I'm no expert, but I think that you can change your primary culture if it's more than half of the culture in the provinces that you have states in (not sure if based on development or number of provinces or what).

If you have only a few states in your empire, getting that number is much easier!

Problem with de-stating stuff is the autonomy goes up and the economics go to poop for those areas, so you have to deal with that.

Well, I was thinking of parking troops in a line from the North Pole down to my western borders in order to prevent Muscovy/Russia from colonizing the eastern steppes. But if they can colonize land I'm already standing on that obviously would be a waste of time.

(Not to mention the fact that colonists travel in invisible hot air balloons and can simply plop themselves down behind my guys, anywhere they want)

Easiest way to block is to just colonize their border. Nations with Russian Ideas don't need a colonist to colonize land connected to their capital province, that's why they push through eastern Siberia so quickly. Seems like a lot of work to counter something that is largely irrelevant, especially in a WC.

The Siberian provinces take a while to pay for themselves but the fur provinces are very valuable and the sheer number of provinces helps with force limit.

That said, I never bother colonizing them, especially since the states system was implemented.

Looking through the list of countries that would accept "Offer Vassalization", I found an interesting OPM I don't usually see on that list:



(it's Ming)

Time to renconquesta.

The cores, lawdy, the cores

Yes, that’s a vassalage that needs to happen.

Must... must...

I wanna hear more about this! That's quite an accomplishment from what I understand

It's relatively easy now, probably easiest since EU4 release

Basically explored spice islands for cash and no CBed Madurai and turned it into a standard WC game from India. The hardest part is just getting a solid start in the beginning and don't let anyone blob too much before the imperialism race to swallow the world begins.

An underrated feature is the auto diplo screen sending diplomats to neighbors and get relations up into friendly territory. With extra diplomats from influence and/or diplo this has been very helpful with keeping AE under control.

I just realized with my Ryuku game I had a small window to convert to Protestant/Catholic and become HRE and vassal swarm my way to world conquest. I think that's viable too. At this point I don't intend to do a WC. I am just going to take over and convert all of Europe to Hinduism for lols.

PS: random fact. After cultural shifting to Dutch, my Canadian colonial nation defaulted to New Hollandia.

Need to add difficulty modifers: One Tag, One Faith, One Culture, etc.

My Ryukyu WC was true one-tag (including no colonial nations), One Faith (catholic), and I colonized every possible province.

Hm... I think I did one tag with Bradenburg > HRE already. Kind of cheating though since I just clicked the last reform before game end.

Did one faith with Spain.

One culture just sounds rather tedious... and a lot of diplo points?

One culture is usually done as a Horde nation so you can raze provinces for monarch points.

That sounds boring... I did my first WC by razing the world to the ground so I think I'll pass on that.

I thought CN formed automatically after you've colonized 5 provinces?

Let me clarify.

I finished Canadian colonial nation after turning Dutch and was surprised to find New Hollandia was the name when I auto-clicked accept.

If your capital is in a colonial region you won't form Colonial Nations. I moved my capital to Mexico before having 5+ colonized provinces in any one colonial region.

Wait, one tag can't even have colonial nations? THen I think I'll work on that. With a Mayan country I think. Crazy religious bonuses if I get through the reforms.

Usually people say One Tag = Country plus Colonial Nations (and True One Tag for no CNs) but that seems like a half measure since your CNs will do a lot of work in the New World for you (and basically everything in Australia). Plus the early economic boosts CNs give you. In my Ryukyu game money was a bigger issue for longer then it usually would be.

ah okay that makes sense

Speaking of which, I have several CNs now, Alaska, California, Mexico, La Plata, Australia and trying to gobble up enough for a Brazil. So far all my CNs have colonized on their own once they got to 5 provinces, including Australia. But in Australia I ran into Portugal who had taken south Australia. Portugal now controls one of the New Zealand islands as well. The other NZ island is still unsettled however along with the provinces on the West side of Australia...but my CN doesn't seem to be interested in settling either area. Why might that be? Do they only auto settle connected provinces?

I thought they would colonize anything in the same colonial region but it appears they will only colonize adjacent provinces. You colonizing 1 province in each area should jumpstart them in colonizing the rest.

As a non-American nation you can't move your capital to colonial region unless it is already in America. There are, however, few American provinces that are not in colonial region like Galapagos islands. So you first move your capital to one of these provinces, then move it to the actual colonial region and voilá, you avoid colonial regions from forming. This is especially fun with Russia and Siberian Frontiers if you can rush to new world

I think so far my single biggest failing with this Ming run is not using my tributaries properly. I get sidetracked with other things and ignore them and let them just ship ducats year after year without changing it up to things I actually need, specifically MANPOWER. I'm leaving up to 20k additional manpower on the table simply because I can't be arsed to go to the screen and change it. Whoever it was that said "Ming should never have a manpower problem" was absolutely correct. Tributaries literally give it to you for free. But you have to take it ldo

I'm also finding that I enjoy colonialization more than any other aspect of the game right now. For sure my next run will be with Portugal, GB or some other nation that focuses on it.

With Ryukyu you can avoid this by not making your territories into states or revoking the states when you want to move and just move straight to the CN.

PlanetFall... hopefully a good spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, which is still my favorite strategy game of all time.

I just don't know what to do in EU4 now. The game is so snowbally that by 1650 or 1700 I either reset or lose interest and I feel like I've exhausted most of the historically interesting nations/mission trees.