But why you need the latter? They serve few goals: 1) to start the coalition, the so-to-be alliance must be stronger than you (strength is measured by the size of your army)Дў) if you don't have a stron army, other nations may attack you in the normal way because you are weak. Maintenance of mercenaries is normally 2.5 times more expensive than your regulars, so ideally one wants to disband them and stick to the regulars. I suspect that people fight with mercs, even though they have manpower, to preserve own man pool. Mercs are also easy way to influence ongoing battle, you probably cannot recruit and deliver regular troops to the battlefield. This means that you must sometimes recruit new ones. The same is true for the battles, regiments of mercs that have 0 man just disappear. If you shift consolidate (by pressing shift key and consolidate button) your mercs the regiments with 0 manpower will disappear by the end of the month. Cavalry and artillery should be composed out of your manpower because their maintenance is much more expensive than infantry. Except the extreme situations (or when you don't even know what to do with money) you never use other mercs than infantry. Your main army protects their back and loot the provinces while they are 'affected' by attrition. Mercs have one general advantage, to replace them one only needs money. It's just the manpower suddenly ends but you have to wage the war. Seriously I don't know 'the proper' strategies. Once the pretender conquers capital, you loose PU. Sadly, you must always check if they don't have the pretender rebels. Those nations have either reduced coring costs or powerful options/economy.Д©) PU's are great for WC, because they are very loyal. The easiest are the Ottomans, France, Austria (if they do HRE way, this is easy way for every catholic nation) and Hordes (maybe not exactly on this patch). This is not a case with regular vassals.ДЇirstly choose the proper country. Sadly, you must always check if they don't have pretender rebels. Don't go over 100% OE unless you stacked decent reduced coring cost.Д©) PU's are great for WC, because they are very loyal. Let them be! After 6 months they will be automatically accepted. When you exceed 100% OE, there revolts progress not by 10% but by 20%. In late-game you can grab up to maybe 250% OE, but trying to core this will make your country collapse. Try to have big trading income as this will enable you to negate corruption.Д§) Stack this two modifiers: reduced coring cost, reduced annexation cost.ДЁ) Use your vassals to core the land you grab. That won't happen if you have entire endnode. While you sit with high overextension (all the time after 1700), your trading income rapidly falls because OE have an impact on your trade power. If you are big enough you can protectorate Ming in one war, whereas it takes at least 3 wars to grab their land.Д¦) Try to get the whole endnodes. In WC it is either you attack someone and have the army prepared so they won't be needed or you don't attack at all.ДҐ) To get easy WC you can use Protectorates. Conquest can be done later and this is must-have to rationally rotate your enemies.Д¤) Get rid of your forts - at least in 1.17. Also try to conquer your way and make 'tentacles' to have access to every part of Afroeurasia in 16th century. In the first place try to get as many forts as you can. Thirdly, beware what provinces you take in peace-deals. Before it, you could stick to CB from religious ideas (very good). Probably the best would be Imperialism, but it is only available if you research 23rd diplomatic technology, usually around 1680-90. Secondly, get yourself a nice Casus Belli. These nations have either reduced coring costs or powerful options/economy. Click to expand.Firstly choose the proper country.

Europa universalis 4 world conquest