I have been thinking of this campaign for a long time since after Common Sense DLC as it introduced Parliaments and a new Assimilation debate that gave -15% to culture conversion. That meant that if all bonuses (religious IG finisher, Cultural Unity policy, fish bonus, Oprichnina and the debate) are stacked it will give Muscovy -90% of culture conversion cost and a decent shot at culture converting all the world. But then came Cossacks that also gave multiplicative -25% to adjacent provinces. All that meant that 1 development could cost as low as -0.75 of diplomatic points, so it was time to push the plug and get to the culture converting sink business.
The goal can be seen as one of the most inclusive goals as it has the following progressing levels of difficulty:
1) Do WC
2) Do one-tag
3) Do "One Faith"
4) Culture convert to Russian all of the Old World (3 is prerequisite to 4)
5) Colonize everything
6) Have all non-wasteland provinces be of the same culture (4 and 5 are prerequisites to 6)
Muscovy is uniquely positioned to do this. First and foremost, it has -20% to culture conversion. Without any bonuses to culture conversion, the minimal cost per development would have been 2.25 and that would mean extra 24K of necessary diplo points or 150 years of diplomatic generation. Second, it is very strong in religious conversion as an Orthodox country it has up to 2% additional missionary strength. Also it can have a large number of missionaries pretty fast with Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome and Pentarchy triggered modifier. Third, it has an additional colonist which is very important to be able to colonise everything.
A choice of religion deserves a special consideration. To do one-tag it would been much simpler to convert to Catholicism through rebels of Livonian order and then become an HREmperor. However, I was mindful of the new world and had the idea that I have to reach colonisers soon if I want to have colonial nations that don't have colonisers cultures as accepted. So I had to go through Scandinavia to England to France to Castille and Portugal fairly soon. In order to grab so much land with as little MPs spent as possible I thought I needed a religious CB and so I stayed Orthodox. Besides, it added to the RP satisfaction. Still, fabricating claims on all India and China reduced the costs significantly to 2.5 per development before administrative efficiency.
Because of this path the idea groups order was Influence, Religious, Administrative, Exploration, Diplomatic, Expansion, Quantity. At the beginning most of land goes to vassal and so there is relatively less need for the adaptability idea. Also, after integrating Tatar lands it is important to convert that land to Orthodox to ensure power base and stability. Judging how slow colonisation was, it might have been a good idea to have Expansion earlier, but I was stacking so much diplomatic points that it was a nuisance and extra diplomat allowed me to fabricate faster and annex two countries at the same time with less problems.
So to show finally some pictures.
"They want to divide us in 1.16 we want to be united" picture. This is the final moment of the campaign with the last available colonies being finished appropriately in Alaska and all of the old world converted.
Unfortunately, in the new world, New Russia (USA) just refused to convert to Russian three provinces (one Iroquois and two Cherokee) that were never accepted and stayed unconverted for more than a hundred of years. No matter how much I replaced their governors with diplomatic ones (a useful trick to speed up culture conversion), they just pumped all that extra MPs into development.
I was thinking of releasing them and culture converting the land for them through war or just playing as them and finishing the process, but at that point just as I loosely remember a Chinese saying - a slight blemish on the ring only highlights how round it is.
The list of development in the world. It would have been higher if I haven't systematically and often denied seats to Parliament. I also turned on Common Sense DLC in about 1540 (I obviously didn't want HRE to go ballistic in their development, but I also knew that I will have to use Parliament, so I decided that to not be too exploitative I should turn it on as soon as I hit the cap for military MPs; recent changes in 1.15 may make finally quell that summer rage on forums from HRE minors overdeveloping their provinces). Notice New Russia crazy level. Also: who cares about inflation.
We should get more of these pie charts.
And the colonisation proof:
As for the exploits I tried to be very moderate with them. I used a couple quite intensely though:
1) Starting and cancelling culture conversion to prevent teching too quickly. This helped to get Influence and Exploration to be filled up fairly soon. More importantly, I had to carry a lot of diplomatic MPs late into the game when I will be culture converting, so I carried around 5-6K to the first round of culture converting and then about 3-4K to the second round. The first one was intense, I had so many diplomatic points stored that I had to monitor which provinces I was actually converting with full adjacency bonus and which were just the storage facility, which I had to cancel before they reach 10%. I hadto physically write down about 40 provinces and manually check on them each month.
2) I noticed in my game that if a debate is not selected, one can quit the game and have a new set of 5 debates. While the first one was a merely -5% tech cost that helped me tech diplomatic levels, remaining ones were -15% to diplomatic annexation and culture conversion.
Another useful trick in the game may be to notice that in the late game diplomatic annexation can be as low as 0.8. For this you need Influence, it's policy, an appropriate debate and an event "Loyal subjects" from subject interactions events, which can trigger if there are 3 subjects with less than 10% Liberty Desire. When I had very high diplomatic reputation and had a lot of CNs, it fired fairly often.
Some goalposts along the way
Quick elimination of Novgorod (almost) and Russian minors, through a war with Novgorod, Ryazan (who became it's ally) and Tver (militarist Tver will attack Novgorod fairly certainly).
Securing distant overseas and Danzig
Denmark had kept its PUs, so it was joyful stomping over it together with PLC
Polish-Lithuanian union was fairly strong, so it took some effort to make it never an issue. While I was of higher military tech, I still need Hungary to serve as distraction.
Sitting a little bit on Lithuanian land though was a good idea as pretender rebels broke the PU.
Distant overseas coring was a bit hard to do at first, as in some provinces autonomy couldn't have been raised. That resulted in some big rebellions, which this patch were more potent as stacks were more concentrated
Still bankrupting Timurids and pushing to India is always a good idea. That "Central Asia" tag would stay for almost entire game when I will have all India and China
Rulers were generally good to me having generally 8 in total for Admin and Diplomatic, but Pyotr was the Great. He was born to Semen. Notice some initial culture converting to establish a strong powerbase
In 1538 I finally declared on Iberians. Castille was going very rapidly through Exploration and Expansion idea groups. Thankfully, they were mostly focused on Africa until I noticed through the goods location ledger that Hispaniola is already 10 provinces large. The war for the new world ensued.
I teched up to level 7 or 9 in diplomatic tech to reach the colonies, starting at 184 per technology and then after the war Castille formed Spain, which was good as I could reconquest a lot of land from to aragon vassal. Portugal was also soon annexed with it's small La Plata CN.
After taking Guyenne from France and cutting Ottomans from Egypt to make them colonies, nobody was really a threat
Still I had to deal though with Castilian culture in the Caribbean somehow. I decided to wait till separatism is down in 4 biggest colonies and convert it to Russian to make a CN with Castilian not accepted. Later on I would dump some Russian non-cored colonies to Leon that also started colonizing in the new world. After annexing it I had two colonial nations in the caribbean I released one and DOWed it. That way Castilian was never accepted in my colonial nation. As it would turn out that may have been unnecessary as CNs would convert even accepted cultures sometime. Still I wanted to make sure the conversion process goes smoothly.
As it turned out, I was colonizing not as fast as I should initially keeping positive balance in money income. I had about 8 colonies running in the mid-game and 14 in the late game. As cost for colonising is quadratic I should have colonised more aggressively earlier. A debate "Charter colonies" was used 2 or three times. Also I should have moved my capital sooner to a place in Europe closer to colonies. Tsargrad aka Constantinople came to mind. That cut the way to Oceania quite significantly.
A bit overzealous with the number of colonies here (look at the cost)
The first round of culture converting was intense
The first WC is always sweet
As is the first "One Faith"
Culture conversion was finished with the second Assimilation debate in 1797
And then we reached the final chapter of historical Russian colonisation
P.S. My deepest thanks to DicRoNero who planted one culture idea in my mind last summer.
The goal can be seen as one of the most inclusive goals as it has the following progressing levels of difficulty:
1) Do WC
2) Do one-tag
3) Do "One Faith"
4) Culture convert to Russian all of the Old World (3 is prerequisite to 4)
5) Colonize everything
6) Have all non-wasteland provinces be of the same culture (4 and 5 are prerequisites to 6)
Muscovy is uniquely positioned to do this. First and foremost, it has -20% to culture conversion. Without any bonuses to culture conversion, the minimal cost per development would have been 2.25 and that would mean extra 24K of necessary diplo points or 150 years of diplomatic generation. Second, it is very strong in religious conversion as an Orthodox country it has up to 2% additional missionary strength. Also it can have a large number of missionaries pretty fast with Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome and Pentarchy triggered modifier. Third, it has an additional colonist which is very important to be able to colonise everything.
A choice of religion deserves a special consideration. To do one-tag it would been much simpler to convert to Catholicism through rebels of Livonian order and then become an HREmperor. However, I was mindful of the new world and had the idea that I have to reach colonisers soon if I want to have colonial nations that don't have colonisers cultures as accepted. So I had to go through Scandinavia to England to France to Castille and Portugal fairly soon. In order to grab so much land with as little MPs spent as possible I thought I needed a religious CB and so I stayed Orthodox. Besides, it added to the RP satisfaction. Still, fabricating claims on all India and China reduced the costs significantly to 2.5 per development before administrative efficiency.
Because of this path the idea groups order was Influence, Religious, Administrative, Exploration, Diplomatic, Expansion, Quantity. At the beginning most of land goes to vassal and so there is relatively less need for the adaptability idea. Also, after integrating Tatar lands it is important to convert that land to Orthodox to ensure power base and stability. Judging how slow colonisation was, it might have been a good idea to have Expansion earlier, but I was stacking so much diplomatic points that it was a nuisance and extra diplomat allowed me to fabricate faster and annex two countries at the same time with less problems.
So to show finally some pictures.
"They want to divide us in 1.16 we want to be united" picture. This is the final moment of the campaign with the last available colonies being finished appropriately in Alaska and all of the old world converted.
Unfortunately, in the new world, New Russia (USA) just refused to convert to Russian three provinces (one Iroquois and two Cherokee) that were never accepted and stayed unconverted for more than a hundred of years. No matter how much I replaced their governors with diplomatic ones (a useful trick to speed up culture conversion), they just pumped all that extra MPs into development.
I was thinking of releasing them and culture converting the land for them through war or just playing as them and finishing the process, but at that point just as I loosely remember a Chinese saying - a slight blemish on the ring only highlights how round it is.
The list of development in the world. It would have been higher if I haven't systematically and often denied seats to Parliament. I also turned on Common Sense DLC in about 1540 (I obviously didn't want HRE to go ballistic in their development, but I also knew that I will have to use Parliament, so I decided that to not be too exploitative I should turn it on as soon as I hit the cap for military MPs; recent changes in 1.15 may make finally quell that summer rage on forums from HRE minors overdeveloping their provinces). Notice New Russia crazy level. Also: who cares about inflation.
We should get more of these pie charts.
And the colonisation proof:
As for the exploits I tried to be very moderate with them. I used a couple quite intensely though:
1) Starting and cancelling culture conversion to prevent teching too quickly. This helped to get Influence and Exploration to be filled up fairly soon. More importantly, I had to carry a lot of diplomatic MPs late into the game when I will be culture converting, so I carried around 5-6K to the first round of culture converting and then about 3-4K to the second round. The first one was intense, I had so many diplomatic points stored that I had to monitor which provinces I was actually converting with full adjacency bonus and which were just the storage facility, which I had to cancel before they reach 10%. I hadto physically write down about 40 provinces and manually check on them each month.
2) I noticed in my game that if a debate is not selected, one can quit the game and have a new set of 5 debates. While the first one was a merely -5% tech cost that helped me tech diplomatic levels, remaining ones were -15% to diplomatic annexation and culture conversion.
Another useful trick in the game may be to notice that in the late game diplomatic annexation can be as low as 0.8. For this you need Influence, it's policy, an appropriate debate and an event "Loyal subjects" from subject interactions events, which can trigger if there are 3 subjects with less than 10% Liberty Desire. When I had very high diplomatic reputation and had a lot of CNs, it fired fairly often.
Some goalposts along the way
Quick elimination of Novgorod (almost) and Russian minors, through a war with Novgorod, Ryazan (who became it's ally) and Tver (militarist Tver will attack Novgorod fairly certainly).
Securing distant overseas and Danzig
Denmark had kept its PUs, so it was joyful stomping over it together with PLC
Polish-Lithuanian union was fairly strong, so it took some effort to make it never an issue. While I was of higher military tech, I still need Hungary to serve as distraction.
Sitting a little bit on Lithuanian land though was a good idea as pretender rebels broke the PU.
Distant overseas coring was a bit hard to do at first, as in some provinces autonomy couldn't have been raised. That resulted in some big rebellions, which this patch were more potent as stacks were more concentrated
Still bankrupting Timurids and pushing to India is always a good idea. That "Central Asia" tag would stay for almost entire game when I will have all India and China
Rulers were generally good to me having generally 8 in total for Admin and Diplomatic, but Pyotr was the Great. He was born to Semen. Notice some initial culture converting to establish a strong powerbase
In 1538 I finally declared on Iberians. Castille was going very rapidly through Exploration and Expansion idea groups. Thankfully, they were mostly focused on Africa until I noticed through the goods location ledger that Hispaniola is already 10 provinces large. The war for the new world ensued.
I teched up to level 7 or 9 in diplomatic tech to reach the colonies, starting at 184 per technology and then after the war Castille formed Spain, which was good as I could reconquest a lot of land from to aragon vassal. Portugal was also soon annexed with it's small La Plata CN.
After taking Guyenne from France and cutting Ottomans from Egypt to make them colonies, nobody was really a threat
Still I had to deal though with Castilian culture in the Caribbean somehow. I decided to wait till separatism is down in 4 biggest colonies and convert it to Russian to make a CN with Castilian not accepted. Later on I would dump some Russian non-cored colonies to Leon that also started colonizing in the new world. After annexing it I had two colonial nations in the caribbean I released one and DOWed it. That way Castilian was never accepted in my colonial nation. As it would turn out that may have been unnecessary as CNs would convert even accepted cultures sometime. Still I wanted to make sure the conversion process goes smoothly.
As it turned out, I was colonizing not as fast as I should initially keeping positive balance in money income. I had about 8 colonies running in the mid-game and 14 in the late game. As cost for colonising is quadratic I should have colonised more aggressively earlier. A debate "Charter colonies" was used 2 or three times. Also I should have moved my capital sooner to a place in Europe closer to colonies. Tsargrad aka Constantinople came to mind. That cut the way to Oceania quite significantly.
A bit overzealous with the number of colonies here (look at the cost)
The first round of culture converting was intense
The first WC is always sweet
As is the first "One Faith"
Culture conversion was finished with the second Assimilation debate in 1797
And then we reached the final chapter of historical Russian colonisation
P.S. My deepest thanks to DicRoNero who planted one culture idea in my mind last summer.
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