Five years since I last played - how do people do World Conquests nowadays?

[PrawnStar]

So yeah I've not played EU4 in 5 years - I seem to recall forts with maintainance and ZOC had just become a thing. Bought myself a new laptop last weekend and thought let's try EU4 again.

Lot's of new stuff. So looking for a reasonable explanation of how to do a World Conquest under current 1.32 mechanics - or pointing to a good AAR/Youtube playlist. Ideally not several hundred hours of twitch streams.

Thanks in advance

Prawn

 

[Victoria 3 finally]

Look up a regular WC (relatively recent of course since 1.24 isnt very relevant now) and remember that now its slightly easier due to reduced Ae and warscore cost.

 

[Astalic]

On mechanic side depend the DLCs you own.

IMO the easiest way to do a (regular) world conquest is taking Oïrat and using horde mechanic (permanant CB on neighbours + razing) to expand fast, killing the empire of china very early in order to form Yuan without the mandate and blob, blob more and more... and more...

There is also the austria/bohemian strat where you reform the HRE to get the vassal swarm and become a living coalition without exploiting (Check lambda revoke for exploit) you can do it before absolutism kick in. (The monument in Bohemia is really strong if you have leviathan).

That's the two strat that I and a friend) used to WC on 1.31 and 1.32

The other well know strat is starting as timurid, manage the "difficult" start, integrate you vassal and form mughal (who have a crazy blobing capacity and verry good missions)

AFAIK, for other country the main strat for wc is taking admin/diplo/Offensive/Humanist (the order may vary depending of your need/point available) and blob, first mainly via vassal reconquest and once absolutism is here via yourself (try to get max absolutism quickly to get the adm eff bonus from it).

Though i'm not the best at WC, i don't like this gameplay. I did it once with the oïrat strat on 1.31 (one tag + full cav because it's a niche case where cav work) to get the world conqueror achievement. I think you'll find better/more precise advice from people who are specialized at the job

I hope it can give you idea anyways.

Good luck and welcome back on the game

EDIT : and if you don't own any DLC i think you can check this :

 

[Borgio]

There are several ways to do it, but IMO they all become quite boring after ~200 years:

Castile -> Spain, going for Personal Union over Portugal, dominating the colonial game, then become HRE Emperor -> vassal swarm
Austria, gets up to 7 PUs just from their mission tree, not even including the Burgundian Inheritance or spreading Habsburg dynasty on the Spanish throne -> HRE vassal swarm
Ottomans -> just blobbing hard, they still have the easiest start
Timurids -> form the Mughals, automatically accepting all cultures is insane
Oirats -> Yuan -> Great Mongol Empire, the trick is to annex Ming instead of taking over the Mandate of Heaven, so you're still a horde and just raze every province in the world

And then there are several strategies involving tag-switching, to stack permanent modifiers from mission trees (Savoy, Bavaria, France etc...) and stacking permanent claims as well as temporary modifiers from mission trees. Most of them end up being the HRE vassal swarm as well. Needless to say, the HRE centralization path is the way to go, don't take the last reform until you're finished with the world conquest

edit: And, ehh, there is this relatively new thing called "Governing Capacity". It's a soft-limit on how much development your country can have at a given time. It increases mostly by advancing in ADM tech, and several buildings can help to reduce the value of a province towards this governing capacity Wiki about Gov Cap

 

[MachopPower69]

If you have the Leviathan DLC, there are lots of great monuments to get like Alhambra in Granada

 

[PrawnStar]

Thanks guys - all interesting feedback.

I was thinking more about a regular country rather than a special case. I have got the patience and micromanagement ability to slog through some very grindy stuff if needed - it's a shame the pictures have been lost from my EU3 AARs

Astalic - I need to figure out Absolutism - that's new but I'm definitely going to need better Admin Efficiency

Borgio - thanks for the tip on Governing Capacity - I definitely need to understand that better!

MachopPower69 - No Leviathan, tbh I can't even remember buying the DLC I do have.

​

 

[Guibou]

Thanks guys - all interesting feedback.

I was thinking more about a regular country rather than a special case. I have got the patience and micromanagement ability to slog through some very grindy stuff if needed - it's a shame the pictures have been lost from my EU3 AARs

Astalic - I need to figure out Absolutism - that's new but I'm definitely going to need better Admin Efficiency

The higher absolutism you get, the more admin efficiency you get. The base amount of efficiency got reduced so you absolutely need to get high absolutism fast. There's a disaster (Court and country) that can help you get increase maximum absolutism that most WC require to go through. The cap is 100 absolutism for the max bonus but you can still reach 115-120, that way if you have unfortunate events, you dont lose the max bonus available. Try to blob alot 1610-1750 because once revolution start, it will cost you alot more the higher your absolutism is (at 100 absolutism, you get 50% autonomy in your core), and since you will be huge, you won't be able to embrace it quickly either. That will leave you with a hard 20-30years on the economy side of management.

Borgio - thanks for the tip on Governing Capacity - I definitely need to understand that better!

The meta is to spam courthouses to lower the capacity drain that new provinces have. There's no more cap on how many state you can have, but if you want to keep your capacity under check you surely don't want to state more than your main hub (culture/religion/trade). You can put a few specific provinces in trade compagny to get extra merchants and leave the rest unstated. The old meta to rush India and TC it all is mostly dead. You can go way over cap... but it will hurt ALOT your AE management and the cost to core new stuff. Being an empire gives alot of free governing capacity so if you chose a nation that is stuck as a duchy (like some theocracy) you will have trouble managing that early game if you blob alot.

 

[Josar]

The most important thing is to have vassals to feed land, and especially cores to.

 

[Astalic]

Astalic - I need to figure out Absolutism - that's new but I'm definitely going to need better Admin Efficiency

Around 1600 absolutism appear (A wild absolutism appear, master ball go ! lol) and you can max it via different strat. Often via autonomy reduction and harsh treatment on rebel. You also have a disaster (court and country : https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Court_And_Country ) who can help you. You must "win" it though.

For other sources of adm eff there is few country who have it in their idea (IIRC : Bharat, Germany, unified HRE, Yuan and Qing), if you have the DLC "mandate of heaven" you can have 5% on the absolutism era. Some mission also give Adm eff (IIRC : austria, prussia, germany and russia, most of them should be DLC locked) and the monument alhambra (cost 8k5 ducat at least and need leviathan DLC, still a really strong monument)

You also have adm eff on tech 17, 23, 27 (+10% each).

So most of your adm eff will come from Absolutism + tech (if i understood well, you don't have that much DLC so it will be maybe your only sources).

You should also check the estates mechanics (who impact max absolutism). You can check the strategy part of this link : https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Estates

 

[yyrkroon]

Still as painful as it ever was. God bless you if you have the patience for the tedium.

On one hand things are easier (remember the insane rebels on the early versions), but my god there are so many provinces now...

 

[PrawnStar]

Still as painful as it ever was. God bless you if you have the patience for the tedium.

On one hand things are easier (remember the insane rebels on the early versions), but my god there are so many provinces now...

Rebels? 99 problems but rebels ain't one of them. Not since my EU3 Golden Horde AAR - the Tribal Succesion crisis of 1802 saw 475 rebellions on the first day. By the time I'd WC'd in 1815 I'd had 7563 revolts with 34,128,000 rebels.

The province number looks to be a real pain - just about everywhere's been chopped into little bits. Even things like coastal western australia which is empty even now.

 

[_Bachus_]

The WC is easier than then. IF you know what you're doing.

1. Stack CCR.
2. Quality > Quantity. Build 140 discipline and stackwipe everything that moves.
3. Time is most important resource of the game. Don't waste it.
4. Learn where mana and money is coming from. And use them to dominate.
5. Go for specific strategy and stack modifiers around it.

 

[PrawnStar]

The WC is easier than then. IF you know what you're doing.

5. Go for specific strategy and stack modifiers around it.

My problem is I've forgot what I'm doing - it really has been 5 years since I played

Can you flesh out an example of your 5th point - the current AARs lean heavily on people already understanding what's going on

 

[Orkonkel]

I've only done two WCs (gave up on an Orthodox one faith that would've easily been WC but I wouldn't be able to convert colonial nations in time), I regularly reach the mid-to-late 1600s in various stages of blobbiness and these are my observations:

1. Mana is no longer as much of an issue. You get so much more (+5 advisors, cheaper advisors, +mana from estates, etc, etc), plus you can disinherit/abdicate if your heir or ruler sucks.
2. 1444-1610 is primarily meant to give you a strong foundation for massive absolutism conquest. Of course you can't be an OPM by 1600 and have an easy WC, but you conquer way, way, way more land with absolutism than without.
3. AE became more of a bottleneck as more provinces, development, and tags were added. This was slightly alleviated in the previous patch, but you really want to expand in multiple directions using reconquest wars or diplo vassalization to reduce AE gain.
3b. Diplo vassalization is so strong right now. With the introduction of monuments, you can get so much dip rep not even counting ideas.

The easiest WC option is probably Mughals, followed by Ottomans. I am not sure which are the best contenders for the non-Muslim options, but they are probably less expansive/immediately powerful (Holy Roman Empire vassal swarm reform excluded).

Monuments:
There is one in Granada that gives administrative efficiancy (nerfed to 5% out of its original 15). Rhodos has 15% warscore against different religions, as does Mecca (only available for Muslims). These three are the ultimate blob-mode monuments, but Paris (15% better relations over time) and Bangkok (-10% aggressive expansions) just make it a lot easier not getting into tedious coalition wars. In addition, I always try to get somewhere around 50-80% advisor cost reduction from monuments; it is a bonus that is sprinkled all across the map for a lot of different monuments. I pretty much always try to get Amsterdam as well for goods produced and burger loyalty equilibrium.

Plan ahead which monuments you want and which of them requires accepted culture. I tend to only accept cultures required to enable monuments (English, Dutch, Egyptian, Syrian, etc).