The mission system has changed. There is now a mission tree which have requirements and unlock next one when one is fulfilled. I'd recommend you start by fabricating a claim on Constantinople, then declare war on Byzantium.

Yeah, the mission system has changed.

You can get free claims on Candar and Karaman by building to 85% of force limit (requires building 7 or 8 troops right away), and go eat Candar while you fabricate on Constantinople.

Is there an interface where I can see the locked missions, or do I need it have the secret knowledge of the universe of missions/consult the wiki?

Building 7-8 troops immediately sounds like a plan, as it seems like I had way too much cavalry to start (even with the increased cavalry:infantry ratio I am allowed to have).

There should be what looks like a green flag in your main menu, between ideas and policies.

Aha this is why I didn't remember getting a mission to take Constantinople. I just fabbed and took it (it was the very first province I took in my kebab run)

Possible hot take: WC is all but impossible if you **** around and let Russia form. While I'm not paying attention they're colonizing all of Siberia and now even though I have more troops I'll never take Russia because a) it's too freaking big now, and b) even if I can take out Russia's troops, their allies will backdoor me into oblivion (and they always seem to have powerful friends in inconvenient locations at all times)

This is based on a sample size of two games but I'm going with it heh

Did you start a Scotland game?

As Ottoman's it should be fairly easy to vassalize Crimea and eat your way north and take a province needed to form Russia. But you should eventually be able to take huge chunks of Russian provinces, just focus on the western part and leave the east.

I got bored over the weekend and started a lazy Ottoman's game to get the Dar al islam achievement, 1650+ and Russia hasn't formed, I'm assuming because my Crimean vassal has a required province but I never bothered checking. Vassalized Anizah and fed it most of the Arabian peninsula, vassalized Offaly and fed it the rest of Ireland. Freed Wales but the useless ****s didn't fabricate a single claim in like 150 years so I annexed them. Vassalized Genoa and fed them a bit of Italy and North Africa.

A Concise Guide to World Conquest

Apologies if already posted but I just found it and it has a ton of good info. Also upon reading it I have discovered Trade Companies after 250 hours of gameplay, who knew?

Yeah, this makes sense for Ottomans. I posted screens a few pages back of where I nearly was able to overrun Russia before the other warring factions punked out and left me along against them. They were busy fighting Ming et al and I was able to go hog wild for a bit there.

Unfortunately I'm doing Ming now so I don't have the luxury of ignoring the East, because the East is where I am and Siberia is Ming's hat. I've got Border Friction for days. If I push into eastern Europe, Russia can skip over to the east and backdoor me there with a modest troop count. It's far too much real estate to cover. I **** the bed not taking care of them when they were still Muscovy :/

No, I just grabbed a random picture off google search that had the screen open.

Something to keep in mind for people in the middle of games whenever the 1.26 patch hits (no release date yet) your save games will most likely be incompatible. So you might want to tell Steam to turn off auto-updates for EU4. No idea if you can earn achievements on an older version, I kind of doubt it.

Also WC will get a bit harder, 100+ provinces being added to India. The One Faith achievement will get a lot harder, you can only convert religions in states not territories.

Huge Russia really isn't an issue for WC. At late game you can take 800 dev in a single peace, so you can annex most nations in two wars. Only real constraints are your army strength and coring management.

It's an expansion called Dharma, right? If so it seems like you could just disable Dharma in Steam before logging in.

The bolded seems like a big boost to Ming. There's nothing in the notes about this affecting harmonization. But then Ming won't be able to get tributaries who aren't border states which seems like a really big deal.

Disabling Dharma (or not buying it) only disables its specific mechanics but the free update changes the map which always makes saves incompatible.

Oh yeah that matters then, ugh. Maybe we'll have a release date soonish

Worked like a charm, thanks. Crushed both Candar and Karaman, but could not make Karaman a co-belligerent due to truce so I just took his gold and made him give me 50% of his trade power for a while. That extended the length of the truce, but I figure I will be busy with other things until 1456. I could have taken territory with a big aggro expansion hit, but I presume I cannot afford extra aggro.

Yeah, I think I did the same (gold, war reps) and took their coastal fort province in the first war (which makes them eatable as a non-co-belligerent).

So I am playing a Ryuku game.

I took exploration first. No CBed Madurai and turned Hindi. Hopped around South Africa while taking over India. Found a 1 province Burgundy that had cores in most of eastern France. NO Cbed it then had it make claim on Holland, which I attacked as soon as the Emperor switched to Wuttenburg and Ottomans attacked Austria. Then I vassallized an England that had cores on most of Scotland but was somehow driven back all the way to London. That gives me two vassals with exploration which will basically make it fine for me to just totally ignore colonizing the Americas after establishing initial colonies and just let me vassals do their thing.

I am now a Dutch Hindi Ryuku with a Burgundy (traditional Burgundy+a big chunk of France) and England vassal (All Ireland+Scotland, claims on Orkney but I am not ready to fight Den+Nor+Sweden+Bradenburg now) in 1580. Cored half of southern India. I am basically the Netherlands (minus some Burgundy provinces) in Europe with some western German provinces.

Concerns: Ottomans blobbing massively, Anatolia+balkans+southern Hungary+northern Ethiopia. Russia formed. Denmark still got Sweden and Norway, allied with a Bradenburg that is starting to blob with almost 400 dev in pretty much East Germany. Ming isn't imploding and has 1600 dev.

Broke as ****. Gonna be spending the next 30 years mostly beating down rebels and paying down some loans while getting some starter colonies in the Americas.

I honestly don't know what I am gonna do vs. Ottomans. At this point no CB wars are really expensive but if I don't break the Ottomans in 50 years, at most, it will take a very long time and a lot of wars to break it apart. I was hoping to no CB vassalize the Mamluks just before the Ottomans finished them off. But the Mamluks somehow took over the southern half of the Arabian Peninsula when I was busy feeding my Burgundy vassal back its cores.

Ming is also getting out of control and it's probably going to take 100+ years to consume it.

This is kind of a weird game. It's RIDICULOUS start in some ways because I basically control Germanay, half of France, all of UK, half of India by 1580. But it's also way worse than the successful 3 Mountains run I had because I don't think I can realistically crack both the Ottomans and Ming and still be ontime for WC.

I think I am going to end up abandoning this game after patch. I just don't see what else I could get out of this game besides giggling at the idea of a Dutch Hindi Ryukuan empire.

How strong are you? I think you can and should ignore Europe for a while and just use that time to build up power base. I'd definitely try to conquer all new world natives if you haven't done that already and then take over most of Africa, as they have ton of gold provinces which will help you finance your empire.

I will be working on natives and Mali. Still, I have to break one of Ottomans and Ming soon or it will be extremely annoying.

Meanwhile I am going to be picking off Japanese provinces and wait for my AE in Germany to cooldown and rebels/separatism to go away.

Money wise I am not TOO worried because once I secure the Ivory Coast, between my English and Burgundian vassals and myself, we'll control almost all of the trade except what's routed through Alexandria.

Can another nation colonize a province you have troops in literally out from under you?

Like, it's not claimed, and you have some troops just chilling out with the natives?

Yes. Yes the other nation can.

Well that seems wrong.

(That was Plan A of "Restarting & Not Letting Russia Form This Time Around" so on to Plan B)

Yeah, no, that won't work sorry.

If you have a colonist on the way, that would lock it down for you.

(wonders idly if sending a colonist, recalling it 1 day before it's scheduled to arrive, and immediately resending it would do whatever it is you want to do)

Reading that WC article posted above, again, and came to this

Can someone explain this bolded bit to me? What's he talking about?

Also, as a matter of course I've been creating states every time the blue flag pops up. Should I be avoiding this for better outcomes?