Overextension, Governing Capacity, WC and my France run

[ProfCC]

So I am happily chugging along in my France run with my goal of replicating Charlemagne's empire. I feel close, and am fairly happy with my progress. Below are the current maps that generally show status as of 1656. But as I have been going along and seeing 1700 come into view, thus realizing the game is in its latter third...I started pondering exactly how come I was going slower. Had I guessed, I would have united all of the rest of the old Empire (so, mostly to the lands below the Danish peninsula) at least by 1600. But, I have gone slower than necessary militarily due to fears about over-extension and the governing capacity cap.

Now, I think I understand both, so I'm not curious about those or what to do with them. And I did take Admin to increase, as well as giving two of the Estates privileges to increase governing capacity too. I don't remember this for EU2, so assuming its a newer thing brought in to slow and challenge a WC, I think its brilliant. As the wiki said, there ought to be some sense of challenge to govern a far-flung empire.

But...then how exactly do you all handle this when going for the WC? I see better today than previously that you'd really have to be racing to make this happen, probably fighting in multiple wars, and confronting coalition after coalition. But do you then just throw caution to the wind about overextension and governing capacity?

I'm just really curious because on many occasions, I have waited on a potential war because my admin points weren't really high enough (especially when doing an Admin idea) to keep the coring going. And I'd really like to create more states (probably just a weird quirk, but I like to wait to state once I have all the lands...that's probably not the optimal way for you experts)...but with my governing capacity at limit, or nearly so, I don't. And I want to rescind those privileges so I can keep my absolutism climbing higher, so even as I get close to the next increase via normal Admin tech, my gc won't really change.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about it. Maybe the choice is just to accept the negative effects, but perhaps there is a trick or two that I don't know about. So, as always, please share your thoughts. And for those of you who have been following along, here's the latest map on things.

And here's my diplomatic situation; you can see that I am going hard still for the diplo-vassal-annex strategy, which makes me happier than war...but still can challenge both overextension and governing capacity.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

I've conquered the world several times and always stayed within my government cap (except when uniting the HRE and having state cores on all of western Europe in one click, but I usually do that when I've completed the WC anyway and the negative effects of government cap don't matter anymore)

My government cap strategy usually is:

- If you're close to the government cap, don't integrate vassals until you have a few 100 points of cap to spare again
- As soon as possible, build courthouses everywhere. They reduce local government cap usage by 25%. And by everywhere I do mean literally everywhere. If necessary, remove existing buildings.
- As soon as possible, upgrade the courthouses to town halls, or build new town halls. Town halls reduce local government cap usage by 50%.
- If the province is not on the home subcontinent, assign the province to a trade company rather than a state. Trade company provinces reduce local government cap usage by 50%. Together with town halls, this is a 99% reduction in government cap (1% government cap cost is the hard minimum), making all trade company regions and thus 90%+ of the old world essentially free in terms of government cap.
- take administrative ideas for the 25% extra government cap finisher. Also, its 25% core creation cost and diplo annexation policy together with influence.
- As soon as your finances allow it, charter a few trade company regions around the African and Asian coastlines and conquer the region around it from these beachheads to get more trade company land

Further world conquest strategies I'm usually employing are:

- Before you get the Imperialism CB, preferrably expand via reconquests of cores of vassals. That reduces AE, and if you're clever about vassalizing the correct tags, you can conquer vast swathes of land with no diplo costs in the peace deal without having to fabricate many claims, and, crucially, without having to deal with separatism. Good examples are:
- Once Castille integrates Aragon and forms Spain, try taking a single iberian culture province with an aragonese core, release Aragon, and then reconquer all of Aragon in a single reconquest war
- Once the Commonwealth forms, try taking a single baltic culture province with a lithuanian core, release Lithuania and reconquer all cores
- If Ming mingsplodes, vassalize them as soon as possible - they usually still have cores on almost all of China and you can reconquer one of the richest regions of the map with manageable trouble
- Try getting as many diplo relation slots as possible to have as many vassals as possible. The monuments Petra (near Jerusalem) and Kanbawzathadi Palace (Pegu) are useful for this.
- Starting in the late 1500-early 1600, try getting a few marches along the Atlantic coast (Leon, Brittany, Scotland, Norway, ...). When you are conquering the new world, give 10 provinces per colonial region to each of the marches and have them form colonial nations. Once you have the new world under control, annex the marches. Their colonial nations will remain seperate entities, even if you now have several colonial nations per colonial regions, they will have lower liberty desire because they're individually smaller, and each one will give you a merchant. You can easily get enough merchants for each trade node in the game that way.
- get as many -minimum autonomy in territories modifiers as possible (6th tier monarchy government reform, expansion ideas, economic hegemon if you're confident). They work for trade companies, too

Edit: I've read your post again and I want to adress a few more points directly:
- In terms of lack of admin power: make sure to pick the admin idea group, which will give you a 25% coring cost reduction. This modifier not only reduces the admin cost to creat cores, but also reduces the time it takes to finish the core, and thereby reducing your overextension more quickly. Distribute monarch power cost by both annexing vassals and conquering to core the conquests for yourself. Disinherit bad heirs. Grant the +monarch power privileges to your estates. If you have spare monarch power, build up your innovativeness - 10% power reduction cost helps more than what it sounds like.
- In terms of coalition management: Coalitions cost time and resources - try to avoid them. Use vassal reconquest CBs for reduced aggressive expansion (AE), avoid taking too much land in the HRE (swarms of small countries in close proximity, plus HRE territory has built-in additional AE generation), stack a few improve relation modifiers (they reduce AE more quickly), space out your conquests by conquering stuff in another region if your AE is close to a coalition in one region. If a coalition forms, either take it out before it grows strong enough to pose a serious threat, or remove individual members from a coalition by attacking their allies - that will pull them into a war with you, and once you peace them out, they will leave the coalition and cannot join again for the duration of your truce.
- Read up about the court and country event on the wiki - you can get a permanent +20 to your maximum absolutism from this and the disaster isn't that disruptive. With that extra absolutism, you can get to the cap of 100 absolutism relatively easily (technically, max absolutism isn't hard capped at 100, but its effects are. Any absolutism above 100 is just a buffer)
- Increase your admin capacity efficiency (typo). It's effectively a muliplicative bonus to core creation cost and diplomatic integration cost, and it allows you to conquer more land at once. There are limited ways to increase it, but having 100 absolutism already gives you +30. You can also get +5 from the Alhambra monument in Grenada, so I'm afraid your alliance with Spain may not last forever. France has a restoration of the union CB against them in its mission tree - once you inevitably break your alliance and go to war with them, consider taking that once province from them in addition to forming the union.
- Consider becoming emperor of the HRE if that fits your overall plan for the game and you're still able to Nevermind, I just noticed that you went for the dismantling strategy

 

[Reman]

You're low on admin points because you likely don't have much core cost reduction, which is the most important modifier in the game by far. Many major nation's idea sets like France, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, etc. are actually hot garbage because they have no CCR. Ditto for the Christian religion group as a whole barring HRE stuff. People like to hype up junk like Orthodox or Hussite but they're mediocre at best if you're doing even modest expansion.

Dealing with GC is just about spamming courthouses and not overstating things. A courthouse reduces a territory's GC cost down to a negligible level, and at that point you use the leftovers for full states. Being significantly above your GC limit is not advisable since it increases core cost.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

You're low on admin points because you likely don't have much core cost reduction, which is the most important modifier in the game by far. Many major nation's idea sets like France, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, etc. are actually hot garbage because they have no CCR. Ditto for the Christian religion group as a whole barring HRE stuff. People like to hype up junk like Orthodox or Hussite but they're mediocre at best if you're doing even modest expansion.

Dealing with GC is just about spamming courthouses and not overstating things. A courthouse reduces a territory's GC cost down to a negligible level, and at that point you use the leftovers for full states. Being significantly above your GC limit is not advisable since it increases core cost.

Yeah, that's the short form.
You can consider forming Italy which has 25% CCR. You'll have to unstate, culture shift and restate a whole lot of provinces, though, which even with the additional CCR is a steep admin cost, and you're more vulnerable during the process.

EDIT:
In an earlier version, I claimed that Italy has 30% CCR. It's actually 25%.

 

[ProfCC]

That’s brilliant name…yet and Reman. I knew about courthouses, but still failed to do just that. New “must do” list. Part of that (off topic) is that I’ve felt far overwhelmed by the sheer number of provinces. When I did my Italy run, starting as Florence, the building up provinces part was much easier for me to stay on top of. I still have some provinces with no buildings at all. I freely admit to not really understanding the best plan generally about building up development with extra mana points, but I have tried to build only where it makes sense (based on advice from others, videos like some of yours Reman). So, when I start up, I will just go over every province and build that building.

Reman, CCR isn’t anything I can get as France…am I reading that properly? Again, as stated, no where near planning to try to WC, but just wanting to make sure I’m not missing a trick I should have employed.

name…yet, when you mentioned “give 10 provinces per colonial region to each of the marches and have them form colonial nations”…how do you do that? Do you mean after a war where you conquer more than 10, go through the subject window and just give it to them? I thought colonial lands automatically became a colonial nation after 5 or 6 provinces were formed or conquered? I feel like there‘s a ton just on the subject tab that I don’t know about or maximize. Of course, most of EU is that way, at least to me.

 

[BladvakRO]

Sounds like you have a problem with Absolutism, in that you do not have enough of it (i.e. 105). the extra 5 is for the Legitimacy hits.

There are sound advices in this thread:
- courthouses everywhere, AND State Houses one per state. This is a must especially in your full states.
- do not Trade Company every province, just the CoT (Centers of Trade). A territory uses half of the GC of a Trade Company province
- FORM THE ROMAN EMPIRE. It has 25% CCR, which you are lacking, plus a good overall idea set.
- Aim to complete the French mission giving you 5% Admin Efficiency
- If you really want to blob in the 1700s, and you are not afraid of taking some risks, you can form Savoy (or Sardinia-Piedmont) for the 5% Admin Efficiency from missions, and then form Austria for the other 5% Admin Efficiency, and lastly form Germany for the 5% Admin Efficiency. that's 15% Admin Efficiency, because the 5% Admin Eff from France missions comes when the Revolution kicks in, which is too late for tag-swapping. Try to save before forming countries.
- Drop your allies, go to Persia, conquer a province of a big tag (eg. Khorasan, Timurids, etc) and then wage wars of reconquest. Vijayaganar, Jaunpur, Ethiopia, any big tags are useful as vassals.
- the situation will change for better blobbing once 1680 hits, since it's the time when Imperialism CB comes at tech 23. this CB will reduce your core cost even further

 

[bokorthedust]

Sounds like you have a problem with Absolutism, in that you do not have enough of it (i.e. 105). the extra 5 is for the Legitimacy hits.

There are sound advices in this thread:
- courthouses everywhere, AND State Houses one per state. This is a must especially in your full states.
- do not Trade Company every province, just the CoT (Centers of Trade). A territory uses half of the GC of a Trade Company province
- FORM THE ROMAN EMPIRE. It has 25% CCR, which you are lacking, plus a good overall idea set.
- Aim to complete the French mission giving you 5% Admin Efficiency
- If you really want to blob in the 1700s, and you are not afraid of taking some risks, you can form Savoy (or Sardinia-Piedmont) for the 5% Admin Efficiency from missions, and then form Austria for the other 5% Admin Efficiency, and lastly form Germany for the 5% Admin Efficiency. that's 15% Admin Efficiency, because the 5% Admin Eff from France missions comes when the Revolution kicks in, which is too late for tag-swapping. Try to save before forming countries.
- Drop your allies, go to Persia, conquer a province of a big tag (eg. Khorasan, Timurids, etc) and then wage wars of reconquest. Vijayaganar, Jaunpur, Ethiopia, any big tags are useful as vassals.
- the situation will change for better blobbing once 1680 hits, since it's the time when Imperialism CB comes at tech 23. this CB will reduce your core cost even further

While your advice is generally good, pretty much none of it helps his specific run and situation outside of courthouses/town halls (which will unlock with tech 22).

Forming Rome is outside of the realm of possibilty given the gamestate and his current ability. He wouldn't be able to defeat and pretty much annex the whole of the Ottomans in the remaining time, and even if he did it would aggravate his GC situation, and that land with some others (including Spain and Northern Africa) is needed for Rome.

Tag switching isn't something you do willy-nilly, you either plan for it from the start and play accordingly, or it requires too much of a sacrifice. While technically possible, it would require him to give up 80% of his power base, terminally weakening him in the process. And outside of Sardinia-Piedmont he wouldn't be able to switch to anything else for a long time anyways, because he doesn't have the requirements.

Side tracking him with Persia and Asia is again something he has nothing to gain from given his stated goal of conquering to the extent of Charlemagne's empire. He's not far from the goal, he is better off focusing on that then going on a worldwide trip of useless conquests.
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Prof, as it has already been stated, you need to invest into courthouses in literally every province , and when tech 22 rolls around (isn't that far from now), upgrading them into town halls for further GC reductions.

If you have completed all of your government reforms, you can now use the points to expand your administration. Each, subsequently expensive click will net you +20 raw GC. You can find the button on the government reforms tab, at the top right, near the progress bar.

If you have acute problems and want to keep conquering, you can also consider de-stating some of your land, for example in Scotland and Wales (provided they are states). Those areas aren't really high dev, so you won't spare much, but won't lose too much income and FL either, and every little could help.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

name…yet, when you mentioned “give 10 provinces per colonial region to each of the marches and have them form colonial nations”…how do you do that? Do you mean after a war where you conquer more than 10, go through the subject window and just give it to them? I thought colonial lands automatically became a colonial nation after 5 or 6 provinces were formed or conquered? I feel like there‘s a ton just on the subject tab that I don’t know about or maximize. Of course, most of EU is that way, at least to me.

I'm glad you asked. I wanted to mention it in my previous post, but there's an entire game mechanic attached and I didn't want to make the post even longer.

Note, though, that this is a bit of an advanced topic and not strictly necessary for a world conquest.

When you or when of your subjects (might not apply to tributaries, or when you yourself are a tributary) occupies a province, you can click this button to transfer occupation to somebody else:

In a peace deal, provinces will always be ceded to the country occupying the province, so that's how you can generally conquer territory for your subjects. You can, of course, always give adjacent provinces to a subject using the subject interaction mechanic, but ceding provinces this way works even for non-adjacent provinces within the receiving country's colonial range which is especially important for colonial regions. Note, though, the caveat about the receiving country's colonial range - that's why you should pick a country at the atlantic coast as a designated colonizer march, and not start too early, otherwise their colonial range just doesn't suffice.

Also, if the subject is a vassal, make sure to march it - marches don't get the opinion malus from annexed subjects that vassals get. Since you want to keep your colonizer around for several decades, if not centuries, you will likely annex several vassals in the meantime, so making them a march early on will help keeping them happy. Also also, make sure that they have at least 5 provinces in the old world, otherwise colonial nations may not form and they may just outright move their capital to the new world.

So, essentially, occupy some territory of the colonial nation/native nation, transfer occupation to your subject, and then annex it for them.

I've recently refined this strategy a bit, so let me go a bit more into the depth of some EUIV mechanics:

When ceding provinces, the reduced warscore cost for provinces from admin efficiency and ideas apply to the country receiving the province, not the country negotiating the peace - so if you have a lot of admin efficiency and your subject doesn't, which is often true in the later half of the game, you can conquer much more land for yourself than for your vassal. Also, warscore cost reduction for provinces only applies if the province is ceded to the warleader, which is somewhat important for imperialism wars (25% reduced warscore cost for provinces) and VERY important for colonialism wars (75% reduced warscore cost).
Also, recently conquered colonial provinces are ceded to your provinces the day after your peace deal.

Taking both of these points together, you can do the following:
1. Pause and open the peace negotiation screen
2. Give a single province in a colonial region to your designated colonizer subject using transfer occupation
3. Take 9 more provinces adjacent to the first one for yourself
4. Optionally, repeat 2 and 3 for additional colonizer subjects of yours
5. Finalize and complete the peace deal
6. WITHOUT UNPAUSING, go to the subject interaction screen and cede the new 9 provinces to your colonizer subject. Repeat if applicable.

Since you maintain direct control of your recently conquered provinces in colonial regions until the day after the peace deal, you have the remainder of the day you sign the peace deal to transfer provinces to a subject. Note, though, that this interaction only works if your subject will stay below 100% overextension after receiving the province - this is often not an issue, since provinces in colonial regions are relatively cheap if not free in terms of overextension, but this is something to keep in mind if you just fed your subject additional provinces. Also, you can't use the interaction when you're at war, so if you want to use this strategy, make sure that this is the only war you're in at that time.

Especially when using the colonialism CB, you can vastly increase the extent of your conquests with this strategy. In my previous playthrough, Mexico decided to declare a war of independence on Spain. I agreed with the Spain part, but not the independence part in general, and used the opportunity to attack them directly with the colonialism CB. I ate up almost all of Mexico in a single war this way, only leaving Mexico 10 provinces so I could get another 10 province colonial nation for free later when annexing Spain.

Oh, right, completely annexing a country with a colonial empire will transfer all of their colonial nations to you, in case you didn't know.

Again, as you can maybe tell by the length of this post, it's a bit of an advanced strategy for only a moderate gain and you have to keep several things in mind, so if you're still struggling with some of EUIV's mechanics, feel free to skip this particular bit of advice. It's not strictly necessary for a WC.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

@Courthouses: Use the macro-builder and sort the provinces by Cost/Benefit (?/coins). Then you can build the courthouses or build/upgrade to town houses in the provinces with the highest impact. Besides that you also need to check the map for yellow provinces, where there is no building slot available. You will need to destroy buildings to make room for the court house. Again start with high dev stated provinces. At some point of course you will need them in every single province.
As soon as town halls are available from a GC aspect you can TC all your territories as they remove 50 % GC. For your territories town halls give no benefit over courthouses.
@State Houses: Make sure to build them in Gem/Glass/Paper provinces for double the effect and to have them at least in your higher dev states.

And of course when you are not able to do that, keep areas as territory or TC, especially areas of lower value / wrong culture ... You won't be able to state everything.

 

[Kazakk]

I'm doing a France run right now. It's going amazingly and I'm pretty sure I'll accomplish WQ, I want to get the one-faith achievement (I hope France is the right pick for being the strongest catholic nation?)

I started by no-CBing Byzantium and vassalizing them. I ignored the first war vs england and got the 5 year truce, then I attacked Epirus and then the Ottomans to expand Byzantium and deal with the Ottoman blob quickly. Then I focused on england, I became HRE emperor at 1510 (got a bit unlucky with Austria king living a very long time) and revoked privilegia at around 1590, conquered everything around and I'm preparing to vassalize both Spain and Poland-Lithuania with the mission tree. All of this before the age of absolutism, which is when I'll blob hard and take the rest of the world.

This is my 2nd world conquest ever, and hopefully the last if there aren't any more WQ achievements. I want to get the one faith, I think France is the right pick because I won't have to convert the americas.

First of all you need a strategy. Everything that is happening in my game, from becoming HRE emperor and quickly taking over the Ottomans (and soon claiming the throne in Russia, it's going to take a few more decades though) has been planned before I even started the campaign. You want to expand aggressively from the beggining of the game, and make full use of vassals to save your admin. If it weren't for my vassals I'd be lacking admin and governing capacity at all times.

I didn't attack any european nations except the British isles, Norway, and other countries I had to attack to expand the HRE and stop the reformation. There's a lot of small things I did during the campaign to optimize it, but it might not be worth mentioning. You also want to be careful with aggressive expansion -- focus on a culture group for annexation. I focused on North Africa and Persia

For some reason, my vassal Byzantium has been completely useless the whole campaign, despite me giving them the whole of Greece and Anatolia. They have been in huge debt for the entirety of the game and always had less troops than by smaller vassal, Bulgaria.

My ideas were Diplomatic - Religious - Admin - Influence. I only started integrating vassals after I completed influence, but I'll keep using them so that they will help me convert. Most of my vassals are being utterly useless in converting, but Syria is being very helpful and I want to use it to convert the whole of Africa for me when I get the imperialism CB.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

One Faith might be a bit tricky in my experience. Not necessarily because of a lack of time, but because all of my colonial nations insist on using their colonists to develop random provinces for the remainder of the game and I can't stop them. I usually don't care enough about the achievement to force them to, but the one time I did (for the "The Third Way" achievement) nothing worked but releasing them, conquering the province from them and converting it before they could start anything funny.

Not sure if France can do it, maybe you need a country with extra missionary power and missionaries, but just in case, make sure to forbid all of your colonial nations to develop their provinces using colonists.

More generally, I can see that I'm on the right track towards a world conquests when I have problems staying within my government capacity despite building courthouses everywhere for some extended period before I unlock town halls, and when there's no single nation that can seriously threaten my on my own by the Age of Absolutism.

Your current state of the game looks pretty good in that regard, Kazakk, and you will be entirely unassailable unless literally the entire world gangs up on you once you've PU'd Spain.

 

[Soulburger]

The block settlement growth button should work now. Previously it would not stop anything once colonial nation started using the development feature but with the latest patch it has been working for me.

 

[ProfCC]

I'm glad you asked. I wanted to mention it in my previous post, but there's an entire game mechanic attached and I didn't want to make the post even longer.

Note, though, that this is a bit of an advanced topic and not strictly necessary for a world conquest.

When you or when of your subjects (might not apply to tributaries, or when you yourself are a tributary) occupies a province, you can click this button to transfer occupation to somebody else:
View attachment 796167

In a peace deal, provinces will always be ceded to the country occupying the province, so that's how you can generally conquer territory for your subjects. You can, of course, always give adjacent provinces to a subject using the subject interaction mechanic, but ceding provinces this way works even for non-adjacent provinces within the receiving country's colonial range which is especially important for colonial regions. Note, though, the caveat about the receiving country's colonial range - that's why you should pick a country at the atlantic coast as a designated colonizer march, and not start too early, otherwise their colonial range just doesn't suffice.

Also, if the subject is a vassal, make sure to march it - marches don't get the opinion malus from annexed subjects that vassals get. Since you want to keep your colonizer around for several decades, if not centuries, you will likely annex several vassals in the meantime, so making them a march early on will help keeping them happy. Also also, make sure that they have at least 5 provinces in the old world, otherwise colonial nations may not form and they may just outright move their capital to the new world.

So, essentially, occupy some territory of the colonial nation/native nation, transfer occupation to your subject, and then annex it for them.

I've recently refined this strategy a bit, so let me go a bit more into the depth of some EUIV mechanics:

When ceding provinces, the reduced warscore cost for provinces from admin efficiency and ideas apply to the country receiving the province, not the country negotiating the peace - so if you have a lot of admin efficiency and your subject doesn't, which is often true in the later half of the game, you can conquer much more land for yourself than for your vassal. Also, warscore cost reduction for provinces only applies if the province is ceded to the warleader, which is somewhat important for imperialism wars (25% reduced warscore cost for provinces) and VERY important for colonialism wars (75% reduced warscore cost).
Also, recently conquered colonial provinces are ceded to your provinces the day after your peace deal.

Taking both of these points together, you can do the following:
1. Pause and open the peace negotiation screen
2. Give a single province in a colonial region to your designated colonizer subject using transfer occupation
3. Take 9 more provinces adjacent to the first one for yourself
4. Optionally, repeat 2 and 3 for additional colonizer subjects of yours
5. Finalize and complete the peace deal
6. WITHOUT UNPAUSING, go to the subject interaction screen and cede the new 9 provinces to your colonizer subject. Repeat if applicable.

Since you maintain direct control of your recently conquered provinces in colonial regions until the day after the peace deal, you have the remainder of the day you sign the peace deal to transfer provinces to a subject. Note, though, that this interaction only works if your subject will stay below 100% overextension after receiving the province - this is often not an issue, since provinces in colonial regions are relatively cheap if not free in terms of overextension, but this is something to keep in mind if you just fed your subject additional provinces. Also, you can't use the interaction when you're at war, so if you want to use this strategy, make sure that this is the only war you're in at that time.

Especially when using the colonialism CB, you can vastly increase the extent of your conquests with this strategy. In my previous playthrough, Mexico decided to declare a war of independence on Spain. I agreed with the Spain part, but not the independence part in general, and used the opportunity to attack them directly with the colonialism CB. I ate up almost all of Mexico in a single war this way, only leaving Mexico 10 provinces so I could get another 10 province colonial nation for free later when annexing Spain.

Oh, right, completely annexing a country with a colonial empire will transfer all of their colonial nations to you, in case you didn't know.

Again, as you can maybe tell by the length of this post, it's a bit of an advanced strategy for only a moderate gain and you have to keep several things in mind, so if you're still struggling with some of EUIV's mechanics, feel free to skip this particular bit of advice. It's not strictly necessary for a WC.

Ok…that all makes sense. Brilliant and quirky all at once. And I think it’s a good example of why I don’t get the general focus of most gameplay with EU4. The concept would never happen in the real world; it’s just not something a nation would do, but of course they wouldn‘t be worried about the technicalities of game mechanics either. Not complaining at you; probably will try with my Irish March, if I do go to war with Spain and their colonial empire…just saying that these kinds of mechanic aspects get lost on me. Thank you so much for sharing and showing me how to do it.

 

[ProfCC]

@Courthouses: Use the macro-builder and sort the provinces by Cost/Benefit (?/coins). Then you can build the courthouses or build/upgrade to town houses in the provinces with the highest impact. Besides that you also need to check the map for yellow provinces, where there is no building slot available. You will need to destroy buildings to make room for the court house. Again start with high dev stated provinces. At some point of course you will need them in every single province.
As soon as town halls are available from a GC aspect you can TC all your territories as they remove 50 % GC. For your territories town halls give no benefit over courthouses.
@State Houses: Make sure to build them in Gem/Glass/Paper provinces for double the effect and to have them at least in your higher dev states.

And of course when you are not able to do that, keep areas as territory or TC, especially areas of lower value / wrong culture ... You won't be able to state everything.

So good to hear from you Manwe; hope all is well for you. I do try to follow the tool tip such as building state houses in those specific provinces. I didn’t know, though, that it doubled the effect.

So since you can’t state everything, then for those going to do massive countries or the WC, they just accept that reality and allow everything to stay as territories or TC? And that means less money for them, right? But they probably just accept that because as they grow, they will control more and more of the major trade nodes, right?

 

[ProfCC]

So, just in reading over Kazakk (and a few others) efforts at WC…am I correct in assuming that the general strategy then is to have wars or moments of expansion that have nothing to do with the historical journey of the nation? Just randomly going over to attack Ming? Or, randomly going after the OE because you know down the road they’ll be a bigger problem if left alone?

I still don’t see how a person doing a WC could have enough admin points to core the things conquered and still spend points to go up in tech AND get certain idea groups. I believe that it happened, but I don’t see how it could of. LOL I’m sure that is just my lack of understanding to the quirks of the game. I watched one guy do an early big blue blob on YouTube, and he seemed to be at war from day 1…and I never understood how he had the mana points to do what he did. I saw it. I don’t think he cheated, and yet it made no sense to me.

All good…I’ll never try to do a WC anyway, but like my op, I am just fascinated by how much slower it is taking me due to watching my admin points, avoiding over extension, the gc cap, and avoiding coalitions. Still learning as I go….

 

[BladvakRO]

So, just in reading over Kazakk (and a few others) efforts at WC…am I correct in assuming that the general strategy then is to have wars or moments of expansion that have nothing to do with the historical journey of the nation? Just randomly going over to attack Ming? Or, randomly going after the OE because you know down the road they’ll be a bigger problem if left alone?

I still don’t see how a person doing a WC could have enough admin points to core the things conquered and still spend points to go up in tech AND get certain idea groups. I believe that it happened, but I don’t see how it could of. LOL I’m sure that is just my lack of understanding to the quirks of the game. I watched one guy do an early big blue blob on YouTube, and he seemed to be at war from day 1…and I never understood how he had the mana points to do what he did. I saw it. I don’t think he cheated, and yet it made no sense to me.

All good…I’ll never try to do a WC anyway, but like my op, I am just fascinated by how much slower it is taking me due to watching my admin points, avoiding over extension, the gc cap, and avoiding coalitions. Still learning as I go….

You're stuck in the early game mindset.
Late game, you can gobble up land quite fast, quite cheap, due to Imperialism CB that lowers province score AND the coring cost of the provinces conquered with the CB.
Add to that the Coring Cost Reductions from ideas, Absolutism/ Admin Efficiency, and sometimes going over 100% OverExtension (OE), and you get to a point where you can eat a 1000 dev country in 3 wars.
If you set your country right from the beginning, then the midgame and lategame are a breeze.

From what you are saying, I assume you have not played until 1821 yet. Try a game and see how it feels, you will lose the dread for monarch points.

 

[bokorthedust]

So since you can’t state everything, then for those going to do massive countries or the WC, they just accept that reality and allow everything to stay as territories or TC? And that means less money for them, right? But they probably just accept that because as they grow, they will control more and more of the major trade nodes, right?

At the beginning you state things pretty much as normal, but a bit more strategically. And courthouses are the name of the game from tech 8 when they unlock. With Leviathan there are also both raw and percentage based GC monuments available, those make things easier too, but even without them you can get by.

Also, most WC strats use modifier stacking, by forming various countries and completing their missions for permanent modifiers which stay with you until the end of the game, for CCR, admin efficiency and the likes, or even switching religions (for example Coptic has a 10% CCR blessing you can unlock).

Switching countries require you for the formation decisions to be the intended country's culture group, which can be achieved by first accepting a culture then making that your primary one. That however requires the chosen culture to be your dominant culture, meaning it has to have 50%+ of your stated development. So in practice you conquer the lands you need to form a country (or multiple countries), while you are your original country, keeping whatever you've stated up until then. Then when you're ready to tag switch, you state something where your target culture is prevalent, promote it using diplo points (that can happen sooner), and start de-stating your original lands until the chosen culture has 50%+ of your stated development. Then you make that culture the primary, the formation decision of your desired new tag unlocks, you take the decision, and voila, you're some other country. If you plan for the new missions from the get go, you complete them at once, without unpausing, and can switch further if you want to, for more tags and more missions and more permanent modifiers.

De-stating of course raises autonomy to the 90% floor, so you lose out on a lot of income and force limit, that's why I said in my previous reply that it isn't something you do willy-nilly. You could re-state the lands but they'll be territorial cores (meaning 50% autonomy), and turning them back into full core states is a lot of admin which you don't have. You can alleviate this by keeping some lands you've annex from a vassal to state up after tag-switching, because you'll have full cores on that, or just live with half states and TCs and territories.

So, just in reading over Kazakk (and a few others) efforts at WC…am I correct in assuming that the general strategy then is to have wars or moments of expansion that have nothing to do with the historical journey of the nation? Just randomly going over to attack Ming? Or, randomly going after the OE because you know down the road they’ll be a bigger problem if left alone?

I still don’t see how a person doing a WC could have enough admin points to core the things conquered and still spend points to go up in tech AND get certain idea groups. I believe that it happened, but I don’t see how it could of. LOL I’m sure that is just my lack of understanding to the quirks of the game. I watched one guy do an early big blue blob on YouTube, and he seemed to be at war from day 1…and I never understood how he had the mana points to do what he did. I saw it. I don’t think he cheated, and yet it made no sense to me.

All good…I’ll never try to do a WC anyway, but like my op, I am just fascinated by how much slower it is taking me due to watching my admin points, avoiding over extension, the gc cap, and avoiding coalitions. Still learning as I go….

Yeah, the historical perspective or anything what we call role-play has to go out the window if you want to do a WC. You expand in the most optimal way, and always aim to cripple your potential biggest enemies as soon as possible, because who wants to fight an Ottoman Empire which expanded into Egypt and Hungary and into the Middle East, when you can fight them when they still have their original power base or barely anything more.

As to how have enough points, as Bladvak said, your pace of conquest picks up with absolutism and especially with Imperialism and administrative efficiency unlocked. Plus there's the vassal route too, effectively shifting some of the cost to diplo instead of admin, but the key here is also modifier stacking. With various missions, parliament debate and innovativeness, you can reduce the annexation cost to the absolute minimum 0,1 dip/development cost instead of the original 8 dip/dev cost without any reductions. Admin efficiency also affects the cost further, so you can get large swaths of land for really cheap. In my recent One Faith run I integrated an absolutely monstrous, historical borders and then some, 3200+ development Russian PU for 390ish diplo points in 1,5 years.

As Bladvak said, you still don't comprehend the power of these modifiers and what they can do for you, if you approach the game from its mechanics standpoint, instead of the historical role-play one you have. But that will come as you build up experience, you are still on your second run in the game after all. And even if you stick to role-playing, that is absolutely fine too, each of us plays this game to derive enjoyment in our own ways. The greatness of EU4 lies in its inherent replayability and the various ways it provides to let you achieve your goals, however you go about playing the game.

 

[Orkonkel]

I'm doing a France run right now. It's going amazingly and I'm pretty sure I'll accomplish WQ, I want to get the one-faith achievement (I hope France is the right pick for being the strongest catholic nation?)

I started by no-CBing Byzantium and vassalizing them. I ignored the first war vs england and got the 5 year truce, then I attacked Epirus and then the Ottomans to expand Byzantium and deal with the Ottoman blob quickly. Then I focused on england, I became HRE emperor at 1510 (got a bit unlucky with Austria king living a very long time) and revoked privilegia at around 1590, conquered everything around and I'm preparing to vassalize both Spain and Poland-Lithuania with the mission tree. All of this before the age of absolutism, which is when I'll blob hard and take the rest of the world.

This is my 2nd world conquest ever, and hopefully the last if there aren't any more WQ achievements. I want to get the one faith, I think France is the right pick because I won't have to convert the americas.

First of all you need a strategy. Everything that is happening in my game, from becoming HRE emperor and quickly taking over the Ottomans (and soon claiming the throne in Russia, it's going to take a few more decades though) has been planned before I even started the campaign. You want to expand aggressively from the beggining of the game, and make full use of vassals to save your admin. If it weren't for my vassals I'd be lacking admin and governing capacity at all times.

I didn't attack any european nations except the British isles, Norway, and other countries I had to attack to expand the HRE and stop the reformation. There's a lot of small things I did during the campaign to optimize it, but it might not be worth mentioning. You also want to be careful with aggressive expansion -- focus on a culture group for annexation. I focused on North Africa and Persia

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For some reason, my vassal Byzantium has been completely useless the whole campaign, despite me giving them the whole of Greece and Anatolia. They have been in huge debt for the entirety of the game and always had less troops than by smaller vassal, Bulgaria.

My ideas were Diplomatic - Religious - Admin - Influence. I only started integrating vassals after I completed influence, but I'll keep using them so that they will help me convert. Most of my vassals are being utterly useless in converting, but Syria is being very helpful and I want to use it to convert the whole of Africa for me when I get the imperialism CB.

Just as a quick note:
The Spanish mission reward is a Force Union causi belli; this lets you get them in an union for 60% warscore. The Polish mission reward is forced vasselage causi belli; this makes them a vassal, at 50% province cost for them. So as long as you have enough absolutism/warscore cost reduction that their total annexation cost isn't above 200%, you can vassalize them in one war. Do note that in doing so Lithuania becomes an independent nation (PUs of a PU target become your PU, subjects of a vassal peace deal break free).

I did my catholic One Faith starting as France and then forming other nations for mission rewards. Notables for WC/One Faith are Sardinia-Piedemont, Austria, and Prussia (+4 total missionary conversion strength, +10 administrative efficiency, and diplomatic annexation cost reduction), ending on Rome for coring cost reduction. Of course, a One Faith is possible without any culture/tag shifting shenanigans. It just takes a bit more effort.

 

[ProfCC]

You're stuck in the early game mindset.
Late game, you can gobble up land quite fast, quite cheap, due to Imperialism CB that lowers province score AND the coring cost of the provinces conquered with the CB.
Add to that the Coring Cost Reductions from ideas, Absolutism/ Admin Efficiency, and sometimes going over 100% OverExtension (OE), and you get to a point where you can eat a 1000 dev country in 3 wars.
If you set your country right from the beginning, then the midgame and lategame are a breeze.

From what you are saying, I assume you have not played until 1821 yet. Try a game and see how it feels, you will lose the dread for monarch points.

Oh, no I've played almost every game till the end. I'm more of a "completist" in that regard with games, one of the reasons I find rpg games tough because I get stuck in the side quests. LOL.

But with EU4 I've not done that many, so please go on about the end game. I do remember the Imperialism cb (but not so much about the colonialism cb others mentioned). But that's not till the 1700s, right? So, someone can adequately conquer....well, how much? Can you be less than 1/2 finished with a cb, and still conquer the rest in 121 years?

 

[ProfCC]

At the beginning you state things pretty much as normal, but a bit more strategically. And courthouses are the name of the game from tech 8 when they unlock. With Leviathan there are also both raw and percentage based GC monuments available, those make things easier too, but even without them you can get by.

Also, most WC strats use modifier stacking, by forming various countries and completing their missions for permanent modifiers which stay with you until the end of the game, for CCR, admin efficiency and the likes, or even switching religions (for example Coptic has a 10% CCR blessing you can unlock).

Switching countries require you for the formation decisions to be the intended country's culture group, which can be achieved by first accepting a culture then making that your primary one. That however requires the chosen culture to be your dominant culture, meaning it has to have 50%+ of your stated development. So in practice you conquer the lands you need to form a country (or multiple countries), while you are your original country, keeping whatever you've stated up until then. Then when you're ready to tag switch, you state something where your target culture is prevalent, promote it using diplo points (that can happen sooner), and start de-stating your original lands until the chosen culture has 50%+ of your stated development. Then you make that culture the primary, the formation decision of your desired new tag unlocks, you take the decision, and voila, you're some other country. If you plan for the new missions from the get go, you complete them at once, without unpausing, and can switch further if you want to, for more tags and more missions and more permanent modifiers.

De-stating of course raises autonomy to the 90% floor, so you lose out on a lot of income and force limit, that's why I said in my previous reply that it isn't something you do willy-nilly. You could re-state the lands but they'll be territorial cores (meaning 50% autonomy), and turning them back into full core states is a lot of admin which you don't have. You can alleviate this by keeping some lands you've annex from a vassal to state up after tag-switching, because you'll have full cores on that, or just live with half states and TCs and territories.

Yeah, the historical perspective or anything what we call role-play has to go out the window if you want to do a WC. You expand in the most optimal way, and always aim to cripple your potential biggest enemies as soon as possible, because who wants to fight an Ottoman Empire which expanded into Egypt and Hungary and into the Middle East, when you can fight them when they still have their original power base or barely anything more.

As to how have enough points, as Bladvak said, your pace of conquest picks up with absolutism and especially with Imperialism and administrative efficiency unlocked. Plus there's the vassal route too, effectively shifting some of the cost to diplo instead of admin, but the key here is also modifier stacking. With various missions, parliament debate and innovativeness, you can reduce the annexation cost to the absolute minimum 0,1 dip/development cost instead of the original 8 dip/dev cost without any reductions. Admin efficiency also affects the cost further, so you can get large swaths of land for really cheap. In my recent One Faith run I integrated an absolutely monstrous, historical borders and then some, 3200+ development Russian PU for 390ish diplo points in 1,5 years.

As Bladvak said, you still don't comprehend the power of these modifiers and what they can do for you, if you approach the game from its mechanics standpoint, instead of the historical role-play one you have. But that will come as you build up experience, you are still on your second run in the game after all. And even if you stick to role-playing, that is absolutely fine too, each of us plays this game to derive enjoyment in our own ways. The greatness of EU4 lies in its inherent replayability and the various ways it provides to let you achieve your goals, however you go about playing the game.

I just reading about your one-faith run. Sounded brilliant; well done!

I think this point you made here is where I get off the train: "Also, most WC strats use modifier stacking, by forming various countries and completing their missions for permanent modifiers which stay with you until the end of the game, for CCR, admin efficiency and the likes, or even switching religions (for example Coptic has a 10% CCR blessing you can unlock)."

As you said, to each their own, and everyone should feel free to play as they wish. I will happily cheer you all on as you gain the accomplishment!!! But this part seems very gamey to me. I mean...okay, if someone wants to start as France but become another country...but the game should not allow that player to keep previously earned modifiers. There ought to be a clear choice for the player, that if the player wishes to become X, then they cannot expect to maintain the characteristics of Y.

I'd understand it better in a situation where I went from Florence to Italy. So, maybe if Brittany wished to ultimately form France, ok.

But I digress...I wasn't asking anyone to defend the choice of WC (nor the choices of the game designers), but to explain relative to speed of accomplishment, and into the technicalities of things like overextension. Your explanation, as well as of course the wonderful others here, have done that clearly. As you know already from helping me previously, I will keep playing the game from my historical position, and still trying to learn more about the game aspects that still mostly escape me (as you know, absolutism--LOL).