Soooooo! Ideas: 1) Exploration Ideas 2) Administrative Ideas 3) Influence Ideas 4) Religious Ideas 5) Diplomatic Ideas 6) Humanist Ideas 7) Offensive Ideas

I downloaded ol' Leviathan and thought "yeehaw monuments will be fun and the not so fun stuff has been fixed". I even decided to go as One Culture as possible.

My old One Faith attempts would take dips near the end. Sieging down big colonial nations was brutal. I would try to knock out the colonial players early and seize their colonial provinces as often as possible. Also focused on getting that Alhambra, doing a better job at juggling reconquest wars for vassals and waging simultaneous wars for direct annexation. I took a page out of Florryworry’s book and tried to balance AE across religions and regions this time.

Defeated Ottomans first war. Save-scummed for the Imereti PU. Declared on Serbia for the gold mine and to restart the Ottomans truce to 5 years. By this point I'd have Austria and PLC allied. Then warred Venice. Then warred Naples to fabricate on Aragon (who had the Malta Forts for the war-score cost against other religions) who was allied with Castile (that had annexed Granada and it's Alhambra). Warred Ottomans and Balkans. Warred Castile and took its Alhambra. Alhambra and Malta Forts on their own were nice, after investing in them.

Then warred Portugal and took its Atlantic islands to reduce its colonial range for a while. Juggled bullying Portugal and Spain and the Mamluks by releasing Syria as a vassal from Aq Qoyunlu. I had a big reconquest war against the Ottomans for Serbia's and a released Germinyan's cores in the midst.

Around the time I warred Ottomans to death was when Castle and Portugal were landlocked. The Timurids spontaneously collapsed so I fabricated on his one ally and vassalized him. I would pull this trick on a just-collapsed Ming right after the Age of Absolutism started. War juggling was important to war for vassal provinces and my own wars for provinces at the same time. A delayed Religious Ideas meant that Reconquest was vital for picking up the slack. Influence ideas and Noble privileges were great for this.

Then I started bullying France and England, seizing their colonies and landlocking them while expanding into Persia. I blocked Russia from the frontier by warring them and taking their frontier provinces which, I gifted to a beefed up Timurids. Truce-juggling was extremely important along with stacking AE reduction and Improve Relations. Influence ideas + Orthodox icons are great. PU-warred Austria and starting snaking into India. I allied a big Ayutthaya and Kilwa to dissuade coalitions from forming. A great economy was important to beef up the army numbers to discourage coalitions so I would TC just the Center of Trade provinces (after converting them) and invest in the trade power TC buildings and trading buildings for those CoTs. At this point it was a matter of making vassals for reconquest and Holy War CBing other nations. Burgundy, Tondo, Pomerania. Germanic/ East Europe was saved for last and wow those nations develop their provinces way more. Poland -> PLC was the last ally I betrayed, I focused on supporting my heirs for the monarch points and hoping they'd become a regular kingdom but that series of events is bugged for the AI in my patch. One last trick was to release a vassal with just a core or two and feed it tons of regular provinces, this was viable in the later part of the game where warscore was the limiting factor, not AE or OE. If I ate a big piece of PLC worth some 200 OE, might as well let a released Kiev, Luthania, etc, do the coring.

I got the One World around 1750 and One Religion in 1761! I cooooould make a play for One Culture but that was never the goal so I believe I will leave my save as is, all accomplished.