Expansion haulted by unjustified demands

[LiS_Johnny Sullivan]

Greetings, I am back again with another late game problem I have not encountered before. I am talking about my world conquest attempt, which is still going great! I am practically nearing the finish line, all that's left is the HRE and the commonwealth, with about 120 years left on the clock. So all is good in the neighbourhood right?

Sadly my diplomatic points are now hitting the -999 cap, due to me gobbling up every province I can get in europe. Interestingly I now get hindered to do any more peace deals that would push me further down the diplo point debt. I am making about 16 diplo points per month, so I guess I could also just slow down the conquest enough for the point generation to catch up, but I was wondering if there is anything I am missing here. Are there better casus belli to conquer everything?

[grotaclas]

Yes, there are better CBs. Dip tech 23 gives the imperialism CB which allows you to take any province in the main peace deal without paying dip points. And they cost 25% less warscore. An alternative would be the CBs from religious ideas

[RCMidas]

Also one of the best ways to grow big fast is to take a single province from an enemy that has the core of a medium-large dead country, then release them as your vassal and use a Reconquest war the next time to feed them all their lost cores.

For example, if you're going to war against the Mamluks (or Ottomans) and they've integrated or annexed Syria, you take a single province with a Syrian core and in your next war take about fifteen through Reconquest for the same price as five normally. With no added Aggressive Expansion penalties and no delay for coring - you merely integrate Syria afterwards, thus spreading your growth costs between ADM and DIP as equally as possible.

Other luminaries of Reconquest include Bulgaria, most Chinese Kingdoms whether or not Ming explodes, Uesugi in Japan, Aragon after Castile forms Spain, Gascony, Scotland in due course, oftentimes Burgundy depending on how the Succession goes, and so on.

[Kapika96]

This is why religious is IMO one of the best idea groups. I usually take it as 1 of my first 3 groups. No diplo cost to taking provinces when using the holy war CB from religious ideas.

At dip tech 23 you get the Imperialism CB which has a similar effect (and a reduction to war score cost so is a little better, plus can be used on nations of the same religion), you shouldn't be too far off that although having -999 diplo certainly won't help. Try to rush that ASAP.

[taintedcat]

unjustified demands shouldn't be a problem if you pick influence idea (if you do a WC its a must pick anyway) −50% unjustified demands on full Influence
Autocracy reform (Monarchy tier 1): −10%
Demanding provinces from a rival: −33% for annexing provinces only

Being the revolutionary target: −50%
Modifiers to all power costs also apply additively

don't demand provinces from secondary war targets, for that you pay plenty of unjustified demands. always use the primary target, add cobelligerent, then you can demand but only while negotiating with primary target. otherwise you pay unjustified demands.
unless you want a single specific Province to release a nation or for some monument you can't get, appart from that its hardly worth taking provinces in secondary peace treaties.

conquest cb requires claims on provinces, if you really have to use conquest cb, form a new nation that grants you plenty of claims in your target region. for Europe Austria works great, or something like Hungary into Austria, just make sure its not an endgame tag.
or form a nation with generic mission tree for permament claims on all neighbouring provinces, basically you can get claims on half the world at once. you save 30% on coring cost for permanent claims, so more savings there.

but as stated before reconquest CB from resurrected nations is king, you can get 100 provinces for nothing,stack some diplo annex modifiers and you eat vassal with 1k development dirt cheap