world Conquest milestone?

[parham_ar]

I am playing as France and try to win a WC for a while. I have read that in order to win a WC, you have to have 2-3000 dev up to 1600, 8-10k in 1700 and win the rest after that. I usually win the first part but I face difficulties in the second stage and always miss that. Most of the time due to AE. This time I am good with AE and only Muslim world is against me which I can handle but Adm point seems to be a problem. I am at 1640 with 4k dev. I earn around 11 per month. I have admin, influence, religion, offensive and I am in the middle of humanist. I am playing at the latest version. I have all DLCs except Leviathan. Please let me know your advices.

[Medicles]

Explain your conquest route.

[grotaclas]

11 adm per month is not much. If you disinherit heirs till you have at least 4 adm, you would have: 3 base, +4 ruler, +5 advisor, +2 national focus, +1 clergy privilege, +1 power projection. That would be 16.
If you don't need France's military or tolerance ideas, you could form a country which gives admin efficiency and/or CCR (maybe after becoming revolutionary and doing the French Revolution mission[eu4.paradoxwikis.com] for extra admin efficiency). Some possible candidates would be Roman Empire(20% CCR), Italy (25% CCR), Germany (5% admin eff. from ideas and 5% admin efficiency from mission), Sardinia-Piedmont (10% CCR from ideas and 5% admin eff. from missions and not an endgame tag, so you can form something else after getting the mission).
Another thing which could help you is to use vassals (and later client states) to core provinces for you. With influence ideas and the admin+influence policy, this is almost as cheap as coring the provinces yourself.

[Marquoz]

It's hard to keep the +1 from power projection on a WC run because you run out of possible rivals pretty early on. But grotacias' idea about forming Italy is a good one--Italy has excellent ideas for a WC. Its huge "Improve relations" modifier plus the 25% CCR reduction is very, very powerful.

Generally speaking, if ADM is your bottleneck, there are a number of things you should do. From your idea picks, I think you know at least some of these, but I'll outline them anyway. The key to saving Admin points is to not have to spend them:

1) Take the Administration idea group and complete it for the CCR (save that Admin mana!) and the policy you can combine with step 2.

2) Take the Influence idea group and complete it. The second idea reduces the cost of diploannexation by 25%, and when you complete both Admin and Influence, you can enact a policy that reduces it by another 20%.

3) Take advantage of the cheap diplo-annexation by using forced vassalization, vassal feeding, and vassal integration for about half of the land you conquer. You want your Dip mana to fuel your conquests as much as your Admin mana. Save that Admin mana!

4) The vast majority of land you conquer outright should be put into TCs (or even left as territories if you have major GC issues). Territorial cores cost half as much as state cores. Save that Admin mana!

5) When the Age of Absolutism hits, max out your Absolutism as fast as you can. Before 1600 arrives, you should have gotten your crownland to 75%+ and revoked most of the estate privileges. Keep the monarch point generators, though--your high crownland percentage will compensate for the max absolutism hit those generate. Then take all the standard steps to increase absolutism, which will max your administrative efficiency and save that Admin mana!

6) Roll back to the earliest version of the game you enjoy. Every major patch has added provinces and total development to the game. WC is a boring, tedious, awful slog. A smaller world is an easier world, generally speaking.

[parham_ar]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

It's hard to keep the +1 from power projection on a WC run because you run out of possible rivals pretty early on. But grotacias' idea about forming Italy is a good one--Italy has excellent ideas for a WC. Its huge "Improve relations" modifier plus the 25% CCR reduction is very, very powerful.

Generally speaking, if ADM is your bottleneck, there are a number of things you should do. From your idea picks, I think you know at least some of these, but I'll outline them anyway. The key to saving Admin points is to not have to spend them:

1) Take the Administration idea group and complete it for the CCR (save that Admin mana!) and the policy you can combine with step 2.

2) Take the Influence idea group and complete it. The second idea reduces the cost of diploannexation by 25%, and when you complete both Admin and Influence, you can enact a policy that reduces it by another 20%.

3) Take advantage of the cheap diplo-annexation by using forced vassalization, vassal feeding, and vassal integration for about half of the land you conquer. You want your Dip mana to fuel your conquests as much as your Admin mana. Save that Admin mana!

4) The vast majority of land you conquer outright should be put into TCs (or even left as territories if you have major GC issues). Territorial cores cost half as much as state cores. Save that Admin mana!

5) When the Age of Absolutism hits, max out your Absolutism as fast as you can. Before 1600 arrives, you should have gotten your crownland to 75%+ and revoked most of the estate privileges. Keep the monarch point generators, though--your high crownland percentage will compensate for the max absolutism hit those generate. Then take all the standard steps to increase absolutism, which will max your administrative efficiency and save that Admin mana!

6) Roll back to the earliest version of the game you enjoy. Every major patch has added provinces and total development to the game. WC is a boring, tedious, awful slog. A smaller world is an easier world, generally speaking.

First, I would like to thank you all for your replies.
Regarding this reply, I do most of the above mentioned things maybe just not feeding enough to my vassals and forming Italy. Of course I don't think forming Italy be really important because I have seen on youtube that without forming Italy people do a WC as France. Is there anything else I should know?

[parham_ar]

And one more thing, do you think I should continue current game? Do I have a chance for WC? I am the strongest country with around 300k army. HRE is weak. I have annexed Burgandy and Netherlands. There is no Mamluks and Ottomons are broken. I have same dynasty with Spain and have land bordering Russia. Norway is mine. West Africa is almost completely conquered. I have almost all of horn of Africa too. Please Advice.

[CreutzFeldJak0b]

Marquoz summed it up pretty well.
i would just add the possiblity to no cb byzantium early on (pretty standard move that will neuter the ottomans but might make things a bit boring.).
another thing is alhambra in granada that will give you 5% admin eff on lvl3 and is well within your reach.
there are some other great projects that might be worth it and are easily obtainable (for example the Grand Palace of Bangkok)
great projects [eu4.paradoxwikis.com]

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

It's hard to keep the +1 from power projection on a WC run because you run out of possible rivals pretty early on.

It is possible to prolong this by taking 200 dev from the last possible rival just before you eclipse them. taking 200 dev gives 100 PP and this decays by 1 per year, so you can stay above 50 PP for about 80 more years. Another way to get PP is to become hegemon. In the current version subjects don't get the -100 opinion anymore, so it is more feasible to be a hegemon in a WC.

Originally posted by parham_ar:

I have seen on youtube that without forming Italy people do a WC as France.

It is definitely possible to WC as France or any other nations without CCR, but it is more difficult. I have not done a WC on the current version, but from what I have heard, the dev in the world has increased by a lot, because the AI develops more and without the Leviathan DLC, you can't concentrate development or use monuments to counteract this.

Originally posted by parham_ar:

And one more thing, do you think I should continue current game? Do I have a chance for WC?

You could try to calculate how much dev you can core/integrate in the remaining time and compare it to the dev which is remaining(you can exclude the new world in the calculation, because you can acquire CNs by annexing their overlord and the CNs can core the native provinces which you feed them). To get a rough estimate, you can upload your save to skanderbeg[skanderbeg.pm] and use the global stats ledger which shows you the dev of the whole world.
And with the calculation you can also see which pace of conquest would be needed to conquer the world before the end date.
As a rough estimation, if you core 100 overextension every 27 months(coring time with 25% CCR) you could core the following starting from 1640:

100/(1-0.45)/27*12*(1687-1640)+100/(1-0.55)/27*12*(1710-1687)+100/(1-0.50)/27*12*(1745-1710)+100/(1-0.60)/27*12*(1821-1745)=17625

This assumes that you have 100 absolutism and the 5% extra admin eff. from the age bonus. 0.45, 0.55, 0.50 and 0.60 are the different admin eff. in the different years. 27 months is the coring time with 25% CCR. 100 is the development which creates 100 overextension without admin efficiency.
This would cost

100*5*(1-0.25)/27=13.888... admin points per month

higher admin efficiency allows you to core more dev for the same price, but the cost/month stays the same)

Of course if you get more CCR and admin efficiency, you can core more.
If you get a parliament for extra diplo annexation cost reductions, you can integrate about the same amount of development from vassals in that time.

[parham_ar]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

It's hard to keep the +1 from power projection on a WC run because you run out of possible rivals pretty early on.

It is possible to prolong this by taking 200 dev from the last possible rival just before you eclipse them. taking 200 dev gives 100 PP and this decays by 1 per year, so you can stay above 50 PP for about 80 more years. Another way to get PP is to become hegemon. In the current version subjects don't get the -100 opinion anymore, so it is more feasible to be a hegemon in a WC.

Originally posted by parham_ar:

I have seen on youtube that without forming Italy people do a WC as France.

It is definitely possible to WC as France or any other nations without CCR, but it is more difficult. I have not done a WC on the current version, but from what I have heard, the dev in the world has increased by a lot, because the AI develops more and without the Leviathan DLC, you can't concentrate development or use monuments to counteract this.

Originally posted by parham_ar:

And one more thing, do you think I should continue current game? Do I have a chance for WC?

You could try to calculate how much dev you can core/integrate in the remaining time and compare it to the dev which is remaining(you can exclude the new world in the calculation, because you can acquire CNs by annexing their overlord and the CNs can core the native provinces which you feed them). To get a rough estimate, you can upload your save to skanderbeg[skanderbeg.pm] and use the global stats ledger which shows you the dev of the whole world.
And with the calculation you can also see which pace of conquest would be needed to conquer the world before the end date.
As a rough estimation, if you core 100 overextension every 27 months(coring time with 25% CCR) you could core the following starting from 1640:

100/(1-0.45)/27*12*(1687-1640)+100/(1-0.55)/27*12*(1710-1687)+100/(1-0.50)/27*12*(1745-1710)+100/(1-0.60)/27*12*(1821-1745)=17625

This assumes that you have 100 absolutism and the 5% extra admin eff. from the age bonus. 0.45, 0.55, 0.50 and 0.60 are the different admin eff. in the different years. 27 months is the coring time with 25% CCR. 100 is the development which creates 100 overextension without admin efficiency.
This would cost

100*5*(1-0.25)/27=13.888... admin points per month

higher admin efficiency allows you to core more dev for the same price, but the cost/month stays the same)

Of course if you get more CCR and admin efficiency, you can core more.
If you get a parliament for extra diplo annexation cost reductions, you can integrate about the same amount of development from vassals in that time.

This was a great explanation. Thank you. I learned a lot