I just finished my Burgundy->Netherlands campaign, and I can honestly say that it's the one I'm the most proud of!
Since I wanted to form the Netherlands and not lose territory to France, I decided to annex France, which I managed to do before 1500, which was helped greatly by France actually going bankrupt! After France died, I diplovassalized and annexed the small nations in the North. The South was controlled by Bourbonnais, then Aragon, and then (due to rebels) by Toulouse. I diplovassalized Toulouse, but I didn't annex them or ever relieve England of Gascogne because it would make my borders look ugly.
My main goal was to own every single trade company province, plus some more provinces to make borders nice (including parts of Africa, South Korea, Japan, India, and Oceania). Originally, I wasn't going to go for the Pacific islands, but apparently, there are a couple of islands that are trade company provinces, so I had to take those and thus, to make the "borders" nice, I decided to take every Pacific island (except the Galapagos).
Thanks to the Holy War and Overseas Expansion CB's, conquering Africa and Asia was not too tricky, once I figured out how to avoid fighting the Ottomans. The Europeans, especially Britain, were more annoying since I had to land on islands and Britain was allied with the fully united HRE (I tried to ally the HRE multiple times, but the alliance always broke when the royal marriage did), but I managed to avoid fighting the HRE by DOWing Brittany with the warleader-locking Heresy CB while they were allied with Britain. Unfortunately, when Russia managed to somehow walk through my provinces to attack China, I decided I had to use the console to prevent the Russians from taking Chinese provinces, and once that can of worms was opened, I also used the console to make Castile accept a peace giving up all their Oceanic territory, even though they were winning battles in Europe (I should have attacked them with the HRE's help when I had the chance...) In any case, I managed to finally annex Ming in 1798, and I converted their last province (achieving religious unity) around 1805.
My other goal was to have the maximum number of merchants without being a merchant republic, which is 23. I placed some of them in Western Europe, London, Timbuktu, Kashmir, and Sevilla, in addition to nodes I completely dominated. With over 1000 in naval force limits, I was able to spam light ships. I initially privateered Sevilla, but I got annoyed with the frequent event that deducted 15% of my trade income, so I just collected trade from there instead.
I ended in 1807 partially because I had achieved all my goals (including my last goal of getting over 1,000 trade income), but also because for some reason, my save always crashed once I took ADM tech 30.
Here's a map of Europe: The borders in the West are nice, except for Gascogne and the Papal State (who I allied).
I colonized every African province I could, and I was rewarded with a nice big "Netherlands" on the map! I would have preferred Ethiopia to annex Funj, but they were both Ottoman protectorates, so that wasn't going to happen. I managed to grab Yemen and Oman before the Ottomans got there. I considered taking Mecca as well, but it turned out I didn't need the extra missionary.
Asia was the continent I looked the most forward to seeing my name over, but I was slightly disappointed that my country's name wasn't bigger...
As I said, I colonized/conquered all of Oceania, and I named my colonial nation the only logical name.
Here are the Americas. I forced Brittany out of Europe. It had a giant colonial nation in Mexico, which became independent but remained allied with Brittany. The Iberians took surprisingly long to colonize Brazil, and Castile went for Canada instead. Sadly, one province in Ohio was left uncolonized at the "end" of the game.
As I implied earlier, I converted every single province I own, so the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, and Southeast Asians are now good Catholics! Interestingly, the only 3 Protestant nations are Scandinavia, Ireland, and Brittany. Also, I have wiped out every single Eastern religion, and so only Christians, Muslims, and Pagans remain, and the latter only exist in North America.
Here's my budget screen, which apparently shows how much base tax you have (over 2,000, in my case!). Unfortunately, most of that tax is lost to trade companies.
I managed to break 1,200 trade income, surpassing my goal of 1,000. I'd like to have broken Myrten's "records" here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...&p=17491561&viewfull=1#post17491561...perhaps if I had spent some more points to build manufactories in China?
I was able to get tech 31 in all categories(I did ADM 30 and 31 together to get ADM 31 without a CTD) despite coring over half the world's population. This is because of National Focus and also the awesomeness of Dutch Republics: not only did I get to choose the higher ADM between 2 leaders each election, but I could also influence whether the guy I picked ruled for life or for only 4 years! Thus, even while coring and taking 3 ADM ideas IN A ROW, I usually had a surplus of ADM points!
Here are the ideas I picked. Religious was critical for the Holy War CB against Africans and also for converting provinces to kill the revolt risk. Quantity was also crucial for me to be able to support an army large enough to both conquer Asian and to suppress the resulting rebels. Unfortunately, since I didn't take Offensive, Defensive, or Quantity, my troops were crap compared to about any other major European power, which is why I needed overwhelming numbers.
Here are my trade companies, in all their glory! One of the really nice things about them is that apparently, they frequently trigger events that give you free forts in their provinces. However, they also have events that claim neighboring provinces (even if those provinces are not trade company provinces), which is nice unless you don't take those provinces immediately, since then you'll lose power points or trade power or gain revolt risk.
When I ended, I had the largest army and the largest navy, but usually the HRE had a much larger army. For some reason, every time the HRE went to war, it literally lost all its manpower and at least half of its troops. My ideas gave my an insanely high naval force limit, but since spamming ships is annoying, I didn't bother spamming more light ships to London or Sevilla or Lubeck.
And here's the final world map!
Since I wanted to form the Netherlands and not lose territory to France, I decided to annex France, which I managed to do before 1500, which was helped greatly by France actually going bankrupt! After France died, I diplovassalized and annexed the small nations in the North. The South was controlled by Bourbonnais, then Aragon, and then (due to rebels) by Toulouse. I diplovassalized Toulouse, but I didn't annex them or ever relieve England of Gascogne because it would make my borders look ugly.
My main goal was to own every single trade company province, plus some more provinces to make borders nice (including parts of Africa, South Korea, Japan, India, and Oceania). Originally, I wasn't going to go for the Pacific islands, but apparently, there are a couple of islands that are trade company provinces, so I had to take those and thus, to make the "borders" nice, I decided to take every Pacific island (except the Galapagos).
Thanks to the Holy War and Overseas Expansion CB's, conquering Africa and Asia was not too tricky, once I figured out how to avoid fighting the Ottomans. The Europeans, especially Britain, were more annoying since I had to land on islands and Britain was allied with the fully united HRE (I tried to ally the HRE multiple times, but the alliance always broke when the royal marriage did), but I managed to avoid fighting the HRE by DOWing Brittany with the warleader-locking Heresy CB while they were allied with Britain. Unfortunately, when Russia managed to somehow walk through my provinces to attack China, I decided I had to use the console to prevent the Russians from taking Chinese provinces, and once that can of worms was opened, I also used the console to make Castile accept a peace giving up all their Oceanic territory, even though they were winning battles in Europe (I should have attacked them with the HRE's help when I had the chance...) In any case, I managed to finally annex Ming in 1798, and I converted their last province (achieving religious unity) around 1805.
My other goal was to have the maximum number of merchants without being a merchant republic, which is 23. I placed some of them in Western Europe, London, Timbuktu, Kashmir, and Sevilla, in addition to nodes I completely dominated. With over 1000 in naval force limits, I was able to spam light ships. I initially privateered Sevilla, but I got annoyed with the frequent event that deducted 15% of my trade income, so I just collected trade from there instead.
I ended in 1807 partially because I had achieved all my goals (including my last goal of getting over 1,000 trade income), but also because for some reason, my save always crashed once I took ADM tech 30.
Here's a map of Europe: The borders in the West are nice, except for Gascogne and the Papal State (who I allied).
I colonized every African province I could, and I was rewarded with a nice big "Netherlands" on the map! I would have preferred Ethiopia to annex Funj, but they were both Ottoman protectorates, so that wasn't going to happen. I managed to grab Yemen and Oman before the Ottomans got there. I considered taking Mecca as well, but it turned out I didn't need the extra missionary.
Asia was the continent I looked the most forward to seeing my name over, but I was slightly disappointed that my country's name wasn't bigger...
As I said, I colonized/conquered all of Oceania, and I named my colonial nation the only logical name.
Here are the Americas. I forced Brittany out of Europe. It had a giant colonial nation in Mexico, which became independent but remained allied with Brittany. The Iberians took surprisingly long to colonize Brazil, and Castile went for Canada instead. Sadly, one province in Ohio was left uncolonized at the "end" of the game.
As I implied earlier, I converted every single province I own, so the Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, and Southeast Asians are now good Catholics! Interestingly, the only 3 Protestant nations are Scandinavia, Ireland, and Brittany. Also, I have wiped out every single Eastern religion, and so only Christians, Muslims, and Pagans remain, and the latter only exist in North America.
Here's my budget screen, which apparently shows how much base tax you have (over 2,000, in my case!). Unfortunately, most of that tax is lost to trade companies.
I managed to break 1,200 trade income, surpassing my goal of 1,000. I'd like to have broken Myrten's "records" here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...&p=17491561&viewfull=1#post17491561...perhaps if I had spent some more points to build manufactories in China?
I was able to get tech 31 in all categories(I did ADM 30 and 31 together to get ADM 31 without a CTD) despite coring over half the world's population. This is because of National Focus and also the awesomeness of Dutch Republics: not only did I get to choose the higher ADM between 2 leaders each election, but I could also influence whether the guy I picked ruled for life or for only 4 years! Thus, even while coring and taking 3 ADM ideas IN A ROW, I usually had a surplus of ADM points!
Here are the ideas I picked. Religious was critical for the Holy War CB against Africans and also for converting provinces to kill the revolt risk. Quantity was also crucial for me to be able to support an army large enough to both conquer Asian and to suppress the resulting rebels. Unfortunately, since I didn't take Offensive, Defensive, or Quantity, my troops were crap compared to about any other major European power, which is why I needed overwhelming numbers.
Here are my trade companies, in all their glory! One of the really nice things about them is that apparently, they frequently trigger events that give you free forts in their provinces. However, they also have events that claim neighboring provinces (even if those provinces are not trade company provinces), which is nice unless you don't take those provinces immediately, since then you'll lose power points or trade power or gain revolt risk.
When I ended, I had the largest army and the largest navy, but usually the HRE had a much larger army. For some reason, every time the HRE went to war, it literally lost all its manpower and at least half of its troops. My ideas gave my an insanely high naval force limit, but since spamming ships is annoying, I didn't bother spamming more light ships to London or Sevilla or Lubeck.
And here's the final world map!