What are your favorite OP national ideas for a custom nation?

[harrisone16]

I’m trying to create the most OP custom nation for fun and wanted to hear what ideas you love to use (ideally staying under the 400 pt limit).
One that’s super fun the “avoid zone of control.” It’s hilarious to walk right past a heavily fortified border!
What are some of your favorite builds?

[bri]

+goods produced is ridiculously strong for the cost.

However, it really can vary some depending on what you're looking to do in the campaign. 400 pts sounds like you're looking at Around the World in 80 Years which will mean front loading with colonial boosts while an Ideas Guy run would look vastly different.

[Primigenia]

discipline, administrative efficiency, technology cost, yearly tax modifier

[Medicles]

The absolute most OP in regard to military is +1 Infantry Fire. If you take that as Tradition then you are immediately stronger than anyone else, even if you have a smaller army, within reason though like a 1k is still not able to defeat 20k. Another not so OP anymore military idea is 2% yearly Army Professionalism. It was OP when it still gave a fixed amount of manpower, but its still very strong.

The rest depends on the nation i want to create though, but generally good are the ones that are also seen as strong in the idea groups, like Core-creation Cost, Province Warscore Cost Reduction, Diplomatic Reputation, anything with Goods Produced, Disziplin, Governing Capacity... it still depends on the country, the place and how strong you want to be at the beginning.

[ChaffyExpert]

goods produced is OP, as far as non-military ideagroups go. It's like a permanent 2 or 3x more money compared to what you would have.

And more money means better advisors, which means more Mana, which means more dev and more money more conquest... It snowballs so hard if you know what you're doing.



I mean, to be fair, you get infinite money after building manufactures, but it pretty much will make sure you never have a deficit, barring something dumb.

Aside from that, there are some ideas clearly better than others.

Because of that, i try to go for a theme rather than just whatever is overpowered.
Like merc related buffs for a trade republic custom nation, along with the goods produced trade stuff and naval buffs.

I had a fun MP game actually where i played this custom nation type in The Netherlands, and another player played as a Pirate-type nation but not a pirate republic more like a dictatorship with raiding ideas, getting boat loads of money from the English Channel by raiding.

So we ended up in a Cold War where i spammed ships to reduce the affect of pirates and raiding, he increased it to raid the coasts for easy money.

It was a blast.


Also, another great one is focusing on defensive ideas as Tibet CN or Switzerland on Steroids. massive buff to the garrison force to wipe out armies with that alone, hostile attrition to kill the manpower of nations, and defensiveness so siege-ing a province takes longer than trying to figure out half of what Biden is saying.

If you're looking for just the most powerful ideas, it's basically
goods produced
discipline
army morale
artillery combat power
artillery fire
infantry fire
tech cost
Admin efficiency
improve relations modifier
AE impact
fire damage
fire damage received
infantry combat ability

(note not in this order in terms of strength, some of these are better than others but the point system for limiting CNs may make some more necessary.