Mughal WC run

[heroforhirerob]

I'm going for a Mughal world conquest run. This is my first attempt at playing them. I'm thinking Diplo, Admin, Quantity, and Influence as my first four idea groups and then military ideas for the rest. Any recommendations on this run? Oh...and for the World Conqueror achievement....do I need the uncolonized provinces as well?

 

[Nostalgium]

Pretty sure you just need to be the last country alive. As for the rest I can't help you, but the four first picks seem sane to me. Unsure if common WC strats demand the rest be military though - I'd think you'd at least want Humanist to sharply lessen the time spent dealing with rebels. Offensive, maybe, for the siege ability (and even more passive rebel suppression), but i.e. Quality I can only see as having very minor value in WC.

 

[Jihem]

I think you'll make your life easier by taking the Timurids, and managing to control Kurdistan and Syria before the Ottomans. Thus the missions of total conquest of the Mamluks will not be triggered, and you can easily eliminate the Mamluks afterwards. I also recommend an alliance with the most powerful European enemy of the Ottomans to avoid their blobbing. It will be much easier to kill them later. I think next you'll have to prioritize conquering all of India, because the cultural assimilation buffs will make your economy powerful, and that's going to be accentuated by conquering China very easily right after. Don't forget to take exploration as a third idea to get your hands on the colonies of the Pacific and Moluccas before the Europeans, too.

 

[Guibou]

For the WC acheivement you don't need uncolonised land, but it can still be usefull to get the full culture assimilation bonus. For exemple, by colonising a province in the somalia area you can get an extra missionary. Maybe expension as a later group, or explo earlier to get into SEA early.

Try to do most of the Timurids missions before switching to Mughals as you will lose all claims, even permanent. As said, good idea to expend in the Syria area to block of Ottoblob. A good trick ! Ally the memeluk and release Syria with the province in QQ. Feed them back all their cores with favors. Block off Ottoblob and you get alot of dev with free AE.

You might want religious to expand faster in Asia, you could drop off influence... unless you want to play heavy on vassal feeding... both options are good. If you wait for imperialism you will be bored af after you finished your mission claims.

Early game you need alot of military point to be early on tech and barage/assault forts. Usefull to to farm profesionalism early.

I'd go diplo, admin, religious/explo, religious/quantity.

 

[Bouchart]

I recently played a Mughals game. Not to WC though, but into the mid 1600s or so. I took Admin, Influence, Religious as my first three ideas.

Deus Vult works great in general but a lot of your neighbors are Sunni, where it won't help. Make an effort to border Ming and start pounding on them. Ton of dev there. You have high heathen tolerances as Mughals and free culture acceptance so I think you can get away with passing on Humanist. Concentrate on convertine Shia and Ibadi land, and you can use Propagate Religion for the rest or even ignore a lot of it without too many problems.

I liked Influence because there's a number of Sunni minors in the Middle East that you can peacefully vassalize and integrate, and there will probably be a rump horde or two to take. Don't vassalize anything in India since you get permanent claims on it all anyway.

One issue I had the the Mughals was trade. Forming the Mughals moves your main trade node to Doab, and as rich as India is, that particular node isn't great and trade tends to leak to your enemies.. You might consider moving your main trade node back to Persia and pushing all trade to there.

 

[simanthegratest]

You might want to take religious and switch to zoroastrian, that way you would get the deus vult cb

 

[Blackmoore]

I recently did this myself as my first WC. Here are some tips that might be helpful.

First, play as Timurids, as they have the best starting location, mission tree and the easiest time getting rolling. Finish Timurid's mission tree before tag switching and forming the Mughals. Timurids have great missions, claims and bonuses. They also have militarily superior ideas for early game. Finally, the Mughal culture thing only works once you've captured and entire culture group.

Second, concentrate on pushing WEST and NORTH at first. You have three potential problems -- the Russians, the Ottomans and the Bengalis. If you want to do a WC you cannot afford to be fighting death wars with these countries, so you have to keep them from getting too big too early. Yes, France, Spain, Austria and Great Britain are also tough, but by the time you are breaking into the British Isles your snowball momentum should be inexorable. Syria makes a nice March. Khazak has many, many cores to break up all the hordes.

Mughals are great because they have the culture mechanic, massive CCR bonuses, amazing missions and because they can control the Persian trade node easily and make buckets of ducats with ease. I would not consider them particularly strong from a military standpoint. 20% Cav Combat, 5% Discipline and an extra military policy makes your ideas from a military point of view on the lower side of mediocre.

So, you are going to need to plan on how to fix this. You can load up on Mil idea sets, stronger inherent military nations can get away with just Offensive. But all things being equal, I don't think that the Mughals can. Another option to consider is the Sikh religion. It offers incredible military benefits and, of course, with Religious ideas, you can have proto-imperialism in the 1500s. Also, they can access some of the mad Dharmic religious monuments. I finally broke through and did a WC with Sikh powered armies that were just disgusting. I think I only took Quantity and Offensive.

Last tip, is for your ideas.

Diplo and Admin are good starters for the Mughals. Especially because you are going to go on massive rampages eating up territory in all directions. Quantity is a good, perhaps mandatory pick for the Mughals because they don't get any buff to their manpower in their national ideas. However, because of the crazy CCR that the Mughals get -- including a 5% Admin Efficiency from missions and extra CCR from culture (Dharmic monument if you go Sihk) -- I don't know that Influence is a good use of a diplo idea set. You will be super efficient coring things on your own and Mughals are already incredibly mana efficient with tech and idea discounts. I'd go and get Religious as your 3rd or 4th idea group and then you are basically done with Admin for the game. Quantity+Religious gets you 10% morale as a policy, which you will need.

 

[grisamentum]

I think going Religious is not the best choice, especially if you're converting to Sikh. You lose 1% missionary strength for every Guru teaching you enact, you don't get a lot of extra missionaries, and you have no need to convert culture. For a WC, Humanist is a much better pick simply because it drastically lowers unrest, both from Separatism and from Tolerance of Heathens. These bonuses are immediate on conquest, unlike Religious which requires conquest -> conversion. With a limited missionary pool you aren't converting land that fast, and you have to wait until it's cored anyway. Plus you're eventually committing to a -2% missionary strength once you're at your gov cap.

Humanist is a much better pick in the same slot, since you instantly have -10 years of separatism on conquest, plus additional tolerance of heathens, and a flat -2 unrest everywhere. You get a similar bonus from Religious and TTF, but, again, only work after conversion. You also already have +3 Tolerance of Heathens from Indian Sultanate tier 1 reform. Converting anything as Mughals is... a very weird idea.

Besides Admin and Humanist, Expansion is worth a look as a mid/late-game pick, since it'll make your territories much more efficient. If you do go Sikh you can get the Harmandir Sahib great wonder for another -15% autonomy, take the -10% reform, go economic hegemon for another -20%, state house per state for another -5%, and you're getting the minimum autonomy penalty down to like -25%. This actually helps a lot in a WC because so much your admin cap will become a limiting factor relatively quickly, and part of being Mughals is that you need to personally own all provinces of a culture get the diwan bonus.

Because of how diwan works for Mughals, and because you already have -25% CCR, I don't actually see much benefit in doing a lot of vassal feeding, so you can skip Influence. Diplo is more important sooner for the -25% province war score cost.

 

[Blackmoore]

I agree with you that Religious is not inherently wonderful for Sikhism, excepting of course the "rare" religion thing and the CB.

However, I think Quantity is kind of mandatory for Mughals since they get nothing out of their national ideas. Having to spam barracks on top of courthouses, and Soldier's Homes on top of State Houses is not great. The Mughals -- Sikh Mughals in particular -- can build some monuments with that money that would benefit them more. Since Quantity is nearly mandatory (nothing is actually mandatory beyond Admin/Diplo), Religious is the best pairing out of the Religious/Humanist choice, and you can make excellent use out of the CB to conquest without stop and without end one hundred fifty years before Imperialism.

As for the lowered Missionary Strength, unless you are trying for a 1 Faith run (which would be stupid hard as Sikh), all you need to do is convert your states, as they are the most important and productive part of your realm. I was able to easily convert all of Persia, and all of North India as Sikh Mughals. That was plenty. The only reason I continued with converting territories was that you get prestige for converting -- like the age of Reformation bonus -- after you assimilate the tibet culture super-group.

 

[grisamentum]

Oh I agree about Quantity, for sure. But I don't think that justifies going Religious just for an extra 10% morale. You already get +10% from Sikh and you can take another +5% from a Guru later on. And you should be able to have a military technology advantage for most of the game anyway: you're Sikh, and as the player you can manage institutions far better than the AI can. Hell, for the slot, Defensive would be better, since you get more morale, and more AT for more morale. Even Aristo would be better, for the AT and the manpower.

And while you COULD convert your state provinces only, you shouldn't need to. Just get to positive tolerance of heathens, nothing else is required. The other downside of diwan here is that you're also committing to -2% missionary strength because you can never accept a culture until you've literally conquered the entire group, which is going to plague you even way before you've hit your gov cap. Again, as Mughals, why convert anything? You're just asking for more unrest, even if you're only converting your states. It doesn't do anything that just getting Humanism does better.

 

[Fenrirwolf]

Heres a recap of my last mughal wc, just a few weeks old :
start as timurid, get the money from your government interaction, get strong duchies for liberty desire reduction, placate transnoxia if necessary (dont remember, dont think you need to). Conquer most of ajam and his vassals, try to isolate him from other nations, then aim for the rest of the persia region for the generic mission (free monarch points, and you wont get free claims for that region), wait for that untill you have the mission with ccr. integrate transnoxia, kohrasan andfars all at once. restart or bird if your starting ruler dies before this (srsly, this will set you back years unless you somehow get tons of prestige, if you want to try it anyway: take the marriages of your vassals when they offer it, dont offer it yourself, and take the reduced liberty desire from the governemnt action) lose sistan, since you have no cores on him, through a seperate peace deal if possible, otherwise seize most of his provinces when its time to integrate him, seize roh from afghanistan when you integrate him, his only province you dont have a core on. also, dont do any government reforms before forming the mughals, you get the second for free.

From there on, start going into india for the provinces to form mughals, remember to finish of ajam and your generic mission tree (80k soldiers is easy with mercs, maybe keep your starting mercs, get new mercs, fulfill the mssion, then fire the old and used mercs) BEFORE forming mughals, you will lose both cores and missions afterwards.
After forming the mughals the next goal is clear: become emperor of China. Why? more government capacity, tributary the west and north of you where you get no claims, ccr and some more minor bonuses, and free claims on all of china. no need to rush though, mughals ideas, claims through missions in india, and admin ideas and the manpower government interaction or full hindustani culture will give you maximum ccr till you form china. move though india, tibet and from there into china. try to take at least two full chinese cultures before taking the emperorship. dont convert anything you take though, you need to convert to eastern religion, most easily confucian, and the more split up your religions in your empire are, the less provinces you need (majority of your provinces, so if you have 20 sunni, 20 shia, 20 hindu, 20 theravada, 21 confucian you can convert to confucian via rebels). It should be noted that THIS IS ENTIRE STEP NOT NECESSARY FOR A GOOD WC TIME, but i would still recomend it for the sheer insanity of the monster you are creating.
once you become emperor of china and stabilized your mandate, focus on hindu land, india and eastern indonesia. the religious end goal is switching to hindu to use their great monuments and guranteed great heir. with enough ccr and military power to ignore being over government capacity, wich allows you to state and trade company tons of land before the max courthouse upgrade, and still get 80% ccr and its benefits.

Ideas in the following order : admin for ccr, gov cap and tech cost, which is great since you dont spend much admin in your first years, and wont spend much in the future for coring due to all those ccr reductions. next, quantity to get manpower, -attrition and -cost to keep up your war machine. great policy with admin. next, religious, your free ticket to china, but even without going to china really usefull up until imperialism cb becomes available. also, it will keep your indian mainland content once you switch to hindu. next depends on your playstyle, either quality to make your units unstoppable, or exploration to start colonizing and opening new paths for conquest. you will want to controll all/most old world colonizeables by the end for the culture bonuses, though you can mostly rely on europe for that if you let them. also, take either tidore or ternate as subjets, and let him eat the other. free colonies and free colonist from his missions, let him colonize the spice islands for you, just give him 4 ducats per month for 100 years. btw, any provinces in the new world or australia do not count toward assimilating cultures, so dont worry, you dont have to one tag to get spanish assimilation bonus or prevent tidore from colonizing australia. lastly, maybe diplofor province cost, and humanist after imperialism cb is unlocked and religious can be deleted. dont take diplo too early, the province cost discount wont save you much time during the conquest of india and china, depending on how large (or small) the nations in india become. most of the time, you will need the same amount of wars to finish of the larger ones with or without diplo, and you dont need it by the time age of reformation and -25% against other religion from age objective comes up, on the contrary, it might happen more often that you cant take 100% without too much oe.

a few more tipps: try to ally the big guys like bahamis, jaunpur, bengal and vajiangar to keep ae in check in india untill you can steamroll them. bahamis will only really care if you take shia land or very large amounts very quickly, vajiangar only if you start taking hindu nations, so start with jaunpur and bengal to keep them of your back for a decade or two. also, while you are still sunni, you can diplovassalise most of arabia, ae free and some use for your diplo points, relation slots and diplomats, do this after integarting your first vassals as timurids. also, get the estate interaction for free scholar and get the ae scholar, you need as much ae reduction as you can get. try to take bangok early if you have the opportunity for the ae monument. also, the earlier you get exploration, the earlier you can get spains monument for admin efficency.

AND FOR GODS SAKE, DO NOT DO THE VICEROYALTY OF DECCAN MISSION UNTIL YOU HAVE ALL LANDS HE WOULD GET AS STATES AND FULLY CORED. after doing the mission, deccan will spawn and take most vajiangars starting land, look up the wiki(mughals mission, viceroyalty of deccan, look at the event) for what land specifically. if the land you own while taking the decision is fully cored and stated (for 20% the cost since all your ccr bonuses), then deccan will spawn with YOUR CORES STILL FULLY INTACT, allowing you to get 10 admin efficency and not integrate deccan for hundreds (or thousands) of diplopoints over four decades, but instantly like your timurid starters.

 

[BladvakRO]

Oh boy (cracks knuckles), here I go with my 2000 cents. Bear with me

I agree with most of the things that you and others have shared on this topic, but I have others that I disagree with.

I'll divide this comment into different parts:
- preparation ( death of Shahrukh Khan, completing the Timurid missions, up until Mughal tag creation, OR harder, reasons for picking a country other than Timurids)
- early game (consolidation and deciding if it's going to be a valid run)
- midgame (massive blobbing before Absolutism)
- Court and Country (special case - go through it or not?), and bankruptcy come tech levels 11 (for manufactories)
- Absolutism blobbing
- Imperialism boredom

1. Preparation.
Ask yourself this: do you want an Ironman game with some achievements bundled up, or is this a casual kind of game?
If you're going for Achievements, know that you could get the "Third Way" by starting as Oman, not convert from Ibadi, create Mughals and making sure no other religious schools exist (or other Muslim denominations?)
You could bundle up with other achievements too, since once you become the Mughals, you are OP already.

This comment will now assume that you are starting as the Timurids.

1.1. The first 2 years of the game will be a make it or break it. If you mess up in the beginning, it's better to just restart and learn from what just happened.
Here is a ballpark telling you if you messed up the start: if within 2 years you do not have most of Ajam either occupied, and your army is small (less than 20-25k).
Opening move:
- If you have access to it, give the Strong Duchies privilege to the Nobility
- Hire mercenaries to your forcelimit (helps with missions)
- Ally a northern horde (I usually ally Chagatai just because all other options are worse, and Chagatai helps against Uzbek at the beginning)
- Ally one of the Arabian Minors that have the religious school with -10 AE (Hanbali school I think)
- Set your vassals to Offensive status or to Sieging status. You want the vassals to do your dirty job and lose troops in the upcoming wars
- Set your privileges to your liking. Remember that giving the Diplo power privilege to the Burgers (or whatever is called) is a waste, since with the tagswitch to Mughals, you will lose access to that estate, and you will lose the Crownland investment
- Set as a priority the Admin monarch points, hire a Discipline advisor if you can, hire level 1 advisors across the board
- Declare war on 11 Dec 1444 on Ajam, and wait for your vassals to do what they do best. Only intervene with your army if you need to or to snipe small stacks.

1.2. Once you occupy all of Ajam, decide between taking all of Ajam's provinces (it will transfer the vassals to you, which might be problematic for diplo relations and vassal love), or leaving Ajam with one province (it will speed up Ajam's acceptance of the peace treaty)

2. Aim to reach the Caucasus and Syria ASAP.
During the war with Ajam, improve relations with Biapas or another Persian Minor (Mazandaram will hate you, so don't improve with them), so you can vassalize them and feed them land.
Fabricate claim on QQ and declare war with these goals:
- Tabriz (fort and Center of Trade (CoT) ) and Ilam (fort)
- releasing Syria
- humiliate (important for the Age of Discovery bonus and for Projecting Power (PP) )
- reps and money for the rest

2.1. In the meantime, improve relations with your vassals so you can integrate them come 1454
If you can, threaten war on Uzbek to get a Transoxianian core that is also a Kazakh core. If you pull this off, release Kazakh and once the truce with Uzbek is over, get Chagatai in and declare reconquest war on Uzbek

2.2. 1454- start integrating the vassals that DO NOT have your cores - Sistan and Afghanistan - and you can also integrate Fars.
The reason for this is because this way, you will be able to improve relations with your other vassals in a gradual way.
Try to vassalize the Arabian Minor that you allied in the beginning.
Try to find a way to kick Hormuz out of the CoT from the province of Hormuz. It just eats a lot of your trade money.

2.3. Idea picking and Renaissance
Try to develop Herat for Renaissance BEFORE you integrate the big vassals, otherwise, you will need to exploit development on a lot of your provinces.
You will need to pump a lot of diplo and military points into Herat. Admin will be needed elsewhere (coring and stab hits).
Idea groups to start:
- Influence, Admin, Religious in this order.
- After that, Quality and Diplomatic (aim for the province warscore cost here), the order depending on what you are lacking and how well you can win the wars.


2.4a. Ottoman and Mamlukes shenanigans.
Your immediate threat or target are these two. Mamlukes because you can take them on once you have 1.5 times their development in your own development, and the Ottomans, well, think more containment here, try to have a wall of your provinces block the Ottomans from Anatolia. Try to vassalize Dulkadir, maybe release a Caucasian minor, and just BLOCK THE OTTOMANS. You will fight them come Age of Reformation and come the Mughal bonus to artillery cost. Fighting Ottomans before that just asks for trouble and it will result in unnecessary losses until then.

On the Mamlukes - play the vassal game on the Arabian Peninsula, and once the Mamlukes are fighting a war against Ethiopia (they are bound to fight), declare on Mamlukes and take the Syrian cores.

2.4b. Focus on completing the Timurid missions. The rewards are really good, especially compared with what will cost you to get to them. The -20 core cost reduction is especially powerful, but do not miss out on the +15% shock damage and on the +2.5% discipline. With all the wars that you will fight, your manpower will suffer, so you need to get some military bonuses.

3. Midgame.
You are Mughals now. Try to expand on all sides, careful with the AE (use the Religious CB and the Hanbali school AE reduction to good use).
Focus on getting the good provinces first : strategically positioned provinces (eg. Constantinople and the other province so you can cross the Bosphorus), snake your way to Malaya and the Spice Islands, get to the Urals, get Beijing and/or Canton and watch Ming explode, etc. These are just examples, but also targets and goals.
If Brahmanis and/or Vijayanagar are down, declare on them, vassalize them and declare war of reconquest on the other one. It helps with keeping the AE down in the Indian subcontinent, also is easy on your admin points.

For Mughals, I strongly suggest the Religious Culture Unity privilege, it is simply awesome for Mughals.

4. Tech levels 11 aka sweet bankruptcy and Court and Country

Come tech levels 11, you unlock the possibility of building the manufactories for most of your provinces. You should take as much loans as possible and as many bonuses as you can gather, so you can build as many manufactories as you can.
Here are the tips:
- manufactories usually take 5 years to complete, but the time can be reduced BOTH (to my understanding) by the bulding cost reduction as well as by the building cost reduction
- bankruptcies will delete all buildings built in the last 5 years
- you need to finish all buildings at least 5 years before declaring bankruptcy

Here is what I do:
I have a big war around 1510-1520, lets say against the Ottomans or against Ming. I eat 100% province and forget about AE.
I loan up 75-80% of my loan capacity.
Let's say I can take 50 loans at a maximum, I take 40 loans. The rest will be my cushion.
I build manufactories in all the provinces that interest me, I focus on Cloth, Cotton, all the good trade goods. I focus on the Persia and Lahore trade regions, since I can easily benefit from the trade from those manufactories. I try NOT to build manufactories downstream from Persia (i.e. not in Syria, not in Anatolia) since I won't get the trade bonuses from those manufactories for a long time, plus the autonomy will be awful for the next 50 years there anyway.
Once 11 years have passed since initiating the building of the manufactories, I try to dispose of any money, monarch points, stability up, pay loans for vassals, etc, and then declare bankruptcy.
Your income should jump by around 100 ducats per month due to building all those manufactories and the trade from them.
Once the bankruptcy is over, continue with blobbing.

4.1. Court and Country
This is only really needed if you cannot hit 100 Abolutism otherwise or if you want to have Estate Privileges for most of the game.
If you cannot easilly pull this off, I suggest against it, since coupled with the bankruptcy and with all the war in the country, it might be too much of a drain on your manpower and on your sanity.

5. Abolutism blobbing.
You should have foothols in all the Old World regions by now. It is not time to paint the Old World in the dark green that is the Mughals.
I usually stay away from the sanity drain that is fighting in the New World until I have most of Europe (and colonizers) until my thumb.
Make sure to eventually aim to change the trade node to Genoa.
Make sure to start attacking the Great Powers by 1600, so you will eventually have peace of mind in your World Conquest.
Goals here: finish off the Otomans(maybe vassalize them too, they make a great March), dismantle the HRE, get the South Slavic culture Mughal bonus (-15% province warscore, it's a HUGE bonus that stacks with the Diplomatic -20% one), conquer most of Castille/Spain, conquer France, in this order.

6. Imperialism. Yawn.
Start conquering the New World and any other minors in the Old World that are still great powers.

With the Mughals, you can hit the ground running from 1500, about 100 years earlier than most other countries. You will conquer more than half of the world development wise before Imperialism hits, so you need to be mentally prepared for the sludge fest that is fighting all those wars and min-maxing. WC is truly a war on your mental state, but with good preparation you can do it!

 

[Jihem]

The faculty of assimilation of the Mughals dictates in my opinion which areas to conquer in priority.

- India, of course, which has the best bonuses.
- Then China : −20% State maintenance.
- Korea : −5% Idea cost.
- Then the Mon-Khmer : −5% Development cost.
- Let's not forget Japan : +10% Morale of armies.
- To finish with Asia, Kamchatkan : +1 Attrition for enemies (perfect for diminishing enemies that will run away from you)
- Then the Cushitic group : +1 Missionary.
- Immediately after : the Sahelian group: +10% Movement speed (very useful for later wars, which will be easy but tedious).
- West Africa : −5% Construction cost.
- Once in Europe, South Slavic : −10% War score cost vs other religions

The order of the following conquests seems to me to have little importance, and will be essentially contextual.

 

[Dracupuncture]

I'm going for a Mughal world conquest run. This is my first attempt at playing them. I'm thinking Diplo, Admin, Quantity, and Influence as my first four idea groups and then military ideas for the rest. Any recommendations on this run? Oh...and for the World Conqueror achievement....do I need the uncolonized provinces as well?

Ive not played eu4 since origins release and have been in a "drought" of not knowing what i wanted to play/do but having read your psot last night i have begun my own Mughals WC. only one restart so far ;p

goodluck with your run dude!

 

[BladvakRO]

The faculty of assimilation of the Mughals dictates in my opinion which areas to conquer in priority.

- India, of course, which has the best bonuses.
- Then China : −20% State maintenance.
- Korea : −5% Idea cost.
- Then the Mon-Khmer : −5% Development cost.
- Let's not forget Japan : +10% Morale of armies.
- To finish with Asia, Kamchatkan : +1 Attrition for enemies (perfect for diminishing enemies that will run away from you)
- Then the Cushitic group : +1 Missionary.
- Immediately after : the Sahelian group: +10% Movement speed (very useful for later wars, which will be easy but tedious).
- West Africa : −5% Construction cost.
- Once in Europe, South Slavic : −10% War score cost vs other religions

The order of the following conquests seems to me to have little importance, and will be essentially contextual.

Sorry, but I disagree with some of your analysis here.

The only bonus that should dictate which culture to prioritize conquering, are the Hindustani, South Slavic and Tibetan ones. All others should be conquered after other things were taken into consideration.

IMHO Useful bonuses in alphabetical order:
Altaic: -10% artillery cost (it adds up)
Burman: +1 leader without upkeep (again, it adds up)
Cushitic: +1 missionary (very useful for a WC OF, also when combined with Tibetan)
Dravidian: +5% goods produced modifier (useful only for a little while, after 1650 you should be swimming in money anyway, and after Enlightenment the bonus is equal to a Coal manufactory)
East Slavic: +10% land limit modifier (only useful if you want to have a big army fast to get the Military Hegemon, otherwise, the bonus is meh)
Hindustani: +10% CCR - the best bonus you will get from the Diwan and the only one that is useful at all stages of the campaign
Iranian: -10% advisor cost (only in this list because you can get this one very fast, sometimes even before getting the Hindustani bonus; also it is relevant until 1650s)
Sahelian: +10% movement speed
South Slavic: -10% warscore cost vs other religions
Tibetan: .5 prestige from development from missionary (this is one of the best bonuses out there, allowing you to swim in prestige, plus it's fairly easy to get)
West Slavic: +1 land leader fire - always relevant, after all it was called Mughal artillery

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Because of how diwan works for Mughals, and because you already have -25% CCR, I don't actually see much benefit in doing a lot of vassal feeding, so you can skip Influence. Diplo is more important sooner for the -25% province war score cost.

Influence is still a useful late game pickup, more useful than MIL groups. Especially if you go humanist, saving DIP on unjustified demands and annexing your OE dump subjects are both valuable benefits. Admin, diplo, humanist are probably worth more, but realistically influence should be in first 5 in most cases.

As for the lowered Missionary Strength, unless you are trying for a 1 Faith run (which would be stupid hard as Sikh), all you need to do is convert your states, as they are the most important and productive part of your realm.

You don't even need to convert those. You can, but all it does is slightly improve your tolerance. You don't take province-level penalties from religion with positive tolerance, even if the religion is "wrong". Culture converting is not worth the cost generally, but it's even less relevant than usual to Mughals.

You would be perfectly fine/take no penalties with literally 0 true faith provinces if you're at +3 tolerance of heretics/heathens.

Not too long ago, I abused this in a knights one tag. As Catholic, I switched to reformed in order to get the -warscore vs other religions (aka against Catholics). I used this to be able to annex 1k+ development per war vs almost all of Europe...then switched back right near the end for the -dipannex cost. The only influence this had on my nation was the prestige hit from making the switch.

Unfortunately, I had a few vassals with ~1k development after 1800, so I could not complete the 1 tag while staying as the knights. I was able to complete it by tag switching for more -dipannex cost, however.