National Idea review

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Contents 1 Foreword 2 Naval Ideas 3 Land Ideas 4 Exploration Ideas 5 State Business Ideas 6 Culture Ideas

Foreword

This is a review of National Ideas and their utility, as of In Nomine version 3.1. It discusses the choice of National Ideas from a strategic perspective, and assumes that the reader is familiar with the effects of each Idea. Hidden effects of Ideas are referred to when it is relevant for determining whether a particular Idea is worth adopting. For a full description of the effects of Ideas, see the main section on National ideas, especially the Hidden Effects section.

Naval Ideas

Press Gangs: This one looks very good at first glance. Actually, it is even better than that. It doesn't just halve ship costs as stated, but also halves naval upkeep (that, btw, goes for all things giving modifiers to troop and ship costs). If you intend to be a major naval player, this one is practically mandatory. Halving ship costs makes you able to afford building that grand navy if you otherwise wouldn't be able to, and even if you otherwise would, the amount of money saved would be enough to make it very worthwhile anyway. Compared to land troops, ships are expensive to build, and expensive to replace as they won't upgrade for free to newer designs when invented.

Grand Navy: Doubling the naval forcelimit might sound like a good thing for someone who intends to be a naval player, but it's hardly as useful as it might appear. First off, a country with a need for a huge navy is usually also a country with a big number of coastal provinces, whose base tax determines the naval forcelimit, meaning that it'll be quite large in the first place. Naval maintenance is peanuts anyway, especially after having adapted Press Gangs.

Sea Hawks: +1 percent point of tradition per year is not to be scorned. Note that as the increase is in percent points but the annual decay is a percentage, having this Idea will not only slow down decay, but make Naval Tradition converge towards an equilibrium of 33% rather than decay towards 0%, boosting Tradition levels substantially and giving decent leaders even without having to fight to maintain the tradition. The second-most powerful Idea for attaining naval power after Press Gangs, in my opinion.

Superior Seamanship: Of doubtful utility, as morale usually isn't much of an issue in the first place in naval battles. Few naval battles in EU3 end up in involuntary retreat, most end in voluntary retreat or total destruction of one fleet.

Naval Glory: Not that useful. Annual decay of prestige is proportional to the amount of prestige had at the time, i.e. exponential. For this reason, marginal gains of prestige give diminishing returns. Granted, prestige determines final rank (i.e. who "wins the game"), but if you're powerful and victorious enough to be the leader in everything else, high prestige tends to come anyway.

Excellent Shipwrights: Meh. Attrition damage sustained as a function of time at sea is a geometric function, so this won't significantly increase the time you can stay at sea anyway.

Naval Fighting Instruction: Hardly worth choosing, unless you for whatever reason (roleplaying, I'd presume) intend to gain a large part of your nation's income by piracy. The additional money you'd gain at the times when you're blockading during war would be peanuts compared to what some of the other income-giving Ideas would give, as those work all the time throughout your nation. The real utility of blockades is to cripple the enemy economy and inflict war score and exhaustion, the monetary gain is a quite insignificant bonus.

Naval Provisioning: Of doubtful value. If you sustain damage, you'll usually want to get to port to be safe from attack while you repair.

Land Ideas

Grand Army: The utility of this idea would depend on the demographics of your nation. Land forcelimit is calculated from the base tax of provinces, so for a nation with low tax income but huge production, trade or gold incomes (and who thus can afford to maintain a proportionally huge army), it might be useful. However, for most nations, an army at the normal forcelimit is already hugely expensive to maintain even in peacetime at half maintenance. Consider embracing if you find yourself at the forcelimit yet consider yourself able to afford a huger army, but don't plan in advance on embracing it unless the circumstances are exceptional.

Military Drill: This is the bomb, baby! Morale keeps your troops stick around when the enemy flees. It makes you win assaults. It protects you from annihilation from breaking early. It makes you fight with close to all your regiments in battle while half the enemy's regiments have fled. It allows operational initiative when your troops stick in battle exactly when you want them to. For a nation intent on indulging in aggressive bloodlust from day one, I suggest this as the first Idea. For anyone else, I suggest this as the second Idea, after National Bank. Towards the end of the game this Idea becomes less useful as the 1.0 additional Morale is proportionally less when a lot of morale is gained out of tech, but towards the end of the game you'll have an abundance of Idea slots anyway and will probably have picked all other really essential ones and can thus afford to keep it.

Engineer Corps: Not bad, but not essential. Utility depends on your strategic doctrine. Useful for players who prefer to slowly but surely advance in a solid front and besiege on the way. Less so for players who prefer to destroy the enemy military first and then split up to besiege maximally.

Battlefield Commissions: Significantly increases your Army Tradition by setting the equilibrium at 33% rather than 0%, see Sea Hawks for explanation on that. A good third to fifth Idea for an aggressive land power. One may even consider taking this idea first instead of drill as high Army tradition grants better generals with an additional effectively +4~6 skill points per leader in the early game. This results in an addition of 1-2 points of shock on average. As the maximum modified roll in Combat is 12, the roll is directly proportional to damage and the leader bonus raises your roll and lowers the enemy roll, 1-2 points of shock on a leader will mean that you deal 17~33% more damage on average, receiving less by roughly the same factor. Of course many other considerations play a role, for example the very slow pace at which the equilibrium of 33% is reached, starting from 0. Still one may want to give this idea a shot. However the idea is redundant during a really intensive BB wars phase, when you'd have close to 100% Tradition from the huge, neverending wars anyway.

Glorious Arms: Of dubious utility for the same reason as Naval Glory, see its entry.

National Conscripts: A really useful Idea for countries with relatively little manpower to wealth, i.e. any country whose base tax makes up a small part of its income. Quite useful for anyone else too, having superior volumes of manpower makes you able to win simply by exchanging life for life as long as you're able to avoid annihilation of regiments.

Regimental System: Of doubtful utility, as most regiments tend to be raised in peacetime anyway, and significant amounts of troops can be raised fairly quickly anyway by simply dividing the recruitment process over several provinces.

Esprit de Corps: +25% Discipline will increase the damage dealt by your troops by +25%. At the time you reach land tech 53, you probably have picked all other Ideas you find essential, making this one even more of a no-brainer.

Exploration Ideas

Land Of Opportunity: Inferior to Colonial Ventures, see below.

Merchant Adventures: If you are a trading nation, why not? National Trade Policy and Shrewd Commerce Practices should get higher priority though; all the extra merchants in the world won't help you if a merchant will get kicked out of his CoT before earning back his placement cost.

Colonial Ventures: An additional colonist per year is a huge proportional increase, especially for Protestans that'd only otherwise get half a colonist per year. This Idea will speed up colonization significantly as long as you can afford to send the colonists. Using this Idea to spam a province with several colonists is more cost-effective than letting it grow on its own: A colonist is 20 ducats for 100 people. Colony upkeep is at 20 ducats per year for 50 people, and the ratio will actually get worse for sub-maximal colonial upkeep. Slider settings, Land of Opportunity and advisors change the above numbers, but not by enough to make Land of Opportunity worth it in any but hypothetical extreme circumstances. Land of Opportunity might only be worth it if you already have Colonial Ventures and just intend to spam colonists everywhere to maximize growth regardless of cost, in which case you better be filthy rich to afford it.

Shrewd Commerce Practice: An early Idea for any nation intent on being a major trade power. Either this or National Trade Policy should be your first one. Pick this if your competitivity isn't assured; pick National Trade Policy if it is. All the trade efficiency in the world won't help you if you won't be able to stick around in the CoTs in the first place. The general consensus is that National Trade Policy should get precedence, see its entry.

Viceroys: An Idea that every colonial nation should adopt eventually, but obviously not before embracing Ideas that help to actually establish the colonies, like QFTNW and Colonial Ventures.

Quest for the New World: Well, what can be said? An obvious first, or second at the latest, choice to anyone intent on going colonial from the start.

Scientific Revolution: A boost to tech research is useful for just about anyone. A solid choice, though not one which changes the way the game works. Pick this when you already have picked all the Ideas that are absolutely essential to your specific overall strategy.

Improved Foraging: Quite useful for any land power bent on conquest. No amount of management will make you immune to attrition; by the very least, you'll suffer it when you and the enemy are simultaneously in a province, or when you combine armies temporarily to concentrate force.

State Business Ideas

Vetting: Quite useful in multiplayer, especially for free-trading nations with poor spy defence. Unnecessary in singleplayer where AI espionage is more of an impediment than a strategic threat.

Bureaucracy: +5% isn't that much, and the longer you get into the game, the less does tax income account for your total income. Still, money is useful for everyone, and if you're in serious need of money early on (and taxes make up almost all of your total income), and in no dire need of some particular Idea for your overall strategy, it might be worth it. National Bank is usually a better early choice though: If you're that starved for money, you'll probably want to mint the whole 10% rather than just take out an additional 5% census tax.

National Bank: Pick this, no excuses. -0.10 Inflation per year lets you mint a significant amount before suffering inflation. Any state with significant military expenses, which you'll have if you get into the great power game, needs to mint. In most situations you just won't be able to get away without minting, and even if you can, you'll probably want the money anyway. A good choice for first Idea unless your specific overall strategy absolutely requires some other, particular one (such as QFTNW, Military Drill or Shrewd Commerce Practice).

National Trade Policy: See Shrewd Commerce Practice for discussion. Remember, the +10% trade efficiency also gives +5% compete chance, so while it doesn't make you as competitive as SCP, it makes you earn more if you're already competitive. In the early game, your initial trade efficiency will usually be at around 30%, so an increase by 10 percent points means effectively about 30% more revenue per merchant. For this reason, this one is usually considered preferable to Shrewd Commerce Practices, though you should eventually pick up both if you are a trading nation.

Espionage: Whether you have spies or not is more important than their actual number. A nation that is neither plutocratic nor mercantilistic won't get any spies otherwise. Pick this only if that is the case, and if you need spies for some particular purpose (such as fabricating claims). In such a case, Espionage becomes useful but not essential enough to get priority over Ideas that are vital to overall strategy.

Bill of Rights: Lower revolt risk is useful for everyone, but how useful? Rarely worth picking, but can be worth it if you already have picked all the essential ones for your overall strategy, and have a generally turbulent realm (lots of heathens, lots of non-accepted cultures, tendency to get war-exhausted). Or if your country is simply imploding due to revolts.

Smithian Economics: +20% production efficiency is really nice, especially when you are far enough into the game for this one to be available and production incomes are fairly dominant. Pick this one unless you REALLY need the slot for some other that is absolutely essential to your overall strategy.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité: Nah. Contrary to what it says, it only removes the -30% tax penalty, not all effects of differing religion. You're better off spending your efforts on converting the provinces.

Culture Ideas

Ecumenism: Usually you'll want to convert the heretics, rather than make them think they have things in common with you. Even with tolerance, heretics pay less taxes and cost more to stabilize. Should you have a large amount of heretics in your realm and no missionaries due to Innovative slider settings, it might be worthwhile.

Church Attendance Duty: Stability is cheap enough and stab-hits avoidable enough (as slider changes don't always cause stab-hits in IN) that this shouldn't be necessary. Potentially only useful if your national makeup makes stability really expensive, or your overall strategy causes frequent stab-hits (such as plowing through the HRE with a lot of small wars). It should be noted, though, that this Idea has a hidden effect of very significantly decreasing the chance that the Reformation will spread to your provinces.

Divine Supremacy: With every missionary succeeding eventually in IN, having a positive number of missionaries per year is more essential than how big that number is, unless you're expanding really quickly. This Idea has the advantage of allowing you to go several steps in the Innovative direction while still having a positive number of missionaries, but with the plethora of Religious Decisions having the same effect in IN, this one seldom gives anything you couldn't get in any other way and is thus seldom worth using an Idea slot on. It should be noted, though, that this Idea has a hidden effect of practically eliminating the chance that the Reformation will spread to your provinces.

Patron of Arts: Quite weak due to the same reasons why the other prestige-generating Ideas are. The fact that it brings along some pretty nice events makes it slightly better, but not by any means good.

Unam Sanctam: This one is better than it looks like. It does not only provide automatic CB, it also removes the stability hit from attacking a country of the same religious group (something you wouldn't get around even if you managed to manufacture a CB in some other way). This Idea effectively makes heretics count as heathens for the purpose of stability hits caused by declaration of war. Very useful for a warmonger in a heretic-rich environment, such as if you are a Protestant power plowing through a Catholic HRE.

Humanist Tolerance: See Ecumenism, except for the part that it (obviously) doesn't affect the spread of the Reformation. Also, it becomes slightly worse because it makes possible an event where a province of the true faith apostatizes on its own, but it's quite a rare one.

Cabinet: Obviously useful for a warmonger who has the military means to expand but not quite the means to go over the BB threshold and challenge the world.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution: Meh. Contrary to Unam Sanctam, this Idea doesn't remove the inherent stab hit from attacking a country of the same religious group, thus giving nothing you couldn't achieve by, say, using spies to manufacture claims.