Yet another cry for help for a first WC

[TheMeInTeam]

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

Normally I would, but I'm debating since I'm finally bothering to do a scrub-mode 1-faith to cross that one off:



Weird run, eliminating Iberia pre-1550 wasn't exactly what I planned but it was basically free. I'm about to break off tributary now that I'm done with the AE abuse. If I go revolutionary, I will forego DotF which gives an extra missionary.

I did random new world to screw with AI colonization, but France will still take an extra war or two to grab the colonies ASAP (going to declare to get that going before peacing Russia). I did the math and assuming I don't stop converting with 5 missionaries it should be possible to self-convert the world, but obviously that won't happen (Sweden is converting its land, new world CNs will convert some if I get them started ASAP). I feel if I wait to full annex France/GB directly the colonies will convert too slowly even if I carpet them in cathedrals.

On the other hand, rev CB is the only way to bypass zeal via force-religion on heathens. I'm thinking it might be better to stay Ottoman gov't for extra missionary then switch if needing to clear zeal.

If OP isn't caring about one faith, rev is definitely the way to go and 1-tagging this should be easy enough by simply annexing everyone left in the 1770's position in 1 war.

 

[bly08]

Without seeing the religious map or knowing more I would guess that revolutionary is still worth it. Finishing the WC asap should make the one faith easier compared to anything else you can do. CNs might be a problem. If you inherit and enforce religion, there will be less revolts, If you form them yourself and feed them land then they'll be unstable and won't convert for a long time. Central Africa should be all Sunni, you can release Ainu from Japan to convert the entire Northeastern corner.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Without seeing the religious map or knowing more I would guess that revolutionary is still worth it. Finishing the WC asap should make the one faith easier compared to anything else you can do. CNs might be a problem. If you inherit and enforce religion, there will be less revolts, If you form them yourself and feed them land then they'll be unstable and won't convert for a long time. Central Africa should be all Sunni, you can release Ainu from Japan to convert the entire Northeastern corner.

Process of going rev will cost ~5 years plus a little damage from extra rebels, not major and I'm definitely considering it once it's available. I think if I go that route I will have a long period of slower conversion though. Sitting on OE while going for rev is painful, but more importantly it will take a toll on piety and leave me at 50 RT initially. Even with a few wars to get that back up again I have to expect some decrease in conversion speed. Still, I have to think you're right now that I'm thinking about it. Losing estates and having so much maintenance reduction means I could easily get away with just culture drifting to form Spain after cores are done if I need the missionary.

On the topic of CNs, even if I go rev, full annex on France + GB is a several war deal. GB can be done in 2 that way, but France at 1200 dev will take 3-4. That forces truce breaks to get the CNs soon, and I can't force their religion until they're loyal/positive relations.

Maybe I should just go rev ASAP --> smash France and give land to vassals --> truce break (buy down WE once due to DIP ideas, boost RT with MIL) --> repeat until they're full annexed. I don't need to feed Ainu, I'm converting everything but the CoR there in ~10 months.

 

[bly08]

Process of going rev will cost ~5 years plus a little damage from extra rebels, not major and I'm definitely considering it once it's available. I think if I go that route I will have a long period of slower conversion though. Sitting on OE while going for rev is painful, but more importantly it will take a toll on piety and leave me at 50 RT initially. Even with a few wars to get that back up again I have to expect some decrease in conversion speed. Still, I have to think you're right now that I'm thinking about it. Losing estates and having so much maintenance reduction means I could easily get away with just culture drifting to form Spain after cores are done if I need the missionary.

On the topic of CNs, even if I go rev, full annex on France + GB is a several war deal. GB can be done in 2 that way, but France at 1200 dev will take 3-4. That forces truce breaks to get the CNs soon, and I can't force their religion until they're loyal/positive relations.

Maybe I should just go rev ASAP --> smash France and give land to vassals --> truce break (buy down WE once due to DIP ideas, boost RT with MIL) --> repeat until they're full annexed. I don't need to feed Ainu, I'm converting everything but the CoR there in ~10 months.

I think you just have to get down to <0 stability for a day to trigger the revolutionary disaster and then you can bring it back up to +2 right after, no need to sit on mass unrest for a long time like for Court & Country. Whatever your conversion math is at this point, it can be helped greatly by releasing religious vassals in every region that still has giant blobs of unconverted provinces. Every religious vassal you release is an extra 2 missionaries.

I'm not sure if annexing or inheriting is better at this point, my guess would still be inheriting. LB is helped by the Age of Revolution bonuses, and for every war where you don't take 100 WS of their non-colony provinces their WS will get higher and higher. If you form a CN and feed it an entire colonial region that's 5x their size, they'll stay at negative stability for a really long time and won't convert during then. Of course, if you can WC fast enough, you can always move your capital and/or release and re-conquer the CN later. Either way the 50% WS cost helps a lot.

I don't even think you need to truce break, you're ahead of schedule and it's best to save for truce breaks at the end if it looks like it'll be close. The only region that seems problematic is Ming since there are no religious vassals to release there.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ming's land is pretty easily converted though, either directly or by kicking out something like Shun and doing force religion + cathedral carpet (I have the money for it, Sweden doesn't have religious either but they're doing even high dev provinces in < 20 months). Sweden has luck though, most would only have base + edict + cathedral + 1 stab or so for ~6.5%, maybe a bit more from Islamic decisions or piety.

Unfortunately client states are useless for converting to Islam since they have too much tolerance. Most likely I'll do most of that conversion work myself, shouldn't be too bad.

 

[Zenonira]

Though you don't need to be at negative stab for the revolution disaster to keep ticking up, and you can thus go for +2 stab, do be aware that if you're in the revolution disaster itself and you kill all rebels, if you at any point have more than 0 stab the disaster ends. I'd be very careful with stabbing up before I become proper revolutionary.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Though you don't need to be at negative stab for the revolution disaster to keep ticking up, and you can thus go for +2 stab, do be aware that if you're in the revolution disaster itself and you kill all rebels, if you at any point have more than 0 stab the disaster ends. I'd be very careful with stabbing up before I become proper revolutionary.

Standard procedure there is to revoke an estate or two near the capital almost immediately. Once they take a province and your subjects are on sleep stabbing up is pretty safe, though in my case the game handed me so much stab so quickly I lost it by going to +3 . I "solved" this issue by simply truce breaking France, since I have diplomatic ideas and needed it back down anyway:



Colonies are pretty unruly since AI loves tariffs, but I pushed most of them into Sunni already. Rev CB was definitely the way to go, I was able to 1-shot full annex --> release Great Britain, and since the lost a lot of territory cores they released with ~550 dev, pretty manageable. Kongo took religious so I just forced religion on them with the CB while trying to deal with level 8 forts of GB in the freaking fog, that was awful. Nothing like hundreds of RNW provinces that might or might not belong to your target of full annexation instead of their colonies since the CN regions are haphazard .

Annex ~700 dev burning empire into colony --> hit Ming up for released Shun + fort gouge should put this on the path to finishing in time. My last idea group NEEDS to be exploration...nobody's trading me maps and counterespionage trolling is real. On the bright side I see everyone that matters, explo will just be to mow down some primitives at the end.

The micromanagement on this is terrible. Truly respect the elites willing to squeeze movements to get this done faster with far inferior nations.

@bly08 the advice is appreciated, thanks! Especially about inherited colonial subjects functioning better for the conversions (though their tariffs/liberty desire is all over the place). Some cathedral spam for them and Shun in Ming was plenty to make it with time to spare after getting 1-tag. Also, Miao in China actually does take religious, though I didn't know that right away. Really anybody who doesn't take humanist is enough since you have tons of money and can cathedral them up which makes converting right-culture pretty nice.

 

[Stillard]

I finally did it! (new campaign, though I played the old one until late 1810s. I learnt a lot about late game mass conquest but I couldn't achieve it).
Thanks for all your comments!.

I finished the WC at 1809, one-tagged late 1810s as I had to pick colonialism to annex that lousy vassal in Africa (I had no direct province to him so I could not core)

-I did the usual start for a Coptic ottomans:

- I handled the Timmies (got a Persia vassal with almost no LD) and the mamluks better than my previous campaign so I could get into India and east Africa almost 50 years earlier.

- Usual set of starting ideas (religious, influence, admin and diplo).

- I Left Europe untouched for 2 centuries (a huge mistake, specially because of the Iberians)

- I got a foothold in India by 1500 and started heavy conquering there before an Indian supper blob was made.

- Africa was a cakewalk and I got to Zanzibar by 1550.

- Steppe nomads and most of Africa and Indonesia was done by the first half of the 17th century.

- I fired C&C. Having 100 abs and a threshold to lower it sometimes without falling down 100 if I had to increase autonomy or lower my legitimacy was a blessing.

- The first war against China was at 1650. Got a bunch of his tributaries during the war and after that I left them be for the next century.

- Started my European conquest by 1660 by invading Iberia and getting a foothold on the new world.

- From there on it was pretty much straightforward conquering.

- I didn't fire the revolution as I was pretty happy with my conquest pace. Looking back I don't regret it.

- By the mid 18th century I realized I could aim for a one faith so I put all my effort into the new world. Unfortunately I didn't handle it good enough and I couldn't get all of it until 1780. I forced religion on all the CN there but unluckily by 1820 there were about 10-20 provinces left to convert (I spammed cathedrals all over the place but it wasn't enough). Also I am not sure if those uncolonized sunni and fetishist provinces in Africa had to be converted aswell.

Now the mistakes:

- If I had handled the Iberians earlier as some people suggested (and therefore most of the new world earlier) I could have done a one faith.

- I could have finished it a lot faster by micromanaging better my armies and CS annexations timing during the last 120 years.

- Forming the Roman Empire. I'm pretty sure I lost the jannisaries bonus because of it. Though I could easily defeat all my enemies by then I still feel it was a huge mistake (I already had the achievement).

So that's all. I was looking forward for this for a long time as I had not done a WC since EU3 and I just couldn't imagine doing it again, this time in EU4. I'm going to try to one faith in the future, probably with another country (Castile seems one of the forums favorite for it).

So thanks for all your advices!

I final

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Congrats!

I am not sure if those uncolonized sunni and fetishist provinces in Africa had to be converted aswell.

You don't. In fact you don't have to colonize Africa either because you can use the age of revolution bonus to core anywhere.

Also it is possible to break CN, break truce to take the land yourself and convert it directly.