Are the New Economic Ideas Worth It?

[Sierra 117 [The Master Chief]]

In 1.34, Economic Ideas got a massive nerf, in which their province development cost was halved, and their synergy with quantity ideas was completely removed in favor of something completely useless economically. In your opinions, are economic ideas worth it anymore?
Because I agree that Eco+Quantity was a bit strong, but they should have either just removed the -10% dev cost with their policy, or buffed other ideas, because in my opinion, how I see it now, besides the inflation reduction, which isn't that powerful by itself, Eco ideas is really bad right now. It gives almost no bonus towards dev cost reduction, and plutocratic/aristocratic ideas almost give as much reduction as eco, so its almost pointless.
Honestly I used to always go eco when I was playing outside of Europe because otherwise its impossible to tech up, but now its brutal trying to compete with the always economically way superior Europeans.
Anyway, text wall aside, what are your opinions on the Economic Ideas nerf?

[Marquoz]

Economic ideas were only ever worthwhile in multiplayer games. In single player, they were bad before the nerf, and they're bad now.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Sierra 117 The Master Chief:

Honestly I used to always go eco when I was playing outside of Europe because otherwise its impossible to tech up, but now its brutal trying to compete with the always economically way superior Europeans.

Also, you need to learn how to force institutions to spawn. Nations outside of Europe can easily be the world leaders in every tech if you do. Develop one province repeatedly until the institution you need appears there. Ideally, that province will be in your capital state (so its GC cost remains very low) and have a high value trade good. Develop subsequent institutions in neighboring provinces so that they spread very quickly.

[Sierra 117 [The Master Chief]]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Originally posted by Sierra 117 The Master Chief:

Honestly I used to always go eco when I was playing outside of Europe because otherwise its impossible to tech up, but now its brutal trying to compete with the always economically way superior Europeans.

Also, you need to learn how to force institutions to spawn. Nations outside of Europe can easily be the world leaders in every tech if you do. Develop one province repeatedly until the institution you need appears there. Ideally, that province will be in your capital state (so its GC cost remains very low) and have a high value trade good. Develop subsequent institutions in neighboring provinces so that they spread very quickly.

Oh yeah I force spawn institutions all the time lol, they just eat up at your monarch points, and it feels like with the old eco+quantity ideas it would be cheaper and allow you to play tall and wide at the same time.
And what do you mean by the were only worthwhile in multiplayer? I've never played online because I want to master the game first so I have no idea

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Originally posted by Sierra 117 The Master Chief:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Also, you need to learn how to force institutions to spawn. Nations outside of Europe can easily be the world leaders in every tech if you do. Develop one province repeatedly until the institution you need appears there. Ideally, that province will be in your capital state (so its GC cost remains very low) and have a high value trade good. Develop subsequent institutions in neighboring provinces so that they spread very quickly.

Oh yeah I force spawn institutions all the time lol, they just eat up at your monarch points, and it feels like with the old eco+quantity ideas it would be cheaper and allow you to play tall and wide at the same time.
And what do you mean by the were only worthwhile in multiplayer? I've never played online because I want to master the game first so I have no idea

In competitive, PvP multiplayer, the meta is to stack every possible reduction to development cost in the game in order to play extremely tall after the early game. This is because, once the AI are all eliminated and all that's left is other players, developing your own provinces is the only way to continue to scale in power and keep up with everybody else. Player wars are massive, drawn-out affairs, taking hundreds of thousands of casualties per side by the 1500's and millions by the 1600's. Even if you are in a situation where you can keep expanding by conquering other players, the rest of the map will take notice of it and unite the entire world to take you down once you become a threat to them.

In single player, on the other hand, the AI isn't smart enough to do that. There is always an opportunity to blob somewhere. In single player, developing province or "playing tall" is always objectively less efficient than blobbing and playing extremely wide. You can devote the entirety of your Admin and Diplo power income to constant expansion through conquest in single player; in multiplayer this is not even vaguely possible, as each individual war takes so long and costs so much to win. You can ignore buffing up your military quality altogether in single player by simply playing smarter than the AI and using the mechanics of combat to your advantage, leaving your idea group slots to be filled with bonuses that let you expand faster and more efficiently. Other players, on the other hand, usually don't possess the fundamental lack of understanding of combat mechanics that the AI does; army quality and size matter far more for your survival in multiplayer, and differences in skill mostly just boil down to "how good are you at micro'ing one to three dozen army stacks and reinforcing WW2-sized battles with them".

In short, the only experience that translates over from single to multiplayer is the understanding of fundamental game mechanics; the way the game is played is so thoroughly different that it might as well be a separate game altogether. The meta is completely different, as well as what stats and mechanics are considered important or irrelevant.

[Marquoz]

Right. There are only a few times that developing provinces makes sense in single player:

--You're force spawning an institution, as previously discussed
--An estate agenda or mission requires you to do so
--There's literally nothing else you can do with the points (but this should rarely if ever happen if you blob)

The rest of the time, spend monarch points on tech, ideas, military leaders, coring conquests, and annexing vassals. It's far more points-efficient to take development from others than to grow your own--and conquest hurts your enemies at the same time, so it's even more effective.

That's why Econ has never been a top idea group for single player, even before the recent changes. Idea groups that help you blob are supreme (Admin, Diplo, Influence, Exploration if you're an early colonizer, Expansion, Religious or Humanist).

[Medicles]

Originally posted by Sierra 117 The Master Chief:

Oh yeah I force spawn institutions all the time lol, they just eat up at your monarch points, and it feels like with the old eco+quantity ideas it would be cheaper and allow you to play tall and wide at the same time.
And what do you mean by the were only worthwhile in multiplayer? I've never played online because I want to master the game first so I have no idea

You only need to force spawn Renaissance, Colonialism and Printing Press (rarely Feudalism) and at least Ren. and Col. happen before you should be able to get something out of the dev cost reduction from Eco.

Each Institution spawns roughly every 50 years, starting with 1450 for Renaissance. Adapt your gameplay to this and save up monarch points accordingly. For example, you are usually able to reach tech four in everything around the mid 1450s and Renaissance has usually spawned by then. Thats the point where you save up and use your monarch points to get Renaissance instead of tech 5. Situationally you can also get military tech 5 instead, for a massive advantage if you want to wage a particularly difficult war. Thats for you to decide.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

And, yeah, double-checking the changes in their current form, what's going to happen here is Infrastructure Ideas is just going to wholly replace Economic Ideas in the multiplayer meta. Besides just the transfer of the all-powerful dev cost reduction, that +1 building slot in every province is going to be an extremely coveted boost, as well as the reduction to Expand Infrastructure cost (which gives an extra -25% dev cost when completed). It'll also come with other moderately useful bonuses, such as faster Prosperity growth (full Prosperity in a state is another source of dev cost reduction) and that very intriguing extra fort level in your capital. People will just end up having to deal with interest being a bit more of a problem when they're taking out massive numbers of loans in a death war.

The policies with Infrastructure are rather forgettable from a multiplayer point of view, though; people may still end up taking Economic as their fourth or fifth idea group after the changes just for the economic and army quality policies tied to it.

[Kapika96]

TBH if you think it's impossible to keep up with Europe without economic ideas then you have a fair bit more to learn about the game still. They've never been essential for any country.

They weren't really worth it even before. I mainly got them for the +5% discipline alongside quality, but that's only in certain circumstances where I'm playing for army quality or something instead of just trying to conquer. I know they're sub-optimal otherwise. Nothing's really changed from that perspective. It may be -10% dev cost instead of -20%, but that's not really what I was getting them for, it was just a nice bonus on top. So they're not that much worse.

Although it looks like they're being nerfed even further in the next patch and completely losing the dev cost reduction. Even further relegating them to only being used for my Prussian space marine games (if even then!).