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Politics strictly better than medicine, training and economy?


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Hello generals!

Forgive me if this has been covered before, been playing the game since EA but new to the forums. Am I missing something, or is politics flatly better than medicine, economy and training? It's a 2.5% bonus to both gold and recruits, where the others are a 2.5% discount for something specific. The discount and the bonus are basically equivalent, except you can use the bonus gold for whatever you want, plus you get manpower. 

Medicine isn't exactly a discount, but 2.5% recovered casualties is equivalent to a 2.5% discount on veteran replacement. The cost comes out the same, but training is a little better because it also discounts new vet recruits past your casualty figures.

A discount is slightly better than a bonus to income, but the difference is so small that it's vastly outweighed by the flexibility of politics and the fact that it also gets you recruits. Numbers for an example:

$10,000 income

22.5 base cost per vet for a one star unit (idk if other things factor into vet cost)

= 444.4 vets

 

With 4 points politics:

11,000 income

22.5 cost

= 488.9 vets

 

4 points training:

10,000 income

20.25 cost

= 493.8 vets

 

The difference is tiny, and politics gets you flexibility and manpower as well. So it seems like the economic choices for career points make sense in this order:

Politics

Economy (discounts every man, but real value depends on political points spending and number of captured guns. Too lazy to run the numbers right now)

Training (only discounts vet replacements while Econ. theoretically discounts everyone. But captured/recovered guns + politics points may even this out or make training better than econ)

Medicine (At first I though makes some sense as CSA because of manpower crunch, but manpower bonus from politics cancels it out)

 

IMO it would make more sense if the three non-politics options had a higher discount, so you would have to choose between specialization and flexibility. As it is though, it looks like politics is strictly better until you max it out.

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When you factor in that rewards are massive at the start compared to middle game(they snowball at the end again) politics is a nobrainer. Factor in that the battles are smaller and hence casualties lighter, and you pretty much have no choice but to max politics AFAP. 

 

Just checked quickly and for example Antietam(as CSA) offers 20k recruits and 500k cash on full politics, whereas for example Cold Harbor nets you 275k cash and 17500 recruits. Going full politics early on will net you considerably more rewards than concentrating on anything else. And since the end this game is very much about money and manpower the choice is obvious.

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I've gone full on politics early in my new Union campaign run on 1.04, after Shiloh my army is bigger then it ever was at this point. 9 points in politics now, next one in Army Organization and then I'll max Medicine and Training for more vets and weapons.

Edited by Hjalfnar_Feuerwolf
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On 8/9/2017 at 0:37 AM, Edward Ferrero Rocher said:

Medicine isn't exactly a discount, but 2.5% recovered casualties is equivalent to a 2.5% discount on veteran replacement. The cost comes out the same, but training is a little better because it also discounts new vet recruits past your casualty figures.

Not exactly. As was previously pointed out, soldiers recovered with Medicine also keep their weapon. Medicine isn't a 2.5% discount though - it's a 100% discount on soldiers and weapons recovered. For example, if you have Medicine at 20% and you take 10,000 casualties, you get 2,000 veteran soldiers and their weapons back for free. To get the equivalent back with Training and Economy, you'd have to buy 2,000 veterans plus at least half their guns (at BG difficulty level, you recover 50% of the weapons of your own casualties). The actual cost varies (more experienced veterans are more expensive), but with no bonuses 1,000 Enfields costs $29k - you can do the math from there. In late battles with highly experienced troops, Medicine can easily save you more than $100k per battle. The downside, of course, is that you have to take casualties in order for Medicine to work, and you're actively working against the bonus by keeping casualties down.

In short, Medicine is just behind Politics in terms of power and priority - Training and Economy are not only less valuable individually, but you need both in order to match what Medicine does.

Edited by Aetius
fixing the math a bit, forgot about recovered weapons
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On 8/8/2017 at 11:37 PM, Edward Ferrero Rocher said:

Hello generals!

Forgive me if this has been covered before, been playing the game since EA but new to the forums. Am I missing something, or is politics flatly better than medicine, economy and training? It's a 2.5% bonus to both gold and recruits, where the others are a 2.5% discount for something specific. The discount and the bonus are basically equivalent, except you can use the bonus gold for whatever you want, plus you get manpower. 

Medicine isn't exactly a discount, but 2.5% recovered casualties is equivalent to a 2.5% discount on veteran replacement. The cost comes out the same, but training is a little better because it also discounts new vet recruits past your casualty figures.

A discount is slightly better than a bonus to income, but the difference is so small that it's vastly outweighed by the flexibility of politics and the fact that it also gets you recruits. Numbers for an example:

$10,000 income

22.5 base cost per vet for a one star unit (idk if other things factor into vet cost)

= 444.4 vets

 

With 4 points politics:

11,000 income

22.5 cost

= 488.9 vets

 

4 points training:

10,000 income

20.25 cost

= 493.8 vets

 

The difference is tiny, and politics gets you flexibility and manpower as well. So it seems like the economic choices for career points make sense in this order:

Politics

Economy (discounts every man, but real value depends on political points spending and number of captured guns. Too lazy to run the numbers right now)

Training (only discounts vet replacements while Econ. theoretically discounts everyone. But captured/recovered guns + politics points may even this out or make training better than econ)

Medicine (At first I though makes some sense as CSA because of manpower crunch, but manpower bonus from politics cancels it out)

 

IMO it would make more sense if the three non-politics options had a higher discount, so you would have to choose between specialization and flexibility. As it is though, it looks like politics is strictly better until you max it out.

Good question. 

Traditionally, I figure cheap men and cheap weapons are the only thing available for the first year of the war. So POLITICS and ORGANIZATION are the first two to leverage up to 10. 

After that, TRAINING gives you a nice large army of vets, and MEDICINE gives you back a nice percentage of expensive veterans and their quality weapons each battle.

Then I worry about LOGISTICS and ECONOMY in equal measure. 

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There's no need to boost organisation all the way early on, as most of the early battles offer more opportunities for deployment than the later ones(I guess the engine couldn't handle it). Though getting to 2.5k brigades is useful you can win the early battleswith right kind of armament quite easily; at Shiloh I had 1.5k brigades against 3k brigades and held the line quite easily(lorezons being the "worst" weapons my guys had, enemy had farmers...).

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2 minutes ago, kjchan said:

How many AO  points would you vets recommend for Bull Run Union? I haven't put any points there. Eyeballing it, it looks like I'll have a 4k manpower advantage as of right now. How many points for Shiloh?

If you'll take my word for it, having enough points to have 4 brigades to a division for 1st Bull Run is perfectly fine.  For Shiloh, you're going to want as much men as possible - you're going to take a pasting there if you don't bring enough manpower.  I think I brought 20 brigades in 4 divisions for one of my corps.

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