Is the 3-Mountain-Achievement possible in 1.7.3?

[Rinsukaze]

@Tortugator and @oblio-

Before going further, you have my gratitude not only for the guide, but for helping me to understand your methods. I'm pretty used to the colonial games, as well as the diplomatic ones, but I ever fail on great empires due to a lack of a good expanding strategy.

What I understand, and correct me please if I'm wrong, is that you:
option 1) fully annex a nation, core the "future" capital and add it to the HRE, then release the vassal. As their capital is on the HRE the vassal will be an HRE member too.
option 2) annex the necessary provinces to create a non-existing nation, coring the "future" capital and release it.

Then, in the next wars, feed him with his cores or with the provinces with an accepted culture.

So, in the example of Scandinavia, it was "dismembered" recreating Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden as HRE vassals, and then feeding them the rest of Scandinavia. This way only 4 provinces where cored, but they had to be the capital provinces.

 

[oblio-]

@Tortugator and @oblio-

Before going further, you have my gratitude not only for the guide, but for helping me to understand your methods. I'm pretty used to the colonial games, as well as the diplomatic ones, but I ever fail on great empires due to a lack of a good expanding strategy.

What I understand, and correct me please if I'm wrong, is that you:
option 1) fully annex a nation, core the "future" capital and add it to the HRE, then release the vassal. As their capital is on the HRE the vassal will be an HRE member too.
option 2) annex the necessary provinces to create a non-existing nation, coring the "future" capital and release it.

Then, in the next wars, feed him with his cores or with the provinces with an accepted culture.

So, in the example of Scandinavia, it was "dismembered" recreating Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden as HRE vassals, and then feeding them the rest of Scandinavia. This way only 4 provinces where cored, but they had to be the capital provinces.

Yes, those are the options. The first choice gives you a lot of AE and IMO isn't worth it unless you're in a huge rush. If you have time for several wars I'd just get 1 province and then return cores.
Also regarding the second option, if I recall correctly, the capital does not matter. You can just get the first province that suits you (adjacent to HRE, low warscore needed, low OE, claim or even wargoal), and since you release the country as an OPM, that will be their capital regardless. The AI can move its capital but I doubt it does it often and I'm not sure how the interactions with the HRE work.
If someone can confirm that you need to core the actual capital and add it to the HRE to prevent capital changes, that would be great

 

[TheMeInTeam]

100% this. If you understand the game and are willing to put in the time, it really is not THAT hard, just incredibly tedious.

OP really did it in the best fashion possible. People are probably still thinking it's tough because they watched Jake's Pagan/no HRE Ryukyu world domination. But if you westernize, convert, and take over the HRE, it really is an order of magnitude easier and faster.

I've been meaning to finally do my LP attempt. There's a 3rd method I believe, that doesn't involve HRE but is much easier than what Jake did.

 

[Tortugator]

@oblio I can confirm that it does NOT have to be the potential capital province. It has to be the nation's primary culture, however. So you can release Finland from any province where Finland has a core AND the culture is Finnish. To ensure that this vassal doesn't cost any DiplRel, you should furthermore find a way to add it to the HRE.

Option 1 may be useful aswell, if there is a reason that you must fully annex them (sometimes less AE than vassalization, or its a nation with CNs) I used full annexation primarily vs steppe Nomads => less AE and they convert the provinces for you

 

[Lehran]

You cannot add a province to the HRE that is outside of Europe since 1.6. So Ming can't be an HRE-vassal.

 

[MaXimillion]

A little late to the party. DDR Jake already got it on this patch and on video too.

Jake did it in 1.7 using an exploit that's no longer present in 1.7.3.

 

[Tortugator]

You cannot add a province to the HRE that is outside of Europe since 1.6. So Ming can't be an HRE-vassal.

Yeah, but for the 3-Mountain-Achievement you will probably prefer to protectorate them anyway.

 

[Outrider]

Yeah, but for the 3-Mountain-Achievement you will probably prefer to protectorate them anyway.

The DIP points alone saved from not trying to integrate Ming is pretty big if you didn't need their land as a power base.

From the looks of things, you definitely didn't need it

 

[Wombat101]

I've been trying to follow the guidelines in this post for the Three Mountain Achievement and keep on failing when it comes to the African portion of the strategy. I've gotten as far as conquering part of the coast of India and progressing to Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti after finishing the exploration idea group. However when I try to annex my African holdings the tooltip said that I don't have a core close enough to annex them. I tried keeping a province to myself next to one of the African vassals and still too far away to core.

I started over and tried to colonize my way there, first colonizing the Maldives, Maha and then northern Madagascar. The whole process was taking a very long time and I ended up getting stomped by other powers in India but it was already 1499 by the time I was getting to Madagascar and I can only imaging how much more colonization I'd have to do to get in range to core Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti.

Does anyone have any general guide about how to quickly get around Africa to Mali and be able to core Jolof in a reasonable period of time to Westernize? Is colonizing there near impossible without Dip tech 7? Its hard to see how that can be obtained by the early 1500's especially while filling out the exploration idea group. I'm at a bit of a loss on how to proceed.

 

[Thrake]

I've been trying to follow the guidelines in this post for the Three Mountain Achievement and keep on failing when it comes to the African portion of the strategy. I've gotten as far as conquering part of the coast of India and progressing to Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti after finishing the exploration idea group. However when I try to annex my African holdings the tooltip said that I don't have a core close enough to annex them. I tried keeping a province to myself next to one of the African vassals and still too far away to core.

I started over and tried to colonize my way there, first colonizing the Maldives, Maha and then northern Madagascar. The whole process was taking a very long time and I ended up getting stomped by other powers in India but it was already 1499 by the time I was getting to Madagascar and I can only imaging how much more colonization I'd have to do to get in range to core Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti.

Does anyone have any general guide about how to quickly get around Africa to Mali and be able to core Jolof in a reasonable period of time to Westernize? Is colonizing there near impossible without Dip tech 7? Its hard to see how that can be obtained by the early 1500's especially while filling out the exploration idea group. I'm at a bit of a loss on how to proceed.

You must avoid the jungle provinces (Madagascar). There are quite a couple provinces East of MAdagascar that have no negative modifier (and almost no natives), from there you should be able to get to South Africa, and from there, the small island close to the West African coast and South of Benin isn't jungle as well in case you need it.

Getting those will also greatly slow European colonization as does its best to aoid jungle provinces and will rather focus on America (there's also an island beetween Africa and America that isn't jungle if you really want to cut colonization, plus the arid African provinces that aren't as deterrent as jungle).

 

[highsis]

Congratulations, very impressive.

Now Paradox makes expansion harder! (no sarcasm)

 

[Tortugator]

I've been trying to follow the guidelines in this post for the Three Mountain Achievement and keep on failing when it comes to the African portion of the strategy. I've gotten as far as conquering part of the coast of India and progressing to Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti after finishing the exploration idea group. However when I try to annex my African holdings the tooltip said that I don't have a core close enough to annex them. I tried keeping a province to myself next to one of the African vassals and still too far away to core.

I started over and tried to colonize my way there, first colonizing the Maldives, Maha and then northern Madagascar. The whole process was taking a very long time and I ended up getting stomped by other powers in India but it was already 1499 by the time I was getting to Madagascar and I can only imaging how much more colonization I'd have to do to get in range to core Oyo/Benin/Hausa/Ashanti.

Does anyone have any general guide about how to quickly get around Africa to Mali and be able to core Jolof in a reasonable period of time to Westernize? Is colonizing there near impossible without Dip tech 7? Its hard to see how that can be obtained by the early 1500's especially while filling out the exploration idea group. I'm at a bit of a loss on how to proceed.

A more detailled guide will probably follow. Concerning your issue: You may avoid the "out of coring range"-problem by selling your vassal a Province with very low Basetax like Bastar (your vassals buy EVERY Core province from you!). So they get into coring range and you can annex them!

As already stated by Thrake, colonizing into Africa is way too slow. Colonizing jungle provinces is slow and on Madagascare there are so many natives, that you would need your entire army (at this point...your poor chinese troops) to kill the natives there under high casualties. So this is no option.

 

[FranKrsto]

WC with Ryukyu 50ish years before game end date? Damn man, you should stream, I would watch that

 

[Wombat101]

Thanks for the advice. I thought a vassal had to have the same culture/religion and be adjacent in order to sell it anything to them. That will help immensely.

 

[atwix]

A more detailled guide will probably follow. Concerning your issue: You may avoid the "out of coring range"-problem by selling your vassal a Province with very low Basetax like Bastar (your vassals buy EVERY Core province from you!). So they get into coring range and you can annex them!

As already stated by Thrake, colonizing into Africa is way too slow. Colonizing jungle provinces is slow and on Madagascare there are so many natives, that you would need your entire army (at this point...your poor chinese troops) to kill the natives there under high casualties. So this is no option.

If they patch "feeding vassals a core to integrate them in another continent", this whole strategy to get hre emperor might be lot harder. Is there even an easy way to become western religion group then? I suppose you could try conquering an OPM in europe to westernize as well.

Can't you get HRE border through Tunesia/malta/sardiania/naples as well? I should look at the sea tiles ingame.

Anyways , you did a nice job. Think this is one of the easiest ways to get 3 mountains.

 

[Tortugator]

@atwix - my initial strategy was to conquer Serbia/Bosnia/Naples to get a foothold in Europe. I managed it in my first serious attempt, but there was no real advantage to it as you cannot move your capital and even if you could, you would lose a lot of income as most of your empire would become "distant overseas".

Going through the middle east is probably no option. In India you need tons of military points for harsh treatment when conquering (you are pagan) and for colonizing you will need even more for killing the natives (you need your whole army to kill them with low casualties...so not killing them is no option). So you will probably fall behind in military tech fast like I did. Combined with your weak units and the steppe nomads fighting-advantage at home (shock-bonus), it would be super hard to defeat them without being western. I don't think, that you could create a path through Timurids/Mamlukes/Tunesia in the necessary amount of time.

Furthermore I think, that keeping Portugal and Castille out of Africa is important. If you colonize the African coast you cut them off Africas heartland and Asia. That's a lot of Basetax you would have to conquer and core afterwards.

If the devs really decide to stop this way of annexing your vassals on foreign continents, you should probably try to colonize your way to Africa: National Focus on Dipl. (some more Diplomatic Techs for colonial range) and the Colonial Range Advisor may help you to overleap Madagascar and do it in a reasonable amount of time. Still, you would lose 20-30 years compared to the vassal-annexation-strategy.

 

[unmerged(1823)]

Congratulations, very impressive.

Now Paradox makes expansion harder! (no sarcasm)

I suspect the HRE religion mechanic and added provinces might slow down conquest some, but thats not been added to stop WC.

 

[atwix]

how did you carve path to HRE then? I assume africa---> into qara qinlyu-->georgia-->crimea-->wallachia west to ancona? Edit: saw you put capital in Judea. And why go around black sea? The province east of izmir connects to the ports north of them, you can reach HRE without going around black sea. Or was a fight with ottomans too hard then (assuming ottomans took karaman, where the province belongs to)?

I theorycrafted your approach months ago, but i didn't think of the "feed vassal a core to integrate them near portugal colony in jolof" strategy then, and i thought back then it was bit too tedious to attempt then. and unsure outcome, since they were in middle of patching 1.4 to 1.7....

Some tricks for WC and conquest you gotta learn on forum I used this vassal feed core trick to avoid the coring cost bonus on north africa. Just sell your OPM vassal one cored berber province (i used an elector vassal for this ), and the culture becomes accepted in that vassal. Do war evey 5 years for one province, and feed the entire berber culture to your vassal. You got to convert them to catholic (or w/e religion the vassal has) first, though, before selling the province. Works on countries like dai viet too.

Thx for sharing strategy. I'll post result of my one tag savoy world conquest soonish after coring the last scrubs.

P.S.: Don't you think "sunset invasion" is harder achievement then 3mountains with current mechanics? As you said, 3M is tedious, but never hard if done right..

 

[atwix]

I suspect the HRE religion mechanic and added provinces might slow down conquest some, but thats not been added to stop WC.

i thought a dev said WC is (so called) impossible after art of war?

Or am i misreading this comment?

 

[Red John]

i thought a dev said WC is (so called) impossible after art of war?

Or am i misreading this comment?

Has it ever been said that they've added in things to SPECIFICALLY stop world conquest?