I picked up EU4 for the first time in a while a couple of weeks ago and have since got stuck in with the Aztecs. I've played a lot of the Aztec mission tree before during my world conquest as Ryukyu, but I actually think that as the Aztecs themselves you have more hurdles to overcome for any kind of world conquest — namely, a long stretch where you're supposedly doing nothing but waiting for the Europeans. Except that isn't actually true.

In the game I was up late playing last night, I completed the conquest portion of the Aztec mission tree by **1456**, getting a 6/6/6 ruler who lived to 65. I also annexed a huge number of one-province minors in North America, which gave my American Frontiers decision a huge boost. I annexed all the OPMs down the coast of Central America toward Brazil, and with American Frontiers I secured a border with Portugal's very first Brazilian colony — letting me reform off them without dumping a load of monarch points into deving a province.

## Flipping to Animist

This run I converted to Animist after my initial wars. As Animist you get a lot more gold, but you lose the Nahuatl morale and discipline bonuses. I found it was better to ally everyone I could and fight three massive mega-wars, fully annexing about seven Mesoamerican tags and vassalizing Zapotec — giving me claims on all the Mayan plains and conquering basically everything in the Nahuatl area apart from my allies.

## Rushing Admin

The core of the run was getting Admin ideas as soon as possible, so I focused everything on admin points and hit admin tech 5 in the early 1480s. After flipping to Animist, I completed the mission that gives you the really cheap admin advisor, and the Animist gold let me promote him to rank 5. Combined with my ruler and power projection, I was getting ~18 admin points a month.

I was very stingy with admin points — I basically cored nothing apart from a couple of provinces. I did temporarily hold a bunch of uncored provinces though, because you need 150 development to unlock the generic mercenary companies, and without them manpower becomes your biggest bottleneck.

## The Early Wars

Winning the early wars is challenging, but it's probably the most enjoyable part of the run — you really do have to go balls to the wall while balancing that against getting wiped.

- I went over my diplomatic relations limit to grab every ally I could, and pulled them into as many wars as possible so I always outnumbered my opponents.
- Intensive micro to make sure *I* was the one controlling and popping every siege.
- I didn't peace out my first war until I'd called my allies into every war I could, because once you break trust by not handing over provinces, they won't join any more wars for territory. I think I'd declared **four wars** before peacing out the first one.

## Breaking the Mayan Coalition

Once I'd annexed every Nahuatl tag except my allies, I had claims on all the Mayans — who were massively outraged by my aggressive expansion. That doesn't matter if you declare on them faster than the coalition can form.

Kiche was the first to join a coalition against me, but they were allied to Cocomes, who hadn't joined yet. The day Kiche coalitioned me, I declared on Cocomes, pulling them and the tag next to them into a normal war. Over the next month, two more nations joined the coalition, but again I declared on *their* allies to pull them into regular wars. A third separate declaration on the Mayans was enough to stop the coalition forming entirely, because the remaining viable members realized they couldn't beat my combined forces — I'd taken several large loans and hired every available mercenary company, getting up to something like 35,000 troops.

## Out-Sieging the Mayans

The thing about the Mayans is that with your morale bonus and mission bonuses, you out-fight them pound for pound quite easily — and they know it, so they don't take fights. They just sit there waiting for an opportunity, which means a decent 10k infantry stack on a siege can work uninterrupted while they watch.

I was sieging three capitals at a time before they could build forts. By then I had enough army tradition (plus a few spent mil points) to get a decent siege general, and I simply out-sieged them — before declaring, alongside hiring the mercs, I'd also released five vassals. When the Mayans finally stopped watching and went to siege my lands, I was much faster than they were: they'd taken maybe one or two of my forts by the time I was at ~100% in all three wars. I then declared on the last few who hadn't joined the coalition and fully peaced everyone out in late 1454.

Then I had a brainfart — I hadn't realized there was still one tribe left in the Mesoamerica region I hadn't dealt with, so I had to no-CB and annex them in 1456.

## Total War in North America

While I was sieging down Chichimeca, I fabricated a claim on Yokuts, the other nearby North American tribe. They're the only one of the free North American tribes starting inside your fog of war that has vision of the rest of North America. Declaring on them, fully annexing them, and releasing them as a vassal is the only way to get them to like you enough to share map knowledge. Using their maps, I got vision of all the North American tribes and declared a massive mega-war against about **thirty of them**, with a combined troop count of just under 200,000.

That's obviously way more than me, but like the Mayans, they don't take fights. I think the way the AI calculates strength doesn't account for allies very well — each individual stack isn't brave enough to be the first to attack, because it thinks it'll lose, without considering the dozen other armies standing right next to it.

So I basically relied on them being too chicken to win. I ran three stacks of about 6,000–10,000 mercs (my own manpower was starting to run dry, so I had to be careful, especially with attrition in the north). I'd siege a tribe down, peace them out individually by annexing the migratory tribes, and move on to the next one. They'd inevitably occupy the province I'd just left, but it had already flipped ownership to me, so I didn't care.

I'd assumed they couldn't reach me down in Mexico — I thought they didn't have vision — but apparently they either do or they cheat, because they sieged up a lot of my land. I had a stack of about 3,000 plus a bunch of vassal troops sitting on my capital (~12,000 total), and none of them dared approach despite there being about 50,000 of them combined. I let my war exhaustion creep to about 16, and over 5–10 years I gradually annexed around 20 of them to end the war. For the last one I just released a tag and gave the war leader some gold — that's enough war score to make them happy, and it didn't really affect me.

Before peacing out, I'd hit admin tech 5 in the 1470s and started exploring South America with a small 6,000 stack, annexing five tribes down there until my overextension was just under 100. At that point I needed to end the wars — I didn't want to sit above 100 overextension for long, and I had a decent number of footholds for American Frontiers.

## American Frontiers and the Reform

I peaced out both wars, then waited until I had **150 reform progress banked — enough for two uses of the American Frontiers decision**. You only accumulate this progress as Animist, which is a large part of why I flipped: stay Nahuatl and you accumulate nothing, and just have to wait for the Europeans.

I then took Cholula back from my vassal, which flipped me back to Nahuatl, and clicked the decision for the first time. This popped an American Frontiers colony right next to the very first Portuguese colony in Brazil. Eight years later, when all the colonies completed, I could reform my religion.

I did make my first real mistake of the run just before this: when I flipped back to Nahuatl, I forgot I didn't have my reforms yet, so I was accumulating something like 150 doom per year. Really annoying, because Zapotec — my biggest vassal, being annexed — was at about 97% progress. Holding them long enough to finish annexing would have pushed me to 100 doom, so I reluctantly released them.

The reforms themselves went really quickly because I had loads of tags to release, demand sacrifices from, and release again — it just cost me a bit of stability. Once all my colonies completed, I clicked American Frontiers again and reformed my religion, at which point I got Portuguese tech: mil 6, admin and diplo 5, plus both the Renaissance and Feudalism institutions from them.

## Where the Run Stands

At this point I own about half of the Americas — probably a bit less, since I haven't gone down to the Inti nations yet. I've found where Spain is colonizing: three colonies running in the Caribbean that I'll contest them for. I assume they'll drop a couple more in South America, but with American Frontiers I'll outpace them and eventually kick them out. I'll probably do an Aztec invasion of Europe if I don't get bored.

I've seen threads where people get all five reforms by 1461 or the mid-1460s. Last night I managed it by **December 1459**, so I thought I'd share the techniques that made it possible. No exploits, no converting to Animist — just playing it straight at a breakneck pace. This isn't meant to be an in-depth guide, more a quick summary of the run with the tips that mattered.

## Opening Moves

- Take the opening missions to improve Mexico, and attack the nation directly east of Aztec.
- Ally as many people as possible before declaring. This run I had five fellow Nahuatl nations plus one Mayan to the east.
- Choose your first war declaration strategically to pull in as many allies as possible with promised land.

## Fighting the Wars

- With intensive micro, you can control all the sieges yourself so *you* occupy everything. Stack-wiping in the first engagement is very doable.
- I run one big stack that goes around stack wiping, and leave a single regiment on each fort with "allow attach" toggled on so the AI helps siege it down.
- If there's a wall breach, always force assault — it's mostly not your own manpower you're burning, and it speeds things up.

## Chaining Wars Before Peacing Out

This is the big one. Once you peace out your first war without giving allies enough land (you won't), **no ally will join a war for promised territory for ~30 years**. So declare as many wars as possible *before* peacing out the first one.

- Scout your next targets before you even declare war #1.
- Wait until war #1 is clearly won (but not at 100%) before declaring the next — you don't want to be overwhelmed, but you also don't want call-for-peace penalties from dragging it out.
- Peacing out individual nations doesn't trigger the ally trust/favor loss — only peacing out the whole war does. I fully annexed the nation bordering the Mayans, then declared on the Mayans while war #1 was still running.
- In this run I got three wars going, dragging in all six allies.

## Annex → Release, Don't Force-Vassalize

I always fully annex and then release as vassals, for two reasons:

1. **Lower liberty desire**, which makes it easier to keep vassals through a reform.

## Sell Provinces Before Releasing

Before releasing a vassal, sell some of their provinces to nearby AI nations:

1. It's a lot of gold — funds mercenaries when manpower runs dry, plus free advisors.
2. Smaller vassals have less liberty desire. Five one-province minors are much easier to keep around for a couple of reforms.

You can't keep them for all five reforms though — the liberty desire from reforms stacks, and even with prestige and developing their provinces I haven't found a reliable way to keep it down.

## Managing Doom and Liberty Desire

- Balancing doom is a bit of an art — easy to keep low pre-first-reform when you're small, harder as you grow. Take any events that lower it.
- If a vassal is sitting at ~30% liberty desire, **demand sacrifices**. After the next reform they'll be too high to keep anyway (~70%), so you might as well push them toward 50 and milk the doom reduction.
- Improving opinion only buys you a few points of liberty desire — not worth much.
- Release vassals in stages. Demanding sacrifices raises liberty desire on *all* subjects, so release one, sacrifice a few times, then release the next. Don't release all five and then start sacrificing.

## Next Idea: Going North Early

I'm tempted to give this another go, because I think I've found another way to speed things up (might make a follow-up post if it makes a big difference). The plan:

- Annex and release the primitive nation up near California, buy maps of the Mississippi region, and no-CB war the natives up there.
- With a decent-sized Aztec empire these should be easy wars, and they'd provide loads of extra tags to release, farm doom off, and power through the reforms with.
- It also gives much earlier access to the north of the continent — with a few uncored provinces up there, a few clicks of American Frontiers basically grabs all of North America within 20–30 years.

In the run above I'd hoped to do the same thing with the South American natives, but the southern native in range doesn't have vision of the south of the map, so that's basically impossible until you get Exploration ideas. If I own North America instead, I can leave a spot open for England and reform off them.

## Closing Thoughts

I was also rushing the mission tree this run — I probably could have gotten the five reforms even faster if I hadn't cared about unifying Mesoamerica (I wanted American Frontiers quickly).