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[Sheb]

I find playing Japan is a great start. I'd suggest you try to take Kai soon, it's the only gold province around, and having it will put you at a huge income advantage compared to the other clans. Then just invade as fast as you can core and you'll own Japan in no time.

[Chaoswizkid]

You will also have no allies since your AE will be quite high. Then again your only enemies in that case should be Korea and Ming.

The Catholic incursion in Japan is actually relatively easily solved if you want to focus on it. When you get the "Western Trade" event and modifier, you lose missionary chance and gain a very small tech bonus. The missionary hit is a huge problem because you're going to be screwed by lack of religious unity if you're capturing provinces on the mainland. After a while, two different events may fire periodically: a province is auto-turned to Catholicism, or a province is auto-turned from Catholicism into Shinto and it spawns a giant mob.

The solution is to raise your stability to 2 and gain 200 points of ADM, DIP and MIL, then choose the national event that ends the Western Trade modifier. You can also choose another national event that gives you +5% stability cost but +1% missionary chance if you want that bonus to converting provinces when you end Western Trade, so you'll want to do those as quickly as possible if you want to stay Shinto. Also, the event where provinces are auto-converted from Catholicism into Shinto and spawn rebels continue to fire after this, which aids in establishing religious unity as fast as possible.

After all of that happens, you should have enough bonuses to missionary chance that you'll be able to convert provinces without religious ideas rather quickly (or as quickly as I've ever seen it, ~19 months for low-tax provinces).

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I don't see why you'd ever want to stay Shinto apart from RP reasons. Catholic is so much better, will likely make westernisation easier and allow conversation to the very powerful protestantism.

[Chaoswizkid]

Staying Shinto is the easiest way to maintain religious unity, for one, and you can't convert from Shinto unless you fall to rebels, which could take forever, even if you aid them. If you manage to own Korea, Manchu and the northern half of Ming like I do, shutting down your country to fall to Catholic rebels is not a wise move.

[BFEL]

Yup as a1s edited my post to make it clearer just punch it into the console. If you don't know how to open the console you have to push the grave accent key (`). It is not tilde (~) like a lot of other games.
If you have a foreign keyboard it might lack the key and you'll have to go hunting on google on how to perform it.

I know how to open the console, its the first thing I did XD
And for my it IS tilde, oddly enough.

What I'm confused about is that you said its possible to get your powerpoints above max with cheats but I've BEEN cheating. HARD. I constantly have max powerpoints, but it never goes over. Is that because I'm just using the cheat [powerpoints]? Does it work differently if I use the dip/adm/mil version and specify amount? I would really like to see the rest of the tech tree (and unleash its full fury upon those silly backwards other nations) but I can't go above tech level 5 or so until a certain year is reached and frankly....that's retarded.

Also I can confirm that Japan is badass. Granted I HAVE been cheating, but everyone talks about Prussian ideas being OP because of +20 discipline, and Japan gets that BY DEFAULT. The plus twenty discipline I mean, not Prussian ideas that would be weird.

Addendum: In my quest for hilariously OP cheating I had briefly considered modding in a ridonkeylous country with stuff like -2000% tech cost as its base idea, but I can't figure out what to do to get it as a starting country on the map. The guide on the wiki was fairly decent and most of the stuff was obvious already but all the guide said about actually getting it in the game was "conditions for forming it" which I want to be "is formed and selectable right off the bat"

[Chaoswizkid]

Don't know anything about modding, but from that description it sounds like it isn't possible to have it start. You could just make the conditions to form that it has to be a specific country you want it to be at and then start the game and immediately form the country. If you only want it with certain provinces from different countries... then add events to each country. One of them will form the country with the given provinces (like releasing a vassal but they aren't a vassal), then save, load and play as the other countries and use their events to give provinces to the new country (with the condition being that it exists). Do that and then when you save and load for the last time you should have your country with all the provinces you care about. People will also hate you since you'll have all of their cores, but you might also be able to revoke the cores as part of the events, if you care to do that.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

snip

I will try to answer your question with an image I (poorly) made.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Jelle]

I thought I was cheating by murdering my ruler, that takes it to a whole new level. 
I do like a bit of modding however, and I wouldn't mind tinkering with this game. If anyone has the knowhow, beyond entering console commands, do share!

Also diplomacy sure is a lot more interesting in westen europe then what I'm used to from my previous games, where I mostly ignored diplomatic relations to the point of shunning alliances. After taking a huge agressive expansion hit and being targeted by a coalition, and ultimately a war, from a large amount western nations, I realized I have to adapt to this diplomatic climate!

So went back in time a bit to rectify the situation. I think I'm in a decent spot now, but I'm still pretty clueless on how to proceed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Where to start. The entire HRE is pretty confusing, having such a large amount of nations, some friendly, some neutral, some hostile towards me. Most notable being Austria, who is current emperor and hates my gut. I'm not a member myself, but most of my eastern neighbors are. No clue on how to asses my diplomatic relation here, all I know is if I enter a war with a member I'm apparently fighting the entire empire.
Both England and France have decided to make me a rival, not much to do about that. Hope it'll be the friendly kind of rivalry. Castile was cordial to me, so I struck an alliance and diplomatic marriage with them. Then out of nowhere Hungary wants to be my ally to. I figure they are a good ally against France and Austria respectively, if they try anything.

So what's your take on this diplomatic situation. Any advice on how to proceed?

[Sheb]

I played Holland recently. I'd advise to get inside the HRE if possible (you'll need to improve relations with Austria) and avoid coalition wars.

You'll want to take down France and Britain sooner or later. Don't touch France until a bunch of coalition kicked their asses. For Britain, get more ships than they do, then attack some minor nation allied to them. Careful use of naval superiority will let you take parts of their realm and split their troops, then have them release everything you can make them release to weaken them.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Flanders will likely have troubles playing imperial politics since it's not the correct culture (German) and will have to join the empire manually which takes a lot of sucking up to the emperor. Joining the empire can net you with decent protection and since France and England might want to nom on you a bit so you will need some form of big player protection. Unless you can secure a good relationship and alliance with someone who can fight France in a land battle you might have to seriously consider joining the empire, if you're not too large already.

It's likely you won't be able to expand into Europe in your current state much at all. I would go for a colonial game and perhaps rush through Africa abusing native basking rights and get a nice strangle hold on India and SEA. You could try for the Americas but it would probably be easier to just leech the trade that GB/France makes when it colonises the north. It's a lot easier to lock the other Europeans out of asia than it is the Americas obviously due to the time advantage Castile and Portugal has to secure colonies. Hell, exploration is likely a great first choice since you will likely be avoiding battles as much as possible.
I'm not sure if Flanders can get the Dutch union events so forming the Netherlands might be a great deal harder.

While you can beat France in a land war and England in a sea war I tend to avoid it since it takes such absurd resources unless you can find a really lucky time to attack. Neutrality and patience seems to be the key to playing the low countries and remember that you can always come back and claim what's rightfully your's with a bunch of colonial conscripts to throw at fortress walls.

[Dutchling]

Flanders will likely have troubles playing imperial politics since it's not the correct culture (German)

Actually, in vanilla EU4 Flemish is a Germanic culture.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well I stand corrected. For some reason I thought it was bundled with the French. You still generally have to be a larger nation to gain respect in the HRE although you can game the system with electors and religion switching.
Colonialism is still the smarter play.

[Jelle]

Oh dear what have I done, the entire HRE is in turmoil. Got in a fight with Austria through my alliance with Hungary, and the two of us and another nation in the HRE were up against Austria and its vassals (my pitiful neighbors). Somehow I managed to be the last man standing and just wrecked Austria's army. Now there's war all over the place between members of the empire, and even some picking on Austria from where I left off.
Meanwhile the French and the English at having at it, hopefully leaving me free to gobble up the lesser nations of the HRE to the east.

I'm not sure if Flanders can get the Dutch union events so forming the Netherlands might be a great deal harder.

I can form the Dutch nation yes. But frankly, It'd kind of kill the fun for me nor are the advantages that important, so I think I'll leave it.

Well I stand corrected. For some reason I thought it was bundled with the French. You still generally have to be a larger nation to gain respect in the HRE although you can game the system with electors and religion switching.

Don't know about game mechanically, but historically Flemish culture is mostly Germanic, while Wallonian (wich is an accepted culture in my nation currently) is Latin.
I did look into joining the HRE, but it said something in the lines of "Your nation is to large to join the HRE, the emperor would never allow it.". Egh, screw them anyway, I'll just drag the provinces I take out the empire.

Edit: Also what does the 'same dynasty' diplo modifier mean? My ruler has the same family name as the other nation, wich is probably it. Still, how does it work? Can I 'inject' my dynasty in another nation with marriages?

[Sheb]

Yup, sometime if a rule dies without an heir, a member of your dinasty will raise to the throne if you have a royal marriage.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Poor Poland didn't release that the world wasn't flat and therefore got creative in finding a way to India.
Big image, link here: http://i.imgur.com/hnCZnOP.png

I managed to get Winged Hussars, Poland can into Space, Market Control, Aggressive Expander, This navy can take it all, Master of India and Down Under all in one game. I'm really disappointed I couldn't get Trade Hegemony since it's locked to Western Europeans for some stupid reason. 

I'm rather proud of my colonial empire since I never wasted points on Exploration and therefore was limited to a single colonist and the other powers already took a lot of the good stuff. I couldn't conquer as many natives in SEA as I would have wanted due to a massive issue with coalitions which Russia would always god damn join.