Ultimate MILITARY Idea Groups Tierlist | EU4 ABC 

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Won't change how you graded it too much, but one thing to remember is the Monthly Reform Progress modifier in Indigenous ideas is actually multiplicative with Reform Progress Growth modifiers which are the norm.

The base of morale recovery speed is somthing like 0.2 or a bit higher. So 10 % from offensive idea is actually huge.

I also think stacking siege ability in single player is extremely underrated. Did a campaign where i maxed it and it made wars go so extremely quick and easy.

Recover army morale 10% usually doubles how fast your free company recovers morale so it is a bit stronger than it seems

Totally agree that quantity is a trap for newer players. Two reasons: First, there are lots of ways to increase your max manpower without them and second, a lot of ideas that improve your army quality are themselves “manpower ideas” because you lose less men in battles or finish sieges faster. IMO the best military modifier in single player is siege ability just because it’s so annoying to siege forts lol

Siege ability is basically the only military modifier worth focusing on in single player

Love divine for the siege ability stacking possibility

After my Livonian run with Divine+Espionage+Offensive campaign, I will say one thing... Siege ability is beautiful

I disagree with Quantity being B tier. It was nerfed a lot, but it still have its big assets of being so strong in early game and in game which is about snowball, it is big asset.

You can't imagine for how long I've waited for you to make this list!

I ALWAYS open every SP game with Diplo Offensive and Human. No rebels - no headache, fast sieges and fast AE decay which is usually what hold you up the most in SP.

Was excited for this video, would love more tier lists in the future.

I agree on your thoughts about offensive ideas, it was my primary military idea group in 1.34 when it gave spl unit force limit but now I go for either quality or aristo

IMO in single player mil ideas depends on your coutrys national ideas, which will make you leverage your bonuses really high.

I think Aristo + Infastructure also gives a 10% gov cap modifier which is decent. Not huge, but useful e.g. for Prussia (since if you stack mil quality for Prussia -unoptimal but yk - you're likely to pick up Quality, can get some decent cav as a byproduct) Generally fairly like Aristo, Quite a few moderately sized bonuses that are useful although probably not really worth, but imo in terms of something that gives some non military bonuses it's one where if you're just going to pick up one military idea group without specifying to a large degree e.g. through national ideas or gov reforms, it's pretty nice. Good tier list Zlewikk, Generally agree.

Defensive has been my go to first idea in most achievement runs I've done, imo nothing compares. The tech 6 + first 2 defensive ideas powerspike (with army drill morale and almost guaranteed top army tradition) can win you wars like solo wallachia or serbia vs otto and snowball the game

Great video! I think offensive ideas is only really useful for single player in the late game, but it is extremely useful in this situation. Once you get big enough the only thing slowing you down really is the speed of your wars which is determined almost entirely on taking forts quickly. Once you have enough troops and a few decent buffs to combat ability/discipline you don't need to keep stacking them, at some point your army is strong enough. When you reach this point in your campaign that 20% siege ability becomes one of the only military buffs that speeds things up. I would give up a 20% discipline boost for that siege ability because who cares, my troops can already kill everything, its only the forts slowing me down!

As someone who plays natives almost every third game, the Native + Horde ideas meta is SO good! You should try it one day

Nice!

Espionage + divine + inno + offensive = few day siege to the point where it can compete with artillery barrage

Naval ideas is great to use thallosocracy government reform. trade protectorates gives a scalable goods produced modifiers. along with trade companies, you can reach 300% goods produced without much effort

I always find myself having to take quantity ideas when I have a massive colonial empire as i'ts impossible otherwise to cover everything without that force limit boost. That's also a way to increase the number of simultaneous wars you can do and accelerate your expension. At minimum A tier for me.

Awesome video Zlewikk been waiting for this to come out! I was wondering about the gov specific idea groups specifically horde and indigenous. Shouldn't those ideas be picked 100% of the time when you are playing that gov type? like always pick horde ideas when you play as a horde?

Offensive Ideas is the only Military Idea Group that I take in single player. You don’t need the the quality buffs from Quality Ideas against AI armies. The 20% siege ability is really necessary after Lv6 forts are unlocked, otherwise late game will just become a slog. I would take Offensive as the 5th Idea Group but I rarely play that long

I liked your comment about none of the military ideas being crucial for a single player run! I decided to give a Mercenary Idea Holland -> Netherlands a try, and am super impressed with the idea group. It's 1567 and I've noted that my mercenary companies are an absolute steal... I'm finding that, with the exception of the odd company with multiple modifiers and a stellar general, most cost between 33% and 75% to raise, and between 50% and 80% to maintain, relative to regular units. I have the Mercenary - Administrative Policy (-20% maintenance) , the Mercenary Leadership government reform (-20% cost), and the bonus from Trading in Cloth (-15% maintenance), plus the Mercenary Ideas (-25% cost and maintenance). I think I may eventually go Plutocratic to get even more modifiers, but need to go Expansion next to get my slice of Asian trade. Each company has a different cost (recruitment and maintenance), but my **current total mercenary regiment maintenance cost is only 73% what the same regular units would cost to maintain**, and all the companies I've hired so far were cheaper to recruit than base regiments. That's already great news, and that's before the true benefits are considered -- you're also paying for extra manpower, occasionally some unit modifiers, and generals (which don't count toward leader upkeep!). I've scored a few generals that were way better than my own military tradition would allow, and have improved them (because mercenary companies can drill with Mercenary Ideas!). My strategy has been to recruit infantry-only mercenary groups, and attach / follow them up with cannons recruited from my own manpower to provide back line artillery and siege capability. It's certainly not min-max (I could have way better quality troops with a different mil idea), but it's highly effective for dumpstering the AI! It's a pretty easy snowball -- the only way to find yourself in a truly bad position with the AI is when you're out of manpower and don't have enough units... this saves you money so you can simply buy more of both whenever you're in need (and helps you conserve your own manpower).

FINALLY!

I think offensive is a good opener Idea group for SP early on the battles are somewhat dependant on rolls(before you're unlocking your government reforms and national ideas) and you're not doing them often enough nor have enough bonuses yet to always be at max AT for good general essentially, the 4 first ideas make your armies perform more reliably and then the last 3 ideas are big bonuses and then you get those policies that keep making it better. I wouldn't say its *needed* but its quite good for SP although later on it falls off hard

i think quantity is still great, i find it particularly useful when youre a smaller rich nation like venice that has tons of money to spend on extra armies, or when youre stuck between larger nations or hugboxes and yorure stuck fighting large wars. Also i think he underrates the supply limit and attrition bonuses, as most players (especially in single player) cant be bothered to micromanage stacks, especially later into the game when you get larger armies. Also I tend to pick defensive first because i always end up with extra mil points early on, while the early morale bonus really helps carry early wars. I also prefer to build nice walls of forts because the ai love to run to the opposite end of my country and carpet siege, so the fort maintenance, defense, and garrison size really help keep the ai busy while you siege their whole country.

The policy that quality ideas has with influence(-10 percent diplomatic annexation cost) I find really important and helpful, so I’m surprised you didn’t mention it

Offensive is an S tier idea group if you combine it with Espionage ideas, literally melting forts for fun

When i was doing 3 mountains achievement as shogunate... mercenary ideas made endgame so much nicer. Having literally endless amount of mercenary manpower i could assault any fort. Also i think in single player siege ability modifiers are much more important than before coz ai now tends to upgrade and build forts on borders ASAP

I'd probably have the mil ideas rated the same. But now that I see the complete list I am somehow inspired to do a campaign with only c/b tier ideas. Strangely they seem to fit the "Venetian Sea"-achievement somehow. Perhaps you could do a speedrun with that? On the other hand, knowing your speedruns you'd probably only get to like the second idea group maximum. 😅 Except if starting at a later start date

Played my football game like 2 hours before this so I kept falling asleep

Aristocratic is very useful when you play Spain or Portugal. You open Exploration--Expansion--Aristo, and get three useful free policies quickly.

I agree that military ideas aren't a make or break for whatever game you're playing. I usually pick military idea groups that synergize with my other ideas and give me strong policies.

Naval ideas are seriously underrated for nations that need strong navies and don't have the economy to support building massive spam fleets. I had a campaign as Pagarruyung --> Malaya where I took naval and dominated the larger Indonesian powers around me, it was some of the most fun I've had playing eu4 Agreed with the rest of the list though, great vid!

I really like you introduce ideas. We really need Ideas. In this game, I like quantity, because you really need numbers to support the battle, especially world war. Reality, I need quality, because without it, it will be a mess.

I love to play ottomans and jianzhou with diplo admin opening and then going offensive quantity for redicioulos sieging capability

I play single player only and I really like to stack development cost reduction while blobling. So yeah, military ideas I quite useless. Regardless, I usually (not always) open with the government type idea, for the sweet -5% development cost reduction and some other bonuses, usually because I need other kind of mana points in the early campaign. So after the quantity-economics nerf, the government type idea became my usual opener and the only military idea. But in current campaign I became crippled by debt and I could not declare bankruptcy because Ottomans, Portugal and Bahmanis really hated me and supported independence of one of my vassals. But at this point I didn't really needed exploration anymore so I swapped it for economy ideas just for the interest rate reduction and other bonuses weren't that bad. But when I was looking on the policies I saw "Development cost reduction in Primary culture provinces -10%" my reaction was "Wait, what?!". I already in all my games stack culture conversion reduction, I convert provinces for 1 diplo point per development and basically have all provinces with my primary culture (with exception for some monuments). So I am sorry espieniage, I promise you each game that I will take, you, but yet again I have to ditch you. :( So my current wacky campaign as Knights (I won't form any other tags until I get "Master of India achievement" and get big name "Knights' India" on my map :D): Divine, Religious, Diplomatic, Influence, Administrative, Economic (swap from Exploration which I took as second or third), Infrastructure and Defensive. :D I am already sorry for the moment when Ottomans will try to siege my forts, I already have +25% fort defence from national ideas and +15% from theocratic government reform in all my provinces. :D

imo the ideas for horde/republic/natives are top tier for their gov type maybe not S but for sure A, i am uncertain about the divine ideas unless going for some kind of meme with policies it's more about C overall also on the other side if there is an idea to pick in single player it will be else quality ( as it bumps all the stats of your army) else offensive for the realy great policies we can pull out late game from it, therefore i would go S for quality and A for offensive this whole topic about mil ideas could be spread into a separate tier list, anyways great job Zlewikk

I think people under estimate the power of Marines which are unlocked by Naval ideas. They save so much manpower in world conquests. Anyway, imo marines alone make naval ideas better than defensive in single llayer campaigns

so in resume i should save my military mana for other things than unlock ideas group

Quantity is still a king IMO. The force limit and manpower recovery speed is always what made it great. Having a large standing army is a huge advantage in single player. You don't need AE reduction modifiers if nations won't join a coalition , and simply being able to siege more fortresses in parallel makes up for a lack of some siege ability. You can hit escape velocity on your growth faster with Quantity early game, and that's the value I see in it. Mixes super nice with administrative. Manpower recovery speed is hard to come by and it's effectively a multiplicative modifier on regular manpower modifiers (since base recovery scales with manpower). Quantity just lets you do everything faster and more aggressively

Could you make a video elaborating on why you don't take any Mil idea in SP please? Becasue honestly I don't see that to be possible depending on who your neighbors are and I just would like to know why you think that is the better play.

I know that defence is a weak idea group. What do you think about stacking morale (republic, defence, plutocracy and so on) and wiping early-mid game? Both as a meme and as a strategy.

Merc ideas are S-Tier, best snowballing first pick for any nation. Three reason. First: +50% armry tradtion gain for merc generals, translate into 2-3 star, 3-6 siege generals the moment you get it, which also have 4-6 fire/shock. They are simply so broken, that you can win any early wars now twice as fast. (no idea why people overlook better generals, when they make a huge deal about better generals in othere idea groups) Second: mil points, which frees you adm and dip points for other thinks, so you can push coring, second idea pick, and more tax income with you adm points, you can use your dip points for more production and trade income or simply unjustify demands peace deal, which translate into more ducats, which translate into more hired mercs for your armies. Third, merc manpower, your limiting factor in the first 50 years is your nation manpower, merc complettly off-set it. So more manpower, more wars, more sieges, more conquest, more snowballing. ..... That's the top 3 for snowballing, also good on merc ideas. ++++ merc cost and merc maintance, which amkes it super easy to go 20-50% over army forcelimit in the first 50 years. As OPM, you can fight a far bigger nations thx to this...as france or austria, you become stronges army nation in the first 50 years, and any coalition will not even form ++++ Tier 5 Goverment, elite merc. It translate ducats into even more merc disc and merc manpower, you have 110 merc disc, than you push your money into it, and you run 140% merc disc....and any nation will stop battles with you. totaly broken, so you can chill sieges them down, when they hide in there last province and prey that you do not stackwipe them +++++ Full Merc allows Drilling, and drilling were the weak points of mercs. But thx to this ideas, you gain now army professsionalism (more normal disc, which stacks with merc disc) and less dmg taken, and more dmg done. In my experience, I snowball as any nation the fastest, when me picks merc ideas first. And the best, merc ideas never become outdated. Your merc scales with your development, and in lategame, you simply hire 50-100k stacks, with 500k-750k manpower on them, simply add a regular cannon stack to them, and you can force assault any sieged province. Only weak point of merc ideas is multiplayer, were other nations can hire merc stacks, to deny them to you.

Any Chance you might do Modded Idea sets like Ante Bellum's Professional, Imperial, Celestial etc...

Naval and maritime are pretty much must haves for pirate republics. You live and die by your navy and marines and since you remain small the must be of the highest quantity and quality relative to your size, Super fun, super silly.

making a Tierlist like this i would have looked at the goverment specivic military idears as any other also, cause if you play a nation you will have access to at least one of them, so it doesnt really metter if thay are only for a few nations or not. In addition there is another point to make that some govermentreforms or desicions are locked behind some idear groups. for example having innovativ or humanist idears gives access to a govermentreform for more inovativness gain, more religions tolerenz and losing the clearic estate. or having navel idears gives you access to a desicion to be able to establish trade protactorate states, a better version of trade leagues.

i once built a custom nation on very ez with 20% provice warscore and 25% provice war score vs different religion(+ malta monument) . i didnt consinder beeing a native though. could be a even sillier build then.

Tuve que tomar ideas de cantidad en mi partida con bizancio, y la verdad no me arrepiento mucho pero se nota la diferencia de calidad en mis Batallas 😢

defensive ideas is for the army tradition as well. 5% seige

I really wish the modifiers better reflected what the core idea should be. Like if you thought you were going to be attacked a bunch by stronger enemies, then you would pick defensive, whereas if you wanted to attack your enemies more you would pick offensive. But I think as it is the idea groups are way to scattered in what they provide.

15:00 Experience has nothing to do with the fact that you tend to lose more to attrition than battles. Even if you only sieged with the minimum required stacksize+1 and always made sure to not over-stack your troops, you're still more likely to lose more people to siege attrition than you'd ever lose in battles.

Just wanted to point out about Defensive: Its not +100%Prestige its army Tradition, and in the first years of the game you are definitly not always at 100. Defensive helps in getting 100 Tradition early, and kill the big blue and green blobs easily with like 5/5 generals. Still think the B is deserved.

indigenous and horde ideas are pretty much a must pick imo should be rated s tier

P sure merc ideas are the new meta in mp. But i havent played much in the last year

In my opinion all military ideas are great (A tier) if you choose it to fit to your national ideas like aristo-Poland, quality-Prussia, quantity-Russia.

i remmeber , when i needed to stack those to win against the AI

Defensive ideas in a nutshell: Me, sieging AI's fort with -20% defensivness: it has been 899 days alredy, but defender's resolve isnt breaking, i cant belive they promised us to be at home by christmas. AI sieging my 135% defensivness fort: *i m about to end this man's whole carrier in 90 days*

ok im convinced this is an elaborate troll ranking theres no way these are legit

Naval + Maritime in MP (if not banned) are really broken for the island nations tbh

I agree with Horde ideas, but exactly because it's exlusive to hordes. If Horde ideas are available to you, you should get them before almost any other military idea. It's A+ for hordes and N/A for any other. Same logic with all exclusive ideas.

Stacking siege ability, fort defence, or cav combat completely changes the way game is played. Fun tier S

I like mercenary because I cam summon army's out of thin air without repercussions

I love picking offensive and quality ideas with innovative. The bonus to siege is just too great to pass up. imo.

what the hell im actually suprised that merc ideas are the best military ideas XDD

Offensive is nice and all, but I really only pick it because of the siege ability, sieges which are arguably the worst part in wars. If the siege ability was in any other group, like it is in the policies, I usually neve pick offensive

IDK Ive been fighting denmark a lot lately and in their home territory they feel more powerful than the British navy on the open sea.

Offensive should really be S tier in single player. The siege ability is just soo good.

Pick Defensive only if your capital is difficult terrain

My only thing about quantity is that it should be s tier. Regardless of the run your going for (except merc only) you need two things . Money and manpower. Quantity is the definition of the second most important resource in the game, manpower (first being monarch points).

Mercany discipline is actually worse than the regular one as it is probably just a combat abillity rather than discipline.

I'm playing as Milan hard difficulty ironman. I have colonies all around the world so quanity it's not as bad. First I take quality then quanity. So I have in about 1600 more than 300 k units when second country have 130 k

Breaking news: competitive euiv multiplayer ranks no mility group in S teir

1:58 its army tradition from wars, not prestige (the icon is wrong)

Horde ideas easy S+ tier. As long as you're a horde, or well, plan on staying as a horde, you take it. You do everything to hit as close to 100% cav-inf ratio and max Cav Combat Ability and laugh as your horse archers run circles stackwiping literally every AI army they encounter.

I think quantity is very helpful with small nations in early game SP. When you can't build solider housholds and you don't have manpower development. And quantity is actually helpful in a diplomatic way. AI doesn't check quality of your army to ally you, and as small nations wich I play a lot is really helpfull in early game. I don't get it when you put mercenery ideas above quantity, both are helpful in same situation but quantity is just better.

*try playing a native confederacy (or do colonial shenigans like the student) to get **_high american_** tech group as early as possible. The pips are so good that you can blow armies of other tech groups away like they are nothing, possibly even beating Prussian quality*

Guys saying that defensive and quantity is useless have never fought a hegemon. Attrition kills a lot. Especially if enemy has managed to spike it up to absurd amounts.

Offensive ideas is my favourite mil idea, it is reliable and useful in most contexts. The others are all, imo, quite situational. 1. Guaranteed shock and fire pips - I disagree with your assessment here, I actually think this is what makes Offensive a viable early game idea because you might be struggling to maintain your army tradition in the early game. Having guaranteed shock and fire pips ensures that your generals will always be somewhat useful. 2. Siege ability - speaks for itself. Faster sieges = faster conquests, less manpower lost to attrition. 3. Force limit - 15% isn't much but its still something. 4. Discipline - 5%, very rare and useful modifier, improves your troops quality. 5. Morale recovery speed - underrated, lets your armies recover quicker and follow up on victories / recover from losses.

I'd put Aristocratic and Offensive at the very top of the A-tier. Offensive is the best and is only not S-tier because the policies suck with the most common starting ideas. Aristocratic simply boosts your nation in so many good ways and has better policies. Quality has good policies, but without any bonuses to siege and slightly boring ones to navy, it goes down to B-tier. Quantity is actually S-tier if you're going for an extremely aggressive and risky campaign, but fairly useless if you're taking the slow and risk-free approach. Defensive has just sucked since they nerfed the morale bonus.

That hat, that accent, that name ... This guy must be nigerian

Defensive - 1:58 - its not prestige but army tradition from battles. Makes defensive a little bit better but still not good. Defensive group was a little bit better with the -25% attrition idea that they moved to quantity and gave 33% garrison size - which is good for forts but does anyone care that much about forts? Agree with the rest tho Reinforce Speed is a little bit underrated IMO. It's C+. Mercenary - played with it once but it just becomes so useless once you get provinces and build manpower buildings. Had we any way to influence merc army comp and use manpower to other things than army, it would actually be very good - but considering how wonky attach army is and how this can fk up micro, I hate this idea group. B- at best, fix attach or army comps and it's A maybe better. Offensive - with how land leader pip rng works, the land leader shock and fire ideas do actually way more than they should. Trust me on that one. And taking into account how dmg in battle is calculated, having always +1 more fire and shock in rolls is better than all these +10% combat ability from quality ideas. Siege ability kinda makes you lose less manpower on attrition. Army morale recovery speed - you are wrong here. It doesn't speed your morale recovery by "10%". It regens another 10% of your total morale. So it's actually way more. If you have at least 50 army tradition (5%) and you are on your own territory (+5%) - your army morale recovery is 15% (base) + 5% (AT) + 5% (own ter) = 25% and you take offensive it's 25%+10%=35% morale which means you can go from 0 to 100% morale in 3 months instead of 4. In my SP games I usually end up taking offensive at some point and it often ends up as my only military idea group. With policies it's easy A or even A+ for me. Quality - I basically agree with everything. I love quality mainly because it improves army so much with the combat ability, discipline, army tradition and policies WHILE also giving you an edge in naval battles. On the other hand taking quality as landlocked nation is kinda painful because you need to spend 3 ideas on useless stuff to get to the good stuff. A+ when you can use navy stuff, B otherwise. Quantity - I simply hate quantity, It's shit in its current form. For me it's mostly useful when I'm playing some OPM because it give AI a lot of reasons to like you or discentivize from attacking. I'd actually like them to bring the Quantity-Eco policy with development cost back. Right now I don't really have any incentive to take either of them. C Aristo - For me it's hard to take Aristo as non cav based country because the only military thing besides leader siege are cav bonuses. It's honestly a tough one to rate this: it has some diplo things with the diplomat, claim cost, unjustified demands; it has some admin things with dev cost and autonomy; and for mil its the cav ability, cost, ratio, tradition decay and leader siege and some manpower. Nothing gamebreaking but it's nice. On the other hand, it's quite similar to pluto now that I think about it - you can use your mil points and improve your country in other aspects than just army/navy. Btw. Aristo has like the worst idea group events ever (or at least used to have). B-

I think that pdx need to revamp some stuff. Def ideas need to have -shock and fire damage,and they should give them discipline as finisher... because so far everything about that idea is useless.

Quantity is S tier in regions of the world with tropical attrition. Manpower there is eaten really fast, and is easily the biggest bottleneck.

I'm ok with you rating except for quality. I think that in 1300 hrs of playing eu4 I never went through a campaign (sp or mp) without choosing them. They are so versatile and give that overall amount of military boost combined also with the policies that I just cannot imagine playing with quality. So for me obv they would be a S+ tier

You don't need a single military idea on sp? But the AI gets insane discipline around 1600 if you don't have that additional mod you are at a disadvantage I am at least lol.

I'm sorry but people who say military ideas are optional have never fought while at a disadvantage (like on vh). Try fighting the Ottomans, France or Spain without them you'll get owned very quickly. The power of innovative lies in stacking bonuses and cost reductions. +10 % to All Techs is absolutely huge. That's -20% each with Admin and diplo. And those also synergize with your advisors cost reduction. More mana generation and less expensive tech is an extremely powerful combination. Add it's excellent policies and you get an S tier idea group imho. Just looking at individual numbers is a mistake. Looking at how they stack and synergize is the way to go. As a muslim you also get an aditional 5% idea cost reduction, making it a top tier first pick.

Aristo should be atleast an A coz of army tradition.

For me offensive is S tier lon 99% of my games it’s always the first group I get

Naval is S tier for me in the fun department.

I think you need to expant the tier list bit more. Like add a B+ or A+. Because, if people don't realy watch your vidio. They'll will think every idea in same tiers equal.

Not played much recently but arent merc stacks still always terrible comp which cant be rearranged. Always makes merc ideas seem a little pointkess tbh if the forces they buff aremt great. Also surely 33% forcelimit for quant is still very good? Gives so much more flexibility to your force especially wheb it vomes to multiple theaters or stomping rebels

I think putting quantity that low is just a bit much. Yeah you can go without it, but since all of the military idea groups are useless in single player, they are all quality of life anyway and quantity is just the best at doing that. I dont see why i would ever pick defensive over quantity in single player tbh, so this makes no sense.

I like divine🥺

I've been really enjoying Naval ideas lately in my Denmark, Tunis, and Cebu playthroughs. Stacking Galley CA in early game, getting god tier admirals, and controlling straits dominantly to stackwipe entire armies. It's definitely higher than Maritime. B-Tier for sure.

I disagree with Offensive. It is by far the best in my Opinion. All wars in single player are won by sieges. And the better Generals are fine for Single player and broken strong in Multiplayer. Only the policies are not that easy to fit together in early years. Edit especially the comparison with quality is extreme. The +2 generals pips on average are a lot better than 10% quality ^^

I am sad that you only used 4 Tiers why not 6 you said so of + or -