you lose overextension for selling them to vassals???? sick


and a bit stupid.

Actually, upon reading the thread I think he refers to the strategy as going to war against someone, and then making them return lands to his vassals where they have cores (i.e., the "Return cores" tab in the peace making screen.) A good strategy to get started with this is identifying a country that at that point in the game has been conquered and no longer exists which has a large core area (think Shun or Ming in China). Then you go to war against the guy holding this land, take just one province where this non-existant nation has a core. You release this one-province nation as your vassal, and now you have a vassal which considers a large area in your enemy's land its core. In the next war, you can demand they return all these cores to your vassal.

This approach is very cheap in terms of warscore and diplopoints (in comparison to demanding provinces for yourself)

Why is it stupid, they are not "your lands" (not yet anyway ). I think it is hard enough to grow anyway due to the overextension mechanic, so this is entirely justified. You are limited by your diplo points, however.

While straight up conquering costs mostly admin points (coring costs, lowering stab for fighting overextension, etc), the vassal strat relies more on diplo points. This allows the user to have a more balanced conquering approach, because you are not starved for one resource.

However, some people are calling it "vassal cheese", so take that for what it's worth

Thanks. I can't imagine how it's possible to win a world conquest without vassal cheese or similar though

Year is 1554



Currently the HRE but I won't be able to form the HRE anytime soon because apparently the Germans won't vote for reforms for a non-Germanic HRE.

After taking most of modern day Syria, Bedouin-Arabs turned red (no longer accepted) and I had to spend the next 5 years converting them. Right now, +23g by dominating Venice, Genoa and Alexandria trade. In PU with Portugal and allied with Naples (won't last for much longer after annexing Papal States vassal). France failboated very early on and got chewed up by England. Then GB lost most of its French holdings to Catholic revolts.

Currently with a failboat 2/1/1 monarch with 5/7 electors but at least two will turn soon as I try to absorb the German nations.

Is it worth it to have so many crappy Arabian provinces? Lots of those are low base tax, not worthwhile trade goods, and do they also count as overseas income? (unsure exactly how that works but I noticed as Portugal in demo that even Ceuta/Tangiers are "overseas income" which seems ridonk)

Are you planning on forming dat Italy?

Actually yes. Once cored and converted, they provide income (via tariffs) and manpower that I needed to compete in Europe. Holding Mecca for +1 prestige is also pretty good.

If I could have expanded in Europe early, I would have. Austria inherited a bunch of Burgundian provinces and forced me to look elsewhere for expansion opportunities. I also find the idea of an Italian Arabic Catholic empire rather amusing.

I just kissed English arses until they allied me and then grabbed the French provinces that I could (real source of income). Picardie, Lyonnais, and Artois are now cored Milanese provinces. Got Neumark too by fighting a weakened Poland with an Imperial Ban CB.

No, not trying for Italy. Going for HRE. I started on the HRE path before I realized German countries don't like voting for Italian emperors. But then I am actually pretty close to forming Italy so I probably will, after I convert the Arabs to Lombardians. After that I am going to try to force Austria to release nations so I could start pushing reforms through and/or some CB's to conquer unrule German nations.

PS: GB converted to protestanism and then lost French holdings to Catholic revolts (that's how Brittany and Normandie are still on the map). Then GB somehow converted back to Catholicism... losing Scotland to protestant revolts.

So, that happened. That's Austria's diplo view; vassalizing the entire HRE made them some enemies!

I was called into the war by my ally Hainaut and obviously joined to kick some Austrian ass.





I occupied as much stuff as I could and peaced out (with Hainaut being the war leader, there's no way I was getting anything if I waited for them to do it) to take Firenze, since Tuscany was one of Austria's vassals. 40 months of coring later:



It would of course be foolish to take this option, since Venetian ideas >>>>> Italian ideas. But it's cool to finally have it.

I took a couple nice coastal Chinese provinces, so I now have merchants + trade fleets steering all the way from...

Hangzhou -> Malacca -> Bengal -> Ceylon -> Gulf of Aden -> Alexandria -> Venice

plus doing some work in Constantinople -> Ragusa -> Venice. My trade income is pretty out of control and I'm making ~120-140 ducats a month.

Currently colonizing western Java + conquering Majapahit so I can boost trade power from provinces. The income is doing wonders for my infrastructure, I have over 100,000 manpower despite the extent of my land empire basically being the northern half of Italy.

Playing a Burgundy game. Allied with Austria and England and then formed Netherlands. Turned around to steamroll France.

Luckboxed into a PU with England. Vassalized Algiers, who's getting African provinces that I can't convert for free.

I think I have to play Austria at some point. In this game Austria seems to have a total death grip on the HRE position and I have no idea how I am supposed to take it from Austria.

I think vassalizing electors is the typical way to do it.

Hm... I might have missed my window then because 3 of the electors think I am a heretic and another 2 are too big to vassalize.

vassalizing electors give you big maluses to the others I think?

That's why you vassalize a majority

and then you annex dem other fukers

I am going to have to do that. I don't know if I want to take the dip power hits though. Gonna think about it at work tomorrow before executing whatever I decide to do. Probably keep carving up French holdings in Europe.

I want France to move its capital to Africa and conquer Mali. Come to think of it, vassalizing a Latin France with a capital in Africa has tremendous potential.



I was going to pick up innovative ideas to get the -2 to naval/mil decay (that puts me in + territory for navy just for sitting around and neutral for military) but I may have to go expansionist if I want a shot at HRE. As it stands, my land force limit is a bit too low to wage a war on the entire HRE and just blitz my way to vassalizing the electors.

Some random happenings in VENICEland:



I'm in a war against Austria, 50 rebel regiments (lol!) rise up in Lombardia...and Austria makes a beeline to help take them out for me?? That doesn't seem right.

It's annoying how easy it is to lose important alliances when your allies wind up in wars against each other - Brunswick declared on Hainaut, Hainaut called me in, and I guess Bohemia was allied with Brunswick cause all of a sudden I'm fighting them too and our alliance is now dead. Brittany declared on Hainaut and Spain joined that war with Brittany, so now my alliance with Spain is dead too. They're both very important allies in opposing Austria (soon to be the Holy Roman Empire, it's looking like) in Europe.

Anyway, in the aforementioned war against Spain, I was too late to help save Hainaut's navy from getting beaten off the coast of Spain, but HOLY CRAP AT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT:



Nine heavy ships captured!!!!

Nine!!!!

idk how the game decides what ships are captured versus sunk but holy crap.

They got a lot of tradition for getting the **** kicked out of them.

Tomorrow's agenda: Claim Throne on Austria.

so what is the best way to take down a large power quickly?
This probably sounds like a lol question, so let me explain.
In my Byzantium game, i have kicked the Ottomons out of my side of the straight, I have a handful of provinces on their side. I'm continuing to push east, but its an extremely slow process. take 2-3 provinces. peace out, core, repeat. In the mean time, they are pushing east and south themselves. I dont really fear them at all militarily, its just a matter of the most efficient way to take their territory.
Any suggestions?

make em release nations

If you have nearby vassals it can help a lot too - you can accept the provinces near them then sell them to your vassals for 20 a go. The vassals will spend their time and points coring their provinces. Once you can't give them new provinces (overextension or just not being on a border any more) you can annex them.

This. In my Burgundy (now Dutch) game, England under PU can occupy provinces and I just just peace to them (they get the extension and rep hits). It's how I managed to completely kick France out of Europe before 1600.

so theyre not patching this game huh?

;p

What do you mean? There have been 2 (I think) hotfixes so far, aand...