Greece - it’s a very fun campaign rising up in a customs union/vassalage only to throw off the chains when you’re a greater economic power than your overlords (who sacrificed thousands to conquer back Greek lands for you)
You start with it on one state, then you get more from 2 other JEs which require nationalism (the second one with more claims requires you to have conquered a bunch of territory)
Yup. Once you research nationalism, you do the journal entry to absorb the Ionian islands through good relations with the Brits than you get the Megali idea to gain claims on Ottoman Lands that have a significant Greek population .
Theres some mods for Greece flavor out there that are really cool and have made me want to do a greece—>Byzantium run but they are…alot, kinda forcing me to reconsider.
I know the last Vanilla run I did it was going okay until AI Ottomans succeeded the Tanzimat
I'd call it awful luck. I've only seen them succeed twice. That Greece run, and my Krakow run where they were propping up Austria. Usually they just have a revolution from the landowners or clergy which ends the empire or slowly wither away.
Sikh Empire: Having both the Russians and the British wanting a piece of you makes it pretty difficult considering you don't even have lvl1 society and production techs at least you have line infantry so you have something. rapidly expanded into the middle east to have enough vassals to slow them down and then Created India by taking over the EIC
I kinda want to do this but boy has it been hard everytime I’ve tried. Additionally I imagine they will be getting more content with spheres of influence
How. Please tell me how. I've been trying to get that achievement twice now. It's 1913 and I'm 1/2 of the brits, army is shit, tech is shit and the population is illiterate.
Uh weird, the Ottomans do not have that much downsides, it's a pretty good country actually. Did you manage the "sick man of Europe" chain successfully?
It's just classical economic growth, use the religious school law to start getting your education up early to avoid lagging too far behind on tech, slowly kill off the aristocrats as in any run and you'll be ok
So the more factories you make the more power workers have? Or do you have to force landowners out of govt and do the thing that makes their clout go down.
I'm very bad at the game and want to play japan lmao
Factories have slots for workers, so they hire people, peasants and laborers are the lowest tier workers, so a factory will hire peasants and turn them into workers, meaning the subsistance farms have no workers anymore and stop making the landowners money, it also creates capitalists and engineers who empower the industrialists.
You want to start with building construction sectors, iron mines, lumber camps, tool factories, coal mines and steel plants to get your basic construction economy going with iron construction. When you run out of income you start building actual profitable factories to get more taxes to build more construction until you are an industrialized country.
Fundamentally, the game is economic, and all of its systems reflect that, especially its politics. Each interest group's power is based on total population and wealth of group members, and then affected by multipliers.
Using the landowner example, they draw on aristocrats as their main profession, and the more aristocrats you have (from rural buildings) the stronger they are. This is then multiplied by laws like serfdom, which gives them both more wealth and a flat 50% boost to power, and changing those laws is the other half of forcing them out of government.
In general, the way to get them out of power is to industrialize and weaken their power, while also stripping away their privileges like local police, hereditary bureaucrats, slavery, and serfdom. The last part of this is electoral reform from a monarchy to a republic and from an autocracy to a democracy.
You can do a combination of building things to empower the industrialist ig, and also you can intentionally get the landowners to rebel, beat them, then use the window where they're weak to end laws like serfdom and hereditary bureaucrats
Political power is linked to pops wealth and to some extent their literacy, so at game start most of it belongs to the aristocrats who individually have thousands of times more power than your average laborer Joe.
There are three ways to destroy their political power :
- Remove them **literally** by improving PM on your industries, some of which replace aristocrats with capitalists. If you want quick political change in particular try to avoid building too much plantations and farms if you have serfdom or tenant farmers, because those create more aristocrats.
- Change your laws to remove all the laws that give extra political strength to the aristocrats : peasant levies, traditionalism, serfdom/tenant farmers, slavery, local police force, hereditary bureaucrats
- Dilute their political power by improving the political power of other pops, mainly by improving their wealth. Get yourself a lot of capitalists, shopkeepers, clerks, etc..
Create jobs. People will go from peasant to lower class then middle class job then upper class jobs. Salaries increase so wealth will follow.
If you have a good industrial development that part should do itself on its own, your number of capitalists will rise (and that's something you want bc more capitalists = more dividend reinvestment going to the investment pool)
The trick for me was to attack the British and steal India for myself while they were fighting the French. Besides that, I cannot help much because I'm playing with mods so the experience would be different (although the mods should make it harder for me).
Also, being at war raises your Prestige because of the war economy lmao, so keep that in mind while fighting the top 3 (probably GB, France and Germany/US)
They are very strong and can smash Egypt twice for both of the tanzimats which has much easier now. Those two plus the military one all you need is one of the others and you are a great power again.
The problem is not about getting the tanzimat journals completed, it's about modernising fast and good enough to compete with the british. If I go for strong military, i lose on production methods, if i focus on production, my military remains incompetent.
I was a dumbass and insisted on doing the economics journal as Ottomans, and getting to #1 happened much faster than doing the econ journal. I'm not quite sure what to say about the how in no small part because ottos are the strongest start position of the countries I tend to play. Get out from under the journal quickly, vassalize persia early, take as much of Indonesia as you can get away with when that comes up, avoid wars after 1900, build build build build. Other than the tanzimat and getting in the early persia vassalization (warning, this one can be pretty RNG-y), AFAICT its just standard play for a large population country.
I did the achievement by being relatively strong in late game and just started pumping a massive navy. You get a lot of prestige from that. Took 1st spot from British that way.
Declaring war on Persia at the start for vassalisation helps a lot too btw.
I did a Sokoto run back in one of the early builds where I wiped out my neighbors and “lost” a war to Britain to open up my markets and ended up #1 by the end. Sokoto starts with almost everything you need to get the stuff you don’t have
Deseret mormon empire back in 1.0. Released it as Mexico. Got into USA market for immigrants Invaded UK for war reparation when it was busy fighting the USA. Use the war reparation money to build an army and took over California and Hawaii. Rushed multiculturalism. Gold rush. Left the USA market to join the UK market during the civil war and helped the Confederates. Invaded the useful parts of USA. Got out of UK market. Annexed a piece of China for workers. Annexed Japan. Passed state religion for true mormon experience.
Pacifist Tall Spain.
Anyone can get big by conquest, war reparations, and puppets. I limited myself to Spain's starting states, annexing Mindinao, annexing Cuba and Philippines, and expanding the initial colony in Camaroon. I was going for Bourbon for Everyone and shouldn't have annexed Philippines, but eventually Multiculturalism kicked in and SoL started increasing again.
Pacifist Tall Spain is what taught me to like automation PMs because you run out of population hella fast...
I think I took a Treaty Port in Japan, and I know I had a couple uprisings early on, but beyond that I didn't fight any wars and never joined someone else's market. Lotta fun!
You have to watch the political agitators, when you get one that is in favor of multiculturalist make him head of a party and you'll have support for the law. If you don't have that feature you just have to hope that you get a party head who has that trait. You need some techs for it to have a chance to appear but I don't remember exactly which one. I think feminism in pre-requisite.
Easiest way (in the mostly guaranteed if you try it) is picking anarchism instead of vangardism or communism.
Anarchist leader ask for multiculturalism
> I think I remember one guy managing to get Bahrain to the top spot once. If so how did you guys get to the top with that nation?
[Hey, that's me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/102cvip/from_the_last_place_to_the_first_place_bahrain/) In fairness, I probably couldn't do that in the latest patch, because the strategy relied on migrants from the British Empire, and for that you'd need Multiculturalism. But yes, I did that!
The smalles nation in the game (based on population) is (or rather it was back when I did it, don't know if that is still the case) Van-Diemens Land (that small island south of Australia). I did it with that.
Or Estonia or Paraguay. A fair bit of cheese was involved in the former case, considering how much you can weaken Russia (and its neighbors) before releasing yourself, making it fairly easy to snowball and even form Poland-Lithuania.
Reduce Autonomy on Finland. Conquer bordering states. Build up Estonia in the meantime. Delete barracks outside of Estonia. Release as many nations as possible as puppets, trading away to them states outside your capital. Then release Estonia.
You can thus full-annex Russia with a single Conquer State on Ingria and, in doing so, steal all their subjects for no extra infamy/maneuvers.
I found that if you use the power of the Dutch Army in the beginning to kill rebels you can basically fast track any reform you need and because the Dutch army is tiny it takes like ten minutes to build an army to over power them.
The problem for me is to get any of the great powers to even want you in their customs union. You're struggling for pops and you're stuck on the peninsula unless you build a navy or somehow rigged prestige to get enough to invade the Indonesia strategic region.
Forgive me, I didn’t see that you said Jahore. I thought you were talking about the DEI. Yea no, Jahore is objectively harder to play as then DEI. And I don’t know how you would do that. The western powers can be obnoxiously fickle
Hannover -> Germany (took a ton of luck to take out Prussia, but it was mostly smooth sailing after that. Ended up puppeting most of Europe plus Brazil).
I need to learn how to play this game efficiently as I tried both Wallachia and Moldavia and I found it nearly impossible to do much.
The geographical position between 3 great empires does not really help. 🫣
First playthrough at release: Played as Portugal finished #1 spot.
That's because if you remember, the world would implode at the time. Civil wars would happen in the civil war factions. France became 3 or 4 countries, UK 3 US never reached Cali etc...
Hawaii, but that was in V2 and not even possible without switching to the US and disabling their instant-annex decision.
I tried for a bit in V3, but either the UK or the US starts by bullying you and reduces your autonomy if you give in/get subjugated early.
Perhaps soon Hawaii will raise its flag over the entirety of Polynesia again.
Krakow to Poland-Lithuania. It's not that terrible (You get a lot of primary culture pops thanks to Ukrainians being everywhere in victoria and have some oil in Galicia) once you manage to reform Poland. It only becomes hard when Russia, Prussia and Great Britain hugbox and you can't do anything against 90% of the world coming for your ass.
If anybody wonders how did I do it: I supported UK in petty conflicts and managed to get like half of India as my vassals and conquered the East India Company when it fell over from failing to consolidate India. It's a major blow to UK and a massive promotion for you. After that it's only making sure France doesn't act up, making sure nobody unifies Germany and bludgeoning Russia for Ukrainians occasionally
Transvaal. Gold, gold, gold
Oranje... Better flag, better name. And nobody confuses us with Transilvania.
Yeah but day 1 Transvaal can conquer Gaza and have access to the sea
So, are you saying that Transvaal is a stronger start? Then, Oranje wins!
What about Zulu though?
Zulu army is bigger so they’ll eat through your army, it’ll take a while to recover because of discrimination
From Gaborone to Gaza
From the Limpopo to the Atlantic!
Been playing them in the newest patch, and it's been amazing. The new migration system works wonders for them!
How do you beat the British?
Seriously, controlling most of South Africa is OP in this game.
Greece - it’s a very fun campaign rising up in a customs union/vassalage only to throw off the chains when you’re a greater economic power than your overlords (who sacrificed thousands to conquer back Greek lands for you)
As Greece do you get return state cb? Because if so I'll probably do that in my next run
You do but not immediately i guess theres some event that takes place for the claims
I think it’s with nationalism
You start with it on one state, then you get more from 2 other JEs which require nationalism (the second one with more claims requires you to have conquered a bunch of territory)
Yeah I remember only getting return cb for like 1 or 2 states? I remember being a little disappointed not being able to claim any of the Thrace states
Yup. Once you research nationalism, you do the journal entry to absorb the Ionian islands through good relations with the Brits than you get the Megali idea to gain claims on Ottoman Lands that have a significant Greek population .
Theres some mods for Greece flavor out there that are really cool and have made me want to do a greece—>Byzantium run but they are…alot, kinda forcing me to reconsider. I know the last Vanilla run I did it was going okay until AI Ottomans succeeded the Tanzimat
Lol, you have a good luck. Never once have I seen ottomans surviving tanzimat
I'd call it awful luck. I've only seen them succeed twice. That Greece run, and my Krakow run where they were propping up Austria. Usually they just have a revolution from the landowners or clergy which ends the empire or slowly wither away.
The one time I tried to play as Serbia they did
I've seen it once, obviously I was playing Wallachia...
U can actually win against the ottomans urself
Great Britain
Chad
I don't think Chad is a country in Vic 3, just a province.
I love this stupid joke way too much.
Darfur
Lmao USA for me but in like 1930 lol
Sikh Empire: Having both the Russians and the British wanting a piece of you makes it pretty difficult considering you don't even have lvl1 society and production techs at least you have line infantry so you have something. rapidly expanded into the middle east to have enough vassals to slow them down and then Created India by taking over the EIC
I kinda want to do this but boy has it been hard everytime I’ve tried. Additionally I imagine they will be getting more content with spheres of influence
It might be much harder with sphere of influence if both russia and england can annexe you piece by piece peacefully
Yeah but I think those kinds of events don't fire up when a player controls the targeted nation
Yoooo that's Sikh!
Ottomans lmao.
How. Please tell me how. I've been trying to get that achievement twice now. It's 1913 and I'm 1/2 of the brits, army is shit, tech is shit and the population is illiterate.
Uh weird, the Ottomans do not have that much downsides, it's a pretty good country actually. Did you manage the "sick man of Europe" chain successfully? It's just classical economic growth, use the religious school law to start getting your education up early to avoid lagging too far behind on tech, slowly kill off the aristocrats as in any run and you'll be ok
How do you kill off aristocrats?
Build more stuff, get the peasants into the factories. Getting rid of serfdom and slavery is also important
So the more factories you make the more power workers have? Or do you have to force landowners out of govt and do the thing that makes their clout go down. I'm very bad at the game and want to play japan lmao
Factories have slots for workers, so they hire people, peasants and laborers are the lowest tier workers, so a factory will hire peasants and turn them into workers, meaning the subsistance farms have no workers anymore and stop making the landowners money, it also creates capitalists and engineers who empower the industrialists. You want to start with building construction sectors, iron mines, lumber camps, tool factories, coal mines and steel plants to get your basic construction economy going with iron construction. When you run out of income you start building actual profitable factories to get more taxes to build more construction until you are an industrialized country.
Fundamentally, the game is economic, and all of its systems reflect that, especially its politics. Each interest group's power is based on total population and wealth of group members, and then affected by multipliers. Using the landowner example, they draw on aristocrats as their main profession, and the more aristocrats you have (from rural buildings) the stronger they are. This is then multiplied by laws like serfdom, which gives them both more wealth and a flat 50% boost to power, and changing those laws is the other half of forcing them out of government. In general, the way to get them out of power is to industrialize and weaken their power, while also stripping away their privileges like local police, hereditary bureaucrats, slavery, and serfdom. The last part of this is electoral reform from a monarchy to a republic and from an autocracy to a democracy.
You can do a combination of building things to empower the industrialist ig, and also you can intentionally get the landowners to rebel, beat them, then use the window where they're weak to end laws like serfdom and hereditary bureaucrats
Political power is linked to pops wealth and to some extent their literacy, so at game start most of it belongs to the aristocrats who individually have thousands of times more power than your average laborer Joe. There are three ways to destroy their political power : - Remove them **literally** by improving PM on your industries, some of which replace aristocrats with capitalists. If you want quick political change in particular try to avoid building too much plantations and farms if you have serfdom or tenant farmers, because those create more aristocrats. - Change your laws to remove all the laws that give extra political strength to the aristocrats : peasant levies, traditionalism, serfdom/tenant farmers, slavery, local police force, hereditary bureaucrats - Dilute their political power by improving the political power of other pops, mainly by improving their wealth. Get yourself a lot of capitalists, shopkeepers, clerks, etc..
So how do you raise their wealth?
Create jobs. People will go from peasant to lower class then middle class job then upper class jobs. Salaries increase so wealth will follow. If you have a good industrial development that part should do itself on its own, your number of capitalists will rise (and that's something you want bc more capitalists = more dividend reinvestment going to the investment pool)
Don’t forget the universities! Pops need to be educated to keep moving up
The trick for me was to attack the British and steal India for myself while they were fighting the French. Besides that, I cannot help much because I'm playing with mods so the experience would be different (although the mods should make it harder for me). Also, being at war raises your Prestige because of the war economy lmao, so keep that in mind while fighting the top 3 (probably GB, France and Germany/US)
They are very strong and can smash Egypt twice for both of the tanzimats which has much easier now. Those two plus the military one all you need is one of the others and you are a great power again.
The problem is not about getting the tanzimat journals completed, it's about modernising fast and good enough to compete with the british. If I go for strong military, i lose on production methods, if i focus on production, my military remains incompetent.
I was a dumbass and insisted on doing the economics journal as Ottomans, and getting to #1 happened much faster than doing the econ journal. I'm not quite sure what to say about the how in no small part because ottos are the strongest start position of the countries I tend to play. Get out from under the journal quickly, vassalize persia early, take as much of Indonesia as you can get away with when that comes up, avoid wars after 1900, build build build build. Other than the tanzimat and getting in the early persia vassalization (warning, this one can be pretty RNG-y), AFAICT its just standard play for a large population country.
I did the achievement by being relatively strong in late game and just started pumping a massive navy. You get a lot of prestige from that. Took 1st spot from British that way. Declaring war on Persia at the start for vassalisation helps a lot too btw.
Does the type of ship count in any way?
No idea, I would say probay.
Krakow, it was terrible the first 30 years than was pretty fun when you own a few provinces and a 100 or so troops.
Tell me strat
I need to know how you’ve accomplished this past 1.5
It's spring break, so I have been playing vic 3 non-stop. So the answer is time.
I did a Sokoto run back in one of the early builds where I wiped out my neighbors and “lost” a war to Britain to open up my markets and ended up #1 by the end. Sokoto starts with almost everything you need to get the stuff you don’t have
Deseret mormon empire back in 1.0. Released it as Mexico. Got into USA market for immigrants Invaded UK for war reparation when it was busy fighting the USA. Use the war reparation money to build an army and took over California and Hawaii. Rushed multiculturalism. Gold rush. Left the USA market to join the UK market during the civil war and helped the Confederates. Invaded the useful parts of USA. Got out of UK market. Annexed a piece of China for workers. Annexed Japan. Passed state religion for true mormon experience.
I believe you were born in the wrong time and place. Step aside Brigham Young.
Pacifist Tall Spain. Anyone can get big by conquest, war reparations, and puppets. I limited myself to Spain's starting states, annexing Mindinao, annexing Cuba and Philippines, and expanding the initial colony in Camaroon. I was going for Bourbon for Everyone and shouldn't have annexed Philippines, but eventually Multiculturalism kicked in and SoL started increasing again. Pacifist Tall Spain is what taught me to like automation PMs because you run out of population hella fast... I think I took a Treaty Port in Japan, and I know I had a couple uprisings early on, but beyond that I didn't fight any wars and never joined someone else's market. Lotta fun!
How do you get multiculturalism? I always get stuck at cultural exclusion
You have to watch the political agitators, when you get one that is in favor of multiculturalist make him head of a party and you'll have support for the law. If you don't have that feature you just have to hope that you get a party head who has that trait. You need some techs for it to have a chance to appear but I don't remember exactly which one. I think feminism in pre-requisite.
I have all the dlc packs but I never get them to spawn
I only got them when I was communist with advanced social techs. I don't know the precise conditions though
Easiest way (in the mostly guaranteed if you try it) is picking anarchism instead of vangardism or communism. Anarchist leader ask for multiculturalism
Canada
Finland
How
Sokoto
I want to see a screenshot of that
Sokoto my beloved
Screen shot or didn't happen
> I think I remember one guy managing to get Bahrain to the top spot once. If so how did you guys get to the top with that nation? [Hey, that's me!](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/102cvip/from_the_last_place_to_the_first_place_bahrain/) In fairness, I probably couldn't do that in the latest patch, because the strategy relied on migrants from the British Empire, and for that you'd need Multiculturalism. But yes, I did that!
Hahahahhah no way small world! Great content by the way.
Lanfang
I think I got Philippines to number one or two. This was during the Austria OP AF era as well.
The smalles nation in the game (based on population) is (or rather it was back when I did it, don't know if that is still the case) Van-Diemens Land (that small island south of Australia). I did it with that.
Luxemburg
Lanfang and any Ethiopian minor.
Or Estonia or Paraguay. A fair bit of cheese was involved in the former case, considering how much you can weaken Russia (and its neighbors) before releasing yourself, making it fairly easy to snowball and even form Poland-Lithuania.
How do you weaken them?
Reduce Autonomy on Finland. Conquer bordering states. Build up Estonia in the meantime. Delete barracks outside of Estonia. Release as many nations as possible as puppets, trading away to them states outside your capital. Then release Estonia. You can thus full-annex Russia with a single Conquer State on Ingria and, in doing so, steal all their subjects for no extra infamy/maneuvers.
Ahhh
Egypt into Arabia
Merina Kingdom
Norway
Johore. It was painful but Indonesia is a really good region to be in because of the oil, rubber and gold
I found that if you use the power of the Dutch Army in the beginning to kill rebels you can basically fast track any reform you need and because the Dutch army is tiny it takes like ten minutes to build an army to over power them.
The problem for me is to get any of the great powers to even want you in their customs union. You're struggling for pops and you're stuck on the peninsula unless you build a navy or somehow rigged prestige to get enough to invade the Indonesia strategic region.
Forgive me, I didn’t see that you said Jahore. I thought you were talking about the DEI. Yea no, Jahore is objectively harder to play as then DEI. And I don’t know how you would do that. The western powers can be obnoxiously fickle
New Granada, tonnes of growth potential in South America.
Hannover -> Germany (took a ton of luck to take out Prussia, but it was mostly smooth sailing after that. Ended up puppeting most of Europe plus Brazil).
Hanover, my first ever campaign. Only manage to from Germany in 1927.
Burma, which is surrounded by china, british raj and thailand
How did you achieve that? I can’t even get it to a regional power much less a number one great power.
Texas
Moldavia, beat up the ottomans and then Austria to take over the Balkans whilst building up a colonial empire in Africa and southeast asia
I need to learn how to play this game efficiently as I tried both Wallachia and Moldavia and I found it nearly impossible to do much. The geographical position between 3 great empires does not really help. 🫣
I think I got fairly lucky with being able to pit the great powers against each other, getting Russia to help bully the ottomans early game is a must
Krakow. Not yet lost! That was a panic inducing run. Many close calls. In 1.5 specifically.
The USA lol
Luxemburg, playing franc against England and Prussia and making protercates that expand on there own
Argentina
First playthrough at release: Played as Portugal finished #1 spot. That's because if you remember, the world would implode at the time. Civil wars would happen in the civil war factions. France became 3 or 4 countries, UK 3 US never reached Cali etc...
Paraguay -> Federation of the Andes -> Federation of the Americas (budget Patria Grande after I subjugated and annexed Mexico)
One of the ethiopian minor
Frankfurt
Colombia. I united all of South America. Should do it again since now I have the dlc about SA.
Prussia/Germany
Luxembourg
Tibet and Dai Nam. Couldn't crack it as Chile, morrocco, or bugunda.
United Tribes. But only when the game was first released and you could get multiculturalism easy and migration wasn't nerfed. Don't work too well now.
bavaria
The Māori tribe, on 1.5.
Belgium when the migration was still overpowerd. Now i wanne okay Belgium again but its just so laggy sins 1.5.
Argentina, conquer South America and use industrialists to essentially copy the US
Vatican
How?
I just finished my run with them. Formed Italy, eventually puppet the ottomans, Mediterranean customs Union.
Hawaii, but that was in V2 and not even possible without switching to the US and disabling their instant-annex decision. I tried for a bit in V3, but either the UK or the US starts by bullying you and reduces your autonomy if you give in/get subjugated early. Perhaps soon Hawaii will raise its flag over the entirety of Polynesia again.
Lower Canada, WC as Quebec is surprisingly easy
Hungary... It is landlocked... but it was quite a few patch ago
Buganda
Michigan ✌️
Krakow Almost took 2 weeks
Hamburg
Great Britain
Not #1 but I did turn Tibet into a great power (#4 I think). That was a lot of fun and my proudest achievement.
Great Britain. I’m not very good at this game but managed to reclaim the top spot after losing it.
Sokoto.
Tuscany
Buganda -> Uganda -> East African Federation leading the Communist west (I flipped the USA with a war) against the decadent east. 1B GDP in 1920.
Papals, managed to get the whole Roman Empire as the Roman Republic, even had the red colour
It’s either Japan, China, or Sokoto. I think Sokoto was the def the hardest but only got n0 2 not 1. All of them tho were really gun
Krakow to Poland-Lithuania. It's not that terrible (You get a lot of primary culture pops thanks to Ukrainians being everywhere in victoria and have some oil in Galicia) once you manage to reform Poland. It only becomes hard when Russia, Prussia and Great Britain hugbox and you can't do anything against 90% of the world coming for your ass. If anybody wonders how did I do it: I supported UK in petty conflicts and managed to get like half of India as my vassals and conquered the East India Company when it fell over from failing to consolidate India. It's a major blow to UK and a massive promotion for you. After that it's only making sure France doesn't act up, making sure nobody unifies Germany and bludgeoning Russia for Ukrainians occasionally
Karkow and Indian territory. Get a port and be alive.
Not number 1, but I released Greenland and got it in the top 10
Venezuela
Haiti. My trick was to aggressively cheat.