Art of War World Conquest Tips?

[Alsark]

Here's my situation so far: It's ~1510 and I have enacted the all vassal reform in the HRE. France is in a PU with me, and both Scotland and Naples are my vassals. I've taken diplomacy and influence as my ideas so far.

What are some general tips of world conquest (not necessarily for my scenario but hints there are good, too)? Are there certain nations I should be looking to make my vassal to vassal feed? When do you incorporate vassals? Should I be aggressively colonizing? What are the best ideas for a WC attempt?

I doubt I'll get it since this is my first real try and I still consider myself a bit of a noob, but I figure it's worth a shot! Thanks.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Break truces like it's going out of style

 

[V1ribus]

Why must everyone be so obsessed with world conquests?

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Why must everyone be so obsessed with world conquests?

We're compensating for small hardware with our map-painting skills.

 

[Alsark]

Why must everyone be so obsessed with world conquests?

It's more an obsession with achievements in general.

 

[Kalderus]

Why must everyone be so obsessed with world conquests?

Oh no, somone's having bad wrong fun in a single player game. Good thing the fun police are here to shut you down.

 

[rmc]

Most important, which country you are playing?

 

[Alsark]

Lol yes that is important - Austria. Don't think I'm gonna do the HRE tag switch. I love having a ton of free vassals.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Stomp out as many colonizers as possible to limit westernization, get expansion ideas and protectorate all of Asia ASAP. Get colonies in Siberia if possible then instantly sell them to whatever Manchu tribe is near there to block settlements that could allow a western border.

As long as you block enough westernization, all that extra tax won't mean very much.

 

[durvas]

You should 100% someone and give up a reform. You will keep all the vassals but not have the -3 Dip rep penalty. If you're going for a WC, you will have plenty of IA to pass all reforms at the end through adding territory.

 

[rmc]

I agree with Durvas and TMIT, and actually you don`t even have to 100% to give up the last reform, just make a peace deal with a non cobeligerent to revoke, and they will accept.
The ideas, Influence and Diplomacy as two first sets I think it is a bad choice, Exploration/Expansion always need to be in the first row for WC attempts. You have to stop the colonizers early. Be in a state of constant war (quantity is a good choice BTW, manpower will be always a problem). And sit most of the game at 90% OE.

 

[V1ribus]

Oh no, somone's having bad wrong fun in a single player game. Good thing the fun police are here to shut you down.

You can have 10 cookie points if you can point to where I said world conquest was bad.

 

[rmc]

You can have 10 cookie points if you can point to where I said world conquest was bad.

I don't see any World Conquest strategy on this link. I'm missing something?

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

I agree with Durvas and TMIT, and actually you don`t even have to 100% to give up the last reform, just make a peace deal with a non cobeligerent to revoke, and they will accept.
The ideas, Influence and Diplomacy as two first sets I think it is a bad choice, Exploration/Expansion always need to be in the first row for WC attempts. You have to stop the colonizers early. Be in a state of constant war (quantity is a good choice BTW, manpower will be always a problem). And sit most of the game at 90% OE.

What? You don't need Exploration to kill the colonists...just use your vassal swarm and annex them and get their colonies for yourself.

 

[V1ribus]

I don't see any World Conquest strategy on this link. I'm missing something?

Evidently, quite a bit.

 

[bbqftw]

What? You don't need Exploration to kill the colonists...just use your vassal swarm and annex them and get their colonies for yourself.

exploration does prevent last minute heartbreakers where the last independent provinces are in terra incognita though

 

[troutblock]

You should 100% someone and give up a reform. You will keep all the vassals but not have the -3 Dip rep penalty. If you're going for a WC, you will have plenty of IA to pass all reforms at the end through adding territory.

Would it be a good idea to revoke three reforms to get rid of the +10% stability cost modifier as well? (given that heavy conquest game will rely on a fair bit of truce breaking)

 

[DrLulz]

Here's my situation so far: It's ~1510 and I have enacted the all vassal reform in the HRE. France is in a PU with me, and both Scotland and Naples are my vassals. I've taken diplomacy and influence as my ideas so far.

What are some general tips of world conquest (not necessarily for my scenario but hints there are good, too)? Are there certain nations I should be looking to make my vassal to vassal feed? When do you incorporate vassals? Should I be aggressively colonizing? What are the best ideas for a WC attempt?

I doubt I'll get it since this is my first real try and I still consider myself a bit of a noob, but I figure it's worth a shot! Thanks.

Sorry for not really contributing, but since this is a WC-tips thread, could you maybe give us the WC-relevant tip, of how you managed to PU-France and Revoke the Privilegia around 1510? I, for one, think that is pretty impressive. I am especially interested in how you managed to accumulate IA so fast?

EDIT: One thing that suddenly struck me, was that as emperor of the HRE you can annex your HRE-vassal pr. decision - normally in 1.8, feeding a vassal provinces will make it significantly more costly to annex in terms of time and dip-points to the point were a super-vassal can become truly unannexable. But as the emperor I guess you could theoretically just feed your HRE-vassals all your conquests, and recieve cores in the end without using ADM or DIP points on coring them. Of course you want to grow a bit yourself, since vassals with more basetax than you, are supposedly quite eager to try to achieve independence, but this still seems rather promising IMHO. Any thoughts on that?

exploration does prevent last minute heartbreakers where the last independent provinces are in terra incognita though

This is supposedly not that reliable in 1.8. where CN's are much more likely to break away, and annihilating their masters to the point, were you can just outright annex them, creates just the conditions under which CN's are likely to try and do that.

 

[CyberianK]

Sorry for not really contributing, but since this is a WC-tips thread, could you maybe give us the WC-relevant tip, of how you managed to PU-France and Revoke the Privilegia around 1510? I, for one, think that is pretty impressive. I am especially interested in how you managed to accumulate IA so fast?

THIS
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-guy-on-reddit-revoked-the-Privilegia-in-1478

also from my previous WC attemps (which were all distrubed by Paradox patching too fast ) I can say that PU of France is bad
that said things might be different in 1.8
It certainly was a bad choice in previous patches you always should do a war against them then instead and conquer/release
especially if you are this early and powerful already they have enough cores still to easily disband France

@TheMeInTeam
is westernization worse in 1.8?
in my experience it wasn't that bad in the previous patch (while it was in earlier patches)
In my last 3 games before 1.8 no big nation ever managed to successfully westernize

EDIT: OK westernization seems way more frequent now from some of the threads here... how does that hurt protectorate mechanic and Expansion tactics? Usually you would protectorate big asian powers but if all those break free by westernization that might be a bad choice now? So what impact does that have for WC?

 

[oblio-]

I think that making protectorates is riskier now. I had some problems with them even in 1.7:
1. Some of them westernized and I had to beat them into submission again.
2. Others interfered while I was trying to protectorate other countries: they declared war on my target and I had to either re-protectorate them or I had to wait for them to peace out.