Best DP sliders for world conquest? and general tips...

[Jomini]

Doesn't this depend on your tech advantage? If you wait until you have a hundred conscription centers or so, and kick of the BB wars in 1750, I would think that 4 rounds is doable - if rather optimistic. Ten to Fifteen years per round. And long BB rounds aren't an issue as long as you have the starting army to handle it - say 3 to 4 million at the start, and however much you can rebuild for subsequent rounds.

In a word: no.

Let's assume you manage to acquire all of Europe without having to fight BB wars there (I'm highly doubtful this can be done in any manner close to easy). The big troup drains fighting in Asia are going to be attrition and rebels. The longer you wait, the higher the fortress level goes up in miserable supply provinces. Medium or worse forts in the mid-Asian corridor suck down hideous numbers of troops even if you can carry every assault with ease. Beyond that you have to deal with the fact that you will be acquiring a huge mass of provinces at once with nationalism in all of Europe and North America. Even assuming you had tolerable religions there, you will be getting multiple rebellions a month there with nowhere for the rebels to wander into. In Asia you will get huge masses of utterly intolerable religion.

Better tech does help somewhat with attrition, but it actually makes the rebels far more costly to deal with. In late stage WC, which any strategy where you diploannex all of Europe is, the enemy armies are a distant secondary concern to rebels and attrition.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

I did it. What I explain with Byzantium, I did it. The only thing is that I dropped the game before the end, in the end of the third round, because I was bored. At the end of that round, I would have left only one-provinces, nothing more, including Japan, because I had few provinces to take from those enemies.

Delhi/Mughals can be tiresome, yes, but with my advices there're 99% odds you'll be warring them in the first round. Off course, it's easier if you previoulsy helped some of their neighbours to beat them. But even without that, in three or four rounds you can get all of their provinces but their capital.

Numbers from Land & Quantity sliders are unnecessary. CC and manus are plenty enough so that you can have a multi-millions strong army to begin with. Remember that my strategy gives you only non-european opponents, mainly. That is, you have a at least three- if not four- CRT-advantage.
Where you use several armies to take one province, by having them marching through the province and reinforcing the assault/siege, I only use one to complete that same assault. Where's the point in having more troops if you need to use more of them to achieve the same results ?
Moreover, your diploannexations will give you more troops at the measure that you do them, removing a part of the need to recruit them.

With high-tech, attrition is not as strong a problem as it is early on. It's further reduced due to your numerous military accesses. And even more by the fact your tremendous tech-advantage allows you to field smaller armies overall. Losses will usually be of 1%/month, due to movement, and that is the same ratio for high quantity. Moreover, basing your strategy on quantity is further worsenning the attrition problem, because you need more troops at a given place.

Quality and Offensive boost morale, but serfdom decreases it. All-in-all, it's a slight boost to morale (10%), which is absolutely not downgraded by tech-maximization.

As for player-skills, I said it in the first place : I assume the reader already masters the game in a normal play. That includes, among other things, careful management of BB.

About stability : going serfdom rather than free-subjects, while being narrowminded, is going for 25% of the cost instead of 125%. It's a one-to-five ratio. This is critical. BB will quadruple the costs, so going serfdom is the only way to keep stabcosts manageable. Combined with 50 FAAs, it's the only way to keep the stabcost for one level under your combined income for one year ; serfdom multiplied by BB, it's a 50% cost with FAAs, or just under 50d/province for wrong-religion ; free-subjects multiplied by BB, it's 250% with the same FAAs, or 250d/province. 50d/province on average is what you can make as income with high TE/PE and most monopolies. 250/province will make you have to wait five years to get up one stab-level.
As I said, you don't receive more than one random event per year, so if the hit is -1 you can suppress it in one year. If you take a -3 when at stab +3, and reach 0, you risk troubles, yes, but you still can get through. Get a -3 when you're at +1, and you're in deep troubles. So, you shouldn't linger on +1 or +2 anymore than necessary.
Remember that 0 can give you civil wars. Remember that. Serfdom is necessary.

The additional border you get following the TA of China is problematic, yes, but that's where the provinces you have in India and Indonesia come useful : odds become really high that you'll be at war with those, due to alliances. Remember the alliances. Same goes for Japan. The way to bring all of them in the war is to share your maps. Share your maps, and you'll find most of those countries in one alliance or another.
Remember also that you wait for China to fall before concluding peaces. China'll be only one province left. Continue the wars until your new enemies are subjugated (you should have the troops ready, since you just took China). When China's truce expires, they'll attack you but they'll be only one-province strong. Make sure their other allies are likewise, and they'll be crushed quickly, giving you minimal WE.

 

[Jomini]

Ambassador, under which version of the game did you do this?

I did it. What I explain with Byzantium, I did it. The only thing is that I dropped the game before the end, in the end of the third round, because I was bored. At the end of that round, I would have left only one-provinces, nothing more, including Japan, because I had few provinces to take from those enemies

Interesting, you had the 1 in a 100 game where England doesn't covert away from Catholicism, and beyond that managed to get enough Catholic territory to keep it Catholic after the edict of Tolerance?

Delhi/Mughals can be tiresome, yes, but with my advices there're 99% odds you'll be warring them in the first round. Off course, it's easier if you previoulsy helped some of their neighbours to beat them. But even without that, in three or four rounds you can get all of their provinces but their capital.

I know that. However you still face the problem that they will give you at best 5 provinces per round on average. If the Mughals take both Ganges and Kutch; you will burn an entire round taking at MOST one other province. Given that the last round can only take the capital you are going to be looking at patheticly weak Mughals who don't span from Afghanistan down into India. Again one might be fortunate enough to have sufficiently small states here that they can be killed in 4 rounds, but it will not be common and easy.

Numbers from Land & Quantity sliders are unnecessary. CC and manus are plenty enough so that you can have a multi-millions strong army to begin with.

Which becomes utterly irrelevant the moment you have your first civil war. Yes a skilled player can avoid civil war, and likewise even deal with a major crisis; but again this is something I'd hesitate to suggest one try for their FIRST WC.

Remember that my strategy gives you only non-european opponents, mainly. That is, you have a at least three- if not four- CRT-advantage.

Irrelevant. I don't care about fighting the Asians. You will handily crush them with only attritionary issues to worry about. You will handily do more fighting against REBELS than all of Asia put togethor. There you will have no CRT advantage nor will you have any morale advantage unless you opt for playing the maintenance trick.

You will have literally hundreds of provinces with at least 3% RR. That translates into multiple armies of rebels every month you need to go put down (given as you have left them no other state to wander into).

If you have some combination of skill and luck you might avoid a civil war, however it is not to be assumed that you will do so. In that case a million man army at LT 60 is actually a detriment (at the higher LT rebels are far more dangerous).

With high-tech, attrition is not as strong a problem as it is early on. It's further reduced due to your numerous military accesses. And even more by the fact your tremendous tech-advantage allows you to field smaller armies overall. Losses will usually be of 1%/month, due to movement, and that is the same ratio for high quantity. Moreover, basing your strategy on quantity is further worsenning the attrition problem, because you need more troops at a given place.

Bwhahahaha. I see, and how do you plan to take Tibet? Or storm the fortresses of the Changatai? Even with MA (which you did not mention getting in your master plan) there are good number of provinces in central asia with pitiful supply limits well below what you need simply to assualt the place. Further if you are up 3 CRTs the boost from quality is negligable, especially given that you are sacrificing much of it back on serfdom.

Quality and Offensive boost morale, but serfdom decreases it. All-in-all, it's a slight boost to morale (10%), which is absolutely not downgraded by tech-maximization.

The relative advantage it gives is. Unless the calculations changed and I missed it, the bonus from DP sliders is additive and not multiplicative. In any event morale is capped at 7 and base with LT 60 is 6.0. Between your maintance and offensive you are sufficiently close to maximum for the effect to be negligable.

As for player-skills, I said it in the first place : I assume the reader already masters the game in a normal play. That includes, among other things, careful management of BB.

Why on earth would you assume that? I am curious, how many BB did it cost for you to take out France, Russia, the HRE, and play religious games in England?

About stability : going serfdom rather than free-subjects, while being narrowminded, is going for 25% of the cost instead of 125%. It's a one-to-five ratio. This is critical. BB will quadruple the costs, so going serfdom is the only way to keep stabcosts manageable. Combined with 50 FAAs, it's the only way to keep the stabcost for one level under your combined income for one year ; serfdom multiplied by BB, it's a 50% cost with FAAs, or just under 50d/province for wrong-religion ; free-subjects multiplied by BB, it's 250% with the same FAAs, or 250d/province. 50d/province on average is what you can make as income with high TE/PE and most monopolies. 250/province will make you have to wait five years to get up one stab-level.

Full narrowminded is a given. As are the BB costs. As even can be the 50 FAAs.

In a nutshell the tradeoff is between having lower stability while having more events that lower it or having higher stability costs and fewer events that lower it. One need not even go full free subjects, just enough to avoid stab crushing events.

As far as the math goes. Full free subjects is +50%, full serfdom is -50%. It is mathematically impossible for full serfdom to bring an otherwise 5 year investment cost down to 1 year.

Remember that 0 can give you civil wars. Remember that. Serfdom is necessary.

Demonstrably false.

The additional border you get following the TA of China is problematic, yes, but that's where the provinces you have in India and Indonesia come useful : odds become really high that you'll be at war with those, due to alliances.

Not given the setup you outlined. Taking the steps you put forth in your intial post; the Changatai migh be allied with the Uzbeks or Mughals, but more often cores, alliance shifts, etc. leave it isolated. Likewise Nepal often ends up without alliances. The Southeast Asian states are often allied to each other, and not with either the Hindu or Moslem states.

Remember the alliances. Same goes for Japan. The way to bring all of them in the war is to share your maps.

Don't you suppose that sharing this little tidbit in your previous outline might have been a good idea? Even there I do beleive you are incorrect. Japan frequently ends up isolated even if it has Chinese maps. Certainly any vassals states not in the leige's alliance are wholly exempt.

Remember also that you wait for China to fall before concluding peaces. China'll be only one province left. Continue the wars until your new enemies are subjugated (you should have the troops ready, since you just took China). When China's truce expires, they'll attack you but they'll be only one-province strong. Make sure their other allies are likewise, and they'll be crushed quickly, giving you minimal WE.

1. You can stockpile at most six diplomats.
2. If you want to make peace with the dozen odd states in rapid succession you can only take provinces from the alliance leaders.
3. The rapidity with which you crush a state has absolutely no direct bearing on WE.

You have three competing objectives with this uber BB round:
1. Make simultaneous peace with all the multiple province states in Asia, Africa, and North America.
2. Maximize your gains so that you can complete this adventure in 3 rounds (the 4th being nothing but capitals going under).
3. TA China.

These are all in competition. Maximizing gains requires you to burn diplos on seperate peaces. TAing China after having DAed all of Europe and the colonies likewise ensures that you will be fighting any residual states in America (barring maybe the Dakota), half of the African states, and pretty much everyone in Asia. Yes one can pull this off, but it seems to be rather less than a commonly easy strat for WC. You do appear to have had a game with uncommonly good luck (England didn't reconvert, uberPoland didn't tear itself apart with revolts, Russia didn't declare independence, etc.). Those happen with enough people playing the game enough times. However I'd be extremely hesitant to give advise counting on everything you've laid out to be readily replicable.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Bah, if you all think such detailed planning of dp-sliders and forwards planning of BB rounds plus strategic use of turbo-annexation are necessary for a high-tech late-game WC rather than being merely convenient I'd hate to see you try a low-tech one. I realise that WC has become harder since I stopped playing EU2 but this seems to be taking it to extremes. The most important thing used to be, and I'd be greatly surprised if that has changed, the ability to think on your feet and adapt to whichever situation arose - just about any setup worked (though some were considerably easier than others).

That said.. Quality or quantity... The choice is long term between improved rebels and cheaper troops+lower WE, so the bright choice is quantity while the fun choice is quality. Naval or land?... The choice that matters is between higher income and cheaper troops+lower WE, a contest that land easily wins even if you have scores of conscription centres. (More colonists from naval are fun, of course, but hardly needed for a world conquest)

As for "minimize the number of fronts, never colonise India!!!" - if you for one reason or another feel that you cannot deal with an extra Indian front, how about utilizing the old trick of colonising India anyhow and losing the provinces shortly before the BB wars getting a BB reduction that you can use for even more pre-BB war expansion and then, when you return to India with a vengeance, you have a lot of same-cultured same-religion provinces to use as handy staging posts for controlling India and leapfrogging troops to China and Indochina? (And if that's too much work for you, just lose them all in the first round of BB wars) Or does this no longer work in 1.09?

 

[unmerged(45766)]

Ambassador, under which version of the game did you do this?

1.09. Otherwise, I wouldn't be as much concerned with Civil Wars.

Interesting, you had the 1 in a 100 game where England doesn't covert away from Catholicism, and beyond that managed to get enough Catholic territory to keep it Catholic after the edict of Tolerance?

No, I had to meddle. I took some of their protestant provinces for a time, helped them take northern (catholic) french provinces. That way, they had much more catholic provinces than protestant ones. And stayed catholic. Once they had enough colonial cities and converted several of their remaining protestant provinces (including Anglia), I gave them their provinces back. And took french provinces in another war, after a few more conversions of english provinces. Luck has nothing to do here, only my meddlings.

I know that. However you still face the problem that they will give you at best 5 provinces per round on average. If the Mughals take both Ganges and Kutch; you will burn an entire round taking at MOST one other province. Given that the last round can only take the capital you are going to be looking at patheticly weak Mughals who don't span from Afghanistan down into India. Again one might be fortunate enough to have sufficiently small states here that they can be killed in 4 rounds, but it will not be common and easy.

They will give you more than five provinces. They might give you only five in some offers, if those are their rich provinces, but their poorest provinces are given en masse. Just wait for the offers, don't rush on the first one, and don't ask them.

Which becomes utterly irrelevant the moment you have your first civil war. Yes a skilled player can avoid civil war, and likewise even deal with a major crisis; but again this is something I'd hesitate to suggest one try for their FIRST WC.

MP is irrelevant in determining the size of your army. Economy, CCs and manus and grain (produced and traded) give a much higher support level than MP, which represents usually 25% in my experience (with CC multipliers). Going from Naval/Quality to Land/Quantity only triples MP, and this would only increase your support limit by half. So, you don't get that much more troops.

Irrelevant. I don't care about fighting the Asians. You will handily crush them with only attritionary issues to worry about. You will handily do more fighting against REBELS than all of Asia put togethor. There you will have no CRT advantage nor will you have any morale advantage unless you opt for playing the maintenance trick.

Yes indeed. It's one way. But you don't get that much rebels either, as I'll show you below.

You will have literally hundreds of provinces with at least 3% RR. That translates into multiple armies of rebels every month you need to go put down (given as you have left them no other state to wander into).

There're approximately 900 land provinces in-game. You already start with over 200, maybe closing to 250-300, whose RR is then under 0, since they're either of your religion/culture or owned for more than 30 years. There're approximately 200-400 provinces that are from your vassals, who were catholics, and so RR is really limited at 3% once you've DA them. This leaves in Asia, barring Siberia, less than 200 provinces whose religion might be harder to tolerate. That's for indicating the numbers.

Now, 3% RR is 3% chances that a revolt will fire in the province in one year. take thirty provinces, a territory the size of France, and it's one revolt per year on average. One revolt. Once you've made your DA's and first round of BBWars, you should have 300-500 provinces with 3% RR, or 10-15 revolts per year. I'm sorry to say that, but if you are afraid of 10-15 revolts per year, I don't care what you might tell. You only need to keep half a million men in the rear (well, and close to the fronts in the provinces you took from the AI). It's barely one-third or one-quarter of what you could field with Naval/Quality, so you don't risk having too few troops.

Oh, and one more thing : the first battle cripples the AI. Essentially, you'll have killed all their troops, they'll have exhausted their treasuries for some, and will have a difficult time restoring their armies to the size they had pre-BBWars. So, coupled with the fact they have less provinces to start the second and ulterior rounds, you need less troops on the battlefront.

If you have some combination of skill and luck you might avoid a civil war, however it is not to be assumed that you will do so. In that case a million man army at LT 60 is actually a detriment (at the higher LT rebels are far more dangerous).

Plain wrong. LT 60 rebels are no more dangerous than LT 50 or LT 1 to you. They have the same tech and morale as your troops. It's the same. You said it yourself earlier.

Bwhahahaha. I see, and how do you plan to take Tibet? Or storm the fortresses of the Changatai? Even with MA (which you did not mention getting in your master plan) there are good number of provinces in central asia with pitiful supply limits well below what you need simply to assualt the place. Further if you are up 3 CRTs the boost from quality is negligable, especially given that you are sacrificing much of it back on serfdom.

You should have better read my first post :

Invent blitzkrieg (a useful trick : military accesses ; as you don't need to DoW, you can conclude MAs beforehand, the AI won't break them, and your troops will be ready).

With a good morale, you're sure to take the place with one assault. And if it's true supply limit is low, with MA it gets good enough : either there're enough fortresses to afford you a high SL, or there're low fortresses you can storm with 10k infantrymen in one week. A hundred thousands men, evenly split in cavalry and infantry (or rather 60inf/40cav) are enough to conquer the whole steppes north of Persia. Tibet is slightly harder, but again SL is in your favor, as you certainly have more than enough CRT advantages to beat away the AI's troops. You only have to start the BBWars at the beginning of the month.

The relative advantage it gives is. Unless the calculations changed and I missed it, the bonus from DP sliders is additive and not multiplicative. In any event morale is capped at 7 and base with LT 60 is 6.0. Between your maintance and offensive you are sufficiently close to maximum for the effect to be negligable.

That's exactly why a +0.10 boost is more than enough. It won't be spoiled above 7, since Serfdom decreases it. And as I said it above : high morale makes for a first-assault success without needing to reinforce the assault. Going Quantity would bring the morale modifier from +0.10 to -0.40, with a +0.50 from maintenance. With Quality, you're at 6.60, while with Quantity you're at 6.10. That 0.50 difference is enough that you might fail an assault. Maybe not on the first province, but on the second or third. And a wave of failed assaults is severely delaying the end of the war.

Why on earth would you assume that? I am curious, how many BB did it cost for you to take out France, Russia, the HRE, and play religious games in England?

Well under BB-threshold at all times. Remember that I make Poland conquer Russia. Religious games with England end-up with a neutral BB (provinces taken are given back), since those wars allowed to get other objectives.

I assume that degree of skill, because it's critical for an easy WC to ensure Europe is under your grasp at the start, whether directly or through vassals.

Full narrowminded is a given. As are the BB costs. As even can be the 50 FAAs.

In a nutshell the tradeoff is between having lower stability while having more events that lower it or having higher stability costs and fewer events that lower it. One need not even go full free subjects, just enough to avoid stab crushing events.

You should review your classics. What are the dangerous events you face even without serfdom ?
- stabhits you can't avoid through easily* : 2 for corruption, (since you probably don't want inflation, although I'd take twice that infla when going WC) ; Nobles ally with foreing powers ; one unhappiness among peasantry ; meteor sighted ; bad gv policies ; two political crisis ; assassination of nobles ; two plagues = 9 or 11 events.
- RR-increases : wave of obscurantism will increase RR by +3% overall, leading to 10-20 more provinces during a year.
Revolt-causing events aren't as dangerous, as those are only annoying in some areas, but if you count them, then you have eight of them IMHO.
What does serfdom add ? two events, unhappiness among peasantry. Two events, when you have around a hundred events open, so only 2% chances every year of getting one of them. 2 more, compared to the already 9/10/11/12/20 bad ones I've mentionned above.
Yes, the two additional ones give respectively -2 and -3 ; but you already had two -2 and two -3.

In the thirty years that your WC attempt will take, you only have less than half a chance to get one of those two new events. But the benefit of that risk is that all other -1 hits will be restored in a year of investments, not five.

* ie, you can'd avoid them through paying money or accepting a move of the sliders : I consider it acceptable to increase/decrease aristocracy and decrease decentralization because of the nobles/burgers demand power, etc, events, because at that point of the game, both those DP sliders don't matter as much as stability

As far as the math goes. Full free subjects is +50%, full serfdom is -50%. It is mathematically impossible for full serfdom to bring an otherwise 5 year investment cost down to 1 year.

DP-sliders' modifiers are cumulative, that is you add Narrow & Serfdom together before comparing. So, 100 - 25 (Narro) - 50 (Serfdom) = 25, or a *0.25 modifier to the cost. But 100 - 25 (Narro) +50 (FS) = 125, or a *1.25 modifier. As far as math goes, it's a one-to-five ratio.

Demonstrably false.

I think it's already common knowledge that stab 0 can give you a Civil War. If you disagreel, demonstrate it then.

Not given the setup you outlined. Taking the steps you put forth in your intial post; the Changatai migh be allied with the Uzbeks or Mughals, but more often cores, alliance shifts, etc. leave it isolated. Likewise Nepal often ends up without alliances. The Southeast Asian states are often allied to each other, and not with either the Hindu or Moslem states.

Those are only exceptions. Remember that I spoke about Indonesia already, you get borders there too. And share your maps several decades before the attempt, and you'll get less isolated countries since alliances will probably get far-away members. Even so, I said it : the TA of China is the signal you are waiting to start seeking peaces. If you get new borders, you'll know it before the TA happens, so your armies will be ready, and in less than six months you'll beat those backward nations. Then, and only then, make massive peaces if you don't want to do other earlier. But I assure you that six months are more than enough to beat the southeast asians if you didn't formerly have borders.

Don't you suppose that sharing this little tidbit in your previous outline might have been a good idea? Even there I do beleive you are incorrect. Japan frequently ends up isolated even if it has Chinese maps. Certainly any vassals states not in the leige's alliance are wholly exempt.

Certainly, isolated vassals are possible. And this tidbit was, IMHO, obvious if you see that some countries are all alone.
Remember also that we're speaking of a late-game WC : the number of countries is reduced compared to 1419 setup. And borders are strange.

1. You can stockpile at most six diplomats.
2. If you want to make peace with the dozen odd states in rapid succession you can only take provinces from the alliance leaders.
3. The rapidity with which you crush a state has absolutely no direct bearing on WE.

1. at a time, yes ; during the war, FA the one-provincers one at a time, but stay close to six diplomats to get peaces at the moment you choose
2. yes, if the leader is offering you the peace ; you can still first accept offers from members
3. you get WE for every month at war ; if a war is finished in one month, and you have no other wars ongoing (which is the case at hand with China), you'll take less WE than if it finishes in six months. So, it has a direct bearing.

You have three competing objectives with this uber BB round:
1. Make simultaneous peace with all the multiple province states in Asia, Africa, and North America.
2. Maximize your gains so that you can complete this adventure in 3 rounds (the 4th being nothing but capitals going under).
3. TA China.

1. Asia mainly : nobody left in America, and no more than one or two left in Africa (the non-pagan ones) ; that makes around 20 countries I'd say
2. yes, possible since you have few enemies, you can prove patient - to an extent
3. as I said, the TA of China is not an order to make peace in one month, but the signal that it's time to look out for peaces ; however, you don't have to accept the first peace offered

These are all in competition. Maximizing gains requires you to burn diplos on seperate peaces. TAing China after having DAed all of Europe and the colonies likewise ensures that you will be fighting any residual states in America (barring maybe the Dakota), half of the African states, and pretty much everyone in Asia. Yes one can pull this off, but it seems to be rather less than a commonly easy strat for WC. You do appear to have had a game with uncommonly good luck (England didn't reconvert, uberPoland didn't tear itself apart with revolts, Russia didn't declare independence, etc.). Those happen with enough people playing the game enough times. However I'd be extremely hesitant to give advise counting on everything you've laid out to be readily replicable.

No, you don't need to burn diplos on separate peaces, only a handful of them, because all allies will offer separate peaces themselves. As you might have noticed, I say that general peaces should endure for four to four-and-half years : this indicates you make peaces in a six-month period. Besides, you seem to forget that waiting for a peace offer is better than asking one, the AI'll offer you more provinces.
And you seem to rely on luck too much, and deem the others do the same. Those situations were carefully nurtured by me.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

Bah, if you all think such detailed planning of dp-sliders and forwards planning of BB rounds plus strategic use of turbo-annexation are necessary for a high-tech late-game WC rather than being merely convenient I'd hate to see you try a low-tech one. I realise that WC has become harder since I stopped playing EU2 but this seems to be taking it to extremes. The most important thing used to be, and I'd be greatly surprised if that has changed, the ability to think on your feet and adapt to whichever situation arose - just about any setup worked (though some were considerably easier than others).

I'm not telling it's hard to do a WC, nor that all that is necessary. Just that it is the easiest way.
And I nearly did two low-tech ones. I both quitted them, for the same reason that I quitted the late-game one : boredom. There's no fun in a WC IMHO. At least not for me.

And since you retired, Civil Wars have become very dangerous with a high BB. Risks are exponentials, hence the focus on keeping a good stability. Hey, IMO it's the only difficulty of a WC.

That said.. Quality or quantity... The choice is long term between improved rebels and cheaper troops+lower WE, so the bright choice is quantity while the fun choice is quality. Naval or land?... The choice that matters is between higher income and cheaper troops+lower WE, a contest that land easily wins even if you have scores of conscription centres. (More colonists from naval are fun, of course, but hardly needed for a world conquest)

AFAIK, Naval/Land and Quality/Quantity have nothing to do with WE. Amount of recruitments you can make per year, maybe ? Yes, it matters. A bit. With MA everywhere and high tech, you don't lose that many troops. With the DAs of your vassals, you get a huge amount of fresh troops, so that's less to recruit. All in all, I didn't need to recruit troops during the BBWars, only between rounds.

As for "minimize the number of fronts, never colonise India!!!" - if you for one reason or another feel that you cannot deal with an extra Indian front, how about utilizing the old trick of colonising India anyhow and losing the provinces shortly before the BB wars getting a BB reduction that you can use for even more pre-BB war expansion and then, when you return to India with a vengeance, you have a lot of same-cultured same-religion provinces to use as handy staging posts for controlling India and leapfrogging troops to China and Indochina? (And if that's too much work for you, just lose them all in the first round of BB wars) Or does this no longer work in 1.09?

Yes, it works. And I agree with you.

But I'd prefer to start the conquest of India from there. And, for my part, I'd conquer a few other provinces bordering countries I wish to fight in the first round. You're already gonna pause every day of the game due to the sheer amount of troops/messages you get from other parts of the world...

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

AFAIK, Naval/Land and Quality/Quantity have nothing to do with WE. Amount of recruitments you can make per year, maybe ?

They have everything to do with WE - as regards increasing the manpower/year and hence reducing the fraction of recruited troops to recruited/year. I probably overemphasize this due to having more experience with low-tech or non-CC's-all-over-the-place WC but given that neither naval nor quality carry significant advantages when regarding pre-BB-wars expansion or the fighting of BB wars it is still the better choice.

Yes, it matters. A bit. With MA everywhere and high tech, you don't lose that many troops.

MA's everywhere taking advantage of the game engine is for sissies. More casualties! Need more casualties! True glory requires the conqueror to stand in blood to the ankles, not manipulate the game engine to minimize casualties. Otherwise, where's the fun?*


* Your sense of fun might reasonably differ [as might a hypothetical soldier in your army ] but EU2 is such an easy game to min/max that I'm sure that a lot of us agree that the most fun is to not do so completely.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

I used MAs in my low-tech attempts too. It's even more important, as you have less troops and especially less tech-advantage, so you have to make sieges. And with low-tech, morale from sliders is even more important.



I prefer to avoid unnecessary losses. Soldiers are precious, they're my toys, and I hate to break my toys. The only good bloodshed is the one you cause, not the one you suffer. My soldiers/toys/slaves are not to be beheaded by anyone but me. And since decimation isn't implemented... :wacko:

* Your sense of fun might reasonably differ [as might a hypothetical soldier in your army ] but EU2 is such an easy game to min/max that I'm sure that a lot of us agree that the most fun is to not do so completely.

At least, I'm sure of one thing : you're not gonna competing with me if I ever want to establish a record for the less-bloody WC ever.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Plain wrong. LT 60 rebels are no more dangerous than LT 50 or LT 1 to you. They have the same tech and morale as your troops. It's the same. You said it yourself earlier.

Not quite right IMHO. Regardless of tech rebels show up with lots of infantry, and little cavalry and a couple of guns. At LT 1 this army is ridiculously easy to beat, as no sane player would ever use a mostly infantry army at LT1. You'll be hitting them with armies that are at least 50% cavalry. At LT60, the rebel armies are much closer to an optimal balance between arms - a little more artillery would probably make them more battle worthy, but they have just enough cavalry to make it annoying to get the cavalry bonus, and infantry are lethal at LT 60.

And a wave of failed assaults is severely delaying the end of the war.

So what? Why does it matter how long each round goes? Attrition? The important thing is to get peace with everyone at the same time for an extended period of time so you can rebuild your army.

3. you get WE for every month at war ; if a war is finished in one month, and you have no other wars ongoing (which is the case at hand with China), you'll take less WE than if it finishes in six months. So, it has a direct bearing.

What on earth are you talking about? How do you get this war exhaustion each month? Movement attrition? (max of 1% per month, and easily avoided by starting movement on the first of the month). Regular attrition? (but I thought you used MAs to avoid that? Recruitment? (Why on earth are you recruiting in a 1 month or 6 month war? And since you've planned this Chinese excursion in exquisate detail how can you not have the necessary troops in place?)

If you have the same number of forts to assault I honestly can see no reason why your WE would be any different

 

[unmerged(45766)]

Not quite right IMHO. Regardless of tech rebels show up with lots of infantry, and little cavalry and a couple of guns. At LT 1 this army is ridiculously easy to beat, as no sane player would ever use a mostly infantry army at LT1. You'll be hitting them with armies that are at least 50% cavalry. At LT60, the rebel armies are much closer to an optimal balance between arms - a little more artillery would probably make them more battle worthy, but they have just enough cavalry to make it annoying to get the cavalry bonus, and infantry are lethal at LT 60.

Right, at the beginning your armies are probably better balanced. But anyway, the difference in optimal composition between LT 40 and LT 60 is very minor. And as a human player, you're probably well above LT 40 around 1750.

So what? Why does it matter how long each round goes? Attrition? The important thing is to get peace with everyone at the same time for an extended period of time so you can rebuild your army.

War Exhaustion. If it gets too high, you'll get more RR, so much more revolts than those 10-15 or 20-30 I spoke of. Aren't you the one careful about revolts ?

What on earth are you talking about? How do you get this war exhaustion each month? Movement attrition? (max of 1% per month, and easily avoided by starting movement on the first of the month). Regular attrition? (but I thought you used MAs to avoid that? Recruitment? (Why on earth are you recruiting in a 1 month or 6 month war? And since you've planned this Chinese excursion in exquisate detail how can you not have the necessary troops in place?)

If you have the same number of forts to assault I honestly can see no reason why your WE would be any different

War Exhaustion, not attrition. You don't get WE only because of recruitment, but also because of normal war-activity.

 

[unmerged(25609)]

Fascinating stuff - it seems that micro-managers rule.
Even though I prefer role-playing, I should clean the blood off my boots (and breeches) and try this. From what Ebbesen-Sama says, it should be possible with almost every country. Is this still true?

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Right, at the beginning your armies are probably better balanced. But anyway, the difference in optimal composition between LT 40 and LT 60 is very minor. And as a human player, you're probably well above LT 40 around 1750.

The artillery are quite a bit more useful at LT60 than LT40, but you're basically right here. At lower techs (before say 20) you have a big composition advantagte over the rebels.

War Exhaustion, not attrition. You don't get WE only because of recruitment, but also because of normal war-activity.

[/quote]
You get war exhausttion from to things, and two things only. Neither of these things is affected by the length of the war, except that losses from attrition may be slightly higher in a longer war. If you lose no troops and recruit no troops war exhaustion will stay at zero for ever.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Fascinating stuff - it seems that micro-managers rule.
Even though I prefer role-playing, I should clean the blood off my boots (and breeches) and try this. From what Ebbesen-Sama says, it should be possible with almost every country. Is this still true?

It used to be. Now? Probably the same, just harder. That said, trying with anything but a latin tech-group major really punishes sub-optimal play and should not be chosen unless you are a glutton for punishment - or bored.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

You get war exhausttion from to things, and two things only. Neither of these things is affected by the length of the war, except that losses from attrition may be slightly higher in a longer war. If you lose no troops and recruit no troops war exhaustion will stay at zero for ever.

Recruitment & war-taxes, yes, but also the simple fact of being at war and to have activities. It does augment.

EDIT: and if there's no activity, it decreases but slowly.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Recruitment & war-taxes, yes, but also the simple fact of being at war and to have activities. It does augment.

EDIT: and if there's no activity, it decreases but slowly.

Activities like what? As far as I know the ONLY things that increase WE are recruitment and losses. Neither is influenced by how quickly you win the war.

And I still don't understand why you put such a priority on 1 month war vs. 6 month war.

 

[Jomini]

No, I had to meddle. I took some of their protestant provinces for a time, helped them take northern (catholic) french provinces. That way, they had much more catholic provinces than protestant ones. And stayed catholic. Once they had enough colonial cities and converted several of their remaining protestant provinces (including Anglia), I gave them their provinces back. And took french provinces in another war, after a few more conversions of english provinces. Luck has nothing to do here, only my meddlings.

How much BB did this cost you? When did you do this, to avoid the multiple conversion events?

They will give you more than five provinces. They might give you only five in some offers, if those are their rich provinces, but their poorest provinces are given en masse. Just wait for the offers, don't rush on the first one, and don't ask them.

You will note the word average, yes some offers will give you more, others however will give you considerably less. On average they give you 5 territories when they make the offer in my experience. The round where they fork over most of Afghanistan is more than balanced by the rounds where they ditch CoTs and their wealthy cloth, china, tea, etc. provinces.

MP is irrelevant in determining the size of your army. Economy, CCs and manus and grain (produced and traded) give a much higher support level than MP, which represents usually 25% in my experience (with CC multipliers). Going from Naval/Quality to Land/Quantity only triples MP, and this would only increase your support limit by half. So, you don't get that much more troops.

Your support limit is immaterial, what matters is your MP. When you have a civil war you will need to recruit, and to recuit massively. If you have lower MP leads directly to higher WE as that is figured as a fraction as a fraction of MP, not support limit.

There're approximately 900 land provinces in-game. You already start with over 200, maybe closing to 250-300, whose RR is then under 0, since they're either of your religion/culture or owned for more than 30 years. There're approximately 200-400 provinces that are from your vassals, who were catholics, and so RR is really limited at 3% once you've DA them. This leaves in Asia, barring Siberia, less than 200 provinces whose religion might be harder to tolerate. That's for indicating the numbers.

MIGHT be harder to tolerate? You have NO tolerance slider for any of the eastern religions whom you are turboannexing or bashing on the first round. With full religious intolerance and nationalism, plus the nationalism risk of your Catholic acquisitions. You will have monthly revolts.

With a good morale, you're sure to take the place with one assault. And if it's true supply limit is low, with MA it gets good enough : either there're enough fortresses to afford you a high SL, or there're low fortresses you can storm with 10k infantrymen in one week. A hundred thousands men, evenly split in cavalry and infantry (or rather 60inf/40cav) are enough to conquer the whole steppes north of Persia. Tibet is slightly harder, but again SL is in your favor, as you certainly have more than enough CRT advantages to beat away the AI's troops. You only have to start the BBWars at the beginning of the month.

Now it doesn't. With MA several provinces stay in the single digits. Further with Tibet and Changatai, the determination of when the BB round starts is quite likely going to be whenever the rebels take China, which leaves you the inability to preposition to avoid attrition.

That's exactly why a +0.10 boost is more than enough. It won't be spoiled above 7, since Serfdom decreases it. And as I said it above : high morale makes for a first-assault success without needing to reinforce the assault. Going Quantity would bring the morale modifier from +0.10 to -0.40, with a +0.50 from maintenance. With Quality, you're at 6.60, while with Quantity you're at 6.10. That 0.50 difference is enough that you might fail an assault. Maybe not on the first province, but on the second or third. And a wave of failed assaults is severely delaying the end of the war.

Why is that .6 so terribly important? If you are up 2 or 3 CRTs you already have an unbeatable morale (not to mention you ignoring other sources of morale increases).

Well under BB-threshold at all times. Remember that I make Poland conquer Russia. Religious games with England end-up with a neutral BB (provinces taken are given back), since those wars allowed to get other objectives.

So you managed to have Poland fight multiple wars against Russia and you managed a defensive war against England without having to spend BB? Quite impressive, but hardly typical or easy.

The fact the Poland conqueored Russia also amazes me, normally that means that eventually Russia will rebel away from Poland.

Plain wrong. LT 60 rebels are no more dangerous than LT 50 or LT 1 to you. They have the same tech and morale as your troops. It's the same. You said it yourself earlier.

Sigh, you'd think by now you'd think before you speak. Yes they have the same tech level, however two things change:
1. Their constant force composition becomes better at higher tech levels which means you fight on more even terms.
2. The seige cannons fire thrice per month at higher levels meaning that provinces fall three times as fast giving you far less time to go kill them or to let them die from attrition.

Rebels are far more dangerous at high LT levels because they become more difficult to crush in a fight and it becomes more necessary to fight them.

DP-sliders' modifiers are cumulative, that is you add Narrow & Serfdom together before comparing. So, 100 - 25 (Narro) - 50 (Serfdom) = 25, or a *0.25 modifier to the cost. But 100 - 25 (Narro) +50 (FS) = 125, or a *1.25 modifier. As far as math goes, it's a one-to-five ratio.

Incorrect as far as my experience and the FAQ go. Unless I and the FAQ missed a math change you are simply wrong. The bonuses are multiplicative not additive.

I think it's already common knowledge that stab 0 can give you a Civil War. If you disagreel, demonstrate it then.

The need for full serfdom is demonstrably false. As multiple of us who have made multiple WC have posted to that effect. I'd tentantively suggest that I might be able to do a WC with no FAAs, full free subjects, and full innovation with a handful of select European powers. That would be extremely challenging, but not necessarily wholly impossible.

1. at a time, yes ; during the war, FA the one-provincers one at a time, but stay close to six diplomats to get peaces at the moment you choose

Don't the late game Catholic Byzantines only get 4 or 5 diplos per year? Which makes you wars last far longer?

2. yes, if the leader is offering you the peace ; you can still first accept offers from members

Peace offers last a whopping two months, late game southeast Asian states get perhaps 2 diplos a year. The odds that you will get orderly peace within a short period of time is low. Now if you have one of those atypical games where one or two powers has carved up most of SE Asia, then things are different. But counting on accepting their offers leaves you with a good deal of time between offers.

3. you get WE for every month at war ; if a war is finished in one month, and you have no other wars ongoing (which is the case at hand with China), you'll take less WE than if it finishes in six months. So, it has a direct bearing

Incorrect. You get WE for every month that war action occurs. You must fight or seige, merely being at war does not increase WE. Once you have 100% victory your WE will slowly fall while at war. Further the amount of this increase is so small as to be negligable.

1. Asia mainly : nobody left in America, and no more than one or two left in Africa (the non-pagan ones) ; that makes around 20 countries I'd say

Fascinating. Zanj is dead. Ethiopia is dead. Nubia is dead. Morocco, Tunisia, Fez, Algiers, Mamelukes, Songhai, and Mali are all dead (assuming none of the Pagans took a conversion event). I'm sorry but that consolidated of an Africa is highly atypical.

No, you don't need to burn diplos on separate peaces, only a handful of them, because all allies will offer separate peaces themselves. As you might have noticed, I say that general peaces should endure for four to four-and-half years : this indicates you make peaces in a six-month period. Besides, you seem to forget that waiting for a peace offer is better than asking one, the AI'll offer you more provinces.

You seem to forget that the AI gets few diplos in SE asia and the odds of them ALL offering peace within six months is rather low. When you have a red monarch with an eastern religion, you might get only one offer every 12 months.

You should review your classics. What are the dangerous events you face even without serfdom ?
- stabhits you can't avoid through easily* : 2 for corruption, (since you probably don't want inflation, although I'd take twice that infla when going WC) ; Nobles ally with foreing powers ; one unhappiness among peasantry ; meteor sighted ; bad gv policies ; two political crisis ; assassination of nobles ; two plagues = 9 or 11 events.
- RR-increases : wave of obscurantism will increase RR by +3% overall, leading to 10-20 more provinces during a year.
Revolt-causing events aren't as dangerous, as those are only annoying in some areas, but if you count them, then you have eight of them IMHO.
What does serfdom add ? two events, unhappiness among peasantry. Two events, when you have around a hundred events open, so only 2% chances every year of getting one of them. 2 more, compared to the already 9/10/11/12/20 bad ones I've mentionned above.
Yes, the two additional ones give respectively -2 and -3 ; but you already had two -2 and two -3.

In the thirty years that your WC attempt will take, you only have less than half a chance to get one of those two new events. But the benefit of that risk is that all other -1 hits will be restored in a year of investments, not five.

2% compounded by 30 years gives you 45.5% chance of getting them. It gives a 23.25% chance of getting a second -3. And that is assuming that your highly ambitious 30 year time table remains true.

Get back to me when you've played multiple WC's through to completion, extapolating from your admittedly small number of attempts does not seem wise.

War Exhaustion. If it gets too high, you'll get more RR, so much more revolts than those 10-15 or 20-30 I spoke of. Aren't you the one careful about revolts ?

The WE from length of war action is generally negligable.

Fascinating stuff - it seems that micro-managers rule.

With any European it is readily possible. With non-Europeans it is exceedingly difficult as it is impossible to get a substantial LT lead before the BB wars and many grand strategies (i.e like the one under debate in this thread) are utterly impossible outside of Europe. My hunch is that the Dakota would be the most difficult to bring to successful completion.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Your support limit is immaterial, what matters is your MP. When you have a civil war you will need to recruit, and to recuit massively. If you have lower MP leads directly to higher WE as that is figured as a fraction as a fraction of MP, not support limit.

But doesn't this depend on how you approach BB wars? If your plan is to stay at war until you get to stab +1, then you KNOW you won't get any civil wars, just really long BB wars. In this case you don't need MP. And if your starting army is big enough you should be able to get through a BB round without recruiting.

If the approach to BB wars includes both of these, then the supportable limit is what's important, not MP.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Incorrect as far as my experience and the FAQ go. Unless I and the FAQ missed a math change you are simply wrong. The bonuses are multiplicative not additive.

No. From the Economy FAQ

5.3- Domestic Policy multiplier

Sum of the modifiers of the two policies affect the stability cost:
- Narrowminded / Innovativeness: from -25% to +25%
- Free Subjects / Serfdom: from +50% to -50%

 

[Jomini]

No. From the Economy FAQ

Then either your quote or the examples provided are inaccurate.

The numbers given in the example tables are multiplying the bonuses, not adding them first. I could be wrong here, but the actual numbers given in the examples are multiplicative. 321*.95*.9 = 274.4 (whereas 321*.75 = 240.75).

But doesn't this depend on how you approach BB wars? If your plan is to stay at war until you get to stab +1, then you KNOW you won't get any civil wars, just really long BB wars. In this case you don't need MP. And if your starting army is big enough you should be able to get through a BB round without recruiting.

No. You gain WE whenever you recruit, be it in the middle of a war or in the 10th year of perpetual peace. The question is how many years of peace (or worse years of inactive war) will it take to reduce to zero. Even if you had unlimited support, you'd still rack up WE whenever you initially built up your army. If you start each BB round with WE from building up a massive army then you will not have time.

Indeed if you have sufficiently low MP, you will be unable to reach your support limit as your WE will rise to unhealthy levels even in the midst of peace.

There are two ways out of the trap here - annexations and mercs. I think it should be possible to complete a WC utilizing only those troops for fighting, but most of the time there is little substitute for having more MP; however when using words like "best" or "most efficient"; I hold that MP handily trumps morale, certainly if your only opponents left are multiple CRTs behind you.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Then either your quote or the examples provided are inaccurate.

Just test it. (I cannot since I don't have EU2 installed at the moment, alas) Start any game of EU2 with a sufficiently small country and note the stability cost. It certainly used to be case that anything affected by an effect X of the domestic policy sliders was affected by the sum of effects x1,...,xn of X within the sliders rather than by having them applied one at a time, multiplicatively*, so unless something drastic changed in that area for 1.09 it is the table that is wrong and the statement about the sum of sliders that is right. Still, 0.25 to 1.75 is a huge span so, who knows, the base principle might have changed, unlikely though it might be. (Hmm, looks as if there's another bug in the FAQ. The NMR is defined as 1-techgroup, should be 2-techgroup)


* In fact, most game mechanics within EU2 (and HOI and Victoria) are based on summing within categories and multiplying between categories - something I've often bitched to Johan about since it leads to those HUGE spans when things start stacking up - the 1% efficiency battles of HOI/Victoria comes to mind.