For one faith when should I start converting as Austria?

[Octopuses]

How long can I wait until I start conquering and converting outside of Europe as Austria to get one faith? Just curious if I can take my time and consolidate and deal with reformation and stuff first to ensure Europe is fully catholic first, or do I have to rush elsewhere?

Just thinking if it's worth trying or not since I'm doing bunch of other achievements starting as Austria.

[RCMidas]

Are you remaining HREmperor? If so, focus on gaining all the Imperial Authority you can as quickly as you can, breaking up as many nations as possible so that as many of the countries that only exist as cores (Lippe, Verona, Moravia etc) are now active countries to generate more Authority for you, and annihilating the Reformation as swiftly as possible so that you can Revoke The Privilegia and start viciously expanding all through Europe and turning it all into the HRE.

Ideally, mid/late-1500s should see you managing this, at which point your goal should be effectively constant war until 1821. Feed your HRE vassals most of the land you take, snaking them every-which-way until nothing remains. Be sure to pick up Religious ideas as one of the first four groups. Remember to set your colonial nations (most of which will be inherited from the real colonisers when you annex their last province) to Block Settlement Growth so that they don't use their colonists to increase development on a heathen province you really need to convert.

[grotaclas]

There isn't a clear answer to this. If you amass enough missionaries, missionary strength and subjects which can convert and razed the world to the ground, you can convert the whole world in a few decades. An extreme example would be the octa-one-faith which lambda started earlier this year in which he attempted to do 8 one-faiths in one run. It was never finished, because he stopped playing eu4 for some time. The newest post about the run which I found was https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/11r47rr/1739_penta_one_faith/ in which he stated that the last two one-faiths took about 30 years and the main limit was the 30 year religious zeal timer.

But if you are inexperienced with one-faiths, it is likely to take centuries and a good guideline would be to get all possible missionaries before the age of absolutism and then make sure that they are busy all the time and that the reformation dies in its infancy, so you only have to convert a handful of protestant and reformed provinces.

The amount of missionaries which you should aim for as a catholic monarchy is something like 8-10 permanent missionaries (base, religious ideas, national ideas(e.g. jerusalem, ethiopia, arabia, and various non-formable tags), defender of the faith, jerusalem monument, heddal stave church monument, San Antonio Missions monument, conquest of mecca, parliament, Assimilating the Cushitic culture group with the Mughal Diwan government reform) and 2 temporary missionaries from the counter reformation.

[Narrowmind]

Concerning subjects, is there a way to know ahead of time which ones will take religious ideas so that we can prioritize them over other tags?

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Narrowmind:

Concerning subjects, is there a way to know ahead of time which ones will take religious ideas so that we can prioritize them over other tags?

If it is a dead country which you release, you can check the historical_idea_groups in their file in the common/countries/ . For each idea slot which they have unlocked when you release them, they will take the next idea group from that list. In some cases some groups are skipped(e.g. exploration ideas in the age of revolutions), but religious ideas would only be skipped if humanist ideas would be earlier in the list, but I don't think that there is a country in the game which has both humanist before religious ideas in that list.

[Narrowmind]

Interesting. I'll take a look. Thank you.

[Octopuses]

It's 1565 now and I revoked the privilege. I still have to convert Lithuania and Muscovy. Rest of Europe is all catholic. I just started religious ideas as my 4th. First 3 were diplo, admin, influence.

Where should I prioritize expanding to get more missionaries? Also, how should I go about the new world? Should I already start expanding there or first let Portugal and Castille to their thing? I have GB in PU.

Also, if I get vassals and force convert them and then send them money, will they use their own missionaries to convert the provinces they own?

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Where should I prioritize expanding to get more missionaries?

Whatever is convenient for you. Getting the monument in Norway should not be too difficult. And ideally you take Jerusalem and Mecca before the Ottomans get there.

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Also, how should I go about the new world? Should I already start expanding there or first let Portugal and Castille to their thing? I have GB in PU.

If the colonizers are catholic, you can ignore it for now, because the provinces which they colonize will usually be catholic(unless they expel minorities). But you could try to get the monument there. To make use of that monument, you must own the province yourself, so you must not have a CN in that colonial region.
If you get CNs, you can use the subject type upgrade increase religious control. That gives them a hidden event which will make them send a missionary to convert provinces. Otherwise CNs don't use their missionaries.

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Also, if I get vassals and force convert them and then send them money, will they use their own missionaries to convert the provinces they own?

Usually yes. But they need enough missionary strength. So make sure that you don't use subjects which will create trade companies or which use a privilege which gives -100% missionary strength(some of them are not taken by AI subjects if the overlord has religious ideas, but if they already have it, they might not be able to revoke it).

[Octopuses]

I actually just realized that subjects remove orthodox autonomy privilege if they see I can convert them so I might actually be able to get this done.

Other than one in Jerusalem and one in Norway, are there any other great projects I should get?

Also, since I'm done with Europe, will it work if I just focus on Asia now, and then later on Africa and the new world, or do I have to expand everywhere at all time?

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

I actually just realized that subjects remove orthodox autonomy privilege if they see I can convert them so I might actually be able to get this done.

They remove it, because you took religious ideas. But this requires that they get enough estate loyalty to actually revoke the privilege. They would not have taken it in the first place if they would already have been your subject and you would have had religious ideas.

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Other than one in Jerusalem and one in Norway, are there any other great projects I should get?

San Antonio missions in Tanu (4627) which is in the Rio Grande region of colonial Mexico. And the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza (214). And whichever monuments help with your WC(e.g. alhambra, malta forts and stuff which gives governing capacity and other helpful modifiers).

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Also, since I'm done with Europe, will it work if I just focus on Asia now, and then later on Africa and the new world, or do I have to expand everywhere at all time?

The order doesn't matter much, but it is helpful to take over the colonial nations around the midgame when the AI has colonized (almost) everything. If you get the CNs early, you can use the subject type upgrade to let them convert. AFAIK the AI doesn't use that upgrade.
And make sure to 30 years before the enddate, you either finished your WC or conquered anything which could get converted in some other way(e.g. via propagate religion or events). Religious zeal can take up to 30 years to go away and it is rather difficult to work around it in some situations. So it is best to prevent zeal from happening and you have more control if you own the provinces yourself(e.g. even a catholic AI might choose an event option which changes the religion of a province).

[RCMidas]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Other than one in Jerusalem and one in Norway, are there any other great projects I should get?

Stonehenge also grants +1% Missionary Strength if its province has English culture which is accepted. Every little helps.

[FighterJet27]

it was some time ago that i did this, assuming you get as many modifiers as possible to get as many missionaries and missionary strength as possible, i think 150 - 200 years is enough, they should be working constantly. All depends on the colonisers too, for me at least it did, perfect scenario is that you get a pu on spain, 1 on GB is really good too. Good luck.

Edit, i should leave a SS
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3099169975

Once i revoked, i switch to orthodox to get all byzantiums buffs for missionaries

[Octopuses]

I followed all the advice here but now I have another question. I'm almost done integrating GB, but looks like I will also have to integrate Castille and Portugal since they have trade companies that I can't convert. This will be very diplo power expensive, and I will probably have to annex couple vassals as well.

Is there a way to reduce the cost of integration other than the nobility policy and papal action? Ideas are currently: diplo/admin/influence/religious/offensive.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Is there a way to reduce the cost of integration other than the nobility policy and papal action? Ideas are currently: diplo/admin/influence/religious/offensive.

Influence ideas already give you -25% annexation cost and the admin-influence policy gives another -15%. If you get quality ideas, you can get another policy for -10%. And there is a parliament issue which gives -15%.
Admin efficiency also reduces the cost, but that's multiplicative with the annexation cost reductions, so it isn't as powerful.
Austria also has a national idea which gives -15% and it has a bunch of missions which give further discounts. Ideally you activate the various missions and parliament issue so that you can use their discounts for several big integrations before they run out.

[Tungdil12]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

I followed all the advice here but now I have another question. I'm almost done integrating GB, but looks like I will also have to integrate Castille and Portugal since they have trade companies that I can't convert. This will be very diplo power expensive, and I will probably have to annex couple vassals as well.

Is there a way to reduce the cost of integration other than the nobility policy and papal action? Ideas are currently: diplo/admin/influence/religious/offensive.

All modifiers are listed here:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Vassal#Annexation

But I dont think you can get it any lower, as you already have influence ideas. Curia Controller apparently gives you another 10%, if that is feasible for you.

[FighterJet27]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

I followed all the advice here but now I have another question. I'm almost done integrating GB, but looks like I will also have to integrate Castille and Portugal since they have trade companies that I can't convert. This will be very diplo power expensive, and I will probably have to annex couple vassals as well.

Is there a way to reduce the cost of integration other than the nobility policy and papal action? Ideas are currently: diplo/admin/influence/religious/offensive.

Not just lowering the cost, but increasing the amount of diplo you can spend per month on it matters, the quicker the better in this situation