If you’re looking to take your starting territories in Europa Universalis 5 and expand your dominion across the globe as you discover new continents and branch out into the world, consider pursuing one of the branches of the Expansion Mission Tree to help get you started with charting new borders.
Whether you’re in the business of embarrassing other countries into submission because they can’t deal with your military might, or you’re trying to claim neighboring territories for your own through war and will stop at nothing to expand, here are some tips for the Expansion Missions in Europa Universalis 5.
Expansion Mission Tree Overview
If your focus in a grand strategy game is to start expanding your country’s borders as soon as possible to try and aim for global dominion, consider using some of the Expansion Mission Tree goals to usher you into different ways to do so. You’ll be declaring Rivals and going to war with them, acquiring new lands and improved Prestige for the efforts if you’re successful.
You’ll have two primary Mission Branches in the Expansion Mission Tree, which are:
- Humiliate a Rival is a fairly simple Mission to complete if you’re playing as a powerful nation to begin with, as it involves you going to war with a Rival a fraction your size and finishing the bloodshed with a Humiliation Peace Treaty that tanks the opposing country’s Prestige.
- Regional Expansion sees you forcefully taking the lands of neighboring countries by way of waging war on them and then agreeing to a Peace Treaty that redraws the borders to annex the territory for your own. It also aids you in the recovery efforts for the region, since the people and buildings within will all have endured some damage during the conflict.
For your efforts, each will reward you with various ways to improve the Prestige of your country and aid in the smooth transition of power as you claim new lands.
How To Complete Humiliate A Rival
The Humiliate a Rival mission is available to any country no matter when you choose to start it, and it can be played through every 20 years after completion. Before you can properly begin the Mission, though, you’ll first need to have a rival you’re able to provoke. The first step of this is covered in the first goal, Diplomatic Play, which tasks you with having a Rival in any other country.
You can choose a Rival in the Diplomacy menu (the dove icon), by clicking the shield and crossed swords icon and choosing a nation. After this, you’ll need to have insulted them sometime in the last ten years. To do this, go back into the Diplomacy menu and click the flag for your Rival’s territory to bring up their info. Under the Hostile Actions menu of the Diplomacy tab, choose Send an Insult to complete the first goal of the Mission.
You’ll incur a five year Casus Belli that gives them a reason to declare war, as well as a 50 point Opinion loss between the countries. Having a Casus Belli could be good for this mission, though, since you’ll need to severely outdo your Rivals in a war before long.
After this, you’ll unlock access to the rest of the Humiliate a Rival Mission Tree and its tasks. While most goals are singular, the Establish a Spy Network goal leads to the secondary goal to Sow Discontent in your Rival, and the Surpass our Foes goal that branches off from Humiliate a Rival in a wartime peace treaty is a final goal, which finishes the Mission outright.
- Humiliate a Rival: During a war with your rival, succeed with the Humiliation Peace Treaty to gain Prestige for your country, and cause the humiliated country to lose a large amount of Prestige. If you’re not already at war, you can always declare one, but try to be sure and have a Casus Belli to justify going to war, even if it’s fabricated.
- Impose an Embargo: If you don’t automatically bypass this task by default with your Diplomatic Play goals, you can choose to Embargo Nation through the Economy branch of the Diplomatic Actions with your Rival.
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Establish a Spy Network: Build a Spy Network of at least 30 in your Rival’s territory, which will allow you to gain secret intel and potentially provided a Casus Belli. The Network grows monthly, but you’ll lose a bit on your Monthly Diplomats Modifier.
- Sow Discontent in Rival: With more than two Diplomats and your Spy Network built, navigate to the Covert Actions tab of the Rival country’s Diplomacy menu and choose to Sow Discontent.
Ultimately, your goal is Surpass our Foes, which will finish the Mission and give you your rewards. To do this, your Rival needs to have less than half your country’s combined strength. After the Humiliate a Rival task is complete, you’ll need to keep an eye on your strength relative to your Rival’s.
Depending on which country you began as, and which nation you declared a Rival, you may technically be able to complete the mission and Surpass your Foes by default. We played as the Ottomanms and declared Cyprus our enemy, and their strength was already a fraction of ours at the beginning of the mission before any wars broke out.
+20 Spy Network against every Rival you surpass in terms of overall strength, not just the one you’ve defeated for the Mission.
+20 Spy Network in your Rival’s territory.
+10 Prestige
How To Complete Regional Expansion
It’s no surprise that other countries aren’t ready to just lay down and let you conquer them, though, which means you’ll need to be ready for war when you opt into the Regional Expansion Mission Tree. The Regional Expansion Mission can be undertaken when your country can declare war on another, and you can opt to repeat it every 15 years to expand your borders.
Your first goal should be to Raise a War Chest, which funds the incoming battles. After this, you’ll need to complete three additional goals before you can head into battle:
- Raise the Army: You can complete this in a number of ways, like having a General in your country, having a Common Militia or Levies ready to go, or by having a higher than expected number of Ships in the Navy or Men in the Army.
- Obtain a Casus Belli: The Casus Belli is your reason for going to war, so either call a Parliament Session from the Government panel for your country, or speak with your Spy Network if you’d like to create a reason of your own to fight your Rivals.
- Raise a Navy: If you’re a coastal country, you’ll need to have Naval Levies or have built Regular Ships in your Military control panel.
Once you have your Casus Belli and an army to support your fighting, you’ll be able to Declare War on another country in the Diplomacy tab for the Rival country in question. After war breaks out, the task cannot be completed for a full year, so prepare for a decent amount of combat.
After you’ve endured a year or more of war with your Rival and raised your War Score enough, you can call a Peace Treaty and conquer some of your Rival’s lands in exchange for ending the war. They’ll hand this new land over, and you’ll begin three new goals before the Mission ends.
- Recover Prosperity: The Raise a War Chest goal also needs to be completed, and you’ll need to raise the Prosperity of the region you conquered above a zero.
- Fortify the Border: Reach For Level Two for the new region to replace anything your war may have destroyed – they’re your people to protect now, after all.
- Integrate our Conquest: Finally, the game will ask you to endure a few events in this new area for two years’ time, as the people and the region settle back into a peaceful life.
10% more Pop Satisfaction in the conquered region.
20% Fort Defense for the conquered region.
10% improvement to Speed of Integration for three years after completion.
