I vassalized the HRE in the 1480's, and now it's almost 1650, and I think I've been conquering much slower than optimal. Although Europe is almost completely vassalized, and the Americas and West Africa are almost protectorated, I think I've been protectorating countries way too slowly. More alarmingly, a bunch of countries, including Russia, the Ottomans, the Mamluks, and Persia have westernized. Persia is of course the most worrying, sicne it could lead to the Westernization of all of India and later Asia, so I released Kazakh as a vassal: They can't reform until they finish their 6th idea group, which I'm hoping will be very very late, even though releasing them myself gave them MY tech levels. I just fought the Ottomans and the Timurids to try and give Kazakh a line of provinces down to persia, since then I could feed them Persian provinces to cut off India from Persia. But it did not work out: the Timurids have actually reformed, so their troops were relatively strong, and I somehow ran out of manpower, and their (bigger) stack was resiegeing faster than my attritioning stack was siegeing, so I took as many provinces as I could.
How should I proceed? I don't want India to Westernize, so I guess I can conquer the Persian provinces myself (they are in coring range). The problem is that Persia actually has a larger army than me, and my vassal swarm has no way to reach Persia, and would probably go occupy Persia's allies instead. And how can I quickly get my manpower back and preserve it? There are way many provinces I have to siege to protectorate countries in Africa and Asia now, so how can I do that while maintaining my manpower?
I was hoping to finish before 1700, but now it seems like I may have to use Administrative Efficiency, and I'm afraid that at that late in the game, Kazakh will reform and Westernize and ruin everything...how can I wrap this WC up as quickly as possible?
How should I proceed? I don't want India to Westernize, so I guess I can conquer the Persian provinces myself (they are in coring range). The problem is that Persia actually has a larger army than me, and my vassal swarm has no way to reach Persia, and would probably go occupy Persia's allies instead. And how can I quickly get my manpower back and preserve it? There are way many provinces I have to siege to protectorate countries in Africa and Asia now, so how can I do that while maintaining my manpower?
I was hoping to finish before 1700, but now it seems like I may have to use Administrative Efficiency, and I'm afraid that at that late in the game, Kazakh will reform and Westernize and ruin everything...how can I wrap this WC up as quickly as possible?
