Conquering Empire Total War World as United Provinces

I last played Empire total war two years ago (post 1, post 2).

Empire Total War has 3 game breaking issues:

• fort sieges will go 0 fps if you use artillery to make breaches, and 10 turns into campaign, every province has a fort
• naval battles are painfully boring beyond belief
• diplomacy is completely broken, especially on hard+ - everyone will declare war on you and never peace out - including your allies and countries on the other side of the world

I always use my mod to remove forts, so that fixes the first problem. Naval battles can be somewhat minimized depending on playstyle. I was never able to fix the final one, even though I was leading Empire Total War diplomatic data decoding efforts decade ago. We managed to make AI numbers more reasonable, but somehow AI acted pretty much the same anyway.

But it turns out there's a way, which I somehow never heard of before, that just involves piles of cheese with military access. It has 3 parts:

• AI massively overvalues getting military access to your land, and is willing to pay a lot for it - we'll be using that for sure
• AI will be much less likely to attack you if it has military access to your lands - this is how we'll fix diplomacy, by toning down AI aggressiveness and backstabbiness to reasonable levels; this doesn't guarantee safety, just tones it down a few notches
• you can repeatedly cancel military access and sell it again without repercussions, taking all their money - this is way too exploity for me, and I will absolutely not be doing that

I'm going for some of the achievements I don't have yet:

• conquer Americas
• conquer Europe
• research all tech
• win game at hard

I have one for India from some past game, probably as Marathas.

I never "won" the game, as conditions are to conquer some lands, and then hold them until 1799, which I never bothered with. But I might do just that this time.

Mods for this:

• my no forts mod
• Additional Units mod
• halfway through I added dry weather mod, that massively reduces battle weather effects, it's mostly visual

Starting position

So United Provinces, the only republic major in the game, it starts with 4 provinces in 3 theaters:

• Curacao and Dutch Guyana in Americas
• Netherlands in Europe
• Ceylon in India

Each will be fighting its wars pretty much separately, as sending troops between them takes very long time.

My traditional opening as anyone who can is rushing pirates. Pirates have 2 islands, one with fairly easy 2 Pirate Mobs units, and capital with much harder 7 Pirate Mob units. Destroying them eliminates their 20 or so ships harassing trade ships all over the world.

I started by a naval battle of 1 Sloop vs pirate 2 Brigs and 1 Sloop, which was super easy, just a bit tedious. Even with me trying my best to minimize such battles, there's a lot more where that came from.

1 vs 3 - Super Easy, Barely An Inconvenience!

Then I landed 1 Militia and 1 recruited General on Trinidad & Tobago to deal with the first pirate enclave. It was defended by 2 Pirate Mobs, each better than a Militia even on normal. This was somewhat questionable move on my side, and I should have probably recruited second General.

With that out of the way, I allied Hannover and Westphalia, sold them military access, and broke starting alliance with Austria to avoid getting dragged into their stupid wars.

I declared war on Spanish protectorate New Spain, which brought me into state of war with Spain without including France. I need to get Flanders to have any hope for security.

Then I gave all great powers except Mughals and Spain free military access to my lands, so I might get attacked less.

After that I destroyed weavers' workshop in Ceylon to build my second university there. And that was a good first turn.

French attack

France attacked me turn one anyway. Free military access is supposed to tone down AI aggressiveness a notch, but it's not an exploit. This attacks looks totally reasonable, if I was France I'd have attacked Netherlands for sure.

I wanted to destroy the pirates, but their second province looked awkwardly strong, so I took some French islands instead first.

All that French nonsense caused so many delays. I really planned to start this campaign by recruiting some army in Ceylon and invading the Mughals. That will need to wait.

After inflicting sufficient losses on them on the land and on the sea, France decided to accept white peace.

I was then able to destroy the Pirates, and that was a really hard fight. They had 7 garrison troops, each a bit better than Militia. I gathered all my New World force - 2 Line Infantry, 1 Hessian mercs, 2 Militia, and 2 generals, all depleted from fighting the French. And that was extremely close victory.

So far:

• in Europe - Netherlands and Flanders
• in India - still just Ceylon
• in New World - Dutch Guyana, French Guyana, Curacao, Trinidad & Tobago, Martinique, Antigua.

Invasion of Mughal India

Spain still wouldn't accept a peace deal, so I kept attacking their New World islands. Eventually they got tired of it, and offered peace deal. That didn't include their New Spain holdings, but New Spain got magically annexed by Spain at some point, so that other war was over too.

A much more important thing is that I finally had some breathing space to invade India before Mughals completely collapse.

Landing in Orissa and Bengal and then moving West, I took 6 regions - a band through Central India from Bengal to Gujarat, peaced them out, and I finally had peace with everyone (not counting Barbary States). All without firing a single cannister shot yet, just with trashy starting units and trashy fixed artillery firing just cannister shots.

Second Mughal War

That peace of course lasted just a few minutes. My New World army had nothing better to do, so I attacked some natives. That's always nice, as attacking natives never leads to any naval combat, and their units are different from Europeans, so it's good variety.

For side note, Empire massively nerfs tax income based on number of provinces you have. It's a weird system. Eventually it goes to -80% when you conquer the map of 140 provinces, but it goes aggressively up for mid-sized empires, and you get -20% at mere 10, -30% at 20, -40% at 30 provinces, and -50% at 50 provinces.

So by mid-game it makes sense to rely mostly on trade. And so I've been spamming trade ships like crazy.

In India I needed a few turns to reorganize army and deal with unrest. I sort of wanted to go South to fight Marathas, but they had way too many ships, as well as way too many armies for a fast finish, so it would mean endless naval battles. I attacked Mughals the second time instead.

Cherokee and Mughal capitals were at -30 unrest so they'd both need babysitting for a while.

Just as I was about to strike the final blow and take Kashmir, Spain declared war on me. Only getting declared twice by 1709, I'm pretty sure selling military access makes a big difference.

Also 25 regions taken, 115 to go.

My still mostly trash army advancing on Mughal city

War with Spain

War with Spain was annoying, as I now had my trade ships everywhere, basically unprotected, and Spanish fleet was huge. On the other hand, their fleet was mainly located near Spain, so they didn't actually harass my traders too much.

European powers were all really busy fighting each other, so they'd hopefully leave me alone. Even not counting wars with minors:

• France vs Austria, Britain
• Spain vs Austria, Britain
• Britain vs Spain, France,, Poland
• Poland vs Austria, Sweden, Britain
• Austria vs Spain, France, Poland, and Prussia
• Prussia vs Austria, Poland
• Sweden vs Poland, Russia
• Russia vs Ottomans, Sweden
• Ottomans vs Russia

They rarely got any territory, and then it usually was lost a while later, but they were constantly raiding each other's ports and sinking ships. Every ship sunk is one I don't have to deal with.

The Iroquois declared surprise war on me. I guess I never offered them military access, and I didn't even notice I now had a border with them. I bribed them with some techs to go away, as it really was completely off my way.

I grabbed 3 Spanish colonies - all garbage land, but I'm going for World Conquest here.

Beyond provinces, game also has 20 naval trade nodes, and I got 14 of them before it even became crowded. I grabbed 2 from Spain in this war. France, Marathas, Ottomans, and Persia have remaining ones, and Persia lost their only port to Ottomans so they're just wasting that node. As things progress from this point, I kept losing them whenever anyone tried to attack them with a real fleet, as I have no patience for that, and then I kept gaining them whenever a country got destroyed. So my control level was close to 14/20 for quite a while.

All that plus a big bribe in form of technology transfer convinced the Spanish that they don't need this fight.

Conquest of France

I wanted to peace out Spain as I had something far more important to do - destroy France.

Battle of Paris, which looks a lot smaller than I expected it to be.

French armies go into battle conveniently carrying white flags.

Paris fell in two easy battles as French troops were mostly sitting in Alsace, but then I had a nice big battle between my first full stack, and Alsatian French full stack.

I thought that would be it, standard take two provinces destroy France, but amazingly France took Algiers a while back and moved their capital there. I did not consider that at all.

I took New Orleans, and that somehow got -30 resistance as major settlement. That's baffling. Capitals of majors get -30, minor settlements get -13, but sometimes there's weird exception, and capitals of minors can go either way. Like that used to be capital of Louisiana colonial nation before France annexed it, so it somehow counts as capital of major power? Annoying.

Especially because in France there's like +16 worth of happiness buildings, and New Orleans is just some alligator infested swamp with nothing of value except port to export cotton and tobacco.

Soon after, France mysteriously lost Algiers, which flipped to Barbary States. I'm not sure if Barbary States got it, or it was just their rebels.

That was some peace and quiet again, not counting my inactive wars with Poland, Barbary States, and assorted rebels.

Conquest of Italy and Canada

I had 3 armies, all on rebel duty:

• New World army which had 2 fake "major" settlements to babysit, so it was stuck for a while
• Indian army only had two ways to go - Persia which was garbage land, or rich South India currently controlled by Marathas, who were far stronger than them
• European army, which was babysitting France at first, but that was surprisingly easy due to all the happiness buildings in France

Indian army would need major reinforcements to do anything, so I let them rest for a while. I disbanded trash units, to be replaced by proper troops.

New World army got a new job invading Canada, which turned into rebels when France collapsed, with exception of one province Quebec.

France's -30 unrest was mostly cancelled by all the happiness buildings, so my European army could march on Italian minors with little opposition.

I let rebels take over Lower Louisiana, hoping that would wipe out its damn -30 unrest when I recaptured it. It did not.

Sweden attacked my ally Hannover, and I declined to join their war, as that would be really annoying new front. Also they did not come to my aid back when I was attacked by France so screw them. Prussia attacked my other ally Westphalia, and I declined the same way.

I finally got Fire by Rank in 1715 (definitely did not rush that like I should), and quickly wrecked Genoa, Savoy, Pope, and Malta, getting me four new shitty -30 unrest provinces to babysit. Of them only Rome had enough happiness buildings to have any hope of fast end of this. In either case, al my European troops were stuck there for a while, so switching to other theaters for a few years.

Half of my New World army got "Agvituk, Montagnais" from the Inuit, and that was -30 unrest province. Very heavy polar bear resistance.

The other half sailed up to Great Lakes, sadly they're not connected to the ocean, so it took slow walk to deal with some natives, and another -30 unrest province.

Conquest of South India

At that point my European and new World armies were mostly stuck on rebel duty, so it was time to look back at India.

This was long overdue, as I was 6 provinces away from conquering the whole damn thing and then I'd no longer to maintain any army there. Selling Marathas and Mysore military access did something to stop them from attacking, but that was not guaranteed, so if I had no army there, they'd probably attack me and that would be a huge mess.

Marathas and Mysore together outnumbered my Indian army by 3:1, and somehow managed to recruit real troops not peasant trash. In other words super easy, barely an inconvenience. In opening battle I deployed 1856 against their 2136, and losses were 382 mine vs 1985 theirs, fairly typical for hard/hard.

Battle against Marathas full stack standing on my border.

I had 24 cannons vs their 16. Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie Cavalry charged their artillery to achieve artillery superiority, taking heavy losses.

Marathas attacked my right flank, and then the whole battle turned into huge chaos.

Mostly Artillery does the damage, Line Infantry holds the line, and Cavalry makes sure nobody runs away to fight another day, but many more interesting situations happen

Some keys to a good fight:

• I have nice line of infantry and artillery that can win every straight firefight
• AI usually suicides their cavalry trying to charge my lines or prancing around, so usually I have cavalry superiority regardless of how many units we start with (I think it used to be a lot worse in early patches, did AI get at least somewhat better at some point?)
• if AI takes forever to engage, I'll just keep shooting them with my artillery, no rush - this is minority of battles, but it definitely happens sometimes
• my cavalry mainly makes sure broken units running away do not come back, and tries to kill as many as possible
• in some fights I get my cavalry some risky tasks, like charging at enemy artillery or routing low morale units - this costs me tons of horses, but I can achieve some strategic advantage
• I research a lot of unit upgrades, so my units are better thanks to tech; AI wastes their research on navy and such nonsense, and generally just doesn't have enough universities
• in melee just pressing Square Formation makes everyone fight better, even if they're not actually in formation
• if some enemies are running away but their army is still fighting nearby - it's best to let them go; they usually regroup later, but by that time their friends are out of the fight, so it's usually no big deal; impatiently chasing broken units too early just cost too much loses
• I totally love any cavalry units who can shoot - in Europe they are high tech Light Dragoons and such, but in New World there are Mounted Natives who can do that - that's amazing harassment force

There are some weaknesses to this. Inf+Art formation can stand its ground or advance forward, but it takes forever to turn around when attacked. So especially if AI changes me from the side, the other side cannot easily support. It's still a good default.

And of course the best way to destroy enemy army is to take their last settlement - then it disappears. Interestingly it doesn't in most other Total War games, where it would turn to rebels.

I took 3 of 6 remaining regions in initial assault and destroyed a third of Indian armies, but I had to run away as more than two full stacks were chasing just one of my stacks.

Western stack took two settlements with little opposition

Eastern stack destroyed one Marathas stack (leftovers in rice farm East of Hyderabad), then took Hyderabad, and ran back to the river to avoid facing those 2 full stacks to the South East.

I fully expected them to take Hyderabad back and just hoped they'd separate, as fighting 2 full stacks at the same time is just too much.

I thought this war would take a while, but after a few quick naval battles peace was offered. 

Hilariously Marathas instead of taking abandoned region back, or chasing my armies just offered me peace if I gave them some techs. Then Mysore paid me money for another peace. I guess than works.

So by 1719 I have 45/140 regions. Game lasts until 1799, so plenty of time to world conquest.

I have 31 of 79 techs I can research, with most other powers being somewhere around 13. Not like such counting matters terribly much - Cannister Shot and Fire By Rank are the only true game changers, everything else is a minor military or economic bonus.

I'll keep playing this campaign over the next few weeks, as it's quite fun, but it's still like 100-200 battles to finish world conquest.