Hello again, I hope I wasn't rude, you're doing a great job!

Now, balancing, I'm no expert on this, but I have some general observations:

1. if you add bonuses, they have to have a cost (researchers are too cheap, they produce a lot of points, so you end up with a lot of ideas almost for free), so a first balancing action would be to change that, multiply the hiring price by 5 times and halve the points they add.

2. the bonuses are added to the ones already in the tech tree and other existing buffs, so on their own it might not seem that good, but think about adding 5 times the 10% siege ability with just a few of your ideas, then we have a few in the tech tree; the result is Space Marines; so I really think halving everything as a base isn't too much because of the cumulative power.

-a second solution to the second point would be to just reduce the idea tree count to just 4 (but who will want just 4 idea tree in 500 years of game play?), and yes I know you can set it to 4 in game rules, but again, I would prefer more ideas with less buffs.


3.the fact that some idea trees a bit more powerful, I do not mind, this is a single player at it's core

Hello! Amazing mod, I love going through all the ideas and imagining how well I can utilize them, and deciding between which power buffs to take. I do think some of them are too powerful, especially given they stack on top of the already intended way the game scales. So much so I think there are correct bonuses you should take regardless of what nation you play. I love getting very OP, but for the sake of balance I would suggest:

1. Anything allowing more control is very powerful in game, hence very powerful with in the ideas tree. The 5% max control in Espionage, which you can get very early is very powerful, when control is a big issue early in the game. If you can make it scale by 1% depending on the Age, it would balance out, or just flat out make it 2, maybe 3%. Also move it to the last idea in espionage, so you can't take it so early.

2. Going off of that, any idea that gives you proximity through roads/land/maritime presence works on top of that, so those are no brainers to take as early as possible.

3. The extra cabinet seats are massive bonuses. The cabinet members already give a huge advantage with their actions, allow you to appoint crown members for more crown power, and having so many extra seats gives too big of an advantage for the early game.

3. The bonuses to trading efficiency and production efficiency are huge, when you stack them with a great economy.

4. The +development bonuses also slowly add up quite a bit, paired with having enough cabinet seats to constantly develop your capital, you can snowball quite fast.

5. The accumulation of ideas seems a bit too fast so you can get 3-4 full idea groups by age 3 and those 3-4 usually have the most OP buffs to your nation, which diminishes the need to choose carefully what you research.

Also it would be pretty cool if there is a notification for when one of your researchers has died/was removed from his/her post, and if clicking on the face icon would open up a UI menu to choose a new researcher. Also how are research points calculated? I feel like it is better to choose someone with more overall points, than someone super specialized in admin/diplo/army

The Guard Barracks also has some interesting interactions. The max number scales with your capital population, which allows you to build lots of them and pretty much use guard units exclusively in the earlier stages of the game. I think for better immersion, you should limit the ammount to like 1 + the bonus levels from the other ideas, but the guard unit could be even stronger, so they really stand out. It also adds a lot of new units to the recruitment screen, which I feel would be quite a pain to navigate in the later stages of the game, so maybe have only infantry/cav guards, or maybe even only cav guards

@Chivu:
1. I thought about adding a cost of researchers, however right now there is no prime solution for it. You could tie it so sth like court cost, but something easily tieable to income sliders is not possible right now, at least to my knowledge. The hiring price will probably not be increased significantly as I feel that smaller countries also should be able to afford them. Maybe you just need to tie them to court cost and that would be that.
As for the points, I generally thought point generation is mostly fine. I mean you want some progress after all I'd say and if you gain like 10 points per month, which you almost never do you still need quite some time for a group to complete. Maybe it could be toned down too, just not sure on this one.

2. well thats always a problem with modifiers. If defensiveness increases on the same rate its not such a big problem though.

3. still thats what balancing is for.

@QuadKings:
1. Fair point.

2. Yeah control/proximity/everything here is hard to balance for sure.

3. Yes, but before the better actions are unlocked more seats mean more integration potential, obviously also ohter bonuses, but you can't add half a seat, so its either you add one or you dont.

4. Yeah maybe the economy percentage bonuses need to be toned down a bit, but despite playing the beta quite a bit I was still unsure how much 10% really are in some cases.

5. Well yeah.

6. Age 3 is already mid game though. I dont think per say that this is too fast. This is pretty much how I generally wanted it to be. Maybe the problem you have can kind of be averted with lowering the bonuses.

As for the guard units, I dont have strong feelings for this one. I guess I need a bit more army composition play in the later stages of the game If I find having too many guard units or not in the end.

Civil Arbitration Bodies (Contract Negotiations, Dip) should be -1.5% instead of -15%.

The modifier is additive with a +10% base, so -15% makes dip spending free.

If there are any Expected Court Cost modifier, they also needs to be in that lower range.

The 10% estate satisfaction recovery in the Diplo -> Influence ideas, is additive I think. Also 10 levels of the palace wing that gives 10% additive recovery is very powerful. Both pretty much make it so you recover the satisfaction in a month or two when a event triggers or you revoke a privilege. The base is 0.3% so something along the lines of +1% would still be quite powerful, but not trivializing the mechanic.

The +10% satisfaction of estates in a few places (Diplo -> Internal mediation/Assimilation) is quite powerful too. +2% or 2.5% would bring it more in line with what buffs the base game already give.

Good day, i think that it should cost some money to unlock the bonuses so you arent too overpowerd too quick also maybe make it so that you can only have one or two idea slots used at once until you complete it and the inovation points for the other categories should be way lower so you arent able to complete the other categories at once when you are done with the others. which should force you into a more somekind focused and strategic approach. fostering to each nations advantage so that not every nation is a jack of all trades vs jack of all trades run.