What if all EU4 idea groups unlocked new gameplay

A few days ago I wrote a long post about EU4 idea groups, with some modest proposals how to make game more interesting.

This one is going into far more radical territory. And I doubt it would make game better, at least not without a lot of heavy rebalancing.

So some ideas unlock new playstyles, and these tend to be the most interesting ones. There are minor exceptions to these rules, but

Other ideas just provide bonuses but don't enable anything. They tend to be boring even if strong.

Current Hard Unlocks

If you don't take Exploration, you can't explore the New World. You can wait for maps to passively spread to you, or use Steal Maps, so you can sort of join the colonial race eventually, but Exploration comes quite clock to hard unlock.

Taking Exploration or Expansion hard unlocks colonist mechanics (an extra colonist you can get from Parliament or such sources are gated by one of those too). Except for a tiny number of countries like Norway who have that as national ideas. Or you could conquer some already colonized land, spawn colonial nation on conquered territory, and have them colonize it for you, but that's much weaker.

Religious unlocks two things - Deus Vult for claim-free warfare, which otherwise you get about 2/3 into the game with Imperialism CB. Nations with a lot of claims from missions can sort of get there too. It also soft unlocks converting provinces. You can have missionaries without it, but you will struggle hard to keep up converting.

Humanist sort of soft unlocks not having to deal with rebels. EU4 rebels are crazy weak, so it's not actually needed, but it sure gets rid of some hassle.

Administrative Ideas Detour

Administrative sort of unlocks playing wide in 1.30, as it's really hard to get governing capacity without it. This one is softer unlock.

Actually let's do some math, as I don't think . Old World has about 18k development, and could get to 20k by the time HRE minors are done spamming development button. New World generally uses CNs so doesn't count.

If you state-ified your half of continent, let's say 5k dev, and used trade companies everywhere else, 15k.

Without buildings you'll need 5000 cap for your states, and 7500 cap for your trade companies, for a total of 12500.

With Courthouses everywhere it's 3750 cap for your states, and 3750 cap again for your trade companies respectively, total of 7500 (that "25% discount" turned into 40% less).

With Town Halls everywhere it's 2500 cap for your states and 150 cap for your territories, or 2650 ("50% discount" turned into 79% less).

The main problem with that is of course building limit - but since base building slots is 2, and the only penalty is -1 Arctic - you can spam Manufactory + Town Hall in every province. Sadly that's most of your realm's building slots, so you won't be able to build much more. Good terrain or 10-19dev is just +1 slot beyond those two mandatory buildings. Building slots were already very limited, this change is seriously dreadful.

Anyway, you get 200 base, 400 as Empire, 250 from "L'État c'est moi" reform, 1700 from technology, 300 from 3 estate privileges. That's a total of 2850, so just barely squeezes it.

If you don't have final technology (let's say just 30), and don't have estate privileges (they're very expensive after absolutism), that's suddenly just 2050, good deal less than what you need. Administrative ideas with their +25% capacity bring that to 2562.5, getting pretty close to the target.

Even below world conquest level, governing capacity is a huge pain for wide play without administrative ideas, but it's mostly fine with them.

What if every idea group unlocked something

OK, let's get to - what if EU4 ideas unlocked new playstyles. Here are some radical suggestions.

I think only about half of these are possible to mod.

I had most trouble coming up with anything good for military groups.

Administrative groups:

Administrative. Already soft unlocks wide play with governing capacity

Economic. Unlocks development buttons. It sounds radical, but they used to be DLC locked and EU4 was supposedly playable without that.

Expansion. Already unlocks Colonists.

Humanist. Already soft unlocks not having to care about rebels.

Innovative. Allows taking technology ahead of time. Without that, you're hard locked to specific year. More brutally we could make innovative let you adopt institution at 10% provinces present as it does now, otherwise you need to wait for like 30% (that simple thing is not moddable as far as I know).

Religious. Already unlocks Deus Vult and soft unlocks conversions.

Diplomatic groups:

Diplomatic. It sort of soft unlocks some actions like divorces. It could gate some other less used diplomatic actions like insults. Most like wars, military access, royal marriages etc. are just needed for game to function.

Espionage. Unlocks all covert actions except Fabricate Claim, and they're not tech-gated.

Exploration. Already unlocks Colonists, Explorers, and Conquistadors.

Influence. Enables diplo-vassalizing and claiming throne. You can still vassalize by force.

Maritime. Enables privateering, and Trade Conflict CB (no longer part of covert action).

Trade. Unlocks collecting trade outside your main node. Otherwise you can only collect in your capital and transfer trade otherwise.

Military groups:

Aristocratic. Soft unlocks cavalry that's not total trash mid/late-game.

Defensive. Soft unlocks meaningful amount of enemy attrition.

Naval. Unlocks heavy ships. Without Naval, you can only build light, transports, and galleys. This would actually be quite realistic.

Offensive. Unlocks artillery and coastal barrage, and assaulting forts.

Plutocratic. This is so rare it would need to be something new. Maybe CB to force minor countries to become republics, like what republics used to have in EU4 at release time.

Quality. I don't have any great ideas. Maybe it could soft unlock high professionalism, by some some of yearly professionalism modifier? Without it, you'd need to go the current slow route.

Quantity. Soft unlocks not having to care about manpower. This would mostly need changes in balance (like drastic nerfs to 1.30 mercs), as now it just doesn't matter enough.

Would that make game better?

Going all the way, probably not.

And a lot of those ideas cannot be modded, or only with convoluted triggered modifiers (for example if you don't have Naval ideas, heavies cost +1000000% etc.).

But a few of those ideas sound pretty decent.