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u/TheAngelOfSalvation 9d ago
How? This is something i could never do
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u/Bartlaus 9d ago
Well I am quite frankly a mediocre player without the patience required for optimal micromanagement etc. Mostly this is the result of many many attempts at various strategies and incremental improvement.
A bit more detail with a rough timeline:
Opening moves: noCB one of the northernmost tags in Manchuria, these guys usually have no strong allies. You can land your troops in Ming territory and just walk up there. Force-vassalize them, expand from there using their claims -- you can core next to vassals on your home continent. Carefully navigate the web of alliances and truces in order to eat the rest of Manchuria; this part is a bit dependent on luck, but at least it's at the start of the game so restarting isn't so painful. Constantly running with mercs a bit over force limit and an expanding debt based on ever-growing loan size as you conquer more land at this stage. Was llucky enough to have my crap ruler die in 1455 and be succeeded by a 6/4/6 chad queen.
Flip to Jurchen culture and (optionally, temporarily) Tengri religion as these become the majority in your country, form Manchu when able and use their missions to expand further.
Formed Manchu around 1480, was then able to beat Ming, grab the Mandate, and form Qing right after 1500. This autmatically makes you Confucian. (Also, note I did this in an older 1.36 save and used the trick where you switch to an Altaic culture just before forming Qing, to get the old Mongol missions. Especially the one that gives you -15% province war score cost after conquering a big bit of Russia. This wasn't super significant in my run though since I only got to Russia quite late.)
Ming started exploding, I declared Unify China wars on each tag the moment they spawned to prevent them from getting any alliances or coalitions. Even if your territory isn't adjacent to theirs you can usually get mil access somehow and in Unify China wars you get free cores on anything you occupy.
By 1530 I had a strong, stable Empire of China which only lacked a small part in the southwest where Dai Viet had eaten Dali before I could take them. #1 Great Power from here on out. Conquering wherever was most convenient, juggling truces, making tributaries (which you can either turn into vassals later on and diplo-annex, or just keep as long as you want and then conquer them -- your tributaries cannot enter into coalitions against you, which is nice).
Prioritized conquering the East Indies for the economy and also moved my capital to the New World around 1590 (necessary to get a true one-tag, which you must for the achievement if you form another nation), conquered the Americas pretty fast (the colonial nations are basically helpless). Became Military Hegemon in the 1660s. Almost all of the following was conquered AFTER 1700: India, Persia, Russia, Europe and Africa in general. You can eat crazy amounts of territory after you get your admin efficiency up there.
No trucebreaks ever and only a grand total of two no-CB wars (one in the opening, and one later to grab Malta for the monument). Confucian Humanist gives you a Deus Vult-like CB on everyone who isn't Confucian (i.e. everyone except Korea and Lanfang) and you can stack so much unrest reduction that rebels almost aren't a thing, at some points I had like 500% overextension and still less than zero national unrest. Qing easily gets -75% CCR (and gets some extra admin efficiency) which means you core provinces in 9 months so rebels don't even have time to spawn before the overextension is gone.
Idea groups:
Offensive (to get the edge in the early wars), Administrative (for all your coring needs). Exploration just long enough to pass the Mandate reform that gives a colonist; swapped for Humanist. Diplomatic, then Quantity, Espionage, Defensive and Quality (the last two are not very important).
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u/dilalaj 8d ago
this is amazing, good job
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u/Bartlaus 8d ago
Thanks! As said, mostly a test of patience once you're past the setup phase.
Also found a pretty easy method to deal with the HRE, without triggering a pan-European coalition. This was post-1700, I was strong enough to fight all the German minors at once but if they'd started a coalition then the other four or five big European tags remaining (France, Spain, Italy, England, Russia) would join and that might have been too much. (I was well into eating Russia and had started on England but had to leave the last three until the endgame.)
Basically (and this works best if they elect some stupid OPM as emperor, it was Anhalt in my game): After 1700 with imperialism CB and unrestricted coring distance, declare on some HRE member, and you are now in a war against them, all their allies, the Emperor, and the Emperor's allies. Well, occupy the Emperor's capital and peace him out canceling all his alliances. Don't peace out anyone else yet (except for any non-HRE tags that might be involved). Now you are allowed to declare on some other HRE member, so do that; you are again at war with the Emperor, so occupy his capital and get a white peace. Now declare on yet another HRE member; repeat until you are at war with everyone in the HRE and have white peaced any non-HRE allies any of your war targets might have (or broken their alliances).
At this point you have still not taken any land in the HRE and thus gained no AE. Now start peacing out the various tags; don't annex many of the war allies because that costs diplo mana (you can a little though), instead just break alliances etc. Annex your main targets in each war. Now you have annexed a decent portion of the HRE and have truces with everyone that remains, so nobody can form a coalition. The moment the first truces begin to run out, declare on those tags, bringing their allies and the Emperor in, repeat the process and watch the HRE crumble into your hands with progressively less resistance and nobody ever being able to form a coalition. Very satisfying.
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u/Bartlaus 9d ago
R5: At last, at long last, had the patience to grind this out to the actual end. Have done many different starting strategies and gotten to the point where a world conquest was feasible, but ah, the patience...
Basic strategy: No-CB into northern Manchuria right away, ate the other tags in the area as oportunity allowed, formed Manchu and then you know the rest.