When you are not going WC, do you ''pause'' to consolidate ?

[BaronNoir]

By ''pausing'' I meant ''not attacking stuff'' (for instance, when I don't have a vassal ready, it's not colonial land and/or especially when I'm gorged up on states. I don't pretend to be a good player, but a territory have to be damn good and/or good to seize for strategic reasob

 

[Vulkandrache]

when I don't have a vassal ready

Release one. Or life with the OE for a few month.
If you are taking care of your land then only newly conquered provinces should revolt.

I'm gorged up on states

The statelimit went from "cant be arsed to invest the mouseclicks to fill it up" to "Im at max well before any sort of real conquest even begins".
Unless you know what you are doing and go for multiple Culture switches there is almost no way you are not perpetualy at statelimit

By ''pausing'' I meant ''not attacking stuff'

The amount of breathers you can take in a WC depend on two things:
1. At the start of the game: How fast can your Diplomats work to avoid a coalition.
2. Once you turned up the gas the trucetimers dictate when to declare on whom next.

 

[Fipse]

When not going WC? Well of course I pause because I usually have some "RP borders" I want to keep.

 

[The_Meme_Man]

I always expand slowly and sensibly. The only places I will expand fast will be in Germany and in India, because obviously they have a pan-cultural tag I can form that rewards rapid expansion, and then I stop AFTER I form Germany/India.

Conquest doesn't really pay itself off besides make other countries poorer. I like making colonial empires over contiguous empires (IMO they look cooler), so I have a shopping list of rich territories I can get, and then I develop them and field a massive Navy to control trade. I figured out I could make more money as a Japanese empire with less land than what they occupied in WWII, than a Chinese Empire that owned all of Eurasia without developing anything.

 

[bly08]

That's simply not true. Conquest gives by far the highest ROI. You should expand slowly in Germany and faster everywhere else due to AE.

 

[Orkonkel]

In games where the aim is to become a regional power, rather than world conquest, I tend to play a lot more carefully to avoid overreaching out of greed. If I am Brandenburg or the Knights or Bengal, I don't need to fight balls-to-the-walls 100% warscore never-at-peace consecutive wars (as I would playing Russia, Ottomans, or France). Is just too stressful.