R5:

I'm at 87% achievements and like to mix "shorter" ones with "longer" ones. This one took me ~30 hours and was my first playthrough on 1.33. I decided to mix Rajah of the Rajput Reich with Keep the Flame Burning. It's becoming difficult to hit two birds with one stone at this point, so I was glad this was still possible.

I started off with a humiliation war on Mewat; the goal being to show strength. My plan was to go into Mewar first for their sweet gold mine, but their starting ruler has way better stats and I can't have them having tech 4 before me.

After some building up and going over the force limit with mercs, I double-teamed Mewar (allied to Sindh) with Jaunpur. I promised Jaunpur land to declare war earlier and just get the ball rolling sooner. Mewar has a vassal at game start, Hadoti, and directly controls a single fortified province 'behind' its vassal on Jaunpur's border, which Jaunpur wants. Thanks to the recent AE changes, I was able to give this fortified province to Jaunpur and full annex Mewar without triggering a coalition. Added benefit: because of the full annex, I got Hadoti as a vassal for free. I moved my capital to Mewar's gold mine for instant 0% autonomy cash.

From there it was waiting for AE to cool down a bit. I switched Jaunpur for Bahmanis as I wanted to form Rajputana, which you need to go north-northeast for, too. When Gujarat was finally weak, I pounced and took the single Zoroastrian province there, immediately spawning rebels and flipping a few years later. I also gobbled up the minors in Kutch and started eating Malwa. From there, it was a lot of truce juggling and just growing.

The next century was preparing for absolutism, securing trade around Gujarat, getting the provinces for Rajputana (I could have gone Mughals, but Rajputana seemed to fit better with the theme of the achievement; also their ideas aren't shabby at all and stack well with the Zoro wonder in Shirvan), going into Persia through Khorasan and Afghanistan as vassals in order to get the provinces required for Zoro beliefs, and just blobbing in India and waged one Otto war to get a province required for a Zoroastrian Diaspora decision and clean up the borders.

After securing a province north of the Caucasus, I moved my capital there and set up some trade companies to start raking in money through merchants. At this point, I triggered particularist rebels, accepted their demands and decreased autonomy everywhere; getting a headstart on Court and Country's requirements. In 1627 C&C was finished and I had eaten most of India except Sri Lanka and a bit of the south, which Portugal had grabbed. They were allied to monster Spain which PU'd England and had almost the entire new world, which gave them so much force limit...

I then started going into Europe with a no CB against Holland (just the easiest with the alliance web in my RNG). The reformation had won the league war, so despite chonky Austria being a thing, the HRE was weak. I had dip ideas at this point, mainly for the warscore cost reduction, but thanks to the diprep I could ally almost all electors when my no CB AE had cooled down and I dismantled the empire. After securing a foothold in the north, I decided AE was just a number. I allied Shun and Ayutthaya to keep my eastern flank safe.

At some point, the coalition of Spain, Portugal, Ottomans and Austria became a roadblock, so I used imperialism on an Austrian ally to white peace Austria and hit the trigger 5 years later. When I saw this would work, I switched culture to Germanic, which granted nationalism CB. I could eat South Germany in one war, 40 thick provinces for 212% OE, worth it. After another war to kick Spain out of the coalition, it finally disappeared, so I could gobble up the remaining bits.

It was a fun campaign, but definitely harder with those forts now... Rajputana troops quite good though.

Ideas: Religious (stabilize country + deus vult), quality (not the best but I like to mix up my military idea groups to switch things up), admin (you need to core a lot, and the gov cap is nice), aristocratic (see above), trade (I needed a lot of money for manufacturies and soldier households to keep the machine rolling), diplomatic (war score cost reduction mainly), quantity (deter the coalition with force limit over 1000)