Late game advice: When to conquer the new world?

[LiS_Johnny Sullivan]

I am currently in a world conquest attempt, as my campaign as timurids into mughals turned out flawlessly in the early and mid-game. The year is 1652 now, with me owning all of Africa and Asia, with some loose exceptions of European provinces here and there, as well as Portuguese Australia.

With this in mind, I am currently at the doorstep of Europe, trying to conquer myself inward without getting everybody in a coalition at the same time. I have by far the largest troop count in the world and more cash than I can reasonably invest, yet all of Europe in a coalition against me would still be annoying to deal with.

So an idea came to my mind: What if I start conquering the new world first? Spain and Portugal have colonized almost everything there, but with a single peace deal, I can annex multiple colonies at the same time. This would spare me of any European coalition just yet, but I would surely pay a ton of diplo points for unjustified demands.

If I focus on Europe alone, only taking Spanish and Portuguese provinces in Iberia, I could probably lead their colonies to rebel and get independent, leaving them much easier for conquest later on. Yet dancing around a European mega-coalition seems daunting.

So what is the advice of the EU4 legends here? Any ideas on how to end this world conquest run? I feel like this is the last challenge the game has for this current attempt, enabling me to do the world conquest after 2000 hours played.

[Marquoz]

When you conquer the last European province of a colonizing nation, all of its colonial nations immediately become yours. The standard means of dealing with colonizers is therefore to eat the mother country, not the colonies.

As for a European coalition, who cares? If you've eaten all of Asia and Africa, you're so much stronger than they are that it doesn't matter. You can juggle truce timers and use improve relations and so on, or you can just smash everyone as needed.

[bri]

Not to mention if you have "more cash than I can reasonably invest" then you haven't built far enough beyond your force limits so build more troops. The single easiest way to avoid a coalition is to have an army so big that the possible coalition can't compete because a coalition won't form if the ai doesn't think the possible coalition can actually compete with you.

[Marquoz]

Oh, and be sure you conquer all of the European colonizing nations' provinces outside their colonial nations. They'll often own inconspicuous spots like islands in the Indian Ocean or Bermuda or the Falklands or whatever that aren't part of colonial nations but aren't on the European mainland either. To inherit their colonial nations, you have to wipe them totally out.

[cayenne_spicy]

I like to hit the colonizers early and hit them regularly. Taking colonial provinces early means you can get your own colonial nations established and get the merchants from them to help an early economy. If there's lots of room to grow in the colonial region I just take 6 per region and let the CN finish itself off to 10, but if the region is pretty settled already I'll take the full 10.

Great trick when you do that, too - if you have a vassal that has coring range, give some provinces in the colonial region to the vassal, too. Ideally if you can get your vassal to own a few CNs in the same colonial regions you also own them in, that's perfect. When you annex the vassal, you'll get their CNs, which remain separate from your own (so you get two or more CNs in the same region). If you're aggressive and opportunistic with this approach you can easily get 2-4 CNs per region and end up with too many merchants to effectively use (not a bad problem to have).

[LiS_Johnny Sullivan]

Oh yeah, I totally forgot you inherit the colonies! That's a mechanic I always forget about, though I should have remembered it, as even in this run I inherited a ton of crappy tribute states this way.

Thanks for the advice, I am currently invading France and England now.

[Dante_Deepdarkness]

The "hard" part of it, it is finding the balance between keeping the colonizer big enough so the CNs don't end free, but at the same time small enough so you can annex the main land in 1 final war. And even finding that balance, you can find yourself fighting a free colony because other factors affect the whole thing, but at this point you won't care about truce breaking if you are running out of time.

[Marquoz]

Maxing out absolutism and administrative efficiency help a lot with the "hard" part you mentioned because you can annex much more land in the "1 final war." And completing the Diplo idea group, but that was probably accomplished long before this point.

[Dante_Deepdarkness]

Indeed, but as I understood it, OP is after the first WC, so in this moment I'm assuming (and I know I can be wrong) that he/she is still on the learning path and probably the admin efficiency isn't anything to big impact in that regard. The diplo idea I'm also assuming is part of the early ideas pick.
I had to learn that point very hard when I started to go for faster WCs due to my main goal for the game (the 1 culture run). Now it seems trivial, but at that moment it wasn't XD

[Octopuses]

You could ally some of the larger Europeans like Spain/GB/France which will keep them friendly and they will make your conquests quicker and smoother. Then it will be easy to clean them up in the end.