Yet another cry for help for a first WC

[Stillard]

Hi, After 1.22 hit I decided I'd focus on getting my first WC (and hopefully one-tag...) as the Ottos.

After several trys (as Coptic ottomans, sunii ottomonas, heck I even tried going to Europe first!) I decided I'd go the sunni --> India --> China --> Euorpe/Africa route. However time seems to win my at every game so I decided I'd took some screenshoots in my last one and I'd share them along with some questions:

The Game:

I went the east route asap, got influence and administrative for some efficient vassal fedding (so many sunnis for deus vult) and cut Muscovy off asia with my vassal crimea. I tried to core as much as possible with my vassals. Thanks to a series of alliances I even grab a chunck of Lithuania and eventually I was able to release Novgorod and feed him most of the lefts of Muscovy and some of Scandinavia, almost AE free.

While I was doing that I got taberastan as a vassal and feed them most of Persia ( In find that Persia will get so many cores back from events that I have to spend a ton of admin to keep their LD low)

When the age of absolutism kick I was in India making a huge Sind vassal as I was coring myself aswell.

Up here seems pretty straightforward. However after this pont I seem to screw all my games so here it goes:

-1. India: No matter how hard I try it almost takes me a centrury to conquer It all. It usually has a hugher Delhi and Bengal with tremendous forcelimit which tooks me several wars to finnish off. Any Idea on how to deal with India faster? What should my goals be in that regard?

-2. China has so many tributaries that I don know how to handle it efficiently: I usually declare on one, drag China in and while let their armies come and lose against mines in my territory I declare on the rest of vassals so I can annex them asap. This however still leaves a pretty powerful china which takes lots of wars and most of my army resources to win.

-3. Vassals: I was under the impression that once absolutism kicked in I should start coring all by myself but late game I seem to let a lot of WS go to the toilet because I cannot eat that many land. Should I use client states then?

-4. Money: It seems clear enough, conquer the TC areas, start TC, build some manufactories there and fuel the trade back to Constantinople.

-5. Africa: When?

-6. Absolutism: Is C&C that much required? No matter what I usually get to about 90 in the first years of the age so I can't se that extra 10 to 100 helping that much.

-7. Revolution: I tried firing it some times but I got so many different types of rebels in the mean time that I end up playing whackamole for a decade. Also I realize that with that much WS reduction I'll be forced to create CS then. What are your thought on it?

So that's preety much everything. I leave you with some random screenshots of my last run. I know that with some truce breaking I could still aim for a close WC but I feel that it should be way smoother than that.

Anyways, thanks in advance!

 

[PrimeYuri]

those 40 years is enough to finish the WC. Next time try to expand more in multiple directions in the beginning. like going for the Zanzibar and Seville trade notes and try to vassilize portugal and castille around 1600 so that taking over the new world is easier.
1 For india, you could try to make allies with their enemy to help you. (maybe bahmani's in this case)
2 Ming will always be the number 1 enemy so take your time.
3. late game it is easy to get lot of land too quick to core so vassal feeding is needed. either by releasing countries or client states. Does not really matter. A tip is to take the annex policy (-20% cost/time) from adm/inf when annexing vassals.
4. For the ones in Asia yes.
5. right after Mamluks
6. it helps. all little bits help and it isn't that hard if you can get it fast.
7. whackamoling rebels is always part of a WC game because of the high OE you should always be in. Dont forget the large reduction of army maintaince, extra morale etc. you get from being rev. So yes it is worth it.

 

[Vetgirig]

1, India takes time to conquer. So if you start in 1490 you should finish around 1600. You dpnt need to finish india before you start to go after Ming.
2. conquer in a line straight towards china and attack them direcly. You want a direct border with china ASAP.
4 yes
5. When mamluks is done - just continue towards the cape and towards iberia.
6. and 7 - they are overrated imho.

However the first time Persia sees day of light it should be as YOUR vassal. Dont fight persia. make it your vassal that you later on integrate.

Dont wait. Just attack. When you start a war you should already be planning your next war and position your troops so you can start that war at the end of the current war. Think about it as a circle that is expanding and your troops is send from war to war in a circle attacking just as the old peace ends.

 

[PhoenixG]

Well india itself is like a mini europe/ming. It has lots of dev so it will take sometime to eat it whole. Always try to eat one religion at a time, so if you start attacking sunni india don't mess with the hindu india and other way around.
Also when you have start eating India, also eat the east africa. In your screenshot Kilwa is alive way too long. Blocking Russia isn't a that big priority instead attacking middle east, you should focus on east africa. You can leave the rest of africa for later, take a bite when you have free troops to spare.

Vassals are always useful, even when absolutism start. They are your extra pair of hands in coring stuff. Always take for yourself and give the land afterwards, due the difference in admin eff.

For Ming the first war against a tributary is the war to snake a border to Ming. After that You 100% WS Ming, core/vassal feed, attack tributary and white peace Ming to reduce the truce and attack Ming again for 100%.

Now that absolutism is capped, it isn't neccessary anymore to trigger C&C. But having it and push it over 100 does give you a buffer to work with, so your admin eff doesn't drop when you need do something that will drop absolutism. It's your call.

Ottoman doesn't need revolutionary to WC. So you don't really need to. But yeah, playing whack-a-whole with rebels is the "fun" part of WC.

Also don't take North Africa early. It's shit place in terms of dev and trade route and on top of it the increase coring cost.

 

[Latheloi]

With regards to Ming, I would echo the advice above about taking 100% WS, then hitting a tributary and white peacing Ming out of that war quickly to reset the truce timer.

Using the no coring distance perk in the age of absolutism is fantastic too. Have only had to complete one siege and massacre a few armies in the 5 wars I have had against Ming after the first one (which was a gruelling level 8 fort slog)

 

[Halit69]

Just a question about early Ottos. How do you guys manage the manpower? The first war against Mamluks allways kills my manpower. After that my manpower is allways around 0. That kills my agressive play. I keep Building barracks and upgrade them, but it doesnt help that much

 

[PrimeYuri]

Just a question about early Ottos. How do you guys manage the manpower? The first war against Mamluks allways kills my manpower. After that my manpower is allways around 0. That kills my agressive play. I keep Building barracks and upgrade them, but it doesnt help that much

Try to pick your fights. Both with more numbers by keeping armies close and in try to lure enemy in good terrain. use mercenary infantry as much as your incomes allows you.

 

[bly08]

The revolution disaster can be ended almost instantly by using estates to spawn rebels near your capital. You should always go for it

 

[Big Bad France]

Just a question about early Ottos. How do you guys manage the manpower? The first war against Mamluks allways kills my manpower. After that my manpower is allways around 0. That kills my agressive play. I keep Building barracks and upgrade them, but it doesnt help that much

Consolidate and replace infantry regiments with mercs as soon as manpower starts getting low. You can run cheap advisors if you need to, since your monarchs should be producing way more points than normal anyway.

 

[Stillard]

Thank you all for your replies. I'll try to finish this campaign and keep you posted with the results.

So after reading through all your replies here is what I'm going to do:

1.- Get a foothold in Iberia asap (maybe vassalaize granada in the first years). And later vassalaize Castile and Portugal for better New World management.

2.- Be more aggressive towards India and leave Muscovy alive to form Russia.

4.- conquer al the way to Zanzibar as soon as I got the mamluks. My question here is how to treat west Africa as I can't get there withou exploration/expansion or going through North Africa which seems a bad idea due to ICC and low dev.

4.- Deal with India and Ming more efficiently.

5.- Keep pumping vassals until tech 23 and later CS.

6.- So one more question. Is religious worth it if I stay Sunni? I found that almost all my rivals early game are Sunni aswell.

7.- Shoud I use the two Mil policies from quantity (+10% more and recovery/manteinance) all the time? I feel I'm losing a lot of Mil point even though I rarely get behind tech.

Thanks!

 

[gia257]

Usually you want 100 abs, but Ottos start with reduced cores and extra firepower, so they could live with just 90 or even 85. Likewise you dont NEED revolutionary, but if it wont affect your time...

Border ming and 1) attack after an explosion/low stability to force an explosion, 2) wait to strike after the "take land regardless of distance" and take the forts, then do a tour on the tributaries and keep getting more and more ming land.

Remember to split ming so that tributaries help you on the partitioning of china, allows you to finish by vassalizing ming and returning cores from the tributaries.

About africa india and such, start with the trade companies and ignore, or use a vassal to conquer the innards, that way they stay at low tech level. Once you start geting your own cores and institutons are doomed to spread, go all in to get all/most of that land before they catch up.

Remember to use warn, that will allow you to keep small countries you can eat easier. eg Buryata is huge, you go to war, grab some land but release some "princes" next to ming, warn ming so they cant eat them, now you got extra tributaries you can declare to take ming out.

If you dont pick exploration, forget about the new world or even vassalizing, you can just aim to fully annex the colonizers down the road, and get their colonies for free. If you pick exploration, dont forget to hunt for cities of gold, and to colonize everywhere.

 

[Big Bad France]

Thank you all for your replies. I'll try to finish this campaign and keep you posted with the results.

So after reading through all your replies here is what I'm going to do:

1.- Get a foothold in Iberia asap (maybe vassalaize granada in the first years). And later vassalaize Castile and Portugal for better New World management.

2.- Be more aggressive towards India and leave Muscovy alive to form Russia.

4.- conquer al the way to Zanzibar as soon as I got the mamluks. My question here is how to treat west Africa as I can't get there withou exploration/expansion or going through North Africa which seems a bad idea due to ICC and low dev.

4.- Deal with India and Ming more efficiently.

5.- Keep pumping vassals until tech 23 and later CS.

6.- So one more question. Is religious worth it if I stay Sunni? I found that almost all my rivals early game are Sunni aswell.

7.- Shoud I use the two Mil policies from quantity (+10% more and recovery/manteinance) all the time? I feel I'm losing a lot of Mil point even though I rarely get behind tech.

Thanks!

I wouldn't necessarily leave Muscovy to form Russia. You can save yourself a lot of time in the long run by splitting Muscovy in half. Definitely use the border friction CB any time the cossack aggression event chain fires, but once you have them walled off, they really aren't worth devoting a lot of time to early. Once they are walled off, you can expect the Commonwealth and Sweden to pick the corpse clean. If you only have a few Muscovite provinces at this point, that allows you to release them as a vassal and use the reconquest CB to take a ton of land later.

Also, I like taking exploration at some point down the line. At the very least, steal maps from the Iberians. Everyone always says to just conquer them and inherit their colonies, but in practice I have trouble getting them conquered before their colonies go independent. It's a lot easier for me to use my map knowledge, plus maybe a couple of colonies at key locations so I can just take colonial land directly from the Iberians before I conquer them.

 

[petertju]

Also, even though you I can recommend focusing on Asia first, you can still nibble away at Europe. I see your main borders with Europe stayed in general the same until 1621. In the 180 years before that you could easily eat a big part of Hungary, Lithuania and/or Muscovy, just keep your AE low and attack opportunistically every time they are at war.

 

[Braan]

You can usually avoid wars with Ming at full mandate by getting a land connection and letting the mandate drop to zero before declaring on them. There are several ways of doing this without having to fight Ming:

• Watching bigger tributaries closely, and declaring on them if they try drop tributary. This might take some luck, but happens occasionally. Ming usually declares on them to force them back almost immediately, allowing you to fight the ex-tributary and grab enough land to get a connection. Don't worry about Ming making peace before you, forcing tributary on the target while you're still at war with them doesn't call Ming to war against you (like force-vassalizing the target would). If you can get into such a war it's a really easy way to get a border, and since the target will be at war with Ming at the same time, this can also serve as an easy way of getting land from a reasonably large target.
• Declaring on a non-tributary ally of a tributary, then eating the tributary in the peace deal (non-cobelligerent, to avoid Ming involvement).
• Becoming a Ming tributary, and eating other tributaries, then dropping tributary status to kill their mandate.

 

[PhoenixG]

imo it's nice that Ming has low mandate (<50), but don't get hell bended to wait till it drop below 50. It doesn't make Ming's units that paper, besides the most time consuming are the sieges.

 

[Vulkandrache]

The first war against Mamluks allways kills my manpower.

The first war against the Mamluks should be tech 4vs3.
There is no need for more than one battle until you get 100 WS peacedeal.
With 5% Disc and a Morale advisor you idealy stackwipe most of their army on the first siege, after that they are done.

As the Ottomans i run a Manpower advisor at the start until i need more raw stats against a real opponent.

India: No matter how hard I try it almost takes me a centrury to conquer It all

Maybe you are starting too late. It takes time for them to grow aswell. Depending on alliences and wheter you rip Persia as a vassal clean from Timmy you can start hitting India around 1500.

China has so many tributaries that I don know how to handle it efficiently

What exactly do the Tributaries have to do with taking on Ming?
Mings forcelimit doest actually grow all that much outside of Quantity.
Once you can comfortably bring 200k Inf and 100k Cannons you can just line the border and go for it.

3. Vassals: I was under the impression that once absolutism kicked in I should start coring all by myself but late game I seem to let a lot of WS go to the toilet because I cannot eat that many land. Should I use client states then?

Abs effects integration the sameway it does coring.
At the start of the game Vassals are there to bolster your forces and to offload coring cost towards Diplo aswell as delaying the coring cost into the future.
Later on Vassal are there offload OE into diplo relations.

Money: It seems clear enough, conquer the TC areas, start TC, build some manufactories there and fuel the trade back to Constantinople.

Thats the plan and that how it works. It happens almost automaticaly.

5. Africa: When?

Inbetween truces against Nations able to fight back.

Absolutism: Is C&C that much required? No matter what I usually get to about 90 in the first years of the age so I can't se that extra 10 to 100 helping that much.

Its not just the 10 more.
1. Having a bit of room at the top is nice so your AdmEff doenst drop the moment you spend 5 legitimacy in an event.
2. AdmEff gets stronger the more you allready have.
Until last patch Abs wasnt capped.
Playing with 96% AdmEff felt like God walking on earth.

7. Revolution

I have 3 pretty crazy WC under my belt and not once did i want or need this.
I guess having it is awesome, but you dont need it in any way for a One-Tag. Get good first, then you can play with the expensive toys.

 

[Stillard]

Thank you all. I'm at 1804 and there is just some Asian/African nations left to take. However some colonies declared independence so I don't think I'll be able to manage this on time. Besides rebels are everywhere and I find it hard to control. Anyways I'm happy about this run as I've learned a lot, specially about late game. I'm pretty sure I'll achieve it in my next run.

So a couple more questions (well, 3) bumped into my head:

1.- OE. How much do you usually take? When it is safe to go above 99%? Is it possible to stay below 100% the whole run?

2.- Rebels. This one is tied to the first one. The moment I get above 99% The rebel sentiment event fires all the time and I start getting massive rebellions everywhere? How do you handle it? I've found that assigning some armies on rebel suppression don't work as I can't only put a really small number of armies to it (the moment I assign a new one some of the olds stops. Is this WAD?).

3.- Map spreading. As a Sunni Otto I barely learn about the new world, let alone the Pacific. How do you handle it?

Thanks!

 

[Vulkandrache]

Is it possible to stay below 100% the whole run?

Yes, but the amount of discipline you need for that causes imense amounts of reallife warexhaustion.

When it is safe to go above 99%?

Above 100%. 99% isnt the limit.

OE. How much do you usually take?

As much as me and my vassals can take without either of us going above 100.

I've found that assigning some armies on rebel suppression don't work

The automation is a joke. You have to do it manualy. But you should be anywhere between 400 to 800 FL with some 500k manpower.

The rebel sentiment event fires all the time

No it doenst. You dont close the old one, then the event only happens once every 4 to 6 month.

Map spreading. As a Sunni Otto I barely learn about the new world, let alone the Pacific. How do you handle it?

Steal maps, go Exploration or just walk into the enemy while at war.
You also dont need to see provinces to be able to demand them.

Besides rebels are everywhere and I find it hard to control

If you get alot of rebels towards the end of the game then something is wrong.
Most of your land shold be converted already, a Theologian and +2 Stab take care of the rest.
Some of your armies will be near newly conquered land anyway, so the one Uprising can be beaten down.

 

[Stillard]

A really helpful video. Thanks

 

[PhoenixG]

you can stay below 100% OE in the whole run. Vassals/client state is the key to balance the load. In a war take 100%, even it's over the 100% OE. After that feed the conquer land to a vassal till you below 100%. But going a bit over 100% isn't really the end of the world.