Where to state as the Mughals ?

[Flammable]

i started as timurids and formed the mughals.i plan to conquer all of india and beat the ottomans. where should i state or plan to state ? its 1550 and i am running out of GC but im building courthouses to help. any advice on this is good. Thank you.

[Marquoz]

First, let's talk about GC in general. Then I'll discuss the Mughals specifically.

Do the following to avoid GC problems:

--Complete the Administration idea group for a +20% boost
--Put every single province that isn't on your home subcontinent into TCs (unless they produce gold)
--Build courthouses in literally every province you own, except for your capital state. Upgrade to town halls when they unlock.
--Build state houses in every state on your home subcontinent (except for your capital state) and every full state on other subcontinents.
--Use "Expand Administration" many times. I always get at least 200 points of GC that way.
--Conquer and fully upgrade the Escorial monument.
--Conquer and fully upgrade the Grand Palace of Bangkok monument.
--Conquer and fully upgrade the Royal Palace of Caserta monument.
--Keep ahead of time on Admin tech.
--Take the "L'etat c'est moi" reform (optional if you do all the rest).
--Grant the GC boosting estate priviliges (optional if you do all the rest--I never grant them and do fine).

The TCs and the buildings are the key. If you are blobbing correctly*, you should be able to easily afford the necessary buildings. A province that is in a TC and has a town hall will cost you the minimum in governing capacity, 1% of normal. Provinces that are in states on your home subcontinent will cost either 30% or 10% of normal, depending on whether or not you can build their state's statehouse in a province with glass, paper, or gems (50% from the townhall + either 20% or 40% from the statehouse).

*"Correctly" means conquering trade node after trade node whose trade you can route to your collection point. Let trade guide your expansion. Don't expand randomly and then try to fix the resulting trade mess.


Now let's talk about the Mughals in particular, because their capital moves between subcontinents can have odd campaign effects. Your starting sub-continent as the Timurids is Persia, which is a fine one. You can collect trade in Persia for a long time. But forming the Mughals relocates your capital to the Indian subcontinent, which screws up your collection.

You have some choices when that happens. First, you can move your capital back to Persia, which also moves your collection point. If you do this, you should state the entire Persian subcontinent and TC everything else, including India. However, note you might have to move your capital back to Persia twice, because the Mughals have a mission that moves their capital again if you complete it. You can skip that mission if you want, of course.

But what if you'd rather have your capital in India? In that case, you can move your trade collection point back to Persia (or later, even further west to somewhere like Constantinople or Genoa) while leaving your capital alone. Then you'll want to state all of India. But you already have all of Persia stated as well, and that can cause GC problems until later in the game, after you build statehouses in India and town halls everywhere. My solution is to unstate some Persian subcontinent land. If my capital is in India, I want to get bonus merchants from Basra, Persia, and Hormuz, so I need to stick most of their provinces into TCs to do so anyway.

But if you go overboard unstating Persian subcontinent land before you control enough of India, you'll do serious damage to your manpower and taxation income, both of which still matter in the early game. It's a balancing act.

[Keijo]

Dont TC everything only tc the high trade provinces to get merchants. You can also use exploit dev in every province every 20 years or so, if you have 500 provinces you can get rid of alot of dev that way.

[Octopuses]

TC everything. Even the gold provinces because it's unnecessary inflation.