5. is where I think Austria really excels for me. If you have a good enough computer (and you'll need one) you can save some of that campaign burnout by essentially having a 150-200 year span where the game kinda plays itself. You just click the war button, make the vasals fight the war, and go to the peace screen. What burns me out is not even just the length of games but the amount of STUFF you have to do. Just constantly moving armies around and taking so much time. Austria is the king of the lazy WC.
yeah timurids is propably the best answer. the fact that you pick up more and more buffs for each culture is very underrated in my opinion. not for the buffs themsalves, but because it motivates you to keep going and not quit halfway through.
Your last point is the far more important for me, world conquest tends to become quite tedious after the first 200 years, and having a too easy early game quickly makes me lose interest in the run (at least it did for my try of WC as france/otto/austria/timmy). As of right now my only WC was with oirat => yuan => mongol empire staying a tengri horde and switching to islam to do a one faith all the while stacking cavalry ability for a 50/50 cavalry artillery army.
You didn't mention Qing. They get 70% CCR form adm ideas and EoC. They also have a amazing mission tree, especially if you switch to mongol culture before forming Qing. Combined with Humanist you get the external perfectionalism CB and the most stabel nation. Definitly a top contender.
They are good in that regard for sure, but I specifically avoided addressing Hordes here. Overall with Hordes which are great for blobbing, they do struggle with literally everything else in the game, and the amount of nation ruined Hordes I have seen is honestly concerning so I don't want someone newer to 'waste' time with them.
I know this list is for more beginner players, but for those with more experience without a doubt, I think the best nation to do a World Conquest with is Oirat > Yuan > Mongol Empire. Alternatively if you like Tag Switching funnies, playing the Teutonic Order, become Holy Horde, form Poland then change primary culture to Mongol and form the PLC gives you so many busted modifiers.
I like Jianzhou->Manchu->culture switch to Mongol->Qing better. 45% CCR in 1480s and 70 %after you get admin. Take 500% OE and not a single rebellion will start because you core it all too fast. I suppose staying as a horde is better but Qing is more chill
@@crustitoad8175 honestly it wasnt planned before i reached 1650 and realised i had most of the world alrdy anyway 😂 I just wanted a tag switching pu game
Good list of countries, I've never done a WC myself, every time I start one I get hit with reason 5. But I think it's more important to remember: The real World Conquest was inside of us all along.
I've always wanted to do one but dreaded the micro. When Mamluks were reworked the 1st time (3 buttons) a long time ago, actually did it as them (also rerolled shia for lulz after eating all of Persia). After all-out wars with the Ottomans tech 4 and 6 and diplo vassalizing the arabian minors it was pretty easy.
My man writing essays and lecturing us about topics of EU IV, and I love it. You truly are one of the best masters of art of war for EU IV I love olur little map painting community, lol
My first and only WC i've done was with the Ottomans. I finished it in the 1780's. I didn't tryhard, i even fooled around for 30 years managing the decadence disasters in the 1600's. I would reccomend them for a WC
I think quite an underrated tag for World Conquest is Popeman. If we to break it down by the list *1: Fighting* This is about the weakest point of Pope. As on the surface, you are only getting +5% Discipline as your ambition. However you can compensate for this lack of surface buffs with Excomunications and Crusades. Being the grand daddy of Catholicism, you can also pick up some very strong and reliable allies (f.e. France or Spain) who will do the fighting for you. Later you pick up Kingdom of God for 15% manpower and 10% morale, so you'll be quite good there. Also you have Swiss Guard. Which I guess having cheap extra manpower that isn't terrible at fighting is always good. *2: Stability* The Church is stability. Between all the tolerance of true faith and general unrest reduction buff you can pick up, Popeman is very stable. *3: Resources* Italy is one of the richest areas in the world, so you should be drowning in ducats all the time. When it comes to mana, Pope is a wizard. You get +1 free Diplo policy (which is effectively +1 Dip mana). KoD gives you +2 Adm ruler mana and each ruler gets additional +1 mana of your choosing along with corresponding free policy, effectively making it +2 mana. You also get some tech discounts, which means more mana for conquesting. *4: Time* Time is of the essence. Definitely not super easy, but definitely fun. Worth considering for one faith wc. Deus Vult!
Is this a good time to mention the Alcheringa native tribe independent daimyo revolutionary empire revolutionary state celestial empire emperor of china shogun horde presidential dictatorship peasant republic parliamentarian free city elective monarchy holy roman emperor revolutionary Papal States run that's being worked on?
A little historical tid bit, the japan one. Is actually what the shoganate tried to do when they invaded korea in the late 1500s. The new shogun wanted to keep his vassals from fighting.
I think its worth mentioning Oirat in this discussion considering the legendary 28 year WC from Lambdaxx. I know his run isnt applicable to most players, but its such an achievement that i think it deserves a mention.
I specifically avoided Hordes since I don't want a new person to try them and fail (they are very easy to fail with too, if you are not blobbing fast enough)
The Timurid start is much harder to play than the Ottoman start so I would recommend Ottomans for first WC since snowballing is kinda import for the time aspect. Eayalets are also a really strong subject type.
I'm currently doing my first World Conquest as Austria as the HRE Emperor, also going for One Faith, all of the Americas is Catholic which makes it easy, got Spain, Britain, and Russia as PUs cause I used Austrias CB to put a Habsburg on their thrones. I've got over 2000 hours in the game and only now trying my first WC lol
I havent finished a world conquest myself and I dont know if I ever will but from other research ive done I think its worth mentioning the angevin empire ccr, adm eff, great armies, the best trade node in the game, add insane missions too, and you have a strong contender for best wc nation imo I do think I might give trying a WC a go next patch, probably trying the new mughals tree
I recently finished my first world conquest as Teutonic order/holy horde to Poland to Commonwealth to mongol empire to Rome. It was also a one-faith, though I didn't initially intend it to be. Having the weird tags as goals really helped with the tedium, and a Catholic horde with Polish ideas is absurdly busted for world conquest. Free stability, powerful army, non-catholic provinces can be razed, so they pay for themselves, and you can also guarantee great rulers as a theocracy. Would recommend if you are compelled to conquer the world.
In Anbennar there is a formable called Black Demesne, lorewise it is essentially the quintessential fantasy evil necromancy empire. Anyways, they get a special CB that allows them to fullannex nations that scales off the power of one of their estates, the disciples. After you get max scaling you can full annex even the number one Great Power if you beat them in a war. Making this one of the most powerful tags for a WC. Unfortunately Vanilla doesn't have estates this powerful, but there are still a lot of wacky estates out there. How many is it possible to have at once?
You do love your estates don't you! Black Demesne is very OP, mainly because you can integrate your vassals for free without spending any mana on top of everything else. But that is super heavily modded, and I am definitely talking Vanilla here.
You can kinda do this in a way if you start as Majapahit and go to Japan and get the Shogunate. Majapahit has a CB that can vassalize any country in 1 war and the Shogunate gives you infinite vassals.
I did only one WC and it was as Austria. Finished it 1743, finished One faith in 1775. I did it just for achievments. Will never ever do another one, its just too tedious.
did my world conquest as the mughals. Definitely a fool proof nation to do it with. No revolts, stupid buffs. At the time, I didnt know how the trade or army system worked, but still managed to fumble my way to a completion.
My advice to players struggling with the late game grind is to stack siege ability, makes wars a lot faster and larger wars less annoying to fight. Espionage ideas help with building up spy network quickly. There is also a government reform that allows you to pick the siege ability trade policy without the requirements, very useful for a WC.
My first and only WC was with Portugal into a very late Spain (~1700). I was doing an achievement run and realized that by 1650 i had so much land and money that no one could stop me anymore. Also no true superpower formed to stop me. Ottoman i stopped early (No cb vassal Byzabtium), got GB in an PU around 1600, France i bullied all game, Ming went boom the second i finish my colonies in Taiwan.
You don't mention the strongest options the Ottobros have for a super fast WC. A bit of cheese. (I don't even mean exploits, just a few tricks and intended usage of game mechanics.) First off, Eyalests. Hands down the strongest subject types (probably onpar with pronoiars, but you can have a limited number of those, unlike Eyalets). Core eyalets only calculate their own strenght vs yours when it comes to liberty desire, so you can core eyalet a balkanized world and have it all be loyal while you on sit on Istambul. They also do not require diplo slots. Basically you can conquer as much land as you can, release it all after the war and eyalet it, so you don't need to ever core anything. They are sunni. Hordes can not anymore spawn "infinite man" from a button bc of the slackening changes, but sunni nations still can. Getting - piety isn't so hard and you can even embrace it for some stability hits. (Which you can afford since you don't need to core). Now, if you slacken before pressing the free man button, it x5 it, usually filling up your entire manpower pool. Pretty cool. Thirdly, they are located perfectly between Orthodoxy and Islam at the start. Meaning if you conquer Byzantium and Epirus you are pretty close to owning 50% orthodox, 50% sunni land by development. Which means you can switch really easily by accepting rebel demands and then going back via the button to sunni. When you go sunni, you get a stacking event that grants +50 relations with all sunni nations you can see. Now if you do the back and forth 4 times that is +200 with everyone, meaning you can basically diplo vassalize everyone from Northern India to Arabia to Northern Africa, even up to Granada with a bit of diplo rep. Not to mention if you time it a bit you can also grab a Burgundian Inheritance. If you wanna take bit slower and care about AE you can basically negate it by just releasing stuff or returning cores to vassals, or you could actively lower it by releasing vassals in peace deals who you can re-vassalize again. Embracing the vassal swarm diplo Ottoman playstyle can yield in a very quick WC. Not sure it'd faster than the Oirat 1450-60ish one we've seen a few patches ago, but then again, that used HRE exploits and a different slacking mechanic.
@BobbiusRossius I mean, sure, but 50% manpower recovery rate isn't a button click that refills your manpower pool. (Sunni hordes however can do that still with piety)
France does have some spicy missions that enable stuff like Military Hegemon by 1510 and Iron-Crowned, which can be like 50 years of -25% core creation. Dismantle HRE (can be done immediately), stack some AE early from the Papacy, Age ability, and Espionage, and you can pretty much lock down all of Europe well before Age of Absolutism. Means you avoid huge Colonial Nations and every province in HRE being 40 development by the time you get to Europe as, say, Mughals. On Very Hard, I've only done a world conquest as France so far, and it was easy as hell because you beat up everyone before they became monsters (Ottomans I'm looking at you) or stacked tedious amounts of development.
I'd honestly put them above Spain. Spain has nothing to help them conquer faster and has a bunch of garbage going on at the beginning (disaster, Enrique, some other bad events). They're a colonizing power house, but as you implied, it's way better to take over someone else's colonies than to make them yourselves. You can form Angevin Empire with Castile with some shenanigans, though, which is funny and very powerful. Not sure you can do that with France, come to think of it.
@@Elvenpath1337 with Spain you can also PU Portugal and England throough your mission tree, so if you wait to do it once they take exploration and expansion, wouldn't this help with the coloniziation part?
For sure, they are pretty good in that regard, but I don't know if 'extra good for VH' is a factor many people consider. I don't play on VH for example, and I know few people do.
@@LemonCake101 That's a fair point. :) You ought to try Very Hard. After (and I'm not kidding) 7000 hours played, it certainly revitalized the game for me. Makes you reevaluate your overall strategy, your idea group picks, and so on - especially as a minor nation, if you wanna face the Great Powers.
@BobbiusRossius Fair point. :) I usually focus on raw conquest when I'm playing and don't go out of my way to get a lot of subjects, but I'll admit that sound pretty powerful if you focus on subjects and integrating them with Influence and the policy with Admin.
I did my first world conquest with 90% admin eff run. I started as Burgundy, tag switched to sardinia-piedmont to prussia to saxony to germany to lotharingia. It was pretty easy since 1670s when i actually formed Lotharingia. Up to that point it was challanging to manage that severe agressive expansion (up to 800 with castile or england). It was key to cripple major powers in early to mid game to stop them from snowballing. However despite having such high admin eff, i didnt finish WC until 1799. It took a lot of mental strength to besiege 500 8 level forts scattered across whole Asia
What about Muscovy? It has only one strong neighbour at the start of the game and sometimes AI doesn't even choose the Jagiellon option. Novgorod and the hordes are pretty weak, while Sweden breaks off Denmark in 95% of the games. When you form Russia, you gain good national ideas for the army and for stability. The economy is the only big issue, but it's manageable. And don't forget all the good things that Orthodox can give!
Muscovy was my second WC (after Ottomans) and it was a breeze. You literally don't struggle at any point in a Muscovy campaign because your enemies are all weak and Russia has unlimited manpower. Although I'm not 100% sure how it workd with the Domination changes to Russia, I haven't tried that yet
Decent choice for sure, my issue is there are better options, and I didn't want to make a 1 hour video where 80% of the points are just repeated between tags (look these guys have CCR!)
imo the thing that makes the ottomans the best is their position in the map they are in the middle which allows them to blob everywhere if they were in the edge of the map like qing then they wouldn't dominate and get institutions easily
"France lacks resources" My friend, France is one Burgundian Inheritance away from the best end-node in the entire game. And then one little British adventure away from securing that end node completely "France has very few buffs beyond their strong start" Burgundian Inheritance, guaranteed PU on Spain (Domination tree cringe), guaranteed PU on the PLC, an extra 6%-9% administrative efficiency during the Age of Absolutism, and the ability to consistently go revolutionary in the 1710s. The HRE can be dismantled super-early and after you inherit Burgundy you can mass-vassalize the German minors and feed those that don't to them. You also start in western Europe which means that you can ensure that the colonizers don't get out of control. I have a failed Qing WC which was ruined by a Great Britian which had eaten all of western and southern Africa but lost their Canadian colony which had grown into a 550% warscore cost independent Canada >.> Also, for every Christian tag there is Rome which has arguably the best idea set in the game for a world conquest.
To be clear here, I don't think anyone who knows what they are doing are going to struggle financially as France. As you said, they have a lot of ways to make a lot of money, but what I meant is they have no direct buffs to economic money generation like some other tags. I am doing this within the context of a 'newish' player who is going to be struggling with a lot of the things mentioned, since if you are good enough for a lot of the things you talked about, well, they probably won't need to be watching this video :) But to be clear you are pretty much correct on every point here.
@BobbiusRossius France has the second best Age of Absolutism of any country and the best Age of Revolutions of any country. Both excluding vassal swarmers because those kind of play their own game. Ottomans are also very good, yes, but require Domination which I don't own. Mughals are also very, very good but they can't mess with the colonizers nearly as good as France can. Spain is an RNG fest with the thousand ways Aragon can fuck up your campaign. Austria is also very good, but the vassal swarm doesn't solve the biggest issue I have with non-France WCs which is the amount of land you can take per peacedeal. As the Emperor of the HRE you are mostly locked out of Protestant which is the best Christian denomination for a WC and completely locked out of the revolution. The hordes are of course hordes, but I fully admit that I suck with Hordes. I have WC'd with France thrice so far (twice under the current ruleset, once over a year ago when military hegemon still gave +5% administrative efficiency). The first finished in 1805, the second in 1803, the third in 1782. Not the fastest of WCs, not even close, but France is so far the only country that got me there.
In the current version of EU4 it's difficult to hit 90% administrative efficiency: The Ottomans are the only country that still get 10% administrative efficiency, Mughals are down to 8%. Germany also no longer has administrative efficiency from missions. Dithmarschen + Prussia + Rome + Alhambra barely gets you there. Aragon has a 10% chance to become a peasant republic which blocks the Iberian Wedding. That's a major RNG gate for every Castile campaign. Also subject integration doesn't help you with expansion and Spanish ideas contain little relevant to a world conquest. It's not 2015 anymore, these days there are ample sources of monarch points. Also no great Britain PU for you if they decide to stay Catholic. Mughals are of course very good (the only country other the France that I have WCd with), but they are limited to Imperialism wars and have to chose between fast cores and 10% warscore cost vs other religions. Also with the nerf the Viceroyalty of the Deccan they now have less administrative efficieny than France during the Age of Absolutism. 5% from the mission + 10% max effect of absolutism only goes up to 8%, while 30% max effect of absolutism goes up to 9%. And while the Diwan is obviously great for accepting cultures for free, imo only the CCR and PWSC bonuses are the only truly impactful bonuses from it. Notably, my Mughals WC required trucebreaking while the only truce break my France WCs did were a single one each run in order to trigger CnC.
Tbh if you get Bohemia PU, early dismantle HRE with Union Casus Beli on Hungary, then game kinda plays itself as Poland. I just finished WC playthrough as Poland and this opener might be one of the craziest ones I had.
You mention mostly about early expansion about wc but the real problem starts in mid-late game where you have to fight in multiple fronts truce breaks and insanely fast expanding. Imo revoking with hre and christian pu mechanics are insanely good and will solve all the problems you rightly mentioned. Revoking before 1550 will grant you easier wc than any other country
That helps for sure, but my first WC I ever did, I was also going for one faith as Mughals, and I finished that in 1706 without a single trucebreak (and I got the one faith achievement before I got the WC one) so its definitely doable without trucebreaking every front. Bare in mind though I was fighting all the people on my borders from like 1450 pretty much non stop.
My first and so far only world conquest was a chill Prussia game turned into admin efficiency stacking game. I did a brief culture shift to Sardinian because France almost wiped out the Piedmontese to form Sardinia-Piedmont and quickly nab the mission, then I went back to german culture and immediately formed Germany. Eventually I formed Rome and throughout all of it I kept the Prussian monarchy so I was working with 50% gov capacity penalty. Funny thing is, I think I picked innovative as my first group as I wanted more infantry combat ability for my Prussia. I also got close to Austrian one faith but got bored. In my Mughal games, the Europeans usually grow pretty big and annoying to fight so I kinda end it. Surprisingly enough, in my more recent games with them, Ming just refused to blow up and were an annoying rival. I also don't feel as powerful as them and tend to struggle with manpower.
I doubt I will ever finish a world conquest. I absolutely believe I have the skillset for it, I've been on pace a few times going into the 1600's, but it just gets so horribly tedious, I end up doing stupid shit to break the monotony. I prefer smaller scale campaigns, managing my unrest, culture converting my empire.
I personally find it more fun not doing world conquests and instead doing more roleplay since historically nations didn’t have overarching goals like this and more or less just wanted money more than owning everything in sight. War is pretty expensive and wasn’t conducted in the way you would have to for a world conquest.
My first and so far only WC was starting as Great Horde. I liked them much better than Oirat - you can get a decent trade setup in Novgorod if you're aggressive, and it feels much less fiddly to me than relying on Ming for all your money
As mughals go confucian! It will add insane religion harmonization bonuses, wich means that you can have 200% overextension and not feel it whatsoever. By the way time jump bug as ashikaga works. Basically you need to click Ashikaga then jump till endgame date and back again after which start the game, without being shogun, but haveing all wassals for free. And they can’t fight each other if you do tha. The only problem, unlike hre scenario is their liberty desire. If you can manage that you free to be in constat endless wars.
@@torgomaghanyan7633 fair enough, I meant it’s effort to flip and I find for a new player Mughals on their own are enough (they tend to not go 500% OE)
acrificia lambs @@LemonCake101 well yeah, but they can use creat nation option to create confucian sacrificial lambs , eath them up, take admin to max out ccr, then do estate shenenigans, to be say 80% confucian trigger religious rebels and switch.
Muscovy/Russia is a strong candidate imo, you have the easy eastern expansion of the Ottoman or Timurids, but you can also fish for Christian PUs early and have relatively easy access to curtail a developing juggernaut (usually Ottomans or France). With the reduced AE from their national ideas, espionage and the icon mean that coalitions (a roadblock not really mentioned in the video) are much easier to avoid. Also, the 100 years of 2 free colonists from the Russia mission tree open up routes of expansion that might otherwise be unavailable without opening Exploration/expansion. The new Russia missions have made Russia imo perhaps the second-easiest World Conquest nation after Timurid/Mughals. The other way I think Russia differs from other WC candidates is that you are leaning into playing towards a One Faith (or quasi-One Faith) run, as Religious rather than humanist ideas are generally more attractive for Russia.
Did WC/OF as Ottomans, I would surely recommend them. Finished WC around 1720s and OF around 1740s. The geopolitical position and sunni conversion via trade nodes sold it to me, you can easily stop colonizers further expansion into new world etc. Also, you open up with admin and in 3 ideas you are good to go with -50%ccr, bunch of perma claims around you and I am not even talking about busted eyalet system and cheese tactics such as getting the Burgindian inheritance as Orthomans.
I have just finished Novgorod->Russia wc and I have to say is was fun but bit grindy in the end. You can get huge bonuses like 25ccr from missions and additional 10ccr from government mechanics, while unique government reforms grand unrest reductions and years of separatism. I really got use of riga's 40k troops while fighting the ottomans.
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 mandate since you get lots of op missions. It is tought at first with low mandate growth but after expanding a lot, growth will increase and debufs will get smaller...
My first wc was either Mamluks into Rûm to essentially play the Ottomans without having to beat the Mamluks(this was before any of the new updates to either so there wasn't the free eyelat on the Mamluks for the Ottomans or the instability for the Mamluks) or Oirat into Yuan into Mongol Empire, though my guess is it was the former since I more clearly remember taking that everywhere while I think the Mongol Empire died out due to having to handle the fact that hordes have good combat but have a really unfortunate pick 1 of 3 for resources stability and time where they either don't raze keeping resources but not time or stability, do raze keeping time and mostly stability but losing so many resources, or reform out of horde losing time and resources for stability and eventually having better resources.
I think Russia might be a bit overlooked here, they also can switch to western units, but most importantly I'm pretty sure they can stack quite some gov cap and minimum autonomy reduction which means your economy can scale pretty well into the late midgame while blobbing, you probably don't even need to full state core your provinces to get nearly the maximum out of them. Combine that with a huge manpower pool that probably lets you fight multiple wars at once and a ton of countries on your boarders in the mid game. You only have to get kinda lucky and have the commonwealth not grow too strong too quickly, but even than a quick expansion into china evens the odds pretty quickly
It will be interesting to see how much more OP the Mughals get with their new mission tree. If it's anything like the Persian one, they'll be unstoppable. The main drawback of playing as the shogun is that you can't press subject claims. So you need to have a reliable way to generate CBs yourself (of course, you could just use the religious CB, but will still need to get a border first).
I never achieved a WC so I'm not sure if I'm asking something obvious here, but why didn't you mentioned Russia? You get CC cost in your ideas, decent military modifiers, good absolutism bonuses, siberian frontiers, and one of the most OP missions tree of all the game.
I was debating including them, and they are certainly very strong, but most of their 'points' are just repeats of Ottomans/Mughals without too much unique stuff to add.
I’d argue the really rough start for Russia can make or break them. The others have an easier start because they aren’t forced into coring at lot. You’re encouraged to core Novgorod, Tver, Ryazan, Kazan, then the Golden Horde all of which can put you far behind admin wise, not to mention you needing to dev colonialism and Printing Press because they won’t spread naturally to you quick enough. Oh and there is the ever present threat of a massive commonwealth. I’ve had a couple of promising Russia campaigns cut short because of a power spike Commonwealth attacking me. That 33% goods produced is a massive income spike.
actually russia isn`t that hard , like all other nations it`s easy to play, you have strong start and good bonuses (that juicy -15% CCR and 1 diplomat from the start , my beloved) . I manage to do burgundy succession with them, own half a europe , and have 400 ducats income from TC in Asia ,and start colonizing new world with siberian frontier due to some shenanigans , and all of that in 1530~. That just simply your own level of play, get some better , teach mechanics , stop being lazy about micromanagment , and even theodoro in your hands become hegemon in 100 year span.
oh and i forgor to say , they have literaly 1/4 world development strong claims from mission. and really strong mission , army , and economy (god bless vodka and +125% production on grain , that give you more then 1 ducat monthly from manufatory, and decision that give you i think year or 1.5 of income from that grain in your provinces) , just beat poland , take all that juicy grain , and make your vodka economy even bigger. pretty chill tag
@@zagsarraykland6291 I’m not talking about how strong Russia can get, I’m being specific to the first 100 years which can cause restarts if something unlucky happens like Poland catching you off guard or a mega Sweden that ate Norway and Scotland.
I think if you can manage the mandate (or without it) any big chinese tag is a great option. You either Ming or have the bank of ming early as the hordes, then you have one of the riches regions as your powerbase with no real threat. Also you get a challenge for the mid-late game since europe will have strong untouched nations like ottos or france. What I am considering doing right now is starting as one of the daimyos (not decide yet) form Japan, then take the mandate with the new missiontree.
Personally really like the timurd WC, i did them as my first WC attempt and managed to get a one tag and one faith with about 80 years to spare while not tryharding a lot would defenitly recommend, you just have to get the start right and after that it basically plays by itself with cultural assymilation guiding your conquest
At two minutes, so I'll just guess the fifth thing, and come back later to see if I got it right: total boredom. I'm mostly a CKII player, but I know that's killed more than one attempt at a world conquest plus total religion/culture conversion in that game for me. I start in 769, and by the time the year 1200 hits, I'm just waiting around, hoping the conversion events pop off quickly enough while running around crushing endless peasant and heretic/infidel rebellions and checking every few hours to see if there are any more hospital upgrades I can build across an entire continent, which gets really tedious really fast. I'm sure it's not the exact same for EUIV, especially if you're not challenging yourself to the conversion, but I'm sure there's a point you can reach where it's obvious that nothing else interesting is going to happen anymore and continuing just seems like it'll be a tedious slog of sameness.
You can use the timestamps to peek: but great guessed: I summed it up as 'still having fun'. CK2/3 runs that are one cultures/faiths are a pain in this regard for sure, and I think Eu4 ones are less tedious, but yeah it still is very much a problem: starting wars against people with 100k+ armies that you know you can win, but you still have to fight.
I'm partial to Oirat-> Yuan-> Mongol Empire. I switch between rushing to grab the Mandate and form Yuan and taking the provinces I need to form the Mongol Empire. Taking the mandate is important bc it gives you access to Unify China cb so you get cores on all the provinces you conquer in the China Super Region. Forming the Mongol Empire replaces the Celestial Empire with The Great Mongol State gov't so you're back to being a horde anyway and you get all of China for free. For ideas I like going for both Horde and Aristocratic- playing steppe nomads you're never short on mana and these synergize surprisingly well, especially when you have Espionage too.
This might be unusual but... Zaporozhian Poland No for real, not only you have dirt cheap army full of cossack regiments that can slap stacks twice it's size, you can also raze provinces for lots of resources, and if you go for espionage to get cav combat policy you can fabricate claims on states really quickly, recently I tried to do what you showed in your cavalry 2.0 guide and before 1525 I was rolling Ottomans and everyone else like it was nothing, the only hard part is the start which can be a bit RNG-ish
@LemonCake101 Well beginner won't be doing a WC even as the easiest WC nation, sure Zaporozhie start is harder than all of those nations but then it just snowballs into being unstoppable within seconds of forming Poland
@mj405 I was talking about Zaporozhie, not wether PL or LIT are better, as Zaporozhie you can grab Aristocratic, use Call of the Steppes to become Horde Republic, form Poland and just by doing that have 100% cav/inf ratio, +80% cav combat ability, -90% cav cost, and on top of that you can spam Cossack regiments every few years giving you essentially a permanent +15% shock damage buff to your entire army
@mj405 ally Muscovy>declare independence in 1449>take land>horse time, by 1460 you can already form Poland if you play your cards right, with no exploits, playing as Zaporozhie from day 1 If you're stuck for a century you're doing something wrong and not even walls of text can fix that
One thing to say about Castile is that you don't have to colonize on your own. You can just PU Portugal after they have exploration and expansion and them them colonize.
Mate of mine just did it as Gelre as a start, formed the Dutch nation and then the untied crowns, yeah idk how he did it either, but he had enough time to spare to go for another achievement and religiously convert all lands to his religion
I tried so many times with the moguls and i was never quick enough. First try with Austria and i finished easily. If you also struggle with your micro i can recommend vassal svarming HRE.
@@LemonCake101 thing is, im very good the first 60 years at micro, got most of the harder timed achivements, its when i’ve done the first part i cant seem to level up the aggresiveness. Anyways i have barely any time to play the game anymore with house, jobb and kids but i love your vids man, very informative for a man who have fallen out with some of the newer mechanics
For anyone that is too bored to micro 50 armies during a wc i recommend automatic sieging once you get good quality and quantity of troops. I thought that this mechanic is super lame but then i discovered that you dont actually need to set up areas. Clicking automatic siege and then closing the window makes your army essentially an ai army that will siege everything on its own. Even better they tend to not go to the same provinces as other automatic siege armies. So now the i think the best strat is have 1 really good army that you control thats focused on battles and a bunch of weaker armies that can still stand on their own. I think its much better than carpet sieging with 1 stacks that get attrition and stop or get wiped by a hidden enemy 5k army that need to be constantly manually set to each provinces. Just grab a 30k click the button and let it do its thing. This mechanic is the only reason ive completed a world conquest. Its 1730 my pc is lagging and i have 20 stacks of 100 each. I refuse to micro all of them individually
Milan in 1399 in Extended Timeline is great cause you can form Italy easily before colonization and own Genoa and Venice. Really fun roleplay fighting the ottomans to take the east back to form Rome eventually.
I have done two world conquest. First was Brandeburg to Prussia, Germany and RE. The second was also one faith with Ottomans abusing the eyelats. Both were “easy” as you can do it fast with max admin efficiency but it’s very tedious and boring.
Experienced players also can do many tag switching for the best optimal ideas and permanent modifiers stacking from missions which make some of the countries even better in World Conquest. my personal favorite is provance>sardinia>lubeck>france>england/angevine. Provance has not too hard start if you can survive early France + can expand in Italy and Iberia fastly. good PU claims and permanent diplo annex cost, Savoy-Sardinia mission for permanent 5% admin eff + 10% good produced, Lübeck gives permanent very strong economy wise modifiers and also potential permanent 5% discipline or 15% morale bonus, France needs no introduction because of very strong missions and stacking modifiers and lastly Angevine national ideas are really good, also English parliament is very strong for easy 90% reduced advisors for mana problems. yes this strategy takes the same skill to pull off but world conquest is not easy either, you anyway need absolutism for WC so don't need to crazy expand in the first 2 age and focus on building the country first, which upmost mentioned strategy is good if you can manage to pull it off before 1600. you will be a monster unleashed as absolutism starts and conquer the world in a lightning speed.
Many of these big countries mentioned in the video(france,austria,mughals,russia,etc) are formable with culture changing so as not starting them and then forming them could end up in faster world conquest, if you can form them it is.
Fastest campaign I ever quit was getting England, Portugal, Bohemia, Aragon, Navarre, Naples, Hungary, and Austria all under PU before admin tech 10 as Castile. I also got the Burgundy inheritance. I felt like I already won and quit the campaign. Btw that has very little RNG involved, even if Burgundy rivals you, if you don’t rival them back they can switch. I assume this is the intended way to get the 10 PUs achievement. Idk how you’d keep the Burgundy PU though and get the English one (requires them to be a heretic aka age of reformation).
@@LemonCake101 oh the last one would be Lithuania because you can transfer them off Poland. Well there you go, 10 unions, the RNG mainly being Iberian wedding and if Austria goes for the Bohemia PU. Transfer subject age bonus is absurdly strong.
One kinda minor thing about Austria that really frustrates me is that your +5% AE bonus isn't available until the Age of Revolutions. Which also means if you want to form the HRE for good blobbing bonuses, you also have to delay until then. It's not a big deal, but it annoyed me even in my casual Austria game.
Yeah, but like you don’t need to pass the final reform till literally the end of the campaign, as job is done by your many subjects and you can just click DOW buttons. I’d argue that forming HRE tag is even worse than staying as Austria
@@LemonCake101 And maybe also mid-powers like Sunda (Cirebon ideas, Varanasi, Buddha deity for a hell lot of fun playing with monuments) It can be a diverse playthrough.
For me Spain was the best one. I played as Shogun, Mughals, Ottomans and didn't try conquer the world (I didn't watch guides), so I didn't made a WC while being close to it. But when I began a chill colonial game as Spain on a new patch, the world was somehow conquered.
I know that a hindu mughals in not the intended way to play them, but it is the easiest way to get almost free cores when you conquer provinces and it's a very easy religion swich, you don't even have to spawn hindu rebels, you just have to wait until Sikhism spawns, which does at around 1480-90, very early in the game, switch to Sikhism via decision, and then switch to hindu via the religious tab. It's easier to do a wc this way, but it's a bit harder to do a one faith, but it's still doable. Also mughals is going to get a new mission tree very soon so you might want to wait if you have never played with them
Obligatory estate comment aside, doing a wc in the base game is really not that difficult. Anebennar, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to do a wc in if you're not playing those tags made especially for wc.
I was thinking how you would bring up estate modifier stacking into this one, but yeah, vanilla WC's aren't inherently 'hard' and Anbennar ones are harder, but that is mainly due to Anbennar just having a lot more land to conquer. A lot more.
nr 5 is so important. I once started a one faith as cologne, but got bored shortly after revoking. I like the challenge of becoming the pre-eminent world power, but once there, what more is there to do than grind and wait?
I would also include a subproblem to 5. Having Fun which is End-game Framerate. It's not fun to have 10 FPS on 4 speed due to everyone having 100K+ armies. Same applies to vassal swarms. They would be fun if the game didn't run like a potato with them.
@@LemonCake101 maybe, but for many intermediate players, or in the early game stacking AE reduction and improved relations to manage AE is much easier than just going hulk mode and beating up the coalitions
@@AQJ_DK Yeah, that's fair enough I guess. I mentally had it marked down under enemy armies though, as end of the day you expand as fast as your coalition size allows it, and having more AE reduction is basically the same as not fighting and hence indirectly defeating your enemies.
The struggle for WC nowadays are not that it's not achievable but because it's tedious. :v But honestly pre-absolutism is about a setup for WC, i wouldn't concern too much about WC viability until i can gobble half of India in one go(Unless PU is a factor in which case my early large conquest would be via PU-ing powerful european nations while babysitting minors so they don't form coalition)
I think you are overly allergic towards hords. You have two types, stable ones and "forced to conquer" ones. The forced to conquer to survive are mostly the sunni hords. If you take Manchu or Oirat and combine Tengri with Vajrayana and the final horde unity reform you get 4.5 unity, which is completely stable as the development counter is capped at -3 unity. With some PP you get to 5, without any ideagroup stacking like eco or court, not needed. You can in fact play tall with the tengri hordes if you want, but he, who wants that :-) I personally like Manchu for its banners, super cheap and deadly. A world with Manchu culture is the best. You get 85-95% cav/ inf without going thru hoops, for 100% cav you ditch Vajrayana or start as one of the Siberian tribes. You should check the details first I guess. Have a nice day Mr. L. Cake.
I mean let’s be clear hordes are good but I specifically avoided talking about them since I believe a lot of new players will struggle with them as they will have a much harder time overcoming their weaknesses namely monetary ones hence I avoided them here
@@LemonCake101 Thank you for reply. There is only monetary weakness if the country is not stable, hence rebel-ridden. And if you have poor development, Ming to the rescue. I explained horde unity is no issue, if you take humanist and religion together with horde ideas you are golden, no rebels and heaps of money. I just give alternatives which are easy for a beginner player and fun. Np.
I think innovative is a bad example, especially when you say the undisputed worst idea group, trade, is a good alternative(it only* gives money). Innovative has some of the best policies in the game, half my policies in current wc is from inno. Also +1 to each mana with free policies is busted.
Trade is great if you need money is the main issue. My main problem with inno is overall when I play Eu4 I encounter problems like not enough money, manpower etc and innovative has yet been an option to solve any of them
I think Otto and Austria are the easiest for begginers because its pretty linear (its the only two WCs i have done). As Austria just go for revoke and keep rotating between killing Otto, France and Russia while getting PUs on the other big players and once you got revoked you can just expand and do an easy WC. As Ottomans just conquer and make sure to stack Absolutism fast after 1600. That way you will never have problems with decadence and Eyalets are so broken overextention will never be a problem cause you can just release every country you conquer and Eyalet them. Its legit WC on easy mode. I dont have a lot of experience doing WC and even after i conquered everyone i had time to integrate my 300 Eyalets and do a one faith
IMO austria is the best becuase it’s by far the best at scaling. Also as a serious but non hard core player you can easily conquer Europe super quick also you get access to some pretty easy tag flips if you’re into it. SP especially. And with an early mid 1520 revoke no one would outfight you. Also PUs are most time efficient for conquest That said Mughals are clear number 2. Janpur to Delhi to Mughal is criminally underregarded just due to the amount of claims you get and you can pretty easily avoid hugboxes that cluster central north India. Does require a culture flip but that’s fine. Timmy to Mughals is also always great. Ottomans get bronze. Get subject play without the investment by just eyelat everything also can get super cheap cores
Problems 4. and 5. are solved with admin efficiency and the best thing for admin efficiency is being close to HRE (or Russia) and not being an endgame tag. This is why Poland > France for WC
@@LemonCake101 Also offtopic besides Germany and Austria, would like to mention Oda for WC. Ashikaga's an easier start but Oda is a good all rounder in terms of idea set with 10 ccr/pwr, goods produced, manpower, and good army quality. IMHO a jack of all trades for a wc candidate, only thing is that nippon is a crap node.
@@LemonCake101 Oda has the single best province to dev renaissance being cloth and farmlands, it also starts with morale and ica, with that combined oda can snowball fast. All it takes is a stackwipe and by splitting stacks to occupy the capitals and provinces before the daimyo can recover troops, warfare can end in like 4 battles tops from my experience. It's difficult but also fast paced, it really slows down when you unify japan and at that point, korea and ming feel like a brick wall.
@@the90thhunter92 It's 'difficult' for a new person sure, but ofc if you know what you are doing no single Japanese tag is significantly hard, you can get like 6 show strength pre 1470...
i'm too lazy to do wc but i wonder how good is it by starting as provence n stacking integration discount modifier from other tag you can get over -90% discount
Try automatic sieging. I thought the mechanic was super bad because you need to manually set the provinces but you dont. Click qutomatic siege and close the window. This makes your army essentially an ai army that runs around and sieges on its own and even does battles if its much bigger than the enemy. Just grab your 30k stack click 1 button and watch it do its thing. In compqrison carpet sieging with 30 requires 30 clicks to split the army and another 60 to move each stack to each province (because you click and then hit escape). Automatic siege is just 1 button
@@LemonCake101 i think only england to gbr can do it w/o tag switching to get max integration bonus, since you can get the bonuses from parliament as well
Oirat-Yuan-Mongol Empire. By far the easiest. However to me the best and also an easy nation to do a WC as is Timurids-Mughals. Doing it for second time rn before the get revamped with 1.37. Mughals is my favorite nation to play in this game, imo the most overpowered nation if u know how to play and easily a Top 3 WC nation.
You guys stay as one country? My runs usually are weird long chains of formables that are either "Horse boys" Lithuania > Sich Rada > Poland > ??? > Russia ?!? or "Boat boys" Gotland > Lubeck > Hansa > England > ???
A true WC'er always stays true to form. No weird shenanigans of the Emirate of Caddo led by the Von Aisin Gioro dynasty conquering the world using streltsys and qizilbashs, no. The universal horde of Oirat led by the Northern Yuan conquered the world using mounted archers, and nobody else
@@danielutriabrooks477 "true WC'er" definitely doesn't apply to me. I spend way more time thinking and planning then actually playing. Figuring out the best modifiers to stack, or clever ways to get bonus X to stat Y. The Student is 100% my favorite EU4 TH-camr.
@@LemonCake101 true, most of my failed runs are due to having 300 OE and rebels (i literally cannot hear the sound of rebels popping anymore, my brain doesnt notice it anymore)
Thanks for the advise. Would it be better to stay Catholic. Become protestant. Or become orthodox?. I know that reformed is definitely out of the question. Orthodox can eventually make it very easy to convert people (the missionary strength. Unlike with Catholic. Is universal rather than only against certain religions) and provides manpower. Protestant can make it easier to max improve relations (at the minute I forget what else it can do without any dlc). And Catholic has mostly the same stuff with or without dlc's, lastly is that Catholic and protestant can get the religious turmoil disaster (if I'm remembering the correct name of the disaster) that has the option to give a permanent +1 missionary strength against other denominations of Christianity (in my eyes it's not a bad idea if it's a 1 faith. Though it's basically hopeless to convert colonial nations)
The problem though is that reformed is basically useless without any dlc. Catholic will hurt a bit until you become Italy. Hussite is out of reach and I don't know if it requires a dlc to be useable. Orthodox doesn't get that disaster and you have to make an effort to take land around Greece to have it. Protestant (like reformed) requires waiting for it to appear and with no dlc it does almost nothing aside from improving your ability to improve relations, and Coptic is way to obscure and hard to access for the very little it gives (especially without it's dlc) and it only feels right to restore rome as a denomination of Christianity of some kind (even if it actually requires that anyway. It's the principle of the matter and I'm limited in options of practicality because I don't have any dlc)
@@LemonCake101 you could also make an argument for Venice. while yes you will need to improve the election system (all of the early game leaders of Venice tend to be old, not all of which have stats that make up for that). you do start with more land. some of which is orthodox (if orthodox is worth it). you get much more options for early expansion, not to mention that republics can get a reform that gives an extra missionary
Do you have another tag that you think is best for a World Conquest? Argue about it with me here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv
Do you think the Angevin Empire as what it takes for an average player?
@@Nick-Hus It is a very Europe first WC build imo
@@LemonCake101 Thanks for the quick reply. Idk if it will be my first one probably Ottomans first
@@Nick-Hus Fair enough!
5. is where I think Austria really excels for me. If you have a good enough computer (and you'll need one) you can save some of that campaign burnout by essentially having a 150-200 year span where the game kinda plays itself. You just click the war button, make the vasals fight the war, and go to the peace screen. What burns me out is not even just the length of games but the amount of STUFF you have to do. Just constantly moving armies around and taking so much time. Austria is the king of the lazy WC.
For sure, I have had campaigns where I would be like 'ugh I can't be bothered to fight, go my vassals'.
A simple "automate armies" where the game plays your armies like it does for other nations would be the MOST quality of life update ever
@@nonono9194there is an auto siege button but that still may get your armies killed if you arent paying attention.
yeah timurids is propably the best answer. the fact that you pick up more and more buffs for each culture is very underrated in my opinion. not for the buffs themsalves, but because it motivates you to keep going and not quit halfway through.
The motivation part is unironically quite important in that regard.
WRONG! The BEST country for world conquest is OBJECTIVELY Janjiro.
They are too strong, like Ulm.
Yup, unfun
Chavuecheny
Incorrect, Ryukyu.
Wrong, mahafaly
Your last point is the far more important for me, world conquest tends to become quite tedious after the first 200 years, and having a too easy early game quickly makes me lose interest in the run (at least it did for my try of WC as france/otto/austria/timmy).
As of right now my only WC was with oirat => yuan => mongol empire staying a tengri horde and switching to islam to do a one faith all the while stacking cavalry ability for a 50/50 cavalry artillery army.
You didn't mention Qing. They get 70% CCR form adm ideas and EoC. They also have a amazing mission tree, especially if you switch to mongol culture before forming Qing. Combined with Humanist you get the external perfectionalism CB and the most stabel nation. Definitly a top contender.
They are good in that regard for sure, but I specifically avoided addressing Hordes here. Overall with Hordes which are great for blobbing, they do struggle with literally everything else in the game, and the amount of nation ruined Hordes I have seen is honestly concerning so I don't want someone newer to 'waste' time with them.
@@LemonCake101 you don't have to be a horde. You stop beong a horde if you form Qing
@@theteamaker6078 yes, but you need to be a Horde to form it.
@LemonCake101 Not even that, you need to be EoC, though admittedly starting as a horde is the easiest way to become Qing.
@@theteamaker6078 oh, I assumed you needed to be a Horde, my bad.
I know this list is for more beginner players, but for those with more experience without a doubt, I think the best nation to do a World Conquest with is Oirat > Yuan > Mongol Empire.
Alternatively if you like Tag Switching funnies, playing the Teutonic Order, become Holy Horde, form Poland then change primary culture to Mongol and form the PLC gives you so many busted modifiers.
I like Jianzhou->Manchu->culture switch to Mongol->Qing better. 45% CCR in 1480s and 70 %after you get admin. Take 500% OE and not a single rebellion will start because you core it all too fast. I suppose staying as a horde is better but Qing is more chill
Hordes are a hell of a drug, for sure. But I find if you are good enough for a Horde, you are definitely good enough for Ottos.
My only WC was Gotland->Denmark->Angevin->Rome->HRE. The later 2 mainly for mare nostrum, and the memes of it :D
@@Samalitugotland world conquest is fucking hillarious lmao
@@crustitoad8175 honestly it wasnt planned before i reached 1650 and realised i had most of the world alrdy anyway 😂 I just wanted a tag switching pu game
Good list of countries, I've never done a WC myself, every time I start one I get hit with reason 5. But I think it's more important to remember: The real World Conquest was inside of us all along.
To conquer the world, one must conquer himself.
I've always wanted to do one but dreaded the micro. When Mamluks were reworked the 1st time (3 buttons) a long time ago, actually did it as them (also rerolled shia for lulz after eating all of Persia).
After all-out wars with the Ottomans tech 4 and 6 and diplo vassalizing the arabian minors it was pretty easy.
My man writing essays and lecturing us about topics of EU IV, and I love it.
You truly are one of the best masters of art of war for EU IV
I love olur little map painting community, lol
Glad you enjoyed!
My first and only WC i've done was with the Ottomans. I finished it in the 1780's. I didn't tryhard, i even fooled around for 30 years managing the decadence disasters in the 1600's.
I would reccomend them for a WC
Yeah, their raw power is hard to match.
I think quite an underrated tag for World Conquest is Popeman.
If we to break it down by the list
*1: Fighting*
This is about the weakest point of Pope. As on the surface, you are only getting +5% Discipline as your ambition. However you can compensate for this lack of surface buffs with Excomunications and Crusades. Being the grand daddy of Catholicism, you can also pick up some very strong and reliable allies (f.e. France or Spain) who will do the fighting for you.
Later you pick up Kingdom of God for 15% manpower and 10% morale, so you'll be quite good there.
Also you have Swiss Guard. Which I guess having cheap extra manpower that isn't terrible at fighting is always good.
*2: Stability*
The Church is stability. Between all the tolerance of true faith and general unrest reduction buff you can pick up, Popeman is very stable.
*3: Resources*
Italy is one of the richest areas in the world, so you should be drowning in ducats all the time.
When it comes to mana, Pope is a wizard. You get +1 free Diplo policy (which is effectively +1 Dip mana). KoD gives you +2 Adm ruler mana and each ruler gets additional +1 mana of your choosing along with corresponding free policy, effectively making it +2 mana. You also get some tech discounts, which means more mana for conquesting.
*4: Time*
Time is of the essence.
Definitely not super easy, but definitely fun. Worth considering for one faith wc. Deus Vult!
Is this a good time to mention the Alcheringa native tribe independent daimyo revolutionary empire revolutionary state celestial empire emperor of china shogun horde presidential dictatorship peasant republic parliamentarian free city elective monarchy holy roman emperor revolutionary Papal States run that's being worked on?
@@LemonCake101 Rainbow Serpent wills it!
@@Nerazmus well you spend most of the time not as Alcheringa actually but close enough
A little historical tid bit, the japan one.
Is actually what the shoganate tried to do when they invaded korea in the late 1500s. The new shogun wanted to keep his vassals from fighting.
I think its worth mentioning Oirat in this discussion considering the legendary 28 year WC from Lambdaxx. I know his run isnt applicable to most players, but its such an achievement that i think it deserves a mention.
I specifically avoided Hordes since I don't want a new person to try them and fail (they are very easy to fail with too, if you are not blobbing fast enough)
The Timurid start is much harder to play than the Ottoman start so I would recommend Ottomans for first WC since snowballing is kinda import for the time aspect. Eayalets are also a really strong subject type.
The Timurid start is a bit painful for sure, thankfully if you mess it up a restart doesn't exactly waste too much time.
Janpur to Delhi to Mughals is so underrated
I'm currently doing my first World Conquest as Austria as the HRE Emperor, also going for One Faith, all of the Americas is Catholic which makes it easy, got Spain, Britain, and Russia as PUs cause I used Austrias CB to put a Habsburg on their thrones. I've got over 2000 hours in the game and only now trying my first WC lol
I havent finished a world conquest myself and I dont know if I ever will but from other research ive done I think its worth mentioning the angevin empire
ccr, adm eff, great armies, the best trade node in the game, add insane missions too, and you have a strong contender for best wc nation imo
I do think I might give trying a WC a go next patch, probably trying the new mughals tree
Go for the Mughals, for sure. But England into Angevin isn't bad for sure, but there is a limit to how many tags I can talk about.
I recently finished my first world conquest as Teutonic order/holy horde to Poland to Commonwealth to mongol empire to Rome. It was also a one-faith, though I didn't initially intend it to be. Having the weird tags as goals really helped with the tedium, and a Catholic horde with Polish ideas is absurdly busted for world conquest. Free stability, powerful army, non-catholic provinces can be razed, so they pay for themselves, and you can also guarantee great rulers as a theocracy. Would recommend if you are compelled to conquer the world.
I am glad I found your channel. Apart from informative content, the way you talk is perfect.
Ah thanks
In Anbennar there is a formable called Black Demesne, lorewise it is essentially the quintessential fantasy evil necromancy empire. Anyways, they get a special CB that allows them to fullannex nations that scales off the power of one of their estates, the disciples. After you get max scaling you can full annex even the number one Great Power if you beat them in a war. Making this one of the most powerful tags for a WC.
Unfortunately Vanilla doesn't have estates this powerful, but there are still a lot of wacky estates out there. How many is it possible to have at once?
You do love your estates don't you! Black Demesne is very OP, mainly because you can integrate your vassals for free without spending any mana on top of everything else. But that is super heavily modded, and I am definitely talking Vanilla here.
Jadd Empire #1
You can kinda do this in a way if you start as Majapahit and go to Japan and get the Shogunate. Majapahit has a CB that can vassalize any country in 1 war and the Shogunate gives you infinite vassals.
I did only one WC and it was as Austria. Finished it 1743, finished One faith in 1775. I did it just for achievments. Will never ever do another one, its just too tedious.
did my world conquest as the mughals. Definitely a fool proof nation to do it with. No revolts, stupid buffs. At the time, I didnt know how the trade or army system worked, but still managed to fumble my way to a completion.
A win is a win!
My advice to players struggling with the late game grind is to stack siege ability, makes wars a lot faster and larger wars less annoying to fight. Espionage ideas help with building up spy network quickly. There is also a government reform that allows you to pick the siege ability trade policy without the requirements, very useful for a WC.
Siege ability is very underrated in that regard, in SP it is a monster modifier for sure.
My first and only WC was with Portugal into a very late Spain (~1700). I was doing an achievement run and realized that by 1650 i had so much land and money that no one could stop me anymore. Also no true superpower formed to stop me. Ottoman i stopped early (No cb vassal Byzabtium), got GB in an PU around 1600, France i bullied all game, Ming went boom the second i finish my colonies in Taiwan.
Ah the classic. Stopping the Ottomans early is always a good idea.
You don't mention the strongest options the Ottobros have for a super fast WC. A bit of cheese. (I don't even mean exploits, just a few tricks and intended usage of game mechanics.)
First off, Eyalests. Hands down the strongest subject types (probably onpar with pronoiars, but you can have a limited number of those, unlike Eyalets). Core eyalets only calculate their own strenght vs yours when it comes to liberty desire, so you can core eyalet a balkanized world and have it all be loyal while you on sit on Istambul. They also do not require diplo slots.
Basically you can conquer as much land as you can, release it all after the war and eyalet it, so you don't need to ever core anything.
They are sunni. Hordes can not anymore spawn "infinite man" from a button bc of the slackening changes, but sunni nations still can. Getting - piety isn't so hard and you can even embrace it for some stability hits. (Which you can afford since you don't need to core). Now, if you slacken before pressing the free man button, it x5 it, usually filling up your entire manpower pool. Pretty cool.
Thirdly, they are located perfectly between Orthodoxy and Islam at the start. Meaning if you conquer Byzantium and Epirus you are pretty close to owning 50% orthodox, 50% sunni land by development. Which means you can switch really easily by accepting rebel demands and then going back via the button to sunni. When you go sunni, you get a stacking event that grants +50 relations with all sunni nations you can see. Now if you do the back and forth 4 times that is +200 with everyone, meaning you can basically diplo vassalize everyone from Northern India to Arabia to Northern Africa, even up to Granada with a bit of diplo rep. Not to mention if you time it a bit you can also grab a Burgundian Inheritance.
If you wanna take bit slower and care about AE you can basically negate it by just releasing stuff or returning cores to vassals, or you could actively lower it by releasing vassals in peace deals who you can re-vassalize again.
Embracing the vassal swarm diplo Ottoman playstyle can yield in a very quick WC. Not sure it'd faster than the Oirat 1450-60ish one we've seen a few patches ago, but then again, that used HRE exploits and a different slacking mechanic.
I mean you can go have with Eyelets, but I think they are almost too strong ;)
@BobbiusRossius I mean, sure, but 50% manpower recovery rate isn't a button click that refills your manpower pool.
(Sunni hordes however can do that still with piety)
France does have some spicy missions that enable stuff like Military Hegemon by 1510 and Iron-Crowned, which can be like 50 years of -25% core creation. Dismantle HRE (can be done immediately), stack some AE early from the Papacy, Age ability, and Espionage, and you can pretty much lock down all of Europe well before Age of Absolutism. Means you avoid huge Colonial Nations and every province in HRE being 40 development by the time you get to Europe as, say, Mughals. On Very Hard, I've only done a world conquest as France so far, and it was easy as hell because you beat up everyone before they became monsters (Ottomans I'm looking at you) or stacked tedious amounts of development.
I'd honestly put them above Spain. Spain has nothing to help them conquer faster and has a bunch of garbage going on at the beginning (disaster, Enrique, some other bad events). They're a colonizing power house, but as you implied, it's way better to take over someone else's colonies than to make them yourselves. You can form Angevin Empire with Castile with some shenanigans, though, which is funny and very powerful. Not sure you can do that with France, come to think of it.
@@Elvenpath1337 with Spain you can also PU Portugal and England throough your mission tree, so if you wait to do it once they take exploration and expansion, wouldn't this help with the coloniziation part?
For sure, they are pretty good in that regard, but I don't know if 'extra good for VH' is a factor many people consider. I don't play on VH for example, and I know few people do.
@@LemonCake101 That's a fair point. :) You ought to try Very Hard. After (and I'm not kidding) 7000 hours played, it certainly revitalized the game for me. Makes you reevaluate your overall strategy, your idea group picks, and so on - especially as a minor nation, if you wanna face the Great Powers.
@BobbiusRossius Fair point. :) I usually focus on raw conquest when I'm playing and don't go out of my way to get a lot of subjects, but I'll admit that sound pretty powerful if you focus on subjects and integrating them with Influence and the policy with Admin.
I did my first world conquest with 90% admin eff run. I started as Burgundy, tag switched to sardinia-piedmont to prussia to saxony to germany to lotharingia. It was pretty easy since 1670s when i actually formed Lotharingia. Up to that point it was challanging to manage that severe agressive expansion (up to 800 with castile or england). It was key to cripple major powers in early to mid game to stop them from snowballing. However despite having such high admin eff, i didnt finish WC until 1799. It took a lot of mental strength to besiege 500 8 level forts scattered across whole Asia
I mean if you are happy to tag Switch like that, I say go for it, but I won't recommend that planning for a beginner.
What about Muscovy? It has only one strong neighbour at the start of the game and sometimes AI doesn't even choose the Jagiellon option. Novgorod and the hordes are pretty weak, while Sweden breaks off Denmark in 95% of the games. When you form Russia, you gain good national ideas for the army and for stability. The economy is the only big issue, but it's manageable. And don't forget all the good things that Orthodox can give!
Muscovy was my second WC (after Ottomans) and it was a breeze. You literally don't struggle at any point in a Muscovy campaign because your enemies are all weak and Russia has unlimited manpower. Although I'm not 100% sure how it workd with the Domination changes to Russia, I haven't tried that yet
Decent choice for sure, my issue is there are better options, and I didn't want to make a 1 hour video where 80% of the points are just repeated between tags (look these guys have CCR!)
Why are you playing EU4? Don't you have Elves to genocide?
imo the thing that makes the ottomans the best is their position in the map
they are in the middle which allows them to blob everywhere
if they were in the edge of the map like qing then they wouldn't dominate and get institutions easily
Being 'in the middle' is a pretty underrated buff as it stands, for sure.
The sixth problem, Beefy computer
True
Great vid man! Poor Oirat though.
I didn't want to touch Hordes for new peeps, too easy to fail as them for newer players.
@@LemonCake101 That's fair
"France lacks resources"
My friend, France is one Burgundian Inheritance away from the best end-node in the entire game. And then one little British adventure away from securing that end node completely
"France has very few buffs beyond their strong start"
Burgundian Inheritance, guaranteed PU on Spain (Domination tree cringe), guaranteed PU on the PLC, an extra 6%-9% administrative efficiency during the Age of Absolutism, and the ability to consistently go revolutionary in the 1710s. The HRE can be dismantled super-early and after you inherit Burgundy you can mass-vassalize the German minors and feed those that don't to them.
You also start in western Europe which means that you can ensure that the colonizers don't get out of control. I have a failed Qing WC which was ruined by a Great Britian which had eaten all of western and southern Africa but lost their Canadian colony which had grown into a 550% warscore cost independent Canada >.>
Also, for every Christian tag there is Rome which has arguably the best idea set in the game for a world conquest.
To be clear here, I don't think anyone who knows what they are doing are going to struggle financially as France. As you said, they have a lot of ways to make a lot of money, but what I meant is they have no direct buffs to economic money generation like some other tags. I am doing this within the context of a 'newish' player who is going to be struggling with a lot of the things mentioned, since if you are good enough for a lot of the things you talked about, well, they probably won't need to be watching this video :)
But to be clear you are pretty much correct on every point here.
@BobbiusRossius France has the second best Age of Absolutism of any country and the best Age of Revolutions of any country. Both excluding vassal swarmers because those kind of play their own game.
Ottomans are also very good, yes, but require Domination which I don't own. Mughals are also very, very good but they can't mess with the colonizers nearly as good as France can. Spain is an RNG fest with the thousand ways Aragon can fuck up your campaign. Austria is also very good, but the vassal swarm doesn't solve the biggest issue I have with non-France WCs which is the amount of land you can take per peacedeal. As the Emperor of the HRE you are mostly locked out of Protestant which is the best Christian denomination for a WC and completely locked out of the revolution. The hordes are of course hordes, but I fully admit that I suck with Hordes.
I have WC'd with France thrice so far (twice under the current ruleset, once over a year ago when military hegemon still gave +5% administrative efficiency). The first finished in 1805, the second in 1803, the third in 1782. Not the fastest of WCs, not even close, but France is so far the only country that got me there.
In the current version of EU4 it's difficult to hit 90% administrative efficiency:
The Ottomans are the only country that still get 10% administrative efficiency, Mughals are down to 8%. Germany also no longer has administrative efficiency from missions. Dithmarschen + Prussia + Rome + Alhambra barely gets you there.
Aragon has a 10% chance to become a peasant republic which blocks the Iberian Wedding. That's a major RNG gate for every Castile campaign. Also subject integration doesn't help you with expansion and Spanish ideas contain little relevant to a world conquest. It's not 2015 anymore, these days there are ample sources of monarch points. Also no great Britain PU for you if they decide to stay Catholic.
Mughals are of course very good (the only country other the France that I have WCd with), but they are limited to Imperialism wars and have to chose between fast cores and 10% warscore cost vs other religions. Also with the nerf the Viceroyalty of the Deccan they now have less administrative efficieny than France during the Age of Absolutism. 5% from the mission + 10% max effect of absolutism only goes up to 8%, while 30% max effect of absolutism goes up to 9%. And while the Diwan is obviously great for accepting cultures for free, imo only the CCR and PWSC bonuses are the only truly impactful bonuses from it.
Notably, my Mughals WC required trucebreaking while the only truce break my France WCs did were a single one each run in order to trigger CnC.
Honestly, it doesn't get much easier than Ottomans turning everyone into Eyalets
I never had an easier WC than Austria ... until I tried the Ottomans. They're the only two countries I've tried that I'd say are WC easy mode.
Tbh if you get Bohemia PU, early dismantle HRE with Union Casus Beli on Hungary, then game kinda plays itself as Poland. I just finished WC playthrough as Poland and this opener might be one of the craziest ones I had.
Bohemia is pretty good for sure, my issue is Austria is just.. better.
You mention mostly about early expansion about wc but the real problem starts in mid-late game where you have to fight in multiple fronts truce breaks and insanely fast expanding. Imo revoking with hre and christian pu mechanics are insanely good and will solve all the problems you rightly mentioned. Revoking before 1550 will grant you easier wc than any other country
That helps for sure, but my first WC I ever did, I was also going for one faith as Mughals, and I finished that in 1706 without a single trucebreak (and I got the one faith achievement before I got the WC one) so its definitely doable without trucebreaking every front. Bare in mind though I was fighting all the people on my borders from like 1450 pretty much non stop.
@@LemonCake101 how can you keep up the manpower at early game?
My first and so far only world conquest was a chill Prussia game turned into admin efficiency stacking game. I did a brief culture shift to Sardinian because France almost wiped out the Piedmontese to form Sardinia-Piedmont and quickly nab the mission, then I went back to german culture and immediately formed Germany. Eventually I formed Rome and throughout all of it I kept the Prussian monarchy so I was working with 50% gov capacity penalty. Funny thing is, I think I picked innovative as my first group as I wanted more infantry combat ability for my Prussia.
I also got close to Austrian one faith but got bored.
In my Mughal games, the Europeans usually grow pretty big and annoying to fight so I kinda end it. Surprisingly enough, in my more recent games with them, Ming just refused to blow up and were an annoying rival. I also don't feel as powerful as them and tend to struggle with manpower.
I doubt I will ever finish a world conquest. I absolutely believe I have the skillset for it, I've been on pace a few times going into the 1600's, but it just gets so horribly tedious, I end up doing stupid shit to break the monotony. I prefer smaller scale campaigns, managing my unrest, culture converting my empire.
No for sure, WC's are a grind, believe me.
I personally find it more fun not doing world conquests and instead doing more roleplay since historically nations didn’t have overarching goals like this and more or less just wanted money more than owning everything in sight. War is pretty expensive and wasn’t conducted in the way you would have to for a world conquest.
For sure, at the end of the day, its a game about having fun, and if you are having fun, you are winning.
My first and so far only WC was starting as Great Horde. I liked them much better than Oirat - you can get a decent trade setup in Novgorod if you're aggressive, and it feels much less fiddly to me than relying on Ming for all your money
Fair enough, although again I avoided hordes for this video as they are not very new player friendly
As mughals go confucian! It will add insane religion harmonization bonuses, wich means that you can have 200% overextension and not feel it whatsoever.
By the way time jump bug as ashikaga works. Basically you need to click Ashikaga then jump till endgame date and back again after which start the game, without being shogun, but haveing all wassals for free. And they can’t fight each other if you do tha. The only problem, unlike hre scenario is their liberty desire. If you can manage that you free to be in constat endless wars.
I mean you can do that for sure, but at that point its almost overkill.
@@LemonCake101 well the point of vid was easy world conquest.
@@torgomaghanyan7633 fair enough, I meant it’s effort to flip and I find for a new player Mughals on their own are enough (they tend to not go 500% OE)
acrificia lambs @@LemonCake101 well yeah, but they can use creat nation option to create confucian sacrificial lambs , eath them up, take admin to max out ccr, then do estate shenenigans, to be say 80% confucian trigger religious rebels and switch.
Muscovy/Russia is a strong candidate imo, you have the easy eastern expansion of the Ottoman or Timurids, but you can also fish for Christian PUs early and have relatively easy access to curtail a developing juggernaut (usually Ottomans or France). With the reduced AE from their national ideas, espionage and the icon mean that coalitions (a roadblock not really mentioned in the video) are much easier to avoid. Also, the 100 years of 2 free colonists from the Russia mission tree open up routes of expansion that might otherwise be unavailable without opening Exploration/expansion. The new Russia missions have made Russia imo perhaps the second-easiest World Conquest nation after Timurid/Mughals.
The other way I think Russia differs from other WC candidates is that you are leaning into playing towards a One Faith (or quasi-One Faith) run, as Religious rather than humanist ideas are generally more attractive for Russia.
For sure, Muscovey has come up a lot. Its just not much to talk about them that isn't mentioned with France/Ottomans.
Did WC/OF as Ottomans, I would surely recommend them. Finished WC around 1720s and OF around 1740s. The geopolitical position and sunni conversion via trade nodes sold it to me, you can easily stop colonizers further expansion into new world etc. Also, you open up with admin and in 3 ideas you are good to go with -50%ccr, bunch of perma claims around you and I am not even talking about busted eyalet system and cheese tactics such as getting the Burgindian inheritance as Orthomans.
No for sure Ottomans are a monster, don’t ever neglect them.
Doesn't Castile get a unique source of early admin efficiency from its unique gov? I'd also mention Alhambra if that also wasn't easy enough to get
That is the reason they make the list too. Everyone gets Alhambra though.
I have just finished Novgorod->Russia wc and I have to say is was fun but bit grindy in the end. You can get huge bonuses like 25ccr from missions and additional 10ccr from government mechanics, while unique government reforms grand unrest reductions and years of separatism. I really got use of riga's 40k troops while fighting the ottomans.
A fun run for sure in that regard, I can't complain.
I tried most of these countries for WC/one faith, but the first time I got it was with Yuan and staying as them...
Mandate or Horde Yuan?
@@spoonsareoccasionallymadeo5728 mandate since you get lots of op missions. It is tought at first with low mandate growth but after expanding a lot, growth will increase and debufs will get smaller...
I feel like horde yuan is relatively better for a wc
Hordes are balanced for sure, I am just cautious recommending them to new peeps.
My first wc was either Mamluks into Rûm to essentially play the Ottomans without having to beat the Mamluks(this was before any of the new updates to either so there wasn't the free eyelat on the Mamluks for the Ottomans or the instability for the Mamluks) or Oirat into Yuan into Mongol Empire, though my guess is it was the former since I more clearly remember taking that everywhere while I think the Mongol Empire died out due to having to handle the fact that hordes have good combat but have a really unfortunate pick 1 of 3 for resources stability and time where they either don't raze keeping resources but not time or stability, do raze keeping time and mostly stability but losing so many resources, or reform out of horde losing time and resources for stability and eventually having better resources.
I think Russia might be a bit overlooked here, they also can switch to western units, but most importantly I'm pretty sure they can stack quite some gov cap and minimum autonomy reduction which means your economy can scale pretty well into the late midgame while blobbing, you probably don't even need to full state core your provinces to get nearly the maximum out of them. Combine that with a huge manpower pool that probably lets you fight multiple wars at once and a ton of countries on your boarders in the mid game. You only have to get kinda lucky and have the commonwealth not grow too strong too quickly, but even than a quick expansion into china evens the odds pretty quickly
It will be interesting to see how much more OP the Mughals get with their new mission tree. If it's anything like the Persian one, they'll be unstoppable.
The main drawback of playing as the shogun is that you can't press subject claims. So you need to have a reliable way to generate CBs yourself (of course, you could just use the religious CB, but will still need to get a border first).
We will have to wait and see, should be interesting.
w/o watching the video, it's Mughals, it must be
You aren't wrong.
I never achieved a WC so I'm not sure if I'm asking something obvious here, but why didn't you mentioned Russia?
You get CC cost in your ideas, decent military modifiers, good absolutism bonuses, siberian frontiers, and one of the most OP missions tree of all the game.
I was debating including them, and they are certainly very strong, but most of their 'points' are just repeats of Ottomans/Mughals without too much unique stuff to add.
I’d argue the really rough start for Russia can make or break them. The others have an easier start because they aren’t forced into coring at lot.
You’re encouraged to core Novgorod, Tver, Ryazan, Kazan, then the Golden Horde all of which can put you far behind admin wise, not to mention you needing to dev colonialism and Printing Press because they won’t spread naturally to you quick enough.
Oh and there is the ever present threat of a massive commonwealth. I’ve had a couple of promising Russia campaigns cut short because of a power spike Commonwealth attacking me. That 33% goods produced is a massive income spike.
actually russia isn`t that hard , like all other nations it`s easy to play, you have strong start and good bonuses (that juicy -15% CCR and 1 diplomat from the start , my beloved) . I manage to do burgundy succession with them, own half a europe , and have 400 ducats income from TC in Asia ,and start colonizing new world with siberian frontier due to some shenanigans , and all of that in 1530~. That just simply your own level of play, get some better , teach mechanics , stop being lazy about micromanagment , and even theodoro in your hands become hegemon in 100 year span.
oh and i forgor to say , they have literaly 1/4 world development strong claims from mission. and really strong mission , army , and economy (god bless vodka and +125% production on grain , that give you more then 1 ducat monthly from manufatory, and decision that give you i think year or 1.5 of income from that grain in your provinces) , just beat poland , take all that juicy grain , and make your vodka economy even bigger. pretty chill tag
@@zagsarraykland6291 I’m not talking about how strong Russia can get, I’m being specific to the first 100 years which can cause restarts if something unlucky happens like Poland catching you off guard or a mega Sweden that ate Norway and Scotland.
I think if you can manage the mandate (or without it) any big chinese tag is a great option. You either Ming or have the bank of ming early as the hordes, then you have one of the riches regions as your powerbase with no real threat. Also you get a challenge for the mid-late game since europe will have strong untouched nations like ottos or france.
What I am considering doing right now is starting as one of the daimyos (not decide yet) form Japan, then take the mandate with the new missiontree.
The mandate is pretty underrated to be honest, managing it isn't that bad.
Personally really like the timurd WC, i did them as my first WC attempt and managed to get a one tag and one faith with about 80 years to spare while not tryharding a lot would defenitly recommend, you just have to get the start right and after that it basically plays by itself with cultural assymilation guiding your conquest
For sure, its really strong
At two minutes, so I'll just guess the fifth thing, and come back later to see if I got it right: total boredom.
I'm mostly a CKII player, but I know that's killed more than one attempt at a world conquest plus total religion/culture conversion in that game for me. I start in 769, and by the time the year 1200 hits, I'm just waiting around, hoping the conversion events pop off quickly enough while running around crushing endless peasant and heretic/infidel rebellions and checking every few hours to see if there are any more hospital upgrades I can build across an entire continent, which gets really tedious really fast.
I'm sure it's not the exact same for EUIV, especially if you're not challenging yourself to the conversion, but I'm sure there's a point you can reach where it's obvious that nothing else interesting is going to happen anymore and continuing just seems like it'll be a tedious slog of sameness.
You can use the timestamps to peek: but great guessed: I summed it up as 'still having fun'. CK2/3 runs that are one cultures/faiths are a pain in this regard for sure, and I think Eu4 ones are less tedious, but yeah it still is very much a problem: starting wars against people with 100k+ armies that you know you can win, but you still have to fight.
I'm partial to Oirat-> Yuan-> Mongol Empire. I switch between rushing to grab the Mandate and form Yuan and taking the provinces I need to form the Mongol Empire.
Taking the mandate is important bc it gives you access to Unify China cb so you get cores on all the provinces you conquer in the China Super Region.
Forming the Mongol Empire replaces the Celestial Empire with The Great Mongol State gov't so you're back to being a horde anyway and you get all of China for free.
For ideas I like going for both Horde and Aristocratic- playing steppe nomads you're never short on mana and these synergize surprisingly well, especially when you have Espionage too.
For sure, Hordes are good, I just didn't want to introduce that conversation for new players. I find they struggle disproportionally with Hordes
@@LemonCake101 Hordes are deffinitely glass canons. They're very powerful but hard to manage as they rely on constant agression to keep afloat.
@@edim108 for sure, and if you can maintain that it's fine, but a lot of people can't.
This might be unusual but... Zaporozhian Poland
No for real, not only you have dirt cheap army full of cossack regiments that can slap stacks twice it's size, you can also raze provinces for lots of resources, and if you go for espionage to get cav combat policy you can fabricate claims on states really quickly, recently I tried to do what you showed in your cavalry 2.0 guide and before 1525 I was rolling Ottomans and everyone else like it was nothing, the only hard part is the start which can be a bit RNG-ish
I mean that for sure is a monster build, but I won't recommend it for a beginner...
@LemonCake101 Well beginner won't be doing a WC even as the easiest WC nation, sure Zaporozhie start is harder than all of those nations but then it just snowballs into being unstoppable within seconds of forming Poland
@mj405 I was talking about Zaporozhie, not wether PL or LIT are better, as Zaporozhie you can grab Aristocratic, use Call of the Steppes to become Horde Republic, form Poland and just by doing that have 100% cav/inf ratio, +80% cav combat ability, -90% cav cost, and on top of that you can spam Cossack regiments every few years giving you essentially a permanent +15% shock damage buff to your entire army
@mj405 bruv we're talking about how easy a WC would be, by age of Absolutism I'm already almost done conquering with my PanzerHussars
@mj405 ally Muscovy>declare independence in 1449>take land>horse time, by 1460 you can already form Poland if you play your cards right, with no exploits, playing as Zaporozhie from day 1
If you're stuck for a century you're doing something wrong and not even walls of text can fix that
this is a Eu4 therapy video
I've only heard of dev click therapy before to be fair
One thing to say about Castile is that you don't have to colonize on your own. You can just PU Portugal after they have exploration and expansion and them them colonize.
For sure, but it still leaves a bit of a power vacuum in that regard.
Mate of mine just did it as Gelre as a start, formed the Dutch nation and then the untied crowns, yeah idk how he did it either, but he had enough time to spare to go for another achievement and religiously convert all lands to his religion
Sounds like a fun run!
@@LemonCake101 he was sending me updates every day, I don't know how he did it, he's a fat better player than I am haha
@@scottporter1998 daily updates that's impressive
I tried so many times with the moguls and i was never quick enough. First try with Austria and i finished easily.
If you also struggle with your micro i can recommend vassal svarming HRE.
I mean it does depend on playstyle as I said right away at the start of the video, for sure.
@@LemonCake101 Yep, for me its a micro issue, im not aggressive enough and not good enough at coalition handling/ignoring in the early game,
@@stavenid no fair enough, you have to be pretty aggressive and you definitely shouldn't speed 5 it.
@@LemonCake101 thing is, im very good the first 60 years at micro, got most of the harder timed achivements, its when i’ve done the first part i cant seem to level up the aggresiveness. Anyways i have barely any time to play the game anymore with house, jobb and kids but i love your vids man, very informative for a man who have fallen out with some of the newer mechanics
@@stavenid fair enough, time is certainly a big thing these days, Eu4 games take a while.
For anyone that is too bored to micro 50 armies during a wc i recommend automatic sieging once you get good quality and quantity of troops. I thought that this mechanic is super lame but then i discovered that you dont actually need to set up areas. Clicking automatic siege and then closing the window makes your army essentially an ai army that will siege everything on its own. Even better they tend to not go to the same provinces as other automatic siege armies. So now the i think the best strat is have 1 really good army that you control thats focused on battles and a bunch of weaker armies that can still stand on their own. I think its much better than carpet sieging with 1 stacks that get attrition and stop or get wiped by a hidden enemy 5k army that need to be constantly manually set to each provinces. Just grab a 30k click the button and let it do its thing. This mechanic is the only reason ive completed a world conquest. Its 1730 my pc is lagging and i have 20 stacks of 100 each. I refuse to micro all of them individually
Its surprisingly not too awful, but damn for me it is still very annoying. I prefer the Imperator: Rome one a lot more.
Milan in 1399 in Extended Timeline is great cause you can form Italy easily before colonization and own Genoa and Venice. Really fun roleplay fighting the ottomans to take the east back to form Rome eventually.
Fair enough, although with extended timeline nothing beats 2ad Rome start
I have done two world conquest. First was Brandeburg to Prussia, Germany and RE. The second was also one faith with Ottomans abusing the eyelats. Both were “easy” as you can do it fast with max admin efficiency but it’s very tedious and boring.
Yeah, the 5th reason is not to be underestimated.
3:45 when i pick innovative i do it for the goated policies
i wanted a quide for 3k overextension in 1452 though, i always hate when that happens and handling it is quite annoying, pls help
Experienced players also can do many tag switching for the best optimal ideas and permanent modifiers stacking from missions which make some of the countries even better in World Conquest. my personal favorite is provance>sardinia>lubeck>france>england/angevine. Provance has not too hard start if you can survive early France + can expand in Italy and Iberia fastly. good PU claims and permanent diplo annex cost, Savoy-Sardinia mission for permanent 5% admin eff + 10% good produced, Lübeck gives permanent very strong economy wise modifiers and also potential permanent 5% discipline or 15% morale bonus, France needs no introduction because of very strong missions and stacking modifiers and lastly Angevine national ideas are really good, also English parliament is very strong for easy 90% reduced advisors for mana problems. yes this strategy takes the same skill to pull off but world conquest is not easy either, you anyway need absolutism for WC so don't need to crazy expand in the first 2 age and focus on building the country first, which upmost mentioned strategy is good if you can manage to pull it off before 1600. you will be a monster unleashed as absolutism starts and conquer the world in a lightning speed.
Many of these big countries mentioned in the video(france,austria,mughals,russia,etc) are formable with culture changing so as not starting them and then forming them could end up in faster world conquest, if you can form them it is.
Tag switching is the way to go, but I can't recommend it to new people.
Oirat. My one and only WC yet.
Fair enough: but as mentioned in other comments hordes have their own issues
Fastest campaign I ever quit was getting England, Portugal, Bohemia, Aragon, Navarre, Naples, Hungary, and Austria all under PU before admin tech 10 as Castile. I also got the Burgundy inheritance.
I felt like I already won and quit the campaign. Btw that has very little RNG involved, even if Burgundy rivals you, if you don’t rival them back they can switch. I assume this is the intended way to get the 10 PUs achievement. Idk how you’d keep the Burgundy PU though and get the English one (requires them to be a heretic aka age of reformation).
That is quite lucky, not going to lie. I feel like if I made a video where I got that kind of PU luck I would be accused of cheating
@@LemonCake101 oh the last one would be Lithuania because you can transfer them off Poland.
Well there you go, 10 unions, the RNG mainly being Iberian wedding and if Austria goes for the Bohemia PU. Transfer subject age bonus is absurdly strong.
@@ThaPinkGuy that helps for sure
One kinda minor thing about Austria that really frustrates me is that your +5% AE bonus isn't available until the Age of Revolutions. Which also means if you want to form the HRE for good blobbing bonuses, you also have to delay until then. It's not a big deal, but it annoyed me even in my casual Austria game.
Yeah, that is certainly quite annoying.
Yeah, but like you don’t need to pass the final reform till literally the end of the campaign, as job is done by your many subjects and you can just click DOW buttons. I’d argue that forming HRE tag is even worse than staying as Austria
@@Vladon32 The vassal swarm does make the conquering less tedious, but there are good bonuses in the HRE tag, like CCR and more AE in the ideas.
I've never had the patience to finish a WC. I'd like to do one but with a smaller tag. Can you make a video which surprising small nations fit for WC?
That could be something interesting to explore to be fair!
@@LemonCake101 And maybe also mid-powers like Sunda (Cirebon ideas, Varanasi, Buddha deity for a hell lot of fun playing with monuments) It can be a diverse playthrough.
@@Barthijzz I mean Sunda I am counting as a smaller tag to be fair
@@LemonCake101 It's one of the biggest I've ever played!
@BobbiusRossius Fair enough, but no admin efficiency, or pwsc. Doesn't make it bad to be clear, but GB, Germany and Angevin have some.
For me Spain was the best one. I played as Shogun, Mughals, Ottomans and didn't try conquer the world (I didn't watch guides), so I didn't made a WC while being close to it. But when I began a chill colonial game as Spain on a new patch, the world was somehow conquered.
Fair enough: Spain certainly isn't weak, and hence it for sure makes the list.
spain is great for me because you kinda conquer the world backwards and you also kinda ignore coalitions, but be aware of europe becoming too strong
@@ratatataget And if you become an HRE emperor, you are not afraid of strong Europe.
@@С.Н.̥ yup mabe exept poland or russia but thats it and if you can manage the hre you vasalise all of the hre
I know that a hindu mughals in not the intended way to play them, but it is the easiest way to get almost free cores when you conquer provinces and it's a very easy religion swich, you don't even have to spawn hindu rebels, you just have to wait until Sikhism spawns, which does at around 1480-90, very early in the game, switch to Sikhism via decision, and then switch to hindu via the religious tab. It's easier to do a wc this way, but it's a bit harder to do a one faith, but it's still doable. Also mughals is going to get a new mission tree very soon so you might want to wait if you have never played with them
I am looking forward to the new Mughal missions, for sure.
Obligatory estate comment aside, doing a wc in the base game is really not that difficult. Anebennar, on the other hand, is a lot more difficult to do a wc in if you're not playing those tags made especially for wc.
I was thinking how you would bring up estate modifier stacking into this one, but yeah, vanilla WC's aren't inherently 'hard' and Anbennar ones are harder, but that is mainly due to Anbennar just having a lot more land to conquer. A lot more.
nr 5 is so important. I once started a one faith as cologne, but got bored shortly after revoking. I like the challenge of becoming the pre-eminent world power, but once there, what more is there to do than grind and wait?
For sure, that's the reason I had to mention it.
I've had like 10 runs where I conquered a third of the world by 1650 but never played beyond 1700 except once. It just gets too boring by that point.
Motivation to keep going is important what can I say
I would also include a subproblem to 5. Having Fun which is End-game Framerate. It's not fun to have 10 FPS on 4 speed due to everyone having 100K+ armies. Same applies to vassal swarms. They would be fun if the game didn't run like a potato with them.
Lag is a hell of a drug, for sure. Depends on computer though too.
I feel like you missed AE as a Problem, for my first world conquest that was a much bigger problem than most of the other things.
That's to some extent part of not having a strong enough army: AI's forming a coalition against you with their troops.
@@LemonCake101 maybe, but for many intermediate players, or in the early game stacking AE reduction and improved relations to manage AE is much easier than just going hulk mode and beating up the coalitions
@@AQJ_DK Yeah, that's fair enough I guess. I mentally had it marked down under enemy armies though, as end of the day you expand as fast as your coalition size allows it, and having more AE reduction is basically the same as not fighting and hence indirectly defeating your enemies.
The struggle for WC nowadays are not that it's not achievable but because it's tedious. :v
But honestly pre-absolutism is about a setup for WC, i wouldn't concern too much about WC viability until i can gobble half of India in one go(Unless PU is a factor in which case my early large conquest would be via PU-ing powerful european nations while babysitting minors so they don't form coalition)
You still do need to know what you are doing, but the grind matters for sure.
Why weren’t the Oirats even included in the list?
I didn't want to introduce new people to Hordes
Your last point is what earn you a sub,and a like. Getting strong is fun,but once you are too strong... There is not a lot of reason to play anymore
Glad you appreciate it. People do forget this is a game.
I think you are overly allergic towards hords. You have two types, stable ones and "forced to conquer" ones. The forced to conquer to survive are mostly the sunni hords. If you take Manchu or Oirat and combine Tengri with Vajrayana and the final horde unity reform you get 4.5 unity, which is completely stable as the development counter is capped at -3 unity. With some PP you get to 5, without any ideagroup stacking like eco or court, not needed. You can in fact play tall with the tengri hordes if you want, but he, who wants that :-) I personally like Manchu for its banners, super cheap and deadly. A world with Manchu culture is the best. You get 85-95% cav/ inf without going thru hoops, for 100% cav you ditch Vajrayana or start as one of the Siberian tribes.
You should check the details first I guess. Have a nice day Mr. L. Cake.
I mean let’s be clear hordes are good but I specifically avoided talking about them since I believe a lot of new players will struggle with them as they will have a much harder time overcoming their weaknesses namely monetary ones hence I avoided them here
@@LemonCake101 Thank you for reply. There is only monetary weakness if the country is not stable, hence rebel-ridden. And if you have poor development, Ming to the rescue. I explained horde unity is no issue, if you take humanist and religion together with horde ideas you are golden, no rebels and heaps of money. I just give alternatives which are easy for a beginner player and fun. Np.
Hello, could you try stacking manpower recovery speed? To basically have infinite manpower while having limited reserve
I did max manpower a while back to be fair, but that could be interesting.
I think innovative is a bad example, especially when you say the undisputed worst idea group, trade, is a good alternative(it only* gives money). Innovative has some of the best policies in the game, half my policies in current wc is from inno. Also +1 to each mana with free policies is busted.
Trade is great if you need money is the main issue. My main problem with inno is overall when I play Eu4 I encounter problems like not enough money, manpower etc and innovative has yet been an option to solve any of them
I think Otto and Austria are the easiest for begginers because its pretty linear (its the only two WCs i have done). As Austria just go for revoke and keep rotating between killing Otto, France and Russia while getting PUs on the other big players and once you got revoked you can just expand and do an easy WC.
As Ottomans just conquer and make sure to stack Absolutism fast after 1600. That way you will never have problems with decadence and Eyalets are so broken overextention will never be a problem cause you can just release every country you conquer and Eyalet them. Its legit WC on easy mode. I dont have a lot of experience doing WC and even after i conquered everyone i had time to integrate my 300 Eyalets and do a one faith
No for sure, that is why I recommended both.
have some engagement
Thanks!
did my first wc with Mughals a while ago (like before empreor or some shit), then i did a one faith with Austria.. Way less tedious
Yeah, the 5th factor is a big one.
Qing and Russia are also well-suited for world conquest as well imo
That's fair, but I wanted to avoid Horde conversations and Russia is a repeat of France/Ottoman points.
What about angevin kingdom? You are a stable country, with lots of money, getting france, and 20% ccc
Not a bad option too, but they aren't that commonly talked about to be fair, and I still think there are better options, even if they are good.
Ryukyu
Too OP clearly
@@LemonCake101 Too many guides and videos for it available, OP for a "meta" reason lol
@@danshakuimo 👀
IMO austria is the best becuase it’s by far the best at scaling. Also as a serious but non hard core player you can easily conquer Europe super quick also you get access to some pretty easy tag flips if you’re into it. SP especially.
And with an early mid 1520 revoke no one would outfight you. Also PUs are most time efficient for conquest
That said Mughals are clear number 2. Janpur to Delhi to Mughal is criminally underregarded just due to the amount of claims you get and you can pretty easily avoid hugboxes that cluster central north India. Does require a culture flip but that’s fine. Timmy to Mughals is also always great.
Ottomans get bronze. Get subject play without the investment by just eyelat everything also can get super cheap cores
That route is pretty decent, but Timmy into Mughals is a real monster simply because of how strong you start too
@@LemonCake101 I need to see how Winds change Timmy start with the Roh Core and the Ajam war. Transoxiana is always somewhat annoying.
Timmy start position is made up by the fact that you start in India and you can easily get Delhi Doab especially if you get the diplo insult
Problems 4. and 5. are solved with admin efficiency and the best thing for admin efficiency is being close to HRE (or Russia) and not being an endgame tag. This is why Poland > France for WC
I avoided tag switching, or unusual tag switches in this regard. But for sure, Admin Efficiency good.
Prussia > Germany's pretty simple for a WC as you can get a total of 15% admin eff without complicated tagswitches
An option for sure, which you can also do as Austria :)
@@LemonCake101 Also offtopic besides Germany and Austria, would like to mention Oda for WC. Ashikaga's an easier start but Oda is a good all rounder in terms of idea set with 10 ccr/pwr, goods produced, manpower, and good army quality. IMHO a jack of all trades for a wc candidate, only thing is that nippon is a crap node.
@@the90thhunter92 Fair enough in that regard, although the Oda start is quite painful for quite a few people too..,
@@LemonCake101 Oda has the single best province to dev renaissance being cloth and farmlands, it also starts with morale and ica, with that combined oda can snowball fast. All it takes is a stackwipe and by splitting stacks to occupy the capitals and provinces before the daimyo can recover troops, warfare can end in like 4 battles tops from my experience. It's difficult but also fast paced, it really slows down when you unify japan and at that point, korea and ming feel like a brick wall.
@@the90thhunter92 It's 'difficult' for a new person sure, but ofc if you know what you are doing no single Japanese tag is significantly hard, you can get like 6 show strength pre 1470...
Austria. Simply because you can literally stop thinking after 1520
They are up there for sure
@BobbiusRossiusAnnoying, but much less annyoing than the micromanagment required for a WC while playing like the ottomans
i'm too lazy to do wc
but i wonder how good is it by starting as provence n stacking integration discount modifier from other tag
you can get over -90% discount
Try automatic sieging. I thought the mechanic was super bad because you need to manually set the provinces but you dont. Click qutomatic siege and close the window. This makes your army essentially an ai army that runs around and sieges on its own and even does battles if its much bigger than the enemy. Just grab your 30k stack click 1 button and watch it do its thing. In compqrison carpet sieging with 30 requires 30 clicks to split the army and another 60 to move each stack to each province (because you click and then hit escape). Automatic siege is just 1 button
I don't think you need Provence to 100% reduction in fairness, but I haven't exactly taken a large look into it.
@@LemonCake101 i think only england to gbr can do it w/o tag switching to get max integration bonus, since you can get the bonuses from parliament as well
I just want to form bavaria and live peacefully
understandable
Oirat-Yuan-Mongol Empire. By far the easiest. However to me the best and also an easy nation to do a WC as is Timurids-Mughals. Doing it for second time rn before the get revamped with 1.37. Mughals is my favorite nation to play in this game, imo the most overpowered nation if u know how to play and easily a Top 3 WC nation.
Same as other comments: but I avoided talking hordes. Timmy-Mughals is still a monster though
It's Ryukyu because you get TWO achievements instead of one
*One Faith for 3.
Ulm
Too OP please nerf
You guys stay as one country? My runs usually are weird long chains of formables that are either "Horse boys" Lithuania > Sich Rada > Poland > ??? > Russia ?!?
or "Boat boys" Gotland > Lubeck > Hansa > England > ???
Those work for sure too, but most people never change religion/culture, and just form what they can.
A true WC'er always stays true to form. No weird shenanigans of the Emirate of Caddo led by the Von Aisin Gioro dynasty conquering the world using streltsys and qizilbashs, no. The universal horde of Oirat led by the Northern Yuan conquered the world using mounted archers, and nobody else
@@danielutriabrooks477 "true WC'er" definitely doesn't apply to me. I spend way more time thinking and planning then actually playing. Figuring out the best modifiers to stack, or clever ways to get bonus X to stat Y. The Student is 100% my favorite EU4 TH-camr.
@@danielutriabrooks477 *Caliphate of Caddo
Having fun is objectively bad for your world conquest, so number 5 isnt that useful
It’s more about maintaining motivation I find
@@LemonCake101 true, most of my failed runs are due to having 300 OE and rebels (i literally cannot hear the sound of rebels popping anymore, my brain doesnt notice it anymore)
What nation would you suggest if someone wanted to become Italy and form rome but has no dlc?
Thanks for the advise. Would it be better to stay Catholic. Become protestant. Or become orthodox?. I know that reformed is definitely out of the question. Orthodox can eventually make it very easy to convert people (the missionary strength. Unlike with Catholic. Is universal rather than only against certain religions) and provides manpower. Protestant can make it easier to max improve relations (at the minute I forget what else it can do without any dlc). And Catholic has mostly the same stuff with or without dlc's, lastly is that Catholic and protestant can get the religious turmoil disaster (if I'm remembering the correct name of the disaster) that has the option to give a permanent +1 missionary strength against other denominations of Christianity (in my eyes it's not a bad idea if it's a 1 faith. Though it's basically hopeless to convert colonial nations)
The problem though is that reformed is basically useless without any dlc. Catholic will hurt a bit until you become Italy. Hussite is out of reach and I don't know if it requires a dlc to be useable. Orthodox doesn't get that disaster and you have to make an effort to take land around Greece to have it. Protestant (like reformed) requires waiting for it to appear and with no dlc it does almost nothing aside from improving your ability to improve relations, and Coptic is way to obscure and hard to access for the very little it gives (especially without it's dlc) and it only feels right to restore rome as a denomination of Christianity of some kind (even if it actually requires that anyway. It's the principle of the matter and I'm limited in options of practicality because I don't have any dlc)
No DLC? Milan due to higher starting dev and being inside the Empire for day 1 expansion.
@@LemonCake101 you could also make an argument for Venice. while yes you will need to improve the election system (all of the early game leaders of Venice tend to be old, not all of which have stats that make up for that). you do start with more land. some of which is orthodox (if orthodox is worth it). you get much more options for early expansion, not to mention that republics can get a reform that gives an extra missionary