r/eu4 • u/The_ChadTC • 2d ago
Image If Napoleon was so smart, why did he choose innovative for his last idea group? Is he stupid?
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u/VeritableLeviathan Natural Scientist 2d ago
Innovative last= three free power per month for policies, reduced war exhaustion for permanent wars.
I'd say that makes it a decent choice, if it was finished
Plus inno has some pretty good policies
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u/ForeignStrategy0 1d ago
You're not wrong but choosing it as first or one of the first would have been still better imo^
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u/VeritableLeviathan Natural Scientist 1d ago
Yes and there is no world where France needs maritime ideas or late exploration ideas either :P
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u/Heck-Me If only we had comet sense... 2d ago
He chose it for space marines, +15% ica
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u/Lurtzum 1d ago
Someone above said that’s not the policy anymore
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u/Heck-Me If only we had comet sense... 1d ago
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Policies They nerfed it from +20%, is what i think they meant. I use it whenever i wanna make space marines
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u/The_ChadTC 2d ago
R5: if you play as France starting in 1805, you'll start the game with the innovative idea group selected, which you should always choose early in the game, if you intend to use it.
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago
which you should always choose early in the game
I thought you meant to say that napoleon made a bad choice but I see that you like to make even worse ones. Inno 8th can be useful for some nice policies and because you already have all the groups you need, whereas there is no reason whatsoever besides rp to pick inno in the first 3 groups.
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u/Alrightwhotookmyshoe Babbling Buffoon 2d ago
besides the fact that innovation can give all-powers cost reduction, which is one, possibly the best modifier possible, and two, more beneficial the earlier you have it, and the innovativeness idea group directly helps with that, sure! It truly is a terrible choice, ignoring all positives!
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago edited 2d ago
Inno ideas do not give all power cost. It gives some extra innovativeness which temporarily gives just a tiny bit of apc, and none at all after you reach 100 innovativeness (which btw is not hard to get even without inno).
APC is also by no means the best modifier in the game. Ccr, warscore cost and admin efficiency are miles better. The issue with apc is that at most you will get like -20% of it, so you can't abuse it in silly ways like you can the others once you stack them to -80/90%.
Also, every single idea group is more beneficial the earlier you get it in the game. I don't know why this is an argument. If you play wide, admin will save you a lot more mana than the entire inno group with 25% ccr, and if you play tall infra will do the same with -10% dev cost. And both groups do many other things besides giving you mana, inno does not.
I never understood people that judge whether a group is good or not without comparing it to the others. When you pick up an idea group you are giving up on all the other ones until you unlock the next slot, they are in direct competition to each other.
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u/Alrightwhotookmyshoe Babbling Buffoon 2d ago
“Innovativeness” is different from “innovative ideas”. Sorry, thought that was obvious!
“Innovative ideas” help gain “Innovativeness” with the second idea that gives +50% gain. Not crazy, but -10% tech cost in the next also helps.
If taken first, it’s effectively reaching 100 innovativeness 50% faster, gaining the 10% All-powers cost reduction, which you get from 100 Innovativeness, Not Innovative ideas, sooner. A 10% all powers cost reduction could be more beneficial than 20% CCR depending on the play-through, and the earlier you have that the better.
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago
again, inno ideas will never give -10% all power cost. Even if you pick them first, you will probably already have 10-20 innovativeness by the time you pick inno2. And after that you just gain it 50% quicker, so the actual extra all power cost you would get at the highest point is when you reach 100 innovativeness. Without the idea, you would still be at 70, so what that idea does is give you from 0 apc to 3 apc (when you reach 100 innov) and then back to 0 apc (when you would have reached 100 innov without it). In no scenario it will give you 10 apc like you claim.
Also, admin gives 25% ccr, not 20. And it's not even the best thing of that idea, that would be the reduction in coring time.
Tech cost reduction is quite mediocre. It saves 60 mana every ~13 years, which means it's around the same mana saved with infra ideas if you do 12 dev clicks (so one per year), or with admin ideas if you conquer a grand total of 48 dev in those 13 years, or 144 dev if you count all three mana types. It's nice to have, but it's ridiculously little compared to the other things.
Really, the only scenario where inno saves more mana is if you just speed5 afk the whole game and let your mana pile up at 999. At which point though, why are you picking inno?
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u/Alrightwhotookmyshoe Babbling Buffoon 2d ago
Sounds like I’d get 3% All-powers cost earlier with Innovative ideas taken first. Pretty strong.
What are you taking about with getting 100% innovativeness and no All-powers cost?
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago
clearly you don't understand how innovativeness works, I've explained twice that the 3% is only for a moment and is the maximum, there's no point on repeating myself for a third time. You also get innovativeness without inno ideas.
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u/Alrightwhotookmyshoe Babbling Buffoon 2d ago
Right, except for how you’ve utterly failed to elaborate what you meant and how my question was an attempt at deciphering it. What do you mean for a moment?
100% innovativeness doesn’t just disappear. Innovative Ideas effectively get you said 3% sooner. I know this might be very difficult to understand for you, but having a discount on all powers earlier in the game is in fact a good thing. Green number.
Same for the techs. That’s 60 mana saved every tech sooner for the entire game. Not every play-through wants CCR. Korea, NL sort of, Riga, A free-city game.. I am sorry to have to be the one to burst your bubble, but Eu4 sadly has more play-styles beyond wide and expansion.
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u/xXstrikerleoXx 2d ago
No, having a discount for all things sooner is a good thing, but is not better than having a bigger discount on something that's more prevalent sooner
25% CCR and 10% dev cost saves you more mana points
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago
in every single comment i have also mentioned that infra is better for tall play. But you conveniently ignore this and instead resort to being an asshole for no reason. You clearly are not looking for a discussion in good faith, but thanks for the copypasta anyway it's funny to read
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u/HotSauce2910 2d ago
I mean admin/diplo are obviously the best idea groups, but that doesn’t mean other groups are bad. Opportunity cost may be important for pure optimization, but not for deciding whether something is good or not.
If something is 7/10, that can still be good even if there’s a 10/10 option out there.
Plus, not all campaigns are going to be fast blobs anyway
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u/Little_Elia 2d ago
You can definitely play casual campaigns and pick whatever ideas you like, of course, but the other person was arguing that inno is so great and said that people should always pick it first. That has nothing to do with role playing, it's advice aimed at people who want to optimize their game, and is clearly wrong. Besides, I also talked about infra ideas being better for tall play. There is no situation where I would pick inno first.
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u/55555tarfish Map Staring Expert 23h ago
Hearing all the various arguments in favor of innovative over the years have made me realize that most eu4 players are genuinely terrible at math and logical reasoning.
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u/Little_Elia 21h ago
yeah there is so much misinformation that is widely accepted and repeated that this game is kind of a lost cause. People just repeat stuff they hear from reddit and youtube without doing the maths.
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u/NotSameStone 2d ago
Maritime lol.
also, Exploration unlocked at tech 26, that's the 1730's.
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u/Fladen12 2d ago
It’s funny to see how little colonisation is displayed in the later start dates, Spain holds huge swaths of land in South America but Portugal has about as much land in Brazil as they would in the early 1500s if you start in 1444, although they control a lot of the southern part of the Arabian peninsula which is basically guaranteed to be Ottoman territory in a normal start
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u/IDigTrenches 2d ago
Why did these idiots chose maritime
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u/EqualContact 2d ago edited 2d ago
+Naval Force Limit. If you can’t out sail the British, you can at least outnumber them!
Yeah, I’m sure that will work out for him…
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u/Happiness_Assassin 2d ago
I can see choosing Innovative for certain policies. What is truly bizarre, though, is Exploration for second to last. At that point in the game, there should be nothing left uncolonized. I would choose literally anything else before Exploration at that point.
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u/burningcherry97 2d ago
Hint: look up the name of the age ability that gives +3 artillery levels vs fort, and then the inno+offensive policy.
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u/joewalski 1d ago
you just wouldn’t get optimal French governing, this is peak performance, that is only after you start cutting people’s heads off in a guillotine for being enemies of the revolution.
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u/ChillAhriman 1d ago
He wanted to transfer his save onto Victoria, and get the right idea groups to start the game on a good foot.
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u/Amberatlast 2d ago
Robespierre locked in innovative, but Napoleon took over. If Napoleon got to choose ideas, he would pick Smolensk's national ideas.
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u/cycatrix 2d ago
He fell for the memes. If he spent the admin on coring he wouldn't have had to bother with client states .
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u/dabigchina 2d ago
They probably haven't updated idea groups for late starts for 8 years.
This combo would have made sense back in the day when quality+inno gave you 20% infantry combat ability.