I finally got my first "one faith" today and I wanted to post some tips since a lot of what I've seen online is: "don't attempt one faith using 1.29 Manchu update. I am by no means the best EU4 player, so I'm really grateful for the tips people post online and wanted to post some of what I've learned.
First and foremost, an overview: I used orthodox ottomans, prioritized getting to India, save scummed a few times to PU Spain and Russia, got an early PU over France generically (but this prevented them from taking expansion/exploration ideas, and they only converted 4 of their own provinces in the entire game even though the first idea they took was religious. They also had many provinces convert to Protestantism by centers of reformation). I PU'd Russia late 1600s after they had already expanded fully eastward, but realized later that I didn't need to do this as you don't need to WC for one faith achievement. I finished the WC in 1775, but had to break ties with my colonial nations in the 1800s because they were using a colonist to improve heretic provinces, preventing me from converting those provinces. THIS WAS SOMETHING I DIDN'T COUNT ON AND WAS VERY ANNOYING TO DISCOVER! BUT YOU CAN RELEASE COLONIAL NATIONS AND DECLARE ON THEM IN THE SAME MONTH WITHOUT BREAKING TRUCE. The only European country I broke truce with was England, because they kept colonizing Anglican provinces and I wasn't sure I would have enough time to convert them, so every peace deal I took the unfinished colonies and abandoned them, then redeclared as soon as the cores on their land were finished. I didn't end up colonizing every province, although in retrospect I probably could have. If it wasn't for the colonial nations blocking my missionaries, I would have finished one faith around 1807, but in the end I finished in 1813.
My first WC finished in the 1800s, so I have to give a huge shout out to this aggressive expansion guide () for helping me understand how to conquer constantly, which really sped things up. There are two parts. This guide changed the way I play this game completely. It took me a few runs to really perfect the strategy, but this run I only had one coalition form and it never fired. I routinely get up to 1000 AE with multiple countries these days. Thank you FlorryWorry, this is one of the best guides I've ever seen. AE is just a number.
Ideas: 1. Diplo 2. Admin 3. Religious 4. Influence 5. Exploration 6. Offensive 7. Aristocratic 8. Trade
I took diplo first because it gives you extra diplomats, and you can use them and the "target outraged countries" feature in the diplo tab to constantly improve relations with countries who would otherwise join coalitions against you. Very helpful. Again, refer to the AE guide above. Admin has the obvious benefit of reducing core cost. Religious goes without saying, and the CB is very nice as well. Influence is great for annexing vassals, and vassals are very important for keeping your manpower high, staying under 100% overextension, keeping AE lower (although I really don't pay much attention to AE after 1550ish). I took exploration to explore some of the fog I was beginning to encroach on, but I'm not sure this was the best idea to pick. It ended up coming in handy when I took undiscovered islands from Portugal, which ended up spawning rebels soon after. Once you conquer the territory it becomes explored, but I didn't have the sea lanes to get to those provinces explored, and I would have lost the islands to the separatists if I didn't have exploration. Offensive, Aristocratic, and Trade were all picked because they pair with religious ideas to allow missionary strength improvement policies. By the time I finished all of my idea groups, I could convert heretic provinces in 3 to 7 months and heathen provinces in 5-8 months.
Conquest priority: My priority was to get to trade company land (otherwise the corruption ticker from "too many territories" always hinders me, so when I peaced out with nations I would take long, narrow strips of land that gave me borders with new countries, thus giving me new CBs/war possibilities. If I'm not explaining that well, feel free to ask away, but the main idea is to always try to border new countries with each peace deal. Constantly declaring new wars really helps prevent coalitions from forming, as you will have truces with many nations. I shot across QQ to Ajam, vassalized Ajam and used their reconquest CB to take a lot of Timurid land quickly, vassalized Baluchistan, and started moving into India. I declared a quick war on Mamluks early to keep them out of coalitions and took (antikaya I think) one province to release Syria and use reconquest on the Mamluks subsequently. I didn't do anything in the Arabian peninsula until after I got to India, and I largely left Africa alone until the late 1700s. The only exception is that I took Jerusalem and Mecca for the extra missionaries/pentarchy modifier. This also makes Rome a priority, but again, referring to the AE guide above, don't piss off the Catholics until the Muslims are almost completely subdued. You can take small portions of land at a time, but don't get above 50 AE with them. I can't go back and look at the game now, but to get an idea, I had conquered about 25%-30% of India by 1550 and around 5300 development by the start of absolutism. As soon as you convert the Indian land, add it to the trade companies. Since I had these long, narrow corridors cutting across the middle east to India, there were many countries who helped direct trade back toward my trade capital, so I only used my merchants to direct trade in one Indian node which was sending my trade down to the Cape of Good Hope (South African node). For example, QQ held on to some Georgian land until the late 1600s and helped direct trade back toward me. The only way you lose trade is if no one in the node is directing trade in your direction, in which case your trade power/value helps whoever is directing trade. Again, if I'm not explaining that well, let me know and I can try to clarify. After India, I finished off southeast Asia and most of the countries south of Russia before turning back to Europe. Europe is pretty easy to take out at that point, but large countries mean you may have to wait out a few truces to completely annex a few of those countries. In my case, Hungary had reverse PUd Austria and then integrated them, and they had a huge amount of land. I declared the first war on them, then declared on several countries they were guaranteeing (one by one, after my Hungary cores finished) so that I could conquer them quickly. This costs a lot of diplo points, but it didn't matter much at that point.
As I said before, I PUd France (early, before 1550 sometimes), Spain (much later, they conquered a lot of land and did almost no colonizing which was surprising, but I got most of northern Italy with this PU, and later used them to take out Portugal in two wars), and Russia (late, after they formed Russia to allow Russian ideas (I don't think PU'd Moscovy can form Russia). Full disclosure, I save scummed a few times to get the latter two PUs. Some people are better than that, I'm not yet. It didn't take many save scums because I follow this strategy: Royal Marry, disinherit your heir when your ruler gets old 55-60ish, and when your ruler dies you will get a ruler from one of your royal marriage partners' dynasties. Then you just have to wait until their ruler dies without an heir and you can claim the throne (or in my case with France, they got a weak claim heir which is, hands down, the best outcome because it gives you a lot of time to initiate the claim to the throne war. I save scummed with Russia/Spain because they ended up getting new heirs while I was waiting for my "dissolved alliance" truce to expire.
I released Syria and Najd as vassals (Syria to limit early AE/core cost, Najd as a permanent vassal who can convert a lot of territory). I gave Najd the arabian lands all the way down to the east African trade company land (with the exception of Mecca, which I wanted for the extra missionary) and kept them as a vassal until the end. They are great at converting, but I realized around 1650 that they were massively in debt and hadn't converted much of anything, so remember to subsidize them when you can. You can check their monthly balance by selecting them in the subject screen. I also got the Crimean March event and took Bohemia as a vassal late in the game, and vassalized Baluchistan to avoid going over 100% overextension. I vassalized Ajam for the reconquest CB on Timurids. Vassals/PUs can also be nice because they let you feed some conquered land to them if your conquest would have otherwise put you over 100% overextension, so you can conquer even faster.
Bohemia and France did almost no converting for me, but Spain and Najd did a ton. I left Baluchistan, Ajam, and Crimea as Muslim and eventually annexed them and converted myself.
Fire court and country disaster ASAP. This short C&C/Absolutism guide by Radio Res is one I stumbled on about a year ago, and I've never played since without firing the disaster (). Thank you to Radio Res for that guide, as well as many others I've viewed over the last year.
Late in the game, take Missionary Strength (inquisitor) advisors even if you can't promote them to level 5. Monarch points become less and less important as you get closer to the WC and missionary strength becomes paramount.
Build Cathedrals (basliicas in Ottoman's case). I have never done this before, but it really helps speed up conversion and, as long as their building slots aren't full, you can build them in your colonial nation provinces as well. I don't use the state edicts very often, but I believe there is a missionary strength edict as well.
Speaking of State Edicts, the one that I do use a ton is the +33% institution spread modifier, as Ottomans are rarely close to institution spawns.
I did spawn Global Trade, as Constantinople can easily become the strongest trade node if you get to India soon enough. The main rival trade node for me in that respect was the English Channel.
If you concentrate your armies near your future conquests, make sure to leave stacks at the other ends of your nation to quickly get rid of rebels. I kept stability at 2 or 3 for the majority of the game to reduce rebels, but they still popped up often. Eliminating rebels before they conquer land means you don't get additional years of separatism, which really helps limit rebel spawn the further you get in the campaign. Forts also protect your territories from separatism (I think) so I generally leave conquered forts for quite a long time. I also raise autonomy to get rid of unrest if it would only take a few provinces to eliminate the threat of an uprising. Once absolutism hits, I'm much more hesitant to do this.
I don't complete any of the economic missions until I'm ready to build manufactories (missions starting with high income). Maybe this isn't the best strategy, but generally I wait until admin 11 and a treasury above 2000 ducats, so that I can use the -10% construction cost to build many manufactories while also being able to complete all the missions up to build a treasury (2000 ducats mission). Early game I build churches and workshops in any province that will return .10 ducats per month or more. My reasoning is that .10 ducats X 12 months = 1.2 per year, so over the next 100 years they easily pay for themselves, and you have another couple hundred years to profit. Workshops also increase trade value (I believe) so that helps even more. I don't have a super sophisticated understanding of trade/production, but I do much better than I used to in terms of economy and this has been one of the things I've focused on. I will also build workshops that return below .10 ducats per month if it's in a high value trade good province, as that generally means the development is low, so those become my targets for development in the future.
I also don't complete the mission that reduces harsh treatment cost until the age of absolutism, because that's when I use harsh treatment to quickly raise absolutism. Basically, don't just finish missions because you can, think about where/when the reward for that mission will be most useful to you.
The Persian trade node is where I state the most territory outside of Anatolia. The trade goods there are amazing, and that node is a big one for feeding trade back to Constantinople.
You might want to work on the colonizers before I did. Like I said in the beginning, I was upset to learn that my colonial nations were blocking my missionaries with their colonists. I had to declare on about half of them at the end of the game to finish the one faith achievement. The first colonial nation I declared on called 3 of my other colonial nations in with them (even though the war preview on the declaration screen said they wouldn't) but after that they all fought alone, and all had level 1 or 3 forts in their capital, making the wars very quick. Just take the land you need and peace out ASAP. I had many colonial nations in the same areas, so some of the conquered territory went to my other colonial nations instead of me, but they never used their colonists on the new land and I was able to convert the territory for them.
This seems like a lot so I'll stop here, but ask away if you have any questions. Being new to one faith and WC achievements, I learned a lot of what I know recently so it's pretty fresh in my mind. Also, if anything I said was incorrect or if anyone has any tips to help me get better, I'd love to hear them. Hopefully this had something helpful in it and wasn't just a bunch of rambling, but long campaigns tend to make me a little loopy.
Happy conquering.
First and foremost, an overview: I used orthodox ottomans, prioritized getting to India, save scummed a few times to PU Spain and Russia, got an early PU over France generically (but this prevented them from taking expansion/exploration ideas, and they only converted 4 of their own provinces in the entire game even though the first idea they took was religious. They also had many provinces convert to Protestantism by centers of reformation). I PU'd Russia late 1600s after they had already expanded fully eastward, but realized later that I didn't need to do this as you don't need to WC for one faith achievement. I finished the WC in 1775, but had to break ties with my colonial nations in the 1800s because they were using a colonist to improve heretic provinces, preventing me from converting those provinces. THIS WAS SOMETHING I DIDN'T COUNT ON AND WAS VERY ANNOYING TO DISCOVER! BUT YOU CAN RELEASE COLONIAL NATIONS AND DECLARE ON THEM IN THE SAME MONTH WITHOUT BREAKING TRUCE. The only European country I broke truce with was England, because they kept colonizing Anglican provinces and I wasn't sure I would have enough time to convert them, so every peace deal I took the unfinished colonies and abandoned them, then redeclared as soon as the cores on their land were finished. I didn't end up colonizing every province, although in retrospect I probably could have. If it wasn't for the colonial nations blocking my missionaries, I would have finished one faith around 1807, but in the end I finished in 1813.
My first WC finished in the 1800s, so I have to give a huge shout out to this aggressive expansion guide () for helping me understand how to conquer constantly, which really sped things up. There are two parts. This guide changed the way I play this game completely. It took me a few runs to really perfect the strategy, but this run I only had one coalition form and it never fired. I routinely get up to 1000 AE with multiple countries these days. Thank you FlorryWorry, this is one of the best guides I've ever seen. AE is just a number.
Ideas: 1. Diplo 2. Admin 3. Religious 4. Influence 5. Exploration 6. Offensive 7. Aristocratic 8. Trade
I took diplo first because it gives you extra diplomats, and you can use them and the "target outraged countries" feature in the diplo tab to constantly improve relations with countries who would otherwise join coalitions against you. Very helpful. Again, refer to the AE guide above. Admin has the obvious benefit of reducing core cost. Religious goes without saying, and the CB is very nice as well. Influence is great for annexing vassals, and vassals are very important for keeping your manpower high, staying under 100% overextension, keeping AE lower (although I really don't pay much attention to AE after 1550ish). I took exploration to explore some of the fog I was beginning to encroach on, but I'm not sure this was the best idea to pick. It ended up coming in handy when I took undiscovered islands from Portugal, which ended up spawning rebels soon after. Once you conquer the territory it becomes explored, but I didn't have the sea lanes to get to those provinces explored, and I would have lost the islands to the separatists if I didn't have exploration. Offensive, Aristocratic, and Trade were all picked because they pair with religious ideas to allow missionary strength improvement policies. By the time I finished all of my idea groups, I could convert heretic provinces in 3 to 7 months and heathen provinces in 5-8 months.
Conquest priority: My priority was to get to trade company land (otherwise the corruption ticker from "too many territories" always hinders me, so when I peaced out with nations I would take long, narrow strips of land that gave me borders with new countries, thus giving me new CBs/war possibilities. If I'm not explaining that well, feel free to ask away, but the main idea is to always try to border new countries with each peace deal. Constantly declaring new wars really helps prevent coalitions from forming, as you will have truces with many nations. I shot across QQ to Ajam, vassalized Ajam and used their reconquest CB to take a lot of Timurid land quickly, vassalized Baluchistan, and started moving into India. I declared a quick war on Mamluks early to keep them out of coalitions and took (antikaya I think) one province to release Syria and use reconquest on the Mamluks subsequently. I didn't do anything in the Arabian peninsula until after I got to India, and I largely left Africa alone until the late 1700s. The only exception is that I took Jerusalem and Mecca for the extra missionaries/pentarchy modifier. This also makes Rome a priority, but again, referring to the AE guide above, don't piss off the Catholics until the Muslims are almost completely subdued. You can take small portions of land at a time, but don't get above 50 AE with them. I can't go back and look at the game now, but to get an idea, I had conquered about 25%-30% of India by 1550 and around 5300 development by the start of absolutism. As soon as you convert the Indian land, add it to the trade companies. Since I had these long, narrow corridors cutting across the middle east to India, there were many countries who helped direct trade back toward my trade capital, so I only used my merchants to direct trade in one Indian node which was sending my trade down to the Cape of Good Hope (South African node). For example, QQ held on to some Georgian land until the late 1600s and helped direct trade back toward me. The only way you lose trade is if no one in the node is directing trade in your direction, in which case your trade power/value helps whoever is directing trade. Again, if I'm not explaining that well, let me know and I can try to clarify. After India, I finished off southeast Asia and most of the countries south of Russia before turning back to Europe. Europe is pretty easy to take out at that point, but large countries mean you may have to wait out a few truces to completely annex a few of those countries. In my case, Hungary had reverse PUd Austria and then integrated them, and they had a huge amount of land. I declared the first war on them, then declared on several countries they were guaranteeing (one by one, after my Hungary cores finished) so that I could conquer them quickly. This costs a lot of diplo points, but it didn't matter much at that point.
As I said before, I PUd France (early, before 1550 sometimes), Spain (much later, they conquered a lot of land and did almost no colonizing which was surprising, but I got most of northern Italy with this PU, and later used them to take out Portugal in two wars), and Russia (late, after they formed Russia to allow Russian ideas (I don't think PU'd Moscovy can form Russia). Full disclosure, I save scummed a few times to get the latter two PUs. Some people are better than that, I'm not yet. It didn't take many save scums because I follow this strategy: Royal Marry, disinherit your heir when your ruler gets old 55-60ish, and when your ruler dies you will get a ruler from one of your royal marriage partners' dynasties. Then you just have to wait until their ruler dies without an heir and you can claim the throne (or in my case with France, they got a weak claim heir which is, hands down, the best outcome because it gives you a lot of time to initiate the claim to the throne war. I save scummed with Russia/Spain because they ended up getting new heirs while I was waiting for my "dissolved alliance" truce to expire.
I released Syria and Najd as vassals (Syria to limit early AE/core cost, Najd as a permanent vassal who can convert a lot of territory). I gave Najd the arabian lands all the way down to the east African trade company land (with the exception of Mecca, which I wanted for the extra missionary) and kept them as a vassal until the end. They are great at converting, but I realized around 1650 that they were massively in debt and hadn't converted much of anything, so remember to subsidize them when you can. You can check their monthly balance by selecting them in the subject screen. I also got the Crimean March event and took Bohemia as a vassal late in the game, and vassalized Baluchistan to avoid going over 100% overextension. I vassalized Ajam for the reconquest CB on Timurids. Vassals/PUs can also be nice because they let you feed some conquered land to them if your conquest would have otherwise put you over 100% overextension, so you can conquer even faster.
Bohemia and France did almost no converting for me, but Spain and Najd did a ton. I left Baluchistan, Ajam, and Crimea as Muslim and eventually annexed them and converted myself.
Fire court and country disaster ASAP. This short C&C/Absolutism guide by Radio Res is one I stumbled on about a year ago, and I've never played since without firing the disaster (). Thank you to Radio Res for that guide, as well as many others I've viewed over the last year.
Late in the game, take Missionary Strength (inquisitor) advisors even if you can't promote them to level 5. Monarch points become less and less important as you get closer to the WC and missionary strength becomes paramount.
Build Cathedrals (basliicas in Ottoman's case). I have never done this before, but it really helps speed up conversion and, as long as their building slots aren't full, you can build them in your colonial nation provinces as well. I don't use the state edicts very often, but I believe there is a missionary strength edict as well.
Speaking of State Edicts, the one that I do use a ton is the +33% institution spread modifier, as Ottomans are rarely close to institution spawns.
I did spawn Global Trade, as Constantinople can easily become the strongest trade node if you get to India soon enough. The main rival trade node for me in that respect was the English Channel.
If you concentrate your armies near your future conquests, make sure to leave stacks at the other ends of your nation to quickly get rid of rebels. I kept stability at 2 or 3 for the majority of the game to reduce rebels, but they still popped up often. Eliminating rebels before they conquer land means you don't get additional years of separatism, which really helps limit rebel spawn the further you get in the campaign. Forts also protect your territories from separatism (I think) so I generally leave conquered forts for quite a long time. I also raise autonomy to get rid of unrest if it would only take a few provinces to eliminate the threat of an uprising. Once absolutism hits, I'm much more hesitant to do this.
I don't complete any of the economic missions until I'm ready to build manufactories (missions starting with high income). Maybe this isn't the best strategy, but generally I wait until admin 11 and a treasury above 2000 ducats, so that I can use the -10% construction cost to build many manufactories while also being able to complete all the missions up to build a treasury (2000 ducats mission). Early game I build churches and workshops in any province that will return .10 ducats per month or more. My reasoning is that .10 ducats X 12 months = 1.2 per year, so over the next 100 years they easily pay for themselves, and you have another couple hundred years to profit. Workshops also increase trade value (I believe) so that helps even more. I don't have a super sophisticated understanding of trade/production, but I do much better than I used to in terms of economy and this has been one of the things I've focused on. I will also build workshops that return below .10 ducats per month if it's in a high value trade good province, as that generally means the development is low, so those become my targets for development in the future.
I also don't complete the mission that reduces harsh treatment cost until the age of absolutism, because that's when I use harsh treatment to quickly raise absolutism. Basically, don't just finish missions because you can, think about where/when the reward for that mission will be most useful to you.
The Persian trade node is where I state the most territory outside of Anatolia. The trade goods there are amazing, and that node is a big one for feeding trade back to Constantinople.
You might want to work on the colonizers before I did. Like I said in the beginning, I was upset to learn that my colonial nations were blocking my missionaries with their colonists. I had to declare on about half of them at the end of the game to finish the one faith achievement. The first colonial nation I declared on called 3 of my other colonial nations in with them (even though the war preview on the declaration screen said they wouldn't) but after that they all fought alone, and all had level 1 or 3 forts in their capital, making the wars very quick. Just take the land you need and peace out ASAP. I had many colonial nations in the same areas, so some of the conquered territory went to my other colonial nations instead of me, but they never used their colonists on the new land and I was able to convert the territory for them.
This seems like a lot so I'll stop here, but ask away if you have any questions. Being new to one faith and WC achievements, I learned a lot of what I know recently so it's pretty fresh in my mind. Also, if anything I said was incorrect or if anyone has any tips to help me get better, I'd love to hear them. Hopefully this had something helpful in it and wasn't just a bunch of rambling, but long campaigns tend to make me a little loopy.
Happy conquering.
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