Last round, last turn!
It's been a while since this succession game had any activity... it would be too bad to let it be unfinished with only fifteen years to go. So I decided to end it once and for all.
I started the turn with annexing Yemen in March 1805. They're Shiite after all. That left us with Bulgaria and Albania as allies and vassals.
I didn't really want to start a grand war against any of the European majors. That would have taken too much planning and time.
Instead, I looked west to our Sunni neighbours of Tunisia and Morocco. War was declared in January 1807. Tunisia was the only real target (my plan was only force-conversion), as Morocco had a province in the interior of Africa that I couldn't reach.
47000 troops were unloaded at the Tunisian capital, while a 27000 men strong army attacked Cyrenaica. All Tunisian provinces were captured by assaults, but many men were lost in the process. I think I recruited almost 150000 men in Isfahan during the war, to reinforce the two attacking armies.
In 1809 the war ended when Atlas was captured, and Tunisia was converted to the true faith. We also got Cyrenaica and Tripolitania in the deal. White peace was signed with Morocco shortly afterwards.
The Safavid Empire had now only one Sunni neighbour, and that was Gujarat. I had to break a MA agreement to send a DoW to them. The war started in February 1812, and Vijayanagar joined their side (they were also Sunni). Seems like it would be two force-conversions for the price of one!
Just like with Tunisia, the war was quite simple. Gujarat had to convert to Shiite in October. We also got our MA back.
With Gujarat out of the way, I could send the army down to Vijayanagar. They had a 50000 men large army, but that didn't create any problems.
80000 men from Isfahan speeded up the invasion considerably. The last province, Bangalore, was captured in July 1815. Vijayanagar had to convert. No more Sunnis in India! The rest of the game until 1820 was only waiting. Some maps from the end:
France in Algerie
Religion:
Morocco, Sus, Timbuktu and some minors in Indonesia were the only Sunnis left!
And a nice little graph:
France had about the same size as us throughout the whole game.
Final Results:
1 6908 Safavid Empire!
2 5321 Spain
3 2382 Portugal
4 2353 Russia
5 2032 Austria
No wonder we got lots of points from Battles and Peace.
We were earning 409 ducats each month, 100 more than #2, Spain.
Final BB was 65/86.