How it works
This is an attempt to make a community EU4 national idea set tier-list
What you're voting on
Voting on a whole idea set at once takes a lot of thought. To keep things snappy, you just vote on one idea against another idea, of the same type (ambition against ambition, idea 1 against idea 1, etc).
How matchups are chosen
- A slot is picked at random, then two countries' components for that slot.
- Components you've seen the least are favoured, so coverage stays even instead of re-showing the same few.
- Opponents are usually picked from components with a similar rating (close matchups are more informative).
- Components that share any modifier (e.g. both grant discipline, even at different values) are never paired — overlapping bonuses make for a muddy comparison.
How ratings are calculated (Elo)
Every component uses the Elo system, the same idea used for chess rankings. Each component starts at 1500. When you pick a winner, points move from the loser to the winner, and the amount depends on how surprising the result was:
- Beat a similarly-rated component → a modest swing (about ±16).
- A low-rated component upsetting a high-rated one → a much bigger swing.
- The favourite winning as expected → only a small change.
It's zero-sum: the winner gains exactly what the loser drops, so the numbers stay meaningful no matter how many votes come in. The more a component is voted on, the more its rating settles toward its “true” strength.
The tier lists
- National Ideas — countries ranked by the combined rating of all nine of their components. Hover a nation to see its full set, with each component's Elo and vote count.
- Individual Ideas — each distinct bonus on its own, ranked by its rating. Identical bonuses (e.g. every “+1% Prestige” idea) share one rating and appear once — click a bonus to see all the countries that have it.
Tiers are percentile buckets of the ranking: S is the top 5%, A the next 15%, down through F at the bottom. They shift as votes accumulate.
A couple of display notes
- Many ideas grant a government-specific bonus (legitimacy / republican tradition / devotion / horde unity / meritocracy) - you only ever get one, so the card just shows the legitimacy value
- Data is parsed straight from the EU4 game files. A handful of countries with empty placeholder ideas are left out.
Data & API
Want to crunch the raw numbers yourself? The ratings and the full vote history are available through a free, read-only public API (no key needed). You can even write your own scoring script and see it ranked right here in the tier list.