WC and overextension

[aussie]

I am playing Ottomans. It's 1720 and I am by far the greatest world power. I own Asia and Africa and I am about to begin eating Europe (I am hoping to take America by inheriting colonies once I take their overlords). My economy is great. I make over 200 a month with tier 3 advisors and I am on top of mil and admin tech despite the enormous coring costs. My absolutism is 115. This is the closest I have ever been to a WC.

Completed idea groups: Admin, Offensive, Influence, Quantity, Humanist, Diplo. Not sure what to take next.

In theory, I should be on time to make it. I've been waging several wars at a time for decades now. I win them all easily but I cannot take land fast enough because of the danger of all those nasty OE events.

I have already played the game until 1790 and retried from the early 1600s to late 1700s a couple of times. So far it seems to me that my OE problem won't get much better despite the promise of increased admin efficiency. I can eat up half of Europe maybe, but not the whole world.

All tips are welcome.

Thanks!

 

[Blizzrd33]

For WC runs, you should be using both direct conquest and conquest using your vassals/client states to manage overextension. This way you can use both admin mana and diplo mana (when integrating vassals) to expand and can be coring almost twice as much development from each war at the same time. If you try to direct annex everything, it will take you a lot longer than a combination of direct and vassal expansion.

You should be coring newly conquered provinces while sieging down provinces in your next war, with OE at around 100% continuously by the 1700s. It's sometimes OK to go over 100% OE if only for a few months, some of the OE events are not really much of a problem in the late game but there are some harsh ones.

Suggest your next idea group should be Expansion. Also you should have Level 5 advisors if you are making 200 ducats/month, not just level 3 advisors. You can upgrade them above level 3 if you pay the ducats for the level ups.

Any absolutism over 100 is wasted absolutism. At 115 max, you should definitely give out some estate privileges and drop it back to max at 105. Then if your legitimacy rises and falls slightly you'll swing between 100 and 105, which is fine.

What was your total development at 1600? Less than 3000 and you'll need to get a move on.
What was your total development at 1700? Less than 8000 and again you'll need to get a move on.

 

[aussie]

For WC runs, you should be using both direct conquest and conquest using your vassals/client states to manage overextension. This way you can use both admin mana and diplo mana (when integrating vassals) to expand and can be coring almost twice as much development from each war at the same time. If you try to direct annex everything, it will take you a lot longer than a combination of direct and vassal expansion.

You should be coring newly conquered provinces while sieging down provinces in your next war, with OE at around 100% continuously by the 1700s. It's sometimes OK to go over 100% OE if only for a few months, some of the OE events are not really much of a problem in the late game but there are some harsh ones.

Suggest your next idea group should be Expansion. Also you should have Level 5 advisors if you are making 200 ducats/month, not just level 3 advisors.

Any absolutism over 100 is wasted absolutism. At 115 max, you should definitely give out some estate privileges and drop it back to max at 105. Then if your legitimacy rises and falls slightly you'll swing between 100 and 105, which is fine.

What was your total development at 1600? Less than 3000 and you'll need to get a move on.
What was your total development at 1700? Less than 8000 and again you'll need to get a move on.

Thanks very much for your answer.

I do have some vassals/client states. I have Najd (vassal), which owns the Arabian Peninsula; Manchuria (cs), which I created to conquer all those provinces in Mongolia and NE Asia; and Assam (vassal), which owns Vietnam and will eventually own the provinces I still haven't got around Cambodia and Birmania (which are property of Siam). I may create one more in Europe maybe.

I am also doing like you suggest. I am always at war to optimize time and I'm basically around 100% all the time. Sometimes I get a bit over. Like you say, one or two events is ok, but all those stab hits make massive rebel armies a pain (rebels are what I hate the most about this game).

My development in 1600 was 3419. In 1725 it is 10045.

I'll check about the states privileges, but I'm not sure how that can help me speed up conquest.

Ok to taking expansion. I imagine this is for the colonist, because I already have 28 merchants from colonial trade land.

 

[Orkonkel]

You can easily go up to 200% OE, especially if you have upgraded all of the tolerance/unrest reduction monuments. The events aren't really too bad, and with your CCR you'll be coring up land fairly quick anyway. Here's an example of what I'm talking about from my Catholic One Faith game:

-3 Global Unrest with 235% overextension.

Also, upgrade your level 3 advisors to level 5 advisors.

 

[adin85]

In my only WC. I have bonuses from Unrest and Tolerance more than 20. I could easily have all the time 300%. I took Humanist and Religiouse ideas.

 

[Blizzrd33]

Thanks very much for your answer.

I do have some vassals/client states. I have Najd (vassal), which owns the Arabian Peninsula; Manchuria (cs), which I created to conquer all those provinces in Mongolia and NE Asia; and Assam (vassal), which owns Vietnam and will eventually own the provinces I still haven't got around Cambodia and Birmania (which are property of Siam). I may create one more in Europe maybe.

I am also doing like you suggest. I am always at war to optimize time and I'm basically around 100% all the time. Sometimes I get a bit over. Like you say, one or two events is ok, but all those stab hits make massive rebel armies a pain (rebels are what I hate the most about this game).

My development in 1600 was 3419. In 1725 it is 10045.

I'll check about the states privileges, but I'm not sure how that can help me speed up conquest.

Ok to taking expansion. I imagine this is for the colonist, because I already have 28 merchants from colonial trade land.

Your dev suggests WC is entirely possible. Don't be afraid to truce break if it keeps your conquest/coring humming along at more or less 100% OE. You'll have enough spare mana to raise stability and lower war exhaustion. There will be a point that you can stop researching Dip techs because the remaining bonuses won't help you with expansion. Same for admin once you get the last admin efficiency bonus.

Full Expansion ideas gives 10% less autonomy in territories, which flows on to give more ducats/manpower to your economy. The extra relations slot allows for another client state/vassal. The colonists may help (but may have been more useful earlier than 1700s) and the 20% global trade power is strong.

WC comes down to a bottleneck of one resource more than any other, depending on your national ideas/traditions and the idea group choices along the way. Mana/ducats/manpower/OE/time - with time being the only one with no modifiers available to help you. Once you have identified the bottleneck, that will tell you which modifiers to look for to help with your most limited resource.

 

[Guibou]

Just tossing it out there because some dont know. Bad OE events are capted at 2 at the same time. So if you leave the popup open for the full 3 months you actually reduce the amount of bad events you get.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

One thing that is most important for fast expansion and WC is rebel management. Rebels spawning in your backyard will tie your forces and decrease your resources to commit into war. With humanism and fast coring you shouldn't have problems with this too much, if you ever want to do one faith in future its important to stack conversion speed as much, so you can convert provinces before 10 months in order to avoid rebels. It is a matter of truce juggling so you can both annex for yourself and release vassals that will take provinces. As you can't release vassals at war, you will have to time the end of your few wars to end in the same time. Release, start coring and start a new war. Ottomans are nice, but mughals are by far the easiest to do the WC.

 

[grotaclas]

Just tossing it out there because some dont know. Bad OE events are capted at 2 at the same time. So if you leave the popup open for the full 3 months you actually reduce the amount of bad events you get.

You can get more than two overextension events at the same time:

The reason for leaving an event open till it times out after 4 months is that you can't get the same event again while it is open. This is especially important for the rebel sentiment event, because as a province event its MTTH is checked for each eligible province separately, so it will happen very often if you have many eligible provinces.

 

[aussie]

You can get more than two overextension events at the same time:
View attachment 842583

The reason for leaving an event open till it times out after 4 months is that you can't get the same event again while it is open. This is especially important for the rebel sentiment event, because as a province event its MTTH is checked for each eligible province separately, so it will happen very often if you have many eligible provinces.

This is probably the most useful tip ever! I wish I had known!

By the way, I finally managed to conquer the world. I don't think I would have been able to do it without heavily overextending. I was conquering like mad from like the mid 1600s. By 1760 or so I stopped caring about OE. Finished conquering Haiti (last standing nation) in late 1820.

For years I've been dying to post this screenshot:

Thanks everybody for your help!