Papal States: Part 16: 1610-1620: Mission to India

My expansion was limited by two main factors - gov capacity, and coalition risk. Also timing of OE and paper mana, but I can handle that better.

For coalition risk, it was mostly the Sunnis - there was France and some non-Sunni Indonesian minors there too, but they were all manageable.

The usual way to deal with coalitions is to ally some countries in general direction of your expansion, as allies care about your AE a lot less. That meant Delhi, Bahmanis, Bengal, Ayutthaya, Shun, Chu, Bukhara etc. Of course they were all rivalled with each other, so I could only pick two. After some consideration, I decided to go with Shia Bahmanis, and current Emperor of China Chu. Delhi, Bukhara, or Bengal, all Sunni, would be better allies for AE reduction, but they're so densely allied with my targets that it would be difficult to hold such an alliance.

It would be possible to get Ayutthaya to give me their monuments for cash eventually, but I'd need to pause expanding for far too long. A lot easier to take them by force, and Ayutthaya's lands are the most obvious way to China.

The second way to deal with coalition risk is just to remove as many Sunni countries as possible. There was 32 of them, and that number can be reduced without too much trouble. This decade I only eliminated 4, but I'll continue God's work.

As for governing capacity, I had two obvious options - reach max level economic hegemon (takes 200 months at >1000 income, and you get zero benefit before max level), and get Pegu monument and upgrade it. And as admin tech gets upgraded I'd get more gov capacity eventually.

Let's talk about gov cap meta a bit.

Initially, gov cap cost are:

• states - 100%
• trade companies - 50%
• territories - 25%

Trade companies and states are arguably roughly about equally valuable, as long as you have money for trade company investments. But if you don't, states are a lot better. Territories are pretty much crap. And all gold mines need to be stated, but that's only a few extra states overall.

Once you get tech for courthouses (8) and can afford to spam them these numbers change to:

• states - 75%
• trade companies - 25%
• territories - 1% (should be 0% but game hates going to 0%; anyway nearly free)

This really makes you want to spam trade companies everywhere, as 3 trade company area are a lot better than 1 stated area, and at this point you probably have money for investments.

Eventually, at admin tech 22, I'd unlock Town Halls, and with that cost is:

• states - 50%
• trade companies - 1%
• territories - 1%

So you can trade company the whole world.

But until you reach that point, there's an interesting way to squeeze just some extra gov capacity out of your land. In every area, make one province (the one with trade center) a trade company, and everything else a regular territory. Average area has about 3-4 provinces, so it would cost you about 10% of gov capacity to do so. And you get most value out of it. As long as trade companies have over 51% trade power in the node - and this is fairly easy - you get that merchant. And trade company investments give at least some bonuses (notably goods produced) to all provinces in a given area.

All this is mostly useful if you want to do World Conquest or something close to it. Anyway, I'm not doing this right now, but I might need to start doing it if gov cap squeeze gets really bad. I probably won't have to, as the mod makes it easier to take techs a bit ahead of time, so I'll probably get Town Halls before I'm really desperate for it.

Anyway, absolutism happened, and I don't even know what's meta. After cleaning up estate privileges to only important ones, my max absolutism is only 65, not really enough. I revoked Strong Duchies and New World Charter to get to 80. I guess I have some government reforms and monuments to squeeze a bit more absolutism, so I can get to 100 without bothering with Court and Country.

I continued expanding in West Africa, East Africa, Middle East, and Indonesia, mostly into Sunni areas. As I allied Bahmanis, I chartered a company from them just next to Vijayanagar, force vassalized Vijayanagar, and started asking Bahmanis to return Vijayanagar's cores. If I'm counting it correctly, it will only take 717 more favors, or about 90 years. Well, even if I only get part of that clay, it's still free clay.

After one of such wars, I finally managed to reach Asian mainland, and get border with Ayutthaya. It's closer and closer to China.

My emerging economic hegemony is going very well, I'm already over 1600 monthly income, and over 1200 of that is pure profit.

This is close to done, there are more other Europeans (Spain and France) than natives. Now time to head North.

I decided to clean up all the Sunnis, West African ones too, mostly for sake of Timbuktu monument. Air is my vassal too. There will also be a lot of Spanish and French here.