Conquering India
From EU3 Wiki
[edit] If you are a European Power
Alright, so you're looking to conquer India? Good choice. It has many valuable provinces, COTs; Not to mention it's smack dab in the middle of asia, and therefore a portal to later conquests. But let's not be too hasty. You're going to need Deus Vult as a national idea, and you probably won't have the tech, manpower or money to conquer India straight from the get go. I would suggest building colonies in S. America, the Carribean and S. Africa before tackling India. I waited untill the 1700, when i had control over Brazil, the Greater Antilles and several provinces in South Africa.
Now that you have your colonies, build up a fleet and put an army of 7-12 units of infantry on it. Sail for the Maldives, DOW it and annex it as soon as you can, it's an island, and it's allies, if any, probably won't bother to send troops your way. Then build a regimental camp there, and wait a year. After the regimental camp is done, get your army on the Maldives on a ship to Sri Lanka to conquer Ceylon. Same deal, annex it as soon as possible. and build a regimental camp in both provinces. When this is done you have a sufficient platform to attack India. (Personally, though, i would conquer the area around Bengal as well.)
First thing, you're going to want to build up as much infantry as you can in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, (and Bengal if you conquered that as well.) Then attack the power controling the southern tip of India. Send the two Units from Sri Lanka to the closest to provinces and capture then, land the troops from the maldives in the province of your choice, although i would stick to the tip of india. When you have captured all three of these and withstood their measily attacks for a while, you can take a couple of those provinces from them.
Wait for the truce to end and DOW on them again and again, untill you've annexed them completely. By now you control the southern part of India, and conquering the North shouldn't be that hard by now, especially if you're conquered Bengal. Now that you have India, Asia is waiting for conquest.
NOTE: Your conquest of India will give you a LOT of BB. One option is to wait untill your BB is suffieciently low untill conquering again. The more favorable option would to be such a powerful country that you don't need to worry about BB. For this i would recommend either France or Germany.
