What's the best nation for WC in 1.4?

[Sensational]

Boom: The emperor can no longer exploit converting his own religion for IA farming.

What does this mean in practice?

 

[dirtInfestor5]

Is it in 1.5 still important to shut down Castille/POrtugal asap since i will get all their colonial nations anyway if i annex them ?

 

[bradleygardner]

The Orthodox/HRE gambit seems a bit harder now that AE has been jacked up. Just tried it and got hit by Aragon before I could core Ancona.

 

[PedroVargas]

One single province caused that hate? Upping the AE really kicked in

 

[bradleygardner]

In order to do the gambit properly you have to take Ancona, Constantinople, and at least two Turkish minors (usually I took more) Second time through I didn't get as much aggression towards me, in part because Aragon was distracted by an invasion from Castile and France.

I definitely don't think I'm good enough at this game for a WC.

 

[Korashy]

Shutting down Castile and Portugal is really not that important early on, because each colony is only worth 2% you can take an entire colonial region in a war and don't even get AE for it. I generally just recruit 50-60k mercs and run around instant siege assaulting an entire colonial region while sieging their european provinces. Once the colonial nation is released it instantly gains cores on all the provinces. You have to make sure you take the entire region tho, not chunks, because once a colonial region is formed it will no longer instant core and will suffer heavy OE if you force more provinces on it.

 

[Sensational]

Shutting down Castile and Portugal is really not that important early on, because each colony is only worth 2% you can take an entire colonial region in a war and don't even get AE for it. I generally just recruit 50-60k mercs and run around instant siege assaulting an entire colonial region while sieging their european provinces. Once the colonial nation is released it instantly gains cores on all the provinces. You have to make sure you take the entire region tho, not chunks, because once a colonial region is formed it will no longer instant core and will suffer heavy OE if you force more provinces on it.

I thought they nerfed this?

I.e. CNs no longer form out of non-cored provinces, you actually need to core non-colonies in the New World before they count towards a CN now, no?

You can of course still do it in 2 passes though. Grab 5, core, then grab the rest, making sure you station some troops to deal with the rebels.

 

[TheBloke]

I thought they nerfed this?

I.e. CNs no longer form out of non-cored provinces, you actually need to core non-colonies in the New World before they count towards a CN now, no?

You can of course still do it in 2 passes though. Grab 5, core, then grab the rest, making sure you station some troops to deal with the rebels.

1.5 - Changes for Subjects: Protectorates/CNs/Vas/PU; Independence; feeding; more

Section A. 2. A. - Colonial Nation Formation.

In brief: the five core requirement applies only to the spawning of a CN, and only five cores are required; any further provinces you own in that region will also go to the CN and be cored by them, even if you have not cored them.

In a way, this actually lets you build up more cores for your CN than before. Before, the CN formed after 5 provinces, and then got only 5 cores. Now, you could keep annexing several nations in a single region, building up a big block of, say, 20 provinces, before you then cored 5 of them. Then the CN would get cores on 20 of them instead of just 5. So long as you could handle the OE in the meantime.

 

[Korashy]

HRE Ottoman with only constantinople to itself will also immediately gain accepted culture, which i believe cuts coring time in half. Meaning you would probably need around 8-9 months for the cores, making it a pretty short period of high OE.

 

[lordelenath]

So the idea would be join the HRE, convert to Orthodoxy and force convert electors (as before) and then sell all your provinces until you own nothing but Constantinople? Should probably Revoke the Privilegia before that though, right? Otherwise you'd be considerably weakened.

 

[Korashy]

So the idea would be join the HRE, convert to Orthodoxy and force convert electors (as before) and then sell all your provinces until you own nothing but Constantinople? Should probably Revoke the Privilegia before that though, right? Otherwise you'd be considerably weakened.

Basically:

On day one use your military power to get a minimum 3 shock general (if you don't I'd recommend restarting)

If Austria allies Aragon -> restart

Kill Albania

DOW BYZ: Take Constantinople and vassalize (you might need to restart if an island revolts to them)

Do not use the decision to make constantinople your capital and don't put a missionary there yet.

Get piety to 100%

Now wait for military tech 4 (I always get a lvl 2 adviser)
B
uild up to force limits + 6-8 mercs

Once you are close to tech 4, get military access from wallachia and hungary and move your troops to the provinces adjacent to Vienna (watch for the attrition)

Once Tech is 4 you want to DOW Austria on the second day of a month and immediately move both stacks onto Vienna (where 90% of the time they have 20k+ troops standing around with minimal maint. Unless you get some bad rolls you should be able to stackwipe those forces in that battle.

After that I found vassalizing the electors before actually sieging Austria easier because they will help you out with troops once they rebuild (even 2 regiments can make a difference)

Start improving relations with the electors immediately

When all 3 electors are vassalized proceed to siege Austria and make them release Styria (this is crucial)

When you sieged about half of the Austrian lands and their military isn't an issue anymore, put that missionary on Constantinople and reduce missionary maint to 0

Finish the war with Austria and hopefully in the truce timer there should be the desired revolt, now make constantinople your capitol and put missionary maint back to full (i always forget this and wonder why i can't convert)

A year before truce is up send a loan to Austria which they will always accept (at least for me)

Dow Austria take Ostmarch and the province next to it and sell them to Bohemia (again for me they will always buy, but you might need to sit on them for 5 years).

Send another loan to Austria

Dow and vassalize (make sure you have your 3 electors voting for you).

I tend to keep Styria as a trusted ally now.

Now DOW the electors and force religion on all of them and their allies (release nations if they are to big). Don't use Enforce Religious Unity.

Give loans to anyone who wants them then DOW -> force religion. I tend to prioritize OPM's for the first 2 reforms because they make it easier to pass them

Do this till you hit landsfriede then use Enforce religious Unity on the big nations starting with the ones that have the lowest opinion of you.

Proclaim Erbkaisertum, release byzantium (only if all the provinces they would get are part of the empire (you probably can't add Cyprus, and Rhodes so be careful)

Now start conquering and releasing to get Revoke the privilegia done. (I usually manage to revoke in about 20 years if I don't get hit by a regency council)

At this point I personally switch back to Sunni because of the morale and piety mechanic.

Once you are Sunni add all the turkish provinces to the empire and release them.

If you have build a solid cash reserve immediately go stop Muscovy from colonizing any further using exclusively mercs to siege(I took their farthest province and just sat on it uncored for years).

At this point if you manage your provinces properly so you can claim and balance AE you can pretty much be at war nonstop as cores will be done before the sieges are finished.



Ideas: Either Diplomatic or Administrative 1st, the other second, 3rd Religious (You need quick conversions and you want the relations decay bonus), rest whatever you want.

 

[Sensational]

So long as you could handle the OE in the meantime.

Yeah that is the issue I was considering, it would considerably slow you down in other areas if you have to sit on 250 OE every time you try to take a colonial nation. Just handing that OE over to your CN and beating down the rebels seems faster.

 

[Korashy]

Yeah that is the issue I was considering, it would considerably slow you down in other areas if you have to sit on 250 OE every time you try to take a colonial nation. Just handing that OE over to your CN and beating down the rebels seems faster.

It takes only about a year to go tho, that's about how long it takes to move your troops into position anyways. The CN takes a fair bit longer to core in my experience and rebel hunting there is pretty annoying since you wont get the hostile siege notification.

 

[Sensational]

It takes only about a year to go tho

Doesn't that depend on your size? I mean, suppose you're not playing OE or Italy, the coring might take significantly longer.

 

[Korashy]

Doesn't that depend on your size? I mean, suppose you're not playing OE or Italy, the coring might take significantly longer.

Fair enough

 

[AurochsAway]

Doesn't that depend on your size? I mean, suppose you're not playing OE or Italy, the coring might take significantly longer.

An alternative would be to have 4 colonies, and declare war while the fifth is starting up. You can then maintain the seiges and annex them all just before the 5th colony finishes, which should put them all straight into a CN.

 

[TheBloke]

An alternative would be to have 4 colonies, and declare war while the fifth is starting up. You can then maintain the seiges and annex them all just before the 5th colony finishes, which should put them all straight into a CN.

Yes, I think that's exactly the optimal strategy.

I described the specifics in the Q&A thread earlier:

Annexed land taken after the CN already existed will not be auto-cored by that CN. Thus, to prevent your CN being crippled by OE (and resulting rebellions, low income, and all the rest):

1. Make four colonies which auto-core.
2. Start a fifth colony.
3. When you anticipate you're a couple of years from that fifth colony finishing, go annex all the land you want.
   • The aim is to have finished annexing all the land you want before that fifth colony auto-cores; ideally *just* before.
4. Once you have five cores in a region: all provinces in that region, including any uncored ones, will form into a new CN, and that CN gets cores on all of them - including the ones you did not have a core on.
   • Thus you want to do all the annexing you can before the CN forms, but timed such that it occurs with as little gap as possible before you get your fifth core.

That way all of the land goes to the CN in one go, and most importantly the CN gets cores on all of it for free. Therefore the CN suffers no OE, and you also suffer no or minimal OE damage because you correctly timed the appearance of your fifth core to be just after you seized the land.

Naturally it's important to do all this with careful regard to the Colonial Region mapmode, to be sure you're accumulating colonies and provinces all in the same region such that it does all cede in one go to a single CN which gets cores on all of it.

Edit: Trying to get the timing of a fifth colony just right to match your annexation may turn out to be more trouble than it's worth in many cases. If you're not taking a huge amount of land, and/or have low coring times, and/or you can manage OE for a year or two, then the simplified version is to make four auto-cored colonies, then just core one of the newly annexed provinces the moment you get one. So you only pay for one core, and you only wait a year or two to core it during which the OE is manageable. That way you don't have to do careful planning with an unfinished colony and risk it finishing too soon - perhaps because you got a +colonist event, or the war dragged on unexpectedly - and forming a CN before you finished your war.

Though I suppose if there did seem to be a risk of the colony ending too soon, you could either lower maintenance to 0, or worst case abandon the colony and then go back to Plan A (manually coring one province as soon as you annex.) Better that than losing several free cores for your CN.

 

[lordelenath]

I guess if you wanted to perfect that strategy you should have four finished colonies in every colonial region and maintain a fifth in all of them at something like 950 population with reduced colonial maintenance to keep them from actually growing. Then wait for all the colonizers to finish their business, carpet siege all other colonial nations, turn up colonial maintenance and annex everything you can. Probably not worth the trouble - still, could be kinda fun.

 

[TheBloke]

I guess if you wanted to perfect that strategy you should have four finished colonies in every colonial region and maintain a fifth in all of them at something like 950 population with reduced colonial maintenance to keep them from actually growing. Then wait for all the colonizers to finish their business, carpet siege all other colonial nations, turn up colonial maintenance and annex everything you can. Probably not worth the trouble - still, could be kinda fun.

Yeah true. Shame you can't adjust colonial maintenance on a per-colony basis. You'd need to manage it quite carefully. But it could certainly be worthwhile making at least three or four colonies in various suitable Regions, so you're not starting from 0 when you are ready to start annexing there.

 

[unmerged(177849)]

This is a little OT, but the thread has wandered OT so here goes ...

People talk about the need to cripple the colonizers early for a WC, but isn't Muscovy/Russia expansion a bigger threat? Worst case with colonies, (a) only 2% war cost per province, and (b) you don't need to core them given colony mechanics.

Whereas Russia, if not stopped at Perm (or slightly past there, if you can cut off their colonization of Siberia), blobs to the point that they will require many wars & huge amounts of coring to conquer. It's not that they get too strong - I mean, they can, but any nation able to serious consider a WC is going to be able to beat them - but it's just war after war after war, and huge coring costs, to absorb an expanded Russia. I know that in my Austria and Italy revoke the privlegia games - not WCs but quite successful - I am facing a LONG series of wars against Russia to gradually eat away at the blob. (Whereas in my Commonwealth revoke the privlegia game I cut them of at Perm and vassalized Muscovy.)

Am I right? Do France/England/Castille WCs rely upon alliances to limit Muscovy early on?