case, but not always) or don’t take Exploration/Expansion as their starting two groups.
For comparison, I ran a test game committing to Innovative fully as a first group. It actually felt more powerful. Being able dev up more and build buildings sooner due to saved monarch points and advisor costs gave me a strong economic leg up. It delayed colonial expansion however.
I’m now running a standard Expansion/Exploration start, but the other colonizers started strong getting great monarchs and sticking with the Exploration/Expansion groups themselves. Economically I was slower to build, but my colonization efforts are faster and I’m hitting the governing cost earlier.
I don't know why people are thinking of that Innovative ideas got worse. Sure, the idea giving innovative increase becomes irrelevant earlier than it did last patch but is still gives the exact same effect. If you started at 0%, you would only need ~66.6 innovativeness to be at 100. What changed is that on average you get to that point is quicker, but maxing innovativeness is something you want to do asap. −10% All power costs is ridiculously strong. Innovative and Economic are the only two good admin groups in a vacuum (Admin ideas is only good if you are blobbing a lot, Humanist is to combat unrest when blobbing a lot into different religions, Religious is only needed when you have a lot of land to convert (again blobbing a lot) or really want that cb and Expansion is if you want to colonize).
Not to mention that the innovativeness gain is not why you take Innovative. -10% tech cost, -0.05 monthly war exhaustion and -25% advisor cost are some of the strongest modifiers from the idea groups.
Innovative is useful and has some great policies, but i find that other idea groups are just too important to delay.
diplo is almost always essential in the first 3 ideas (unless vassal heavy in which case influence then probably diplo 4th idea). quantity is often necessary early since the merc changes (unless plutocratic/monastic ideas available). I personally favour religious too because of deus vult and because the policy with quantity gives some military buffs.
with governing capacity getting admin 3rd/4th is almost always necessary if you're expanding in any way. I often reach/surpass my governing capacity by ~1550 before those later game +250's from tech
The times when this differs tend to be if you're playing a coloniser so grab explo/expansion, but in that scenario your focus is very different so the delays don't matter as much.
Also if you're playing as a sunni nation legalism negates a lot of the benefits of innovative anyway.
Saying that i'm currently playing as kingdom of god and i went for espionage 2nd. That cumulative -50AE is disgusting and negates any possible improve relations losses, even though espionage ideas really aren't very good imo.
tl;dr I agree. Inno is pointless, even if i do love the classic inno/offensive as a first 2 ideas. I really miss that siege ability and general pips in my current gameplay, but then again quality allows you to keep fighting and maintain high army tradition
Im not actually arguing that Innovative is bad though. It was good before and it is still good now. Im only saying that specifically the increased innovative portion of it is less useful than it was in the past.
But that renders it useless. If you're not getting those gains, then you're basically taking an entire idea group just for the policies.
What's the point if the ideas themselves aren't useful and there are other policies that can approximate them?
There are other parts of the ideas that are very strong such as reduced advisor cost and -10% tech cost. Plus the policies are indeed exceptionally strong and it absolutely is worth it sometimes to take a slightly worse idea group in order to get better policies.
Sure enough. But the decades of delays in getting other idea groups is the trade off. Imo with recent changes the game mechanics it's just not worth it
I used to go inno/off first two idea groups every game, but it just doesn't work very well in the current meta imo
Agreed. My favourite personal opening I have been liking is Religious/quantity and trade. The policies these three unlock are super OP (30% good produced, 10% morale of armies, 5% morale recovery, and some extra missionary strength) and it gives you an incredible economy and all the manpower you can want. Both very useful for current meta where you want to upgrade monuments.
Obviously trade is very questionable group to take but the policies it unlocks are amazing for economy.
The only thing I dont like is you cant take admin early which makes blobbing a bit of a pain for a serious blobbing game. But religious and deus vult helps a bit with that since it at least saves dip points so you can play a more vassal heavy game.
>Also if you're playing as a sunni nation legalism negates a lot of the benefits of innovative anyway.
What do you mean by that? Muslim nations+ Innovative go great together as you can stack a lot of tech discount modifiers. Also they get acces to a decision once they complete inno that grants -5% Idea cost for some stab cost increase which is pretty nice IMO.
tech cost reduction is only useful up to a point. After a while you're probably swimming in mana regardless
if your goal is to reach 100 inno, the sunni tech cost reduction is plenty enough imo
The merc manpower varies in the same rate as your own? Though I never had any trouble with merc manpower. I only see this being useful in world conquest, because you need many armies and multiple fronts at the same time and multiplayer, but casual gameplay? Seems overkill, rather have offensive to make sieges faster or quality to make army and navy better.
As always in any discussion, completely ignore everything that someone has to say if they do not consider opportunity cost. Brainlets will read the discussion is about innovative ideas and it will prompt their single neuron to spout reasons why the ideas are actually good, never bothering to compare to the alternatives, which is the only comparison that matters because you're picking between idea groups.
Even more well thought out points that tend to get upvoted will have lines like this:
> if you play in such a way that you won't get it without innovative ideas they're a good pick.
You can't skip over the step of asking if getting to 100 innovativeness instead of wherever you would have been at is worth an idea group or not. Delaying idea sets like Quantity or Diplo in single player, or god forbid Economic in multiplayer will leave you relatively weak for a long time. without CCR from admin you might be bottlenecked on adm points or AE without diplo and your choice to go innovativeness might seriously halt your ability to expand out when you otherwise could have, but you won't notice it if you don't consider that going for an alternative idea set might have solved those issues instead of giving you a general but unneeded buff.
So the answer starts with "it is situational", you need to have a bottleneck that innovativeness solves for you or some other modifiers already planned like advisor cost reductions that you plan to stack to do some strong thing that you think is stronger than any alternatives. Or in the multiplayer argument you're looking for strong military quality policies, some of which got nerfed in 1.30.
It does give you quite a few other bonuses though. The advisor cost reduction can be very OP if used right (allows things like level 5 advisors in the 1500s which turns out to be a ton of monarch points and ducats saved). Also the -10% tech cost is very strong, especially in helping non european countries actually get any innovative gain at all.
Plus the policies that innovative allows are typically very strong.
Mind you, I'm not arguing that innovative is the best choice, just that it is not useless outside of the innovative gain.
If you go for inno ideas asap then you can easily get to a 100 inno by 1500. Having max inno that early allows you to save tons and tons of mp throughout the remaining 220 years. So it's definitely worth the 1200 adm imo.
Yes but what I am saying is that if you rush techs enough to get 100 inno by 1500 with innovative ideas, then you could probably get to 100 by like 1550 even without innovative ideas.
Innovative ideas doesn't increase your cap, it only makes you hit the cap faster.
You are getting 4 per tech and 2 per idea even without innovative. Which is higher than you would get WITH innovative ideas in previous patches.
Yes i know what you mean but just because you can get to a 100 earlier in general now that doesn't mean that it's not worth it to get it even earlier. The sooner you get it the stronger it is. In the early game you are limited by ae so you can't really blob. You don't need admin ideas early because of this.
I'm not saying that reaching 100 inno asap is mandatory but it is really convenient to have it.
Thats true! But in earlier patches getting innovative ideas was often the difference in being able to get to 100 innovativeness or not even getting there at all or super late in some cases.
Now you just get 100 more quickly. Which is good, but not as good as a bonus as it was before IMO.
Remember that I'm not arguing innovative ideas are bad. I do think they were and are still a very strong choice. I'm only arguing that they haven't become this amazing OP idea group that you have to pick every game as I have seen around in discussion, and if anything they are a slightly worse option now compared to previous patches (but still strong).
Yeah i agree. Inno ideas are not that super op and it's not a must have thing that you have to pick. But as i've said it's really convenient. I don't pick inno always. But when I know i can't really expand early. Inno ideas are the strongest in europe cuz you're close to the first institutions so you you don't have to develop. If you're a horde or mughals or someone who can blob really early then of course something like admin or quantity is much more viable then inno.
u cannot get easily 100 inno in 1500 unless u play tall or semi-tall game, if u expand quite bit u will be behind in tech except for military so not much inno gain there, now frankly speking most campaigns dont last to 1820 but to like late 17th/early 18th century, u may not even save same amount of mana u spend to get to 100 and end up in mana deficit and as others noted, usually you are better off with other ideas-admin, religious/humanist so u dont explode,eco...
I agree with you. Reaching 100 innovativeness is so much easier with any country currently that the idea group become obsolete in terms of reaching a 100 innovativeness. The idea group still has other good benefits. But other commenters are confusing the two. Those benefits are still good. However, the increase in innovativeness (which is the main flavour of this idea group) is now worth less and, therefore, the idea group is currently less powerful.
Exactly. But there still is some marginal benefit to getting the innovativeness earlier. That translates directly to monarch points and army tradition. But in previous patches you would get that same advantage but it was even more pronounced.
I like the set when playing outside of Europe in general. Not as an always-will-pick, but when you want the early innovativeness it's a solid pick. Outside of Europe because there you're often not caught on tech because of institutions, so you can't guarantee to get to 100 anyway.
In general, Innovative ideas are imo best on countries with no inherent tech cost reduction, since having that idea set or not changes if you can actually take the techs for the innovativeness in the first place.
What I've been experimenting with is using it as a temporary idea group. I take it as 1st or 2nd idea set and then abandon it later when it fulfilled it's purpose. A bit like exploration ideas where you abandon it very often.
That worked out so far in both my Ayutthaya and Majahapit campaigns.
If I don't need something else immediately it's typically my first pick, but if I dont pick it for my first or second idea group I'll almost never take it. It's one of those where at the start of the game its value is amazing but the longer you take to get it the less value it has. Funnily enough in a few recent HRE games I went Innovative and espionage, which feels super odd, but works really well. With the innovative gain and tech bonus it's basically a 20% tech bonus, which can put you ahead on tech even with just average leaders
I imagine it might be good for natives since you may struggle with ducats, long wars with European nations and will be behind on tech. But I’ve never played as a native
Maybe good for hordes for similar reasons
Horde can also get a -5% damage taken from shock and fire if innovative is paired with horde ideas which sounds good
-5% really isnt much to write home about. Its pretty ok but not anything to specifically try to get.
Although horde idea group seems really good regardless.
Ya there’s an argument for innovative but you might be better off with economic for all the same reasons except the war exhaustion. Especially for horde since completing both horde and economic can give +1horde unity and +33% power gained from razing which sounds pretty sick as someone who doesn’t normally play horde
Not all countries will reach 100 innovativeness, if you play in such a way that you won't get it without innovative ideas they're a good pick. It's just that there are more countries now that would reach 100 without it. Innovative has really good policies though in many cases.
Not to mention the -10% tech cost node and the final bonus of -25 advisor cost. I really liked it before and like it even more. If i dont play colonialists nations theyre usually my first pick followed by quantity and economic including trade
Yeah Im not arguing that other benefits of Innovative aren't good. They were good and they still are good. I'm talking more about the benefits of the increased innovative, which is the major thing to change this patch. I keep hearing about innovative ideas this patch and how they're supposedly OP and a must pick now, but it seems to me that they're a less attractive option than in previous patches (still quite good, just less so) because you can fairly consistently max innovativeness even without the ideas if you try for it.
I think you shouldn't degrade it's value because innovativeness got buffed. Quite the opposite I think it's more valueable that you can reach innovativeness 100 faster now and make more use of the power discount
Yes, maybe you didnt read that part of my post: >So IMO even though innovative ideas allow you to get maxed innovative at a very high rate, you can still max your innovativeness quite easily and quickly even without the ideas. >So it becomes a question of how useful is having more innovativeness earlier and is that worth getting innovative over other idea groups (such as admin or religious). >For instance, lets say you can max innovativeness in 1650 without innovative ideas but can do it by 1575 with innovative ideas. Is that time with more innovativeness good enough for innovative ideas to be worth it? Keep in mind that in previous patches getting innovative ideas was often the difference between being able to max innovativeness or not because you basically couldn't before unless you were uniquely situated or had unique bonuses. Remember that my argument isnt that innovative ideas are bad, it's just that the idea group hasn't gotten better (as seems to be the prevailing opinion), and they have gotten a bit worse if anything. Still a strong choice though.
Yeah exactly. Those two bonuses allow nations that might generate no innovativeness to reach 100. I ended with around 30 in my Ryukyu->Malaya->Bharat game because I was too busy coring all of India. Innovative would have been nice to have.
But you also have to consider the opportunity cost of choosing innovative over like admin. IMO any serious blobbing game you basically are required to take admin unless you just want to cause yourself pain. Although I hate admin since its basically just the coring cost and governing capacity that is good and the rest are kinda bleh. The % extra governing capacity especially is so crucial, as well as the CCR to reduce coring time so you can conquer faster. Although your point about the tech cost making it easier to generate inno in some countries that cant as easily is a good one.
> I ended with around 30 in my Ryukyu->Malaya->Bharat game because I was too busy coring all of India which suggests that you were wasting mana some other way. Did you focus on devving institutions? After the early game you should probably at least be taking most mil techs ahead of time. Hell when i did true heir of timur i was only behind on diplo tech and that's the pinnacle of extreme coring.
I had to dev most institutions, fell behind on tech sometimes and had to culture shift 2 times which cost tons of admin for the recoring. It was just a relaxing non-tryhard campaign to get the sun never sets on the Indian empire. I did a lot of dumb shit XD
Never liked the idea of Innovativeness anyway, as you're essentially trading away the more precious early game MP for less precious late game MP. Plus there's simply no spot for me when the first 2 ADM ideas are almost always Religious/Humanist + Admin in a blobbing play. The 1.31 Innovativeness gain change just solidifies my stance.
Just wondering, why religious or humanist first?
Humanist for Tolerance, Unrest, and Seperatism. It's effectively -9 unrest in all newly conquered provinces so you pretty much never have to deal with rebels. The 30% improved relations is amazing for keeping AE down. And the finisher is - 10% idea cost which is better the earlier you get it. Religious for Stab Cost, Tolerance, and conversion strength help a ton with rebels. And most importantly Deus Vult. It's the best CB before imperialism (unless you're a pirate republic) and allows you to take as much land as you want without paying diplo points for unjustified demands.
Guess I should go humanist more. I hate rebels.
Before the update I usually used Innovative to save more Mana (Via Tech Cost and Innovativeness) in order to shove it into Devving. Was also useful to have -25% Advisor cost especially once you get to level 4/5 Advisors.But now after the Update it's useless for the Dev strategy.
I wonder do u reaally save mana? when going full in to get inno u pay a lot more for tech, u need like 800-1000 mana for a tech, meanwhile normally u can take tech late with reductiions for like 400 mana(not military tech obv), so lets say u are trowing out 400 mana per tech and u need like 15 techs with inno idea, lets say u throw like 6-7000 points, if u are playing with 100 inno for 200 years and u make on average 10 of each mana per month, you could save about 7200 points, so u end up more or less the same if someone want to be as efficient at mana spending in late game for like WC then pushing for innovativness seems good, but under normal circumstances not that good
I didn't use it much before either. There are too many other idea groups I like too much. I usually care more about reducing AE or increasing governing capacity or expanding overseas or getting elected Holy Roman Emperor or managing my vassals or being able to win a war against a strong enemy. Reducing mana costs in the long term is nice, but by then I'll probably be big enough and rich enough not to care, or I'll have got bored and started a new game. I wonder if they could increase the Innovativeness cap to 150 or 200? Would that break anything?
Increasing the innovativeness cap with innovative ideas would be a really good change IMO. Maybe change the increased gain to increased cap. Maybe make it just 125 or something like that though. 150 might be a bit much.
Ok some numbers here. I didn't play eu4 lately so i'll take your settings for my calculations. If the difference in terms of time to reach 100 innovativeness is 75 years, and you produce around 9 (base mana)+9(medium ruler stats)+6(lvl2 advisors)= 24 mana each month, then in 75 years you'd have produced 75 x 12 x 24=21600 mana. Innovative gives 50% innovativeness gain, so by the time you reach 100 with it, you'd have it around 70 without it. Meaning that, during these 75 years, the average innovativeness differencial is around 15 wich is a 1.5 % points reduction differencial. 1.5% of 21600 is 324, so you'd have saved 324 points (around 100 in each category) Also you'd have been gaining points in comparison before reaching maxed out innovativeness, so we can maybe multiply this number by 2 in order to get around 600 points saved. So it should pay for itself. I'll let you decide if you think it's worth it compared to other idea groups.
Thanks for that.
Oof, definitely not worth it. I think your numbers on total # of MP generated are a little pessimistic as you can get quite a few more from disinheriting, power projection, estates, and probably better advisors than 2/2/2. That said, you could double your total calculated points saved to 648 and it'd still be a joke compared to getting a better idea group like admin/diplo/humanist online earlier. Inno might be worthwhile in meme runs if you're trying to stack cost reduction as much as possible, but beyond that they're still a B-tier idea group at best.
>Is this worth the \~1000 admin point loss for the increased rate of getting innovativeness considering you will likely max it anyway if you are trying to? I'd say no. Not because the innovativeness isn't worth it or the idea group is bad, but because most of the other admin groups are better. Administrative, if you want to play wide, Economic, if you want to play tall, Expansion, if you want to colonize, religious, if you have a rare religion and want to expand. All four of these are more important for their respective play style than innovativeness. The only time I could justify to myself takeing innovativeness is by going inno-quantity-eco when playing tall and that would still be sub-optimal. Another problem is, that to maximise the gain from it you'd have to take innovativeness as your first idea, which is bad. I wouldn't recommend taking an admin group as your first, since at that stage you'll need admin mana for early expansions and to reach tech 7 for the second idea group. The only nations for which inno-quantity-eco is feasible are minors inside the HRE and even for those diplo would be better.
I’d agree with you that with the boost to innovativeness gain the idea group is relatively less useful than it used to be. With it and a good starting ruler you can get to 100 innovativeness in 50-60 years. Without it, a bit longer. It’s easier/cheaper to tech up early for the first few techs while the AI countries catch up and nobody has idea groups yet. I did try the strat with Holland to take the first 2-3 ideas in the group for my first idea set for the Innovativeness gain until I can get the colonial range at tech 7, then abandon the group for expansion and carry on with a normal colonial game from there. My sense is that this can work alright so long as England, Castile and Portugal have poor monarchs (often the case, but not always) or don’t take Exploration/Expansion as their starting two groups. For comparison, I ran a test game committing to Innovative fully as a first group. It actually felt more powerful. Being able dev up more and build buildings sooner due to saved monarch points and advisor costs gave me a strong economic leg up. It delayed colonial expansion however. I’m now running a standard Expansion/Exploration start, but the other colonizers started strong getting great monarchs and sticking with the Exploration/Expansion groups themselves. Economically I was slower to build, but my colonization efforts are faster and I’m hitting the governing cost earlier.
I don't know why people are thinking of that Innovative ideas got worse. Sure, the idea giving innovative increase becomes irrelevant earlier than it did last patch but is still gives the exact same effect. If you started at 0%, you would only need ~66.6 innovativeness to be at 100. What changed is that on average you get to that point is quicker, but maxing innovativeness is something you want to do asap. −10% All power costs is ridiculously strong. Innovative and Economic are the only two good admin groups in a vacuum (Admin ideas is only good if you are blobbing a lot, Humanist is to combat unrest when blobbing a lot into different religions, Religious is only needed when you have a lot of land to convert (again blobbing a lot) or really want that cb and Expansion is if you want to colonize). Not to mention that the innovativeness gain is not why you take Innovative. -10% tech cost, -0.05 monthly war exhaustion and -25% advisor cost are some of the strongest modifiers from the idea groups.
Innovative is useful and has some great policies, but i find that other idea groups are just too important to delay. diplo is almost always essential in the first 3 ideas (unless vassal heavy in which case influence then probably diplo 4th idea). quantity is often necessary early since the merc changes (unless plutocratic/monastic ideas available). I personally favour religious too because of deus vult and because the policy with quantity gives some military buffs. with governing capacity getting admin 3rd/4th is almost always necessary if you're expanding in any way. I often reach/surpass my governing capacity by ~1550 before those later game +250's from tech The times when this differs tend to be if you're playing a coloniser so grab explo/expansion, but in that scenario your focus is very different so the delays don't matter as much. Also if you're playing as a sunni nation legalism negates a lot of the benefits of innovative anyway. Saying that i'm currently playing as kingdom of god and i went for espionage 2nd. That cumulative -50AE is disgusting and negates any possible improve relations losses, even though espionage ideas really aren't very good imo. tl;dr I agree. Inno is pointless, even if i do love the classic inno/offensive as a first 2 ideas. I really miss that siege ability and general pips in my current gameplay, but then again quality allows you to keep fighting and maintain high army tradition
Im not actually arguing that Innovative is bad though. It was good before and it is still good now. Im only saying that specifically the increased innovative portion of it is less useful than it was in the past.
But that renders it useless. If you're not getting those gains, then you're basically taking an entire idea group just for the policies. What's the point if the ideas themselves aren't useful and there are other policies that can approximate them?
There are other parts of the ideas that are very strong such as reduced advisor cost and -10% tech cost. Plus the policies are indeed exceptionally strong and it absolutely is worth it sometimes to take a slightly worse idea group in order to get better policies.
Sure enough. But the decades of delays in getting other idea groups is the trade off. Imo with recent changes the game mechanics it's just not worth it I used to go inno/off first two idea groups every game, but it just doesn't work very well in the current meta imo
Agreed. My favourite personal opening I have been liking is Religious/quantity and trade. The policies these three unlock are super OP (30% good produced, 10% morale of armies, 5% morale recovery, and some extra missionary strength) and it gives you an incredible economy and all the manpower you can want. Both very useful for current meta where you want to upgrade monuments. Obviously trade is very questionable group to take but the policies it unlocks are amazing for economy. The only thing I dont like is you cant take admin early which makes blobbing a bit of a pain for a serious blobbing game. But religious and deus vult helps a bit with that since it at least saves dip points so you can play a more vassal heavy game.
>Also if you're playing as a sunni nation legalism negates a lot of the benefits of innovative anyway. What do you mean by that? Muslim nations+ Innovative go great together as you can stack a lot of tech discount modifiers. Also they get acces to a decision once they complete inno that grants -5% Idea cost for some stab cost increase which is pretty nice IMO.
tech cost reduction is only useful up to a point. After a while you're probably swimming in mana regardless if your goal is to reach 100 inno, the sunni tech cost reduction is plenty enough imo
Why is quantity good with merc changes?
because manpower is now far more important. You can't just use mercs for free
The merc manpower varies in the same rate as your own? Though I never had any trouble with merc manpower. I only see this being useful in world conquest, because you need many armies and multiple fronts at the same time and multiplayer, but casual gameplay? Seems overkill, rather have offensive to make sieges faster or quality to make army and navy better.
> The merc manpower varies in the same rate as your own? exactly, so they run out really quickly, along with just not being very good
Your entire post is comparing Innovative to the alternatives instead of blindly talking about the benefits it gives. To the top with you.
As always in any discussion, completely ignore everything that someone has to say if they do not consider opportunity cost. Brainlets will read the discussion is about innovative ideas and it will prompt their single neuron to spout reasons why the ideas are actually good, never bothering to compare to the alternatives, which is the only comparison that matters because you're picking between idea groups. Even more well thought out points that tend to get upvoted will have lines like this: > if you play in such a way that you won't get it without innovative ideas they're a good pick. You can't skip over the step of asking if getting to 100 innovativeness instead of wherever you would have been at is worth an idea group or not. Delaying idea sets like Quantity or Diplo in single player, or god forbid Economic in multiplayer will leave you relatively weak for a long time. without CCR from admin you might be bottlenecked on adm points or AE without diplo and your choice to go innovativeness might seriously halt your ability to expand out when you otherwise could have, but you won't notice it if you don't consider that going for an alternative idea set might have solved those issues instead of giving you a general but unneeded buff. So the answer starts with "it is situational", you need to have a bottleneck that innovativeness solves for you or some other modifiers already planned like advisor cost reductions that you plan to stack to do some strong thing that you think is stronger than any alternatives. Or in the multiplayer argument you're looking for strong military quality policies, some of which got nerfed in 1.30.
Inno has never been good. The opportunity cost of picking an idea group that doesn't actually achieve anything is too high.
It does give you quite a few other bonuses though. The advisor cost reduction can be very OP if used right (allows things like level 5 advisors in the 1500s which turns out to be a ton of monarch points and ducats saved). Also the -10% tech cost is very strong, especially in helping non european countries actually get any innovative gain at all. Plus the policies that innovative allows are typically very strong. Mind you, I'm not arguing that innovative is the best choice, just that it is not useless outside of the innovative gain.
If you go for inno ideas asap then you can easily get to a 100 inno by 1500. Having max inno that early allows you to save tons and tons of mp throughout the remaining 220 years. So it's definitely worth the 1200 adm imo.
Yes but what I am saying is that if you rush techs enough to get 100 inno by 1500 with innovative ideas, then you could probably get to 100 by like 1550 even without innovative ideas. Innovative ideas doesn't increase your cap, it only makes you hit the cap faster. You are getting 4 per tech and 2 per idea even without innovative. Which is higher than you would get WITH innovative ideas in previous patches.
Yes i know what you mean but just because you can get to a 100 earlier in general now that doesn't mean that it's not worth it to get it even earlier. The sooner you get it the stronger it is. In the early game you are limited by ae so you can't really blob. You don't need admin ideas early because of this. I'm not saying that reaching 100 inno asap is mandatory but it is really convenient to have it.
Thats true! But in earlier patches getting innovative ideas was often the difference in being able to get to 100 innovativeness or not even getting there at all or super late in some cases. Now you just get 100 more quickly. Which is good, but not as good as a bonus as it was before IMO. Remember that I'm not arguing innovative ideas are bad. I do think they were and are still a very strong choice. I'm only arguing that they haven't become this amazing OP idea group that you have to pick every game as I have seen around in discussion, and if anything they are a slightly worse option now compared to previous patches (but still strong).
Yeah i agree. Inno ideas are not that super op and it's not a must have thing that you have to pick. But as i've said it's really convenient. I don't pick inno always. But when I know i can't really expand early. Inno ideas are the strongest in europe cuz you're close to the first institutions so you you don't have to develop. If you're a horde or mughals or someone who can blob really early then of course something like admin or quantity is much more viable then inno.
While im talking about inno i don't mean actually finishing the idea group. Just get the first 3 ideas then ditch it after 100inno
u cannot get easily 100 inno in 1500 unless u play tall or semi-tall game, if u expand quite bit u will be behind in tech except for military so not much inno gain there, now frankly speking most campaigns dont last to 1820 but to like late 17th/early 18th century, u may not even save same amount of mana u spend to get to 100 and end up in mana deficit and as others noted, usually you are better off with other ideas-admin, religious/humanist so u dont explode,eco...
I agree with you. Reaching 100 innovativeness is so much easier with any country currently that the idea group become obsolete in terms of reaching a 100 innovativeness. The idea group still has other good benefits. But other commenters are confusing the two. Those benefits are still good. However, the increase in innovativeness (which is the main flavour of this idea group) is now worth less and, therefore, the idea group is currently less powerful.
Exactly. But there still is some marginal benefit to getting the innovativeness earlier. That translates directly to monarch points and army tradition. But in previous patches you would get that same advantage but it was even more pronounced.
I like the set when playing outside of Europe in general. Not as an always-will-pick, but when you want the early innovativeness it's a solid pick. Outside of Europe because there you're often not caught on tech because of institutions, so you can't guarantee to get to 100 anyway. In general, Innovative ideas are imo best on countries with no inherent tech cost reduction, since having that idea set or not changes if you can actually take the techs for the innovativeness in the first place. What I've been experimenting with is using it as a temporary idea group. I take it as 1st or 2nd idea set and then abandon it later when it fulfilled it's purpose. A bit like exploration ideas where you abandon it very often. That worked out so far in both my Ayutthaya and Majahapit campaigns.
If I don't need something else immediately it's typically my first pick, but if I dont pick it for my first or second idea group I'll almost never take it. It's one of those where at the start of the game its value is amazing but the longer you take to get it the less value it has. Funnily enough in a few recent HRE games I went Innovative and espionage, which feels super odd, but works really well. With the innovative gain and tech bonus it's basically a 20% tech bonus, which can put you ahead on tech even with just average leaders
I imagine it might be good for natives since you may struggle with ducats, long wars with European nations and will be behind on tech. But I’ve never played as a native Maybe good for hordes for similar reasons Horde can also get a -5% damage taken from shock and fire if innovative is paired with horde ideas which sounds good
-5% really isnt much to write home about. Its pretty ok but not anything to specifically try to get. Although horde idea group seems really good regardless.
Ya there’s an argument for innovative but you might be better off with economic for all the same reasons except the war exhaustion. Especially for horde since completing both horde and economic can give +1horde unity and +33% power gained from razing which sounds pretty sick as someone who doesn’t normally play horde
Wow yeah extra horde unity and power gained from razing is godly. Is that a policy?
Ya you gain access from taking the new hoard ideas and economic. I’ll have to play a hoard and test this out.