Questions About WC, Coring Cost and Ideas

[OldmansHQ]

Hi,

Seeing as another CW has happened I'm even more motivated to try my luck. I'd like to do it Polololand. Since I am not as good as some people around here I don't have any particular additional goals. I'll hopefully become Orthodox, bonuses from that religion are brilliant. I will also leave colonizers as my vassals to colonize for me. Lastly, I will not be playing on Ironman, because I really dislike Historical Lucky Nations. Here's a couple of questions about this:

1. Is it absolutely a must to have some coring cost reduction? Poland by nature doesn't have anything that does that, and if possible I'd really like to avoid taking Administrative ideas as I take them almost every time.
2. I was thinking about going for Innovative, Aristocratic, Diplomatic, Humanist, Quantity, Influence, Offensive and Defensive (possibly but not necessarily in that order). Will they do the job?

This is my reasoning... Innovative is good altogether, but I take it mostly for the lowered tech cost and events that give additional points, I want to take this early to start saving points from as early as possible. Aristocratic for the lowered military tech cost and events again, which should help me unlock more military ideas. All of Diplomatic is good, lowered province war score cost will allow for faster chewing and of course more vassals which I like. Humanist, because I really like that idea group, less rebels to mess things up and easier assimilation of new provinces means easier manpower and gold and lets you save up points on future ideas! Quantity is my favourite military idea group, don't have to explain why I think it's a good idea. Influence is also obvious why. Offensive to improve the giant army and defensive for the morale boost, reinforce, less attrition - it's all good. My general goal is to have as much manpower and have as big army as possible while also saving points, I'm hoping I'll be able to maintain it. Also the policies are interesting.

My biggest worry is of course that I will run out of admin points.

Of course I could be talking out of my arse since I'm such a newb.

 

[delpiero1234]

Just move your capital to a European island and you can core all of Asia/Africa/America 50% cheaper since it will be considered overseas territory.

 

[bbqftw]

1. Is it absolutely a must to have some coring cost reduction? Poland by nature doesn't have anything that does that, and if possible I'd really like to avoid taking Administrative ideas as I take them almost every time.

It's helpful to know what sort of WC you are attempting. There's three major categories:

1. WC achievemement - by far the most lenient. You can protectorate headshot most of the world, though in Poland's case this would require Westernization.
2. WC w/ subjects, no protectorates
3. One-tag - no subjects except Colonial Nations

If you intend on one-tagging...administrative would probably be helpful. If you just want the achievement, it's not needed - you can rely on transfer occupation vassal feeding for most of the expansion required.

I really would not suggest going too many military ideas - if you absolutely need one, quantity is probably the best, as "WC achievement" is often manpower limited, not MP limited. I feel like exploration is necessary to avoid late-game heartbreakers, and it helps to kill off the colonizers early (very high priority if you're going for the 1st category to avoid Asians westernizing, not so much if you intend on one-tagging).

In general, for "WC achievement" - you really only need influence, exploration, expansion, with diplomatic being helpful (and I think if you have good vassal planning you can finish before 1700, even with it being substantially harder to pull off early revokes - you could probably tear through the HRE manually with a vassalized Brandenburg).

 

[FreeSoc]

a) I'd pick Religious instead of Humanist. A CB with 0 DIP cost is very useful, as is improved conversion strength.
b) If you're playing Poland/Commonwealth, then you're in a good position to PU/integrate lots and lots of people. Elective monarchy is pretty good like that. That, and the complete lack of regencies.
c) I personally wouldn't take Innovative, although that might just be my prejudices talking, because I dislike it as a group. If you become Defender of the Faith, you get WE reduction and a host of other bonuses anyway, and +5% tech cost is not a major issue once you can afford +2 or +3 advisors and you've completed Aristocratic and Diplo. Admin is good for reduced coring cost and (if you want) mercenaries, while if you take Humanist and Religious instead of Innovative and Humanist then you're looking at the most stable blob in the Universe. Expansion and Religious gives you a 0 DIP CB (if you're Orthodox) on basically everything in the world except the Orthodox Balkans and Muscovy (who you should kill very early on anyway), as well as allowing you to colonise stuff.
d) The fact that you can just murder everyone with your ungodly Commonwealth horsies means that you won't need many MIL groups. 2 max.

In short, I'd suggest the following in any order: Aristocratic, Quantity, Religious, Expansion, Diplo, Exploration, Influence. You'll get god-generals from high tradition from very frequent warring anyway, and enemies with slightly better troops don't matter when you have a massive numbers advantage and the Polish Horsemen of Death.

 

[ikkiks]

As mentioned by bbqftw, it depends on which kind of WC you want to do.

1. Coring cost might not be a necessity, but it is highly recommended. You want to reduce as much as possible, not only to use less admin points, but to core provinces faster. Administrative is necessary for the "Vassal Integration Act", a policy that reduces diplomatic annexation cost by 25% (despite it saying 20%).

2. There's one huge problem with your plan, you'll spend too many dip points in your wars. You need religious idea for Deus Vult. Religious CB lets you take any provinces you want for 0 dip points, that's a must have until Imperialism CB. You could take only Deus Vult and abandon Religious when you reach Imperialism, but I don't think you'd want that. You need missionaries and missionary power, unless you have some great plans of feeding vassals that have religious ideas.

Quantity is the best military idea by far.

So, I'd suggest: Diplomatic (or Influence), Religious, Quantity, Influence (or Diplomatic), Administrative, Exploration, Offensive, Aristocratic (or Quality)

The last 2 idea groups being militaristic because you probably won't have any adm or dip points leftover to use on idea groups.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Hmm... I typed up this long post and I have no idea what happened, its gone ??? Guess I'll type less articulate version of it again?

So everyone is saying Religious, and I don't see why it would be better than Humanism, and taking both seems like a waste. The CB and decreased stab cost seems cool, but what's about it. Why waste time converting religion when you can simply increase tolerance and ignore it? Past early game, there is a number of bonuses that improves conversion and you get a missionary from DotF and holy cities, and why convert culture when you can accept it? Humanism reduces rebels that tend to mess things up and indirectly increases income and manpower and on top of that - decreases cost of future ideas. Seems perfect? Also isn't Offensive better than Quantity? I've heard some say that it's better to reduce the usage of manpower as opposed to increasing. Though I personally think Quantity ideas are amazing.

I'm not sure about the kind of WC I will go for. What would the gameplay consequences and differences be? I would like to vassalize HRE electors and become the emperor, not sure if I wan't to lose the gorgeous pink colour though. Also could you link some YT WC let's plays? I couldn't find anything decent and not outdated. Perhaps there's like a written form of let's play here on forums?

Oh and what other super duper simple tips and tricks would you have for me that I'm missing. Like this, should I make claims only on the rich provinces to not waste any precious time?

 

[Kirikano]

1. I wouldn't say coring cost reduction is mandatory for one tagging, but it certainly helps. If you start as a western nation, you'll probably be able to get away with administrative, unless you have some really bad luck with rulers or stab. One thing that's often overlocked about coring cost reduction is that is also reduces the TIME it takes to core a province. If you running a ton of wars concurrently (I've had more than 10 wars running at the same time several times in my own recent game), having coring cost reduction can let you take a ton more provinces for yourself if you stagger the peace deals, or if you need to go over 100% OE, since it reduces the amount of time you spend over 100% OE for all those nasty events to fire and super fast and large rebels to appear. Also, vassal integration act that reduces vassal annexation cost requires administrative, and that is pretty much mandatory if you don't plan to go greyskin and use HRE vassals with a free integration button. And if your warring a lot without vassal swarm or need to assault forts, the merc ideas are amazing, especially early when manpower is much more limited.
2. No they will not. You have neither expansion nor religious or even exploration in there, which means your choice of CBs are very limited until you get Imperialism CB. Also your gonna pay too many dip points just to make peace deals, as any provinces you take without claims will cost you dip points (or provinces you take for vassals). Even then it comes at dip tech 22. If you try to one tag and aren't doing HRE or playing someone core cost reduction ideas, you won't even get to dip tech 22 to unlock imperialism.
3. Like others have said, you don't need 3 mil ideas. Quantity should be enough in most cases, with either offensive or aristocratic as the other if you really need it.
4. Innovative and humanist are both unnecessary. Unless your playing Ottos and want accepted cultures everywhere or can't deal with rebels. Administrative will save you more MP than Innovative anyways in a WC run.
5. I would not be comfortable without exploration ideas or without being Norway in a WC. All it takes is one native nation in TI, or a colonizer getting too many islands you can't see and you've failed.

 

[delpiero1234]

Oh and what other super duper simple tips and tricks would you have for me that I'm missing. Like this, should I make claims only on the rich provinces to not waste any precious time?

I say this again: Move your capital to a European island that has NO straits: Gotland, Bornholm Malta, Sardinia, Cyprus; NOT Sicily. Moving your capital there will make coring 50% cheaper in non-European provinces.

Just move your capital to a European island and you can core all of Asia/Africa/America 50% cheaper since it will be considered overseas territory.

 

[bbqftw]

2. No they will not. You have neither expansion nor religious or even exploration in there, which means your choice of CBs are very limited until you get Imperialism CB. Also your gonna pay too many dip points just to make peace deals, as any provinces you take without claims will cost you dip points (or provinces you take for vassals). Even then it comes at dip tech 22. If you try to one tag and aren't doing HRE or playing someone core cost reduction ideas, you won't even get to dip tech 22 to unlock imperialism.

I actually managed just fine without no-DIP CBs in my revoke WC, even forgetting that I can cheese peace deals to make sure they at most cost 100 DIP for half of the run. Influence -50% unjustified demands is quite useful in this regard.

 

[Kirikano]

I actually managed just fine without no-DIP CBs in my revoke WC, even forgetting that I can cheese peace deals to make sure they at most cost 100 DIP for half of the run. Influence -50% unjustified demands is quite useful in this regard.

???What are you talking about, you picked up Expansion and Exploration when it mattered. You wouldn't have been able to protectorate so easily and efficiently without those two CBs. And you can't one tag that run like that. Could you imagine no-CBing every country in India and exploded Ming and SE Asia and all the native americans, then protectorate them without the right CB while you had that many vassals, let alone actually taking provinces at 25 dip a pop? Also, I'm not sure if making blobs explode and bankrupting them by sitting on them for years, driving up LA and vassalizing them for 25 dip a pop, creating tons of HRE vassals and using reconquest CBs counts as not using no-DIP CBs since that really applies more to conquering provinces for yourself or your vassals directly. I mean, you've seen when people or the AI fights a blobbed Oirat or something and pays 800 dip for a peace deal because they took 2 dozen provinces without claims before right?

 

[bbqftw]

you only need to pay 100 (realistically, around 110) dip for any peace deal (or multiple peace deals, provided you can make them on the same day), no matter how many unjustified demand provinces you take, as long as any individual peace deal doesn't cost more than 999 DIP (its unlikely though, as you'd have to take more than 39 unjustified demanded provinces for yourself in a peace deal).

I absolutely could have done an HRE one-tag without deus vult, imperialism or expansion CBs, provided I had enough real life war exhaustion reduction (I probably don't, even with vassals to siege half the world for you, the last 40 years is absolute misery).

 

[OldmansHQ]

I say this again: Move your capital to a European island that has NO straits: Gotland, Bornholm Malta, Sardinia, Cyprus; NOT Sicily. Moving your capital there will make coring 50% cheaper in non-European provinces.

Yes I've read you. I'm still thinking if it's cool or too cheesy for my taste.

Nobody answered my previous post :<. Would you say I should get claims on high BT provinces to reduce coring cost, but ignore rest to save time?

 

[Kirikano]

Wait what, how does this work? 100 dip for any peace deal?

 

[Orkonkel]

Eh. It's all very situational and there's no strict 'do precisely this or you can't make it'. Rather, world conquest is about playing super aggressively, being opportunistic, and being good at multi-tasking (waging effective wars on several fronts). In addition, you need to understand the game mechanics (how to get into wars that lets you take provinces without paying diplomatic points, vassal feeding, how HRE works, dynasty spread, etcetera). I personally am building up for a world conquest attempt by playing games all the way to 1821 and learning and improving with each game. Currently, I am playing Sweden again and I'm at 1750, and I've pretty much won Europe. There's still tons of provinces left there that aren't mine, plus France and Portugal are still colonizing, but I know that I made some mistakes in this game, of which the biggest one is playing way to passively and not being at war all the time, always.

Anyway, since you won't be playing on Ironman and without lucky historical nations, you'll be able to do this super easily if you want to.

EDIT:
100 diplo for any peace deal is a bit of a misnomer as far as the early-game goes. Once you're big enough with no nationalism in your provinces, you can go set the peace deal you want, then before unpausing, start culture-converting all your diplo points and then unpause for one day. The peace deal goes through, but you can't go below negative 100 diplo points, so you'll have -100 diplo points. At this point, simply cancel all the culture conversions and you'll get all your points back. Exploits/abuse makes for the easiest WCs, I suppose.

 

[zdlugasz]

Wait what, how does this work? 100 dip for any peace deal?

Say you have 800 DIP. You strike peace deal for 400 or 600 DIP, preferably do it the same day against two or three opponents, so your total DIP costs would be like 1000, 1500 or even more (game check your current reserve when you send peace offer). Then, the same day you start culture convert everything in sight (building buildings works as well, but much more work for you) until your DIP points drop to little above zero. You unpause. Next day your enemies accept deals, but there is minimum cap on monarch points, so -100 is the worst you can get. Then you cancel culture conversions and other things so you retrieve your DIP points.
And that is it - you got 1000/1500 peace deal for actual 100 DIP cost

Although I agree that early game it is difficult/impossible to "store" hundreds of DIP points doing revocable works because of nationalism
Edit: and now I have just noted edit in previous post ...

 

[Incompetent]

a) I'd pick Religious instead of Humanist. A CB with 0 DIP cost is very useful, as is improved conversion strength.

Also, Orthodox Poland can stack stability cost reductions like crazy. NIs give -10%, Nieszawa Privileges give another -20%, Orthodox gives another -10%. Throw in Religious ideas and you're at -65%. You just need a couple more bonuses of that kind and you can truce-break at will, which I'd imagine is very powerful on a WC run.

 

[herrhals]

I say this again: Move your capital to a European island that has NO straits: Gotland, Bornholm Malta, Sardinia, Cyprus; NOT Sicily. Moving your capital there will make coring 50% cheaper in non-European provinces.

Does this reduce integration cost for "overseas" vassals as well?

 

[herrhals]

Also, Orthodox Poland can stack stability cost reductions like crazy. NIs give -10%, Nieszawa Privileges give another -20%, Orthodox gives another -10%. Throw in Religious ideas and you're at -65%. You just need a couple more bonuses of that kind and you can truce-break at will, which I'd imagine is very powerful on a WC run.

Also if you can stack war exhaustion cost reduction.

 

[Incompetent]

Also if you can stack war exhaustion cost reduction.

Ah yes. Poland suffers on this score due to the Pacta Conventa.

 

[gall]

Does this reduce integration cost for "overseas" vassals as well?

What do you mean, your vassal provinces will be overseas after annexation or vassal provinces are overseas for this vassal? Anyway, there is probably no such discount for annexation - e.g. look at DIP costs of integrations given in one tag Foix thread (atwix feed overseas prov to England if i recall correctly and make some PU junior discontinuous by kicking countries out of them and still didn't get any meaningful discount on DIP cost/BT).