Best Ideas for Japan and the Ottomans

[Nathanial Kray]

Hi All!

I've been hoping to give Japan a try, and I usually play the Ottoman Empire in Singleplayer as its one of my favourite nations. could you fantastic players out there give me your best advice for the idea groups I should pick?

Thanks all!

[Yaldabaoth]

If you're a good player and can unify Japan early, you might want to go with exploration, expansion, quality for the colonization of the pacific and american west coast. You can route the California node back to Japan via the Pacific.

[Narrowmind]

Do you intend to remain a shogunate, or are you unifying to become "Japan" and be like every other nation?

[Nathanial Kray]

Originally posted by Narrowmind:

Do you intend to remain a shogunate, or are you unifying to become "Japan" and be like every other nation?

I usually do Ashikaga but I've heard Oda are great if you plan on conquering Asia, but then again does it really matter? isn't it better to swap to Japanese Ideas instead? idk.

[Narrowmind]

As Oda, generally it matters and it's not wise to take Japanese ideas. But I wasn't talking about ideas. What I meant was that not unifying Japan would let you use your daimyo as a vassal swarm. Is that how you're planning to play, or will you unify and use Japan like any other nation besides HRE vassal swarm.

[Marquoz]

The only reason to play Oda is to keep its national ideas, which are better than Japan's for a conqueror. If you plan to take Japanese ideas, you might as well start with a stronger multi-province nation.

As for idea groups, the following advice applies to everyone. If you're not an early colonizer and you aren't planning on a tall game, the Big Three (Diplo, Admin, Influence) plus either Religious or Humanism are the strongest possible picks. Early colonizers start with Exploration and Expansion and then add the Big Three plus either Religious or Humanism.

Again, that's if you want "the best advice." You can make any combination of idea groups work to varying degrees, but the ones I mentioned are easily the most powerful.

[Nathanial Kray]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

The only reason to play Oda is to keep its national ideas, which are better than Japan's for a conqueror. If you plan to take Japanese ideas, you might as well start with a stronger multi-province nation.

As for idea groups, the following advice applies to everyone. If you're not an early colonizer and you aren't planning on a tall game, the Big Three (Diplo, Admin, Influence) plus either Religious or Humanism are the strongest possible picks. Early colonizers start with Exploration and Expansion and then add the Big Three plus either Religious or Humanism.

Again, that's if you want "the best advice." You can make any combination of idea groups work to varying degrees, but the ones I mentioned are easily the most powerful.

I love achieving these giant Empires from nations that have a ton of Potential, so thank you for this!

but would you not recommend going for a Military Idea instead of immediately rushing the big three?

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Nathanial Kray:

but would you not recommend going for a Military Idea instead of immediately rushing the big three?

Never. One of the great ironies of EU4 is that military idea groups make your armies weaker until late in the game. Consider what happens when you don't spend all those points on military ideas:

--You get and keep a permanent tech lead. We get posts from new players on this forum about AI nations with a tech lead destroying them over and over again. Be the destroyer instead. If you don't take military ideas, you get to be the one with a lead over the rest of the world.

--You hire many, many generals, discarding the bad ones and keeping the good ones. This means all your armies have strong leaders who are good at their jobs. Siege armies have generals with siege pips, combat armies have generals with fire and shock pips, and pretty much every army has generals with maneuver pips.

--Your army professionalism goes up fast because of all the generals you hire, which gives other strong bonuses.

The combination of a tech lead + good generals + high army professionalism is stronger than any single military idea group. Taking early military groups are a trap that many players fall into. "I want a better army" is their thinking--and it's a good goal. But because of EU4 design flaws, military ideas aren't the way to get it until late in the game, if ever.

The real way to win is to pick idea groups that enable you to outgrow the AI. Then you swamp it with numbers, a tech lead, good generals, and army professionalism. I guarantee that this approach works against every nation in the game.

[RCMidas]

Originally posted by Nathanial Kray:

but would you not recommend going for a Military Idea instead of immediately rushing the big three?

I did the math for someone a while back. Here it is.


Each idea group has seven tiers, each costing a baseline of 400 Military Mana. Let's say I want to pick Offensive ideas. I spend 400 Mana and gain +1 General Shock. Now all my generals will have an extra 1 Shock point. Alternatively, I could spend 400 Mana to recruit EIGHT generals, immediately giving me the potential to have eight different armies led by a general, on average making those armies much more capable - I also gain +1% Army Professionalism (to a max of 100%) per general.

Army Professionalism boosts EVERY army's Fire and Shock damage as it rises, and improves your Siege Ability, which makes sieging enemy forts and capitals much easier and quicker (and therefore saves on hostile attrition, which eats into your manpower reserves and if uncontrolled can result in you not being able to actually HAVE armies). At 60%, when you disband a unit, its members return to your manpower reserves instead of just disappearing. At 80%, your armies suffer 50% reduced morale damage from waiting to join a battle. At 100%, you get 50% reduced cost for hiring a general.

It will cost me a baseline of 2800 Military Mana to complete the Offensive idea group, giving my generals +1 Fire and +1 Shock, my armies +10% Morale and +5% Discipline, and +20% Siege Ability. I still need to spend more Military Mana to actually hire generals to lead my armies. For that same baseline cost, I could hire FIFTY-SIX generals to lead my armies and make them better, whilst increasing my Army Professionalism by 56% to give equivalent bonuses. At the same time, I am not gaining ANY benefit from any other idea group that I could have taken in its place.

Let's say you decide to take a military idea group over one of the Big Three. Maybe your argument is "It costs Admin and Diplo Mana to take those ideas, but I need that mana to core provinces and integrate vassals. I'm only delaying my ability to do this. A military idea group lets me win wars quicker and easier instead." However, the Big Three are basically a guaranteed-return investment.

Spend 2800 Admin Mana on Administrative ideas, and you only need to conquer provinces with a total of 1120 development to save more Mana in coring costs than you spent on the ideas. That's about 40 provinces of 30+ development, or under 60 provinces of 20+ development average - very easy to find in places like Europe, India, or Japan.

Spend 2800 Diplo Mana on Influence ideas, and you only need to integrate vassals with a total of 1400 development to save more Mana than you spent on the ideas - ah, but you also took Administrative ideas and enacted the policy to make this cheaper, so in fact you only need to integrate vassals with a total of 735 development.

Over the course of an entire game, you'll save way more Mana this way than you will be spending on the ideas themselves.

[Damedius]

The problem with military ideas is opportunity cost. If you don't get a military idea set, You are usually swimming in Military points. Which you can use for generals, to make sure you are always on par and ahead on tech. You can also use extra military points to Dev your provinces so you have manpower and so that your manpower recovers quicker.

However every once in awhile it is fun to pick a nation with great military ideas and pair them with a military idea set to delete enemy troops.

[Nathanial Kray]

Wow! thanks for all the incredible ideas fellas. Right now I'm just trying to play the Best Japan I possibly can do. I've found however I struggle to capitalize on colonizing, allegedly I should colonize the spice Islands and not America? I've also heard that it might be good to start as the Oda? rather than the Ashikaga Shogunate?

any thoughts on this? and any help for defeating Korea and the Ming? lemme know!

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Damedius:

The problem with military ideas is opportunity cost.

Yup. It's an EU4 design flaw, as I said earlier in this thread. Tying everything military to monarch points was a big error. Tech? Mana. Ideas? Mana. Generals? Mana. Development? Mana. Army professionalism? Mana (not entirely, but hiring generals is the fastest way to raise it).

There are too many important demands on one insufficient pool. The net effect is that military ideas, which sound good in a vacuum, actually weaken your military in practice if you take them early. Later in the game, when you've already got a tech lead, have maxed out your professionalism, and can afford +5 advisors in all categories, sure, take them. But by then the game is pretty much over anyway.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Nathanial Kray:

Wow! thanks for all the incredible ideas fellas. Right now I'm just trying to play the Best Japan I possibly can do. I've found however I struggle to capitalize on colonizing, allegedly I should colonize the spice Islands and not America? I've also heard that it might be good to start as the Oda? rather than the Ashikaga Shogunate?

any thoughts on this? and any help for defeating Korea and the Ming? lemme know!

Oda is the strongest Japan former if you keep its national ideas and can handle a tough OPM start.

As for colonization, the spice islands are well worth colonizing if you move your trade collection point to Malacca. As part of that process, conquer every nation that has provinces in that trade node. Then conquer every nation that has provinces in nodes that feed that node. And so on. Let trade guide your expansion.

Trade from much of the Americans can be routed across or around the Pacific to Asia, so expanding there is also useful.

[Marquoz]

Oh, and Ming's easy to beat. Build a bigger fleet than they have and then blockade their entire coast until their devastation maxes out. That will wreck their Mandate, which will wreck their armies. Then you attack on land.

Patience is the key. Or, if you're not willing to win the war at sea for some reason, hope for a Mingsplosion around 1500. The AI doesn't handle Ming's challenges well.

[Mr.X]

As the Ottoman on the current patch I would focus on mitigating two things;

1) At some point you need to deal with the decadence mechanic which involves high absolutism and low influence of estates.
2) European (majors) nation will get better military units as the game progresses.

Conclusion would be: Get military ideas that makes you unit or generals better and ideas that decreases estates influences.