Do I just need to Truce Break?

[Jay916]

Playing a game as Austria, I revoked the privigelia (sp) early and my first act was to break off a chunk of France. But now with how stupidly long truces are, and with my desire to possibly do a WC, should I just start truce breaking everyone in Europe? At least for now anyways? Because I need to crack France, England, Castille, AND Portugal to keep them from colonizing everything. And I'm not sure I can do it in time without just truce breaking, a LOT.

Any advice?

 

[bbqftw]

you don't really need to trucebreak as long as you get a foothold in the British Isles early (so you don't have to mass heavies which you won't have the money until ~1600 in most cases)

Portugal is down in 2-3 wars, and you can remove Castile's coastline in 2. France and England don't take exploration 1st so you have a slightly more generous clock to deal with them.

Here are my moves right after revoking - WC finished in 1654 so pacing was okay but I still made some mistakes - http://imgur.com/a/ZWZWr. Remember that Imperial Ban CB gives 75% warscore cost and free diplomatic power cost on all core return. It is a very useful CB for shredding down France (core return discounts from Guyenne, Toulouse, Provence, Flanders will save you ~300 DIP and 70% warscore - almost a whole 15 year truce timer) for this phase of the game. Thus you will not want to take the HRE lands of countries you have Imperial Ban on.

You don't absolutely need to 'kill' Castile early. If you restrict their income enough from rampaging over their lands, they won't be able to subsidize 4 colonists which is where the real colonial problems start happening.

You will want to core the French provinces all the way to the Atlantic, add to empire, so you can eventually add Galicia and Navarra to the empire, which will easily eat Portugal and Spain for you. Galicia can also handle north africa (though not easily, you will need to babysit them) - they have religious ideas so once they convert the Berbers its ok, but it will take a while for that to happen.

 

[Pilot00]

What about their allies? Can you find CBs to declare on them and drag them into a war?

 

[hauptman]

Always make then cancel alliances in your wars... then when they find new allies, dow them and keep the ball rolling.

 

[Kirkegaard]

What idea groups did you chose and in what order?

edit: @bbqftw

 

[bbqftw]

diplo influence exploration expansion, just the bare-bones necessary to make everything work.

If you want a slightly smoother ride (but finishing later) I suggest going quantity 4th (or even earlier, but you do want exploration because shit will hit the fan if Westerners get into Asia). Manpower really is the limiting factor for fast revoke WC, not monarch points.

 

[Kirkegaard]

Don't you need a lot of adm. point to core all those provinces?

As I understand it, you give a lot of provinces to vassals but you need to core some, add to empire and then release as new country, that can eat conquered provinces?

 

[bbqftw]

Yes, but you don't really need to core a whole lot yourself. Remember that you can add provinces to HRE via adjacent seazone. So you can add Galicia to the empire by going Gascogne -> Asturias -> Galicia. Similarly, Scotland can be added to the empire from Calais -> Normandie -> Cornwall -> Glamorgan -> Ayrshire.

I think at the end of my Austrian WC I had around 1000 base tax of provinces myself. Possibly even less.

Also: a tip I learned from the Norwegian WC that inspired mine. Bankrupting a country and getting peasant rebels sieging all their land will greatly increase local autonomy, allowing you to take land for even cheaper. Timurids are the best to do this to, you can shave 4 full truce timers off finishing that region by exploding them with rebels.