I decided to go all out blob and do a World Conquest (World Domination if you will).
As a result, I think my min-maxing days are over. It's insane what you have to go through to get a World Conquest, especially for a game. You either grind openings or you grind popups or you cheese to hell and back.
I'm somewhere in the middle, I decided that I would cheese as little as possible for my World Conquest.
Rules for the game:
1. Reduce the amount of game that had to be sieged down/conquered/protectorated/vassalized. This meant that the list of country choice was restricted to the colonizers: Portugal (too small and weak), Castile (possible candidate), France (obvious candidate), England (too gimmicky), Russia (interesting).
2. Protectorate everything that can become a protectorate. Having to take care of all the land in the world is a chore. If I could let others take care of it, that's what I would do. This meant that Russia was out since it meant that I had to westernize as Russia. Hardly impossible or even difficult, but another chore to take care of.
3. No HRE. This is where it gets interesting. I really hate the HRE: the concept, the country color, all the wacky tricks it allows (vassals that do everything for you during wars, vassals that core for you and don't cost any DIP). So I decided quite early I'd dismantle it.
4. Stack as much stuff that reduces revolt risk as possible. I hate rebels with a burning passion - especially those in far-away provinces in Siberia or on islands. To keep my sanity I decided to only go for a mad dash at the end. For the same reason the coalitions against me were quite small. I barely had any decent coalitions against me until 1800.
5. No Task Manager shenanigans or other nasty stuff. I'd either go bust with what the game offers or succeed on my own terms.
I've decided to go for a 0 colonization attempt. I can tell you this, it's almost impossible with the speed of colonization in this game. I've made many big mistakes, I admit:
- I failed to take Madeira in a war with Portugal, even though I had both war score and occupation
- I failed to take Bermuda in a second war with Portugal because I did not have Exploration as one of the first 3 ideas
- England managed to sneak colonies in America, again because I did not have Exploration
- I failed to release Perm in a war with Russia
- I failed to snipe their colonies in a second war with Russia (on this note - does the AI actively protect those colonies? I had tons of forces sieging Moscow and the AI still sent troops to catch my "scouts"
Here's the almost-end result:
Why "almost-end"? Because of these guys:
The little yellow province in the middle of North America almost got away and cost me the World Conquest achievement.
Once I got them, bam!, I got the popup you see above.
Now the game crashes whenever I go to my subjects tab or when I click the "liberty desire" notification. I think I'll start the game 1 more time to see if I can take it to 1821 - I want to see as my empire crumbles while I do almost nothing but look at it.
(I did manage to get to 1821, here is the screenie, in case anyone wants to know what idea groups I picked and other stuff like tech)
Thankfully you guys are awesome and you saved my sorry butt when I almost gave up on the WC! (special thanks to AurochsAway)
(Now that I've done I have 2x the respect I had for DDRJake. And I already respected him a lot before!)