...is there anything that stops you from annexing the Ottomans and releasing it as vassal? Losing Ottoman cores in the Balkans?
That's it precisely, an annexed nations seems to only keep their cores in their exact cultured provinces. Not only that, but annexing Ottomans would have generated more AE than I could burn off ever.
You may want to check your AE towards Ottomans, did the same to smaller countries ending with -800 AE, you may not have the time to annex them
It was +480AE in total. A lot, but it can be burned off within 100 years.
It's amazing, but it doesn't seem like it was worth the cost. All that time at max war exhaustion. The massive overextension you have to deal with as you slowly sell them back one province a month making you unable to go to war for another year or two. All that AE and 'conquered our provinces' penalties making them hate your guts for centuries so you can't diplo-annex them. Almost an entire tech level's worth of diplomatic power.
Tell me about it. I really thought that I could get the vassalise cost to below 100% on its own, taking other provinces to make it possible was not part of the plan and ended up being a massive setback. The cost in DIP is not an issue: I haven't teched up in Diplomatic tech for a long time, it's still at about 9. DIP is pretty much useless other than for peace deals and lowering WE. I frequently hit its cap and have no idea what to spend it on thanks to having DIP republican leaders, and this is even with 13/8 diplomatic relations. The WE wasn't actually too bad, I was able to keep Anatolia under wraps, it was china and the occupied areas of Bengal of all places which were the most guilty of revolting. The cost of reducing DIP doesn't scale though, so I'm able to quickly reduce it during this peace session as I sell provinces back to the Ottomans.
Despite the enormous cost, getting Ottomans as a vassal is a huge boost. Ottomans was the very last large area of concern. I have all other areas planned for how to conquer. It's just a case of managing in both within 150 years in-game, and ~2 week in real life, without losing my mind.
Asia has more or less abandoned the coalition against me, so they can be picked off at leisure without concern for AE
Japan is Japanese. They will not count towards Overextension
Persia should be able to be broken up
India is being fed to Hindustan
Russia is slowing being fed to Novgorod
Norway will be fed Sweden, who finally don't hate me
Poland is weak and will be fed mostly to Ukraine
the HRE will be forced to unify and will be part of the "I don't give a monkey's about OE" final dash
Africa is an uncolonised joke
America is pagan, and will also be part of the IDGAMAOE dash.
150 years is also plenty of time to integrate my vassals. Scotland and Champagne are currently being annexed, which will, thanks to advisors, ideas and the length of their servitude, take about a decade factoring in dropping OE and WE.
But things will no doubt go wrong! I have only 4 diplomats. I will be taking either plutocracy or espionage as the next idea in order to get another, but that is still ~3 techs away. forcing the HRE to unify will be horribly difficult: they are very divided, with OPM saxony as its leader. These are two of my main choke points, so I'd like to ask:
- are there are more ways to gain extra diplomats? I am thinking about becoming catholic, but surely that wouldn't be enough to secure Curia control? What are the other benefits of being a strong power in the holy see?
-What decides if an HRE reform will be accepted? when I click on the screen, it shows that only HRE Saxony will back the reform, all 24 others will not. It's only the 2nd reform, Saxony has 98% Authority and -10 relations with most people, while they and most of the HRE are catholic. In the game files, it shows that to vote yes, members must have "will_back_next_reform = YES", but I cannot find this variable anywhere.
Cologne is a very strong potential emperor, hopefully they will take the throne, at which point I'm praying my plan can go without a problem.
