Part 12: Late-Game Goals

Part 12: Late-Game Goals

You may have noticed that Spain hasn't felt very threatened in the past few updates. Your game will probably reach a critical point where you'll feel as if you've accomplished everything that you've set out to do, or that you can no longer do any wrong. What you do from that point on is up to you. Some people in the thread have suggested starting a new game with a different country, or switching to another country on the save file so you can try to fight against what you've created. I enjoy seeing how things play out to the end, so we're going to see how far Spain can go in the remaining 200 years or so.

Our new focus will be on the Americas and East Asia. Inca is first on the list, and then we'll connect our holdings in North and South America with new colonies. In the east, we will expand by colonizing in Oceania and invading China. Conquests into India may follow afterwards.



The Inca and their small ally are our next victims. A new army to invade and then guard the region is raised and shipped to battle.




Even outnumbered 2 to 1, our more modern troops with firearms can win decisive victories against the natives. It takes about 6 months to occupy all of their land, only slowed down by sluggish movement in mountainous and jungle provinces.



With so many resources at our disposal now, invasions against nations of this size and tech level go at a quick pace. They are fully occupied and then annexed to add to our empire.



In order to collect your tariffs from oversea provinces at full efficiency, you need to have at least as many Big or Light warships as you have overseas provinces. Galleys and Transports don't count towards this. Adding the large number of Incan provinces do our empire brought us below 100% tariff efficiency.



Simply build as many warships as you need to satisfy full coverage. Hover over the tariffs figure on your economy tab and it will display the necessary number. With enough warships now built, tariff efficiency is again 100%.



Post Offices are the level 5 trade building. With gaining so many provinces so rapidly, we haven't been able to build every trade building in every province up to 4, but as soon as this structure becomes available, we build them wherever we can. Post Offices have a global effect of +1% trade value in all of your provinces. Building 10 of them is like having an extra Marketplace in every single provinces. 50 of them is like having 5 more marketplaces everywhere. I currently have 57 level 4 trade buildings built in various provinces around the world with good trade goods, so once I finish my first round of post office construction, the trade value of every province in my nation will be 57% higher. That means more production income as well as more trade income.



Portugal has been colonizing as well. The southeastern part of North America often produces tobacco and cotton. Both are valuable colonial trade goods.



Burgundy draws us into another war against England, and we help in our usual way. Once an enemy's navy is destroyed, you can split your fleet up and blockade all of their ports in relative safety. This causes an addition to their war exhaustion each month and siphons off some of their overseas income as well, giving it to you instead.



On the War Overview, we can see that England is completely blockaded.




The invasion of Ming China begins by landing 2 armies in these 2 island provinces. Troops can move directly between these islands and the mainland, as pointed out by the icon in the lower right corner of Hainan province's window. Keeping our fleet in this sea zone prevents enemy troops from crossing the strait, however. By landing our troops here and keeping our fleets in each sea zone, we can allow ourselves movement in and out but prevent enemy troops from crossing.




Ming's technology levels are higher than the Inca, and they have nearly 4 times as many troops as my invasion force, but it still isn't enough. The technology difference is too great and their forces are unable to compete with modernized western armies.



A small portion of Ming's southern provinces are seized to act as a launch pad for future conquests. The Holy War CB from being an Empire is still in effect as of the early 1600s, so we can continue to annex these provinces at a cost of only 1 infamy each for a few more decades.







Every 5 years as soon as our truce ends, we repeat the process and seize slightly more territory from them. Every 5 year period of forced peace gives us a chance to send missionaries to convert, put down any revolts, and build new trade structures in the rich chinaware producing provinces.



Colonization in the Americas continues as well, linking our northern and southern territories. In the very late game, you can start colonies for no other reason than to milk magistrates out of colonists. Every time you discover what type of trade good that a new province is going to produce, you are awarded 1 free magistrate. This effectively increases your rate of magistrate production by your rate of colonist generation. If the new colony is in a relatively safe spot, such as inland and surrounded by other colonies that belong to you, you can opt to not build a fort there and spend your free magistrate on another high level trade building somewhere more developed.



The Philippines are completely untouched and could be a good target for future colonization, with so many forces available in the region to support them. I also move my national focus to Taiwan and build a new CoT there. My plan is to conquer all of Ming except for their CoTs, and starve their CoTs out of business before fully annexing their last cities. If that works, Taiwan's CoT will be rolling in ducats.



And finally, Austria's progress through central Asia is a bit disconcerting. I am half expecting to bump borders with them as we finish the conquest of Ming.

We are at around 1615 now, and I am considering simply finishing this game and then doing one final big update detailing any completely new mechanics or strategies that occur along the way. I'd also include any particularly important events that happen, such as inheriting France or if Austria were to form the HRE (yikes). End date statistics and any interesting oddities would be pointed out, too. I've described the basic flow of war and battle now to the point that there isn't any further instructive purpose of watching me kill hundreds of thousands of natives in every update, is there?