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

[unmerged(6909)]

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

The merc-pool is very limited and it refills very slowly. Not a solution

 

[unmerged(6159)]

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).

Other than your math error (321*.85=272.9 ) this is exactly right. The FAQ is wrong, either in the body of the text, or in the worked example. I've posted on the (old) thread there to point this out. I suspect that the example is wrong, as everything else with DP sliders is additive not multiplicative (Trade efficiency, production efficiency, research rate, etc.). It would be strange if stability were different, but you never know. I'll have to test it.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

Jomini, I'll make a cut in the answers, because I'm starting to find all this bickering really annoying.

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

Not much, I did it through the course of other wars, or by jumping in other alliances currently at war against England. I didn't make England avoid the conversions, I only jumped on them some short time thereafter when I suspected they wouldn't convert back to catholicism. And they don't get that many of them, after all.

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.

The under-averaged offers, you turn them down, that's simple. As long as you don't get good peaces in several offers, you wait. As I already said : no need to rush on the first offer.

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.

Better avoid CW altogether.

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.

Narrowmindedness has no effect on RR, don't you know ?
For those religions, RR is +2 for culture (when at war, or +1 if at peace), +1 for religion (default when not having a tolerance slider), +3 for nationalism, and a negative modifier for good stability (even possibly completely offsetting the culture/religion penalties, especially when at peace).
Yes, you'll get monthly revolts. But not ten revolts every month. Not anymore.

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.

Those simple-digits provinces are rare and few, and only where there're no fortresses (1.09 change). So, no worry here either.

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).

I already factored in the other sliders and maintenance. What other sources do you want to include ? Relgion ? mostly no modifiers, not for plain catholics at least. Monarch ? you need a good monarch to get a morale boost, and better not to count too much on it. So, if you're trying my arguments, be specifics. Demonstrate, bring numbers and datas, not only words.

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.

Hum. It's not that I want to insult you, but I told it wasn't a strategy for newbies. I'm starting it with Byzantium, after all.

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

Again, a little help is handy. Gifts of money, MA and presence of troops help Poland convert the orthodoxes and keep the russian rebels in check. Poland is a big asset in this strategy, not only taking care of the russians but also, most probably, of some scandinavians.

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.

1. arguably right if comparing from LT 1 to LT 40 or 60, but quite not from LT 40 to LT 60.
2. three times (66%) faster than at LT 1, yes, but 33% quicker only than when they fire twice. And your armies get the same advantage. Not counting it's usually better and easier to crush the rebels when they're the attacking force, depending on terrain.
And I see you're insulting too.

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.

It's a mistake in the example only.

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.

It's possible to do WCs with Xhosa. It doesn't mean it's easier to do it with Xhosa than with a european latin country. Your "demonstrations" are flawed, you're comparing apples and peachs.

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

No less than most other catholics. You'll learn that the number of diplomats you get depend on two things : religion and DIP-skill of the monarch (modified by Aristocracy slider). If you're at war, that's one more diplomat. The exact number is 4 with monarchs that have a base DIP of 5 or less, if at peace, and 5/year if at war. You start the war with 6, the war's length can be kept one year easily, it means you can use 11 diplomats. More if the war lasts longer.

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.

True. The case being discussed was one-province China, with Isaac telling you didn't receive WE for anything else than recruitment and war-taxes. When the siege would be over, it'd be direct annexation, so I didn't precise immediately you only get WE if activity was conducted. But I gave the precision later, a post you don't seem to have read.

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.

Did I tell I didn't mess there ? First Spain has a habit of warring with those northwestern states, so help is given. But I also spoke about getting african colonies' manpower, so you need land connection, and that implies conquest of part of the continent. And early conquest and conversion of the pagans.
And if Mali gets loose, help the pagans conquering many pagan provinces.
Also, Mameluks have Byzantium's cores, so it's free lunch.

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 forget the number of really big countries is quite low. Mughals and Persia mostly. The other countries have less than ten countries - otherwise, they're not numerous.
Once you're telling there're too many countries there, and next you tell they're all big. Make a choice, because the number of provinces isn't that high.

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.

Which is exactly just under half a chance to get those events. Thanks for the precision, but we at least seem to agree on those odds. And 30 years are consistent with a five-rounds WC.

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.

Well, seeing your poor knowledge of many game-mechanics, I'm starting to pity you.

The WE from length of war action is generally negligable.

By the way, I show Isaac Brock the way to Daniel A's War Exhaustion FAQ.
Max WE for centra-narro is 6. It's more RR, isn't it, twice more than nationalism alone ? Aren't you already complaining about too many revolts ? I'm beginning to know why...

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.

It depends on which one. With China for example, it's possible if you take muslim techgroup following Zeng He. Bur for non-latin/orthodox/muslim, it'd be near to impossible to keep up with the europeans. For those, I'd say the best is to attempt an early WC, before you get late compared to them. But you might not keep up enough income to finish.

 

[unmerged(45766)]

If you start each BB round with WE from building up a massive army then you will not have time.

Two comments :
- you don't lose that much troops when you have MAs everywhere, meaning you need to make fewer recruitments
- you have four years to recruit the troops and let WE fall down
- at the measure the WC progresses, you need fewer troops, meaning fewer replacements to make

 

[unmerged(6159)]

It's a mistake in the example only.

Could you post the tests you ran to confirm this? It would be nice to get this nailed down,

On a more relevent note I'm interested to hear how you did all of this in your Byantien game. If you kicked off the BB wars in 1640 or so (which you must have to take advantage of turbo-annexing Chine) you have 220 years of BB reduction from your monarch. I've never played BYZ so I don't know what their DIP ratings are, but if you average losing 1 BB per 5 years (which sounds awfully good to me) you lose about 44 BB points from the monarch. Add in 55 for the BB limit in 1640 (which also seems high to me) and you have a total of 100 BB points to play with. With this you managed to
1) Conquer all your cores. Fine, this can be done at a very small BB cost, although if you did it for under 5 or 6 I'm quite impressed.
2) Conquered all of HRE, France, and the Netherlands. This is 69 provinces. Unless I'm misunderstanding your approach you must have taken about 10 provinces in Italy as well. (I suppose maybe you got Spain to take them).
3) Cut a path to the Siberian corridor. I guess this is only about 5 provinces from the edge of your cores (Tabriz, Georgia, or whatever). Still it's another 5 provinces.
4) Kept England Catholic, by taking protestant provinces from them and giving them back. In theory this can be done for very little net BB, but, again, if you managed to do it for under 3-4 BB I'm impressed. They do convert away from Catholicism by event at least 3 times.
5) Got manpower from Africa. Again I'm not sure what you mean here, but to be getting manpower from either Zimbabwe or West Africa you need about 10 province for each. I can't see that you're taking the needed provinces from pagans.
6) Messed with Poland and Russia, so that Poland takes out Russia. Again this can theoretically eb done at no BB, but I'd be hard pressed to see doing it for under 5.

You said that you only capture 80 provinces (beyond cores), so my math must be off somewhere (In that I can't get what you had in anything less than about 100 provinces). Even so you captured 80 non-cores, all of your cores, and messed with Poland, England, West African muslims, all for about `00 BB points.

Do you have any guesses as to how many BB points you used for each of my 6 categories? How did you do all of this with only 80 provinces, and how did you get those 80 provinces at what looks to be an average BB of 1 point each?

To be clear, I'm not questioning whether you did all of this. I'm sure you wouldn't be posting these things without having the experience. But I'm really interested to learn how you accomplished such spectacular BB management. Or is my math wrong?

edit: fixed typo

 

[unmerged(44386)]

Thanks for all the replies, your given me alot to think about and plan, when I got the time to completely analyse all of it, I will get back to you.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

* 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.

Fortunately, after CK the policy seem to be changed for good

Whats the thing with siege cannons firing thrice? I must have misssed something incredibly important :rofl:

 

[unmerged(45766)]

Fortunately, after CK the policy seem to be changed for good

No, since HoI2 is back with what PE said.

Whats the thing with siege cannons firing thrice? I must have misssed something incredibly important :rofl:

At low tech, there's one "die roll" per month to determine progress of the siege. At higher techs, you get more. So, sieges progress faster.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

Wow. I did play mostly low tech campaigns, but this is huge ommision on my part.

HOI 2 uses multiplication system, not additive one, btw (HOI 1 did)

 

[SecondReich]

I'm just about to finish my first WC, and:

1. Stability is usually at +3. Its no big deal, but when it dips lower, it is much better to have Decentralized, Narrow-Minded, and Serfdom. You are much more safe from Civil War when you have +1 stability than you are from whatever "bonus" Centralization gives you.

2. I think I prefer low tech WC's. I have ADD, and having alot of time to focus on conquering different areas in turn, without feeling like I have to do it RIGHT THEN or the WC is going to fail helps. The trade in, I suppose, is that conquering countries takes longer because you have less Tech superiority.

I also found that long periods of peace aren't AS useful as you guys make it out to be. You usually don't have extended periods of peace until you break out of Europe.

I've managed to do it, and it is 1660ish and I am five years away from invading China, I am wrapping up Africa, and I have my bitches Portugal and Spain colonizing America for me, and I will annex them when I am ready to jump on the Indian countries. I did all this with only about 38% inflation so far, which isn't bad.

My ONE HUGE PIECE OF ADVICE IS:

COUNTER REFORM CATHOLICISM

That extra tolerance slider has saved me probably 500+ revolts so far in this game. I only regret that I didn't convert sooner. I wouldn't do a World Conquest without being CRC, if there was any way to avoid it.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

That extra tolerance slider has saved me probably 500+ revolts so far in this game. I only regret that I didn't convert sooner. I wouldn't do a World Conquest without being CRC, if there was any way to avoid it.

Time for you to step up to the challenge and play a non-Christian non-latin tech country, then. Relying on having the best religion and techgroup is a crutch you'll be the better for throwing away. (And not just for WC - also for things like playing multiplayer; knowing how to play well when the deck is thoroughly stacked against you will, in the long run, improve your overall performance in the face of adversity even when the deck is otherwise stacked in your favour).

 

[SecondReich]

Time for you to step up to the challenge and play a non-Christian non-latin tech country, then. Relying on having the best religion and techgroup is a crutch you'll be the better for throwing away. (And not just for WC - also for things like playing multiplayer; knowing how to play well when the deck is thoroughly stacked against you will, in the long run, improve your overall performance in the face of adversity even when the deck is otherwise stacked in your favour).

I was thinking of doing it with Brandenburg-Prussia next as Protestant, and then maybe China (that would be a bitch, with the revolt events.)

 

[Jomini]

Not much, I did it through the course of other wars, or by jumping in other alliances currently at war against England. I didn't make England avoid the conversions, I only jumped on them some short time thereafter when I suspected they wouldn't convert back to catholicism. And they don't get that many of them, after all.

They get three of them, and I'm curious exactly which alliances go to war with England given that you expressedly encourage players to kill off France, the HRE states and the Nordic countries.

The under-averaged offers, you turn them down, that's simple. As long as you don't get good peaces in several offers, you wait. As I already said : no need to rush on the first offer.

The AI can only offer provinces totalling <= 100% WS. When a nation, like the Mughals, has a good number of high value provinces it is simply impossible to beat the average of 5 territories per offer. The "under-averaged" offers aren't coming from a stingy AI, they are coming because the AI has reached the cap for offers. You can turn down offers till the end of game, if the AI is offering Kutch and Ganges, you will not be able to take even 5 provinces.

Now if you are lucky, or mucked around, then there will be no state who has consolidated the Indian CoTs and the other valuable Indian/Mongol provinces; but in my experience one is normally left with somebody who manages to 300% or more WS total in the vicinity.

Better avoid CW altogether.

I can see no way to reliably do that aside from gaming the engine. The odds of getting -3 stab events or even chain -2s are simply too high.

I already factored in the other sliders and maintenance. What other sources do you want to include ? Relgion ? mostly no modifiers, not for plain catholics at least. Monarch ? you need a good monarch to get a morale boost, and better not to count too much on it. So, if you're trying my arguments, be specifics. Demonstrate, bring numbers and datas, not only words.

DoTF, CRC, and Monarch.

Hum. It's not that I want to insult you, but I told it wasn't a strategy for newbies. I'm starting it with Byzantium, after all.

What of it? As IB points out you are gobbling up a huge amount of territory and averaging less than 1.25 BB when doing so; and accomplishing a huge number strategic tasks without expending precious BB. I've spent a good deal of time playing for a Catholic WCv and numerous of your goals (i.e. offing Russia, converting England, killing religous enemies, etc.) are far from trivial.

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here, I recall you this was the easiest strat, not the most amazing.

Again, a little help is handy. Gifts of money, MA and presence of troops help Poland convert the orthodoxes and keep the russian rebels in check. Poland is a big asset in this strategy, not only taking care of the russians but also, most probably, of some scandinavians.

Most respectfully, no it doesn't. I've tried many times to get Poland to convert large swathes of territory, by giving it veritable fortunes in peace settlements. Poland, for reasons I do not fully understand, is terrible at conversion. Yes using your troops to put down Polish revolts will prevent them from imploding (perhaps), but that then leaves you even fewer troops for the rest of your grand adventures.

1. arguably right if comparing from LT 1 to LT 40 or 60, but quite not from LT 40 to LT 60.

Even from LT 40 to LT 60, their force composition becomes better suited to fighting.

2. three times (66%) faster than at LT 1, yes, but 33% quicker only than when they fire twice. And your armies get the same advantage. Not counting it's usually better and easier to crush the rebels when they're the attacking force, depending on terrain.

You are still operating off the assumption that the player will always be able to avoid all civil wars.

Did I tell I didn't mess there ? First Spain has a habit of warring with those northwestern states, so help is given. But I also spoke about getting african colonies' manpower, so you need land connection, and that implies conquest of part of the continent. And early conquest and conversion of the pagans.

Okay so you have troops in Poland supressing rebellions, troops helping out in the Great Northern War, troops carving up central Europe, and troops mucking it up in Africa. That is a rather broad theater of operations and doing so economicly is well beyond even experienced skill.

Also, Mameluks have Byzantium's cores, so it's free lunch.

Egypt my good sir. Capitals have this nasty habit of not being a quick free lunch. I suppose it is theoreticly possible to alliance hop into a war with the Mamelukes, arrange for their annexation, and then to alliance hop on the unfortunate victor; but I'd not describe such machinations as "easy".

Which is exactly just under half a chance to get those events. Thanks for the precision, but we at least seem to agree on those odds. And 30 years are consistent with a five-rounds WC.

Yes which means in just under half the games you play you nab an additional nigh unto unavoidable civil war by events. You base your strategy around avoiding CW, fair enough, yet you then blithly dismiss the fact that you are a coin flip away from CW via event mechanics (yes I know the -2 isn't always placing you at 0, however odds of it striking when you are at 1 or 2 as well as it chaining with other nasty events is enough to say approximately 50%).

Sure one can declare a war whenever you drop to zero, but your previous calculations have not mentioned keeping a diplo in reserve.

You forget the number of really big countries is quite low. Mughals and Persia mostly. The other countries have less than ten countries - otherwise, they're not numerous.

Once you're telling there're too many countries there, and next you tell they're all big. Make a choice, because the number of provinces isn't that high

No, I know that exactly. However if Either Persia or the Mughals have more than 300% total valuation in their non-capital provinces you cannot defeat them in 4 bb rounds.

Frankly you are glossing over important minor details. Having many small states, means that your initial BB rounds get longer, having a even one large (or more aptly high valued) empire means that you will take more than 4 rounds to off them.

I'm not saying this can't be done, I'm saying it takes an extremely good mix of luck and expertise.

It depends on which one. With China for example, it's possible if you take muslim techgroup following Zeng He. Bur for non-latin/orthodox/muslim, it'd be near to impossible to keep up with the europeans. For those, I'd say the best is to attempt an early WC, before you get late compared to them. But you might not keep up enough income to finish.

Muslims can keep up with the Europeans, but getting a substantial lead is nigh unto impossible. You either need to stay small, grow garantuan inordinately quickly, or dabble in the forbidden fruit of innovation. I have found it quite impossible to get more than a CRT LT lead on the Europeans when going for WC; and frankly that CRT lead isn't worth the cost.

IB:

On a more relevent note I'm interested to hear how you did all of this in your Byantien game. If you kicked off the BB wars in 1640 or so (which you must have to take advantage of turbo-annexing Chine) you have 220 years of BB reduction from your monarch. I've never played BYZ so I don't know what their DIP ratings are, but if you average losing 1 BB per 5 years (which sounds awfully good to me) you lose about 44 BB points from the monarch. Add in 55 for the BB limit in 1640 (which also seems high to me) and you have a total of 100 BB points to play with. With this you managed to
1) Conquer all your cores. Fine, this can be done at a very small BB cost, although if you did it for under 5 or 6 I'm quite impressed.
2) Conquered all of HRE, France, and the Netherlands. This is 69 provinces. Unless I'm misunderstanding your approach you must have taken about 10 provinces in Italy as well. (I suppose maybe you got Spain to take them).
3) Cut a path to the Siberian corridor. I guess this is only about 5 provinces from the edge of your cores (Tabriz, Georgia, or whatever). Still it's another 5 provinces.
4) Kept England Catholic, by taking protestant provinces from them and giving them back. In theory this can be done for very little net BB, but, again, if you managed to do it for under 3-4 BB I'm impressed. They do convert away from Catholicism by event at least 3 times.
5) Got manpower from Africa. Again I'm not sure what you mean here, but to be getting manpower from either Zimbabwe or West Africa you need about 10 province for each. I can't see that you're taking the needed provinces from pagans.
6) Messed with Poland and Russia, so that Poland takes out Russia. Again this can theoretically eb done at no BB, but I'd be hard pressed to see doing it for under 5.

3)Minimum is three provinces; however odds are against a simple single shot to nab all three of them. The first is the GH's CoT which requires a smashing victory to nab, the second is Alga held by Nogai, and the third is Aralask held by the Khazaks.

5)You can reach open territory by taking three provinces from Nubia (including capital). This however requires you to find someone to take Nubia's 4th interior province off your hands. From there you can colonize down to Zanj where someone will have to blow a BB on the DoW to burn the TPs. Normally this is you given the Zanj AI. After this you have nothing but pagans and AI on the initial map to round the Cape and head back up to the west. The problem is that Portugal settles amid the path there quite early and bashing your way through is rather annoying (if not BB heavy).

Beyond that I'm not seeing terribly much in the way of bad math. Doing everything done before kicking the war off is most impressive.