Coring: 20 467

Technologies: 11 379

Ideas: 10 711

Developing: 7183

Stability: 1299

Parliamentary debates: 58

Technologies: 13 934

Developing: 11 181

Integrating subjects: 5908

Ideas: 5112

Peace deals: 4444

Expelling minorities: 920

Leaders: 478

Promoting cultures: 375

Reducing liberty desire: 135

Parliamentary debates: 34

Technologies: 14 091

Developing: 12 383

Ideas: 7228

Leaders: 2361

Strengthening government: 1317

Wall breaches: 859

Harsh treatment: 103

Reducing liberty desire: 72

Attacking natives: 49

Parliamentary debates: 43

Forced march: 41

Assaulting forts: 5

Trade investments: 515 000

Manufactories: 399 605

Workshops: 354 872

Churches: 130 337

Universities: 91 190

Forts: 82 605

Conscription centers: 52 348

Marketplaces: 35 683

Centers of Trade: 30 320

Barracks: 28 926

Grand shipyards: 20 095

Courthouses: 6641

Drydocks: 4400

Furnaces: 3827

I like to take my time playing Europa Universalis, and prefer focusing on my economy rather than constant wars. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot more of the use of ducats and monarch points, and this is the result of that. How I turned this:Into this:The game started as any other English game by conquering Ireland and Scotland, and rounding out the 1400s by forcing France into a PU. 1500 – 1700 was mostly spent colonizing and conquering Africa. In the early 1700s I enforced PUs on Spain and Russia, and got a bonus PU on Circassia. After that I focused on India and China (Mingplosion had already happened).I spent a total of 51 097 ADM points, 42 521 DIP points and 38 387 MIL points throughout the game, excluding points lost in events.The breakdown is as follows:England starts with 333 development in 1444, I had 782 in 1560, 1048 in 1574, and after that it developed like this and ended at 12 336:The integration of France finished in 1650 and Spain was integrated in 1805. In 1805 my subjects had a total development of 8776.Along with conquests and subject integration, I also developed a fair bit myself, in total 30 747 points:Besides the early game I typically teched up as soon as the ahead of time penalty went away. This is where most of my developing happened, while waiting for the penalty to expire.Teching costs and timings looked like this:My tech order was Economic > Exploration > Expansion > Defensive > Humanist > Administrative > Offensive > Quality > Trade. I abandoned the expansion ideas at the end of the 1600s as almost everything had been colonized at that point, and I needed room for the Humanist ideas.Idea timings:In terms of coring it's pretty easy to see that I barely did any conquest at all in the first 100 years, but sped things up towards the end.Said conquest resulted in the follow corruption costs:My average ruler was a bit above average, close to 3/3/3, but I did have some good ones (Frederick I <3).I upgraded to level 5 advisors in the middle of the campaign:The advisors were really cheap at the end thanks to a 30% advisors discount (the Meritocratic Recruitment reform, the Jane Austen event and the fur trade bonus, all giving -10%).In the past I’ve focused much more on the colonization of the Americas, but this campaign I only solidified the Thirteen Colonies and Newfoundland, and then went after Africa and South East Asia.This resulted in Portugal and Spain going hard in the Americas, and I could essentially stop colonizing before the end of the 1600s, which allowed me to drop Expansion ideas. Afterwards I conquered Portugal and integrated Spain, getting their colonies for free.I didn’t expect to see that buildings cost as much as they do, a total of 1 672 179 ducats, but that’s in part due to trade investments costing 515 000 ducats, which I have not played too much withThe total costs break down like this:The breakdown of each century looks like this:This is how the military expanded over time, mostly to avoid the time penalties of transporting troops from Europe to Asia to Africa.This is how the army distribution shifted over time:And the navy:So what fueled all of this? The income of course:Above 100 income in 1540, above 500 in 1618 and above 1000 in 1662.I see a lot of talk about stability, and how it’s impossible to keep it high. As you can see here I’m keeping at +2 or +3 almost at all time, and all for the low cost of 1299 ADM points. The spikes high spikes in the early 1700s were to recover from -6 stab hits from forcing Spain, and then Russia and Circassia into PUs. And no, I didn’t constantly use the Angelician +stab interaction. In fact I only used it a couple of times, all after the 1700s.This, and my other games, seem to indicate that being at high stability will promote high stability.It will of course cost you more ADM, and you’ll be stuck at 0 or +1 if you like to stay above 100% OE in the late game, due to high OE events.And while we're at it, prestige is also often talked about, most big hits are due to placating subjects and disinheriting heirs:The end of the campaign looks like this, including all the colonies, PUs over Russia and Circassia, as well as the march Kingdom of Naples:If there's interest I might do another run focused on innovativeness to see how that would affect the end result. Now I’ll leave you with some wise words from an anonymous developer, maybe @Johan