I see complaints about how slow the game is, when you have to spend time assimilating a new conquest, rather than just moving on with your army to the next target. Along with suggestions that there's nothing to do but click on the next turn button and wait until things calm down. Which just demonstrates a lack of imagination, and worse ignoring an entire aspect of the game. You should have plenty to do, if you are more active than just conquering settlements and use a little imagination.
That requires you to take an interest in what's going on around you even aside from where you're going to conquer next, and having an agenda about how you want the AI factions near you to develop. This might be preparing the way for your eventual invasion, or just stirring the pot to prevent anyone getting too strong. You might want to ensure nearby factions remain weak and divided, or play favourites with some you want strong over others. It's statecraft.
You have agents; there's an entire "shadow game" you can be playing without ever using an army.
Spies should be keeping an eye on what's going on in your locality, and watching for the rise of powerful potential enemies. It's useful to have a spy in every foreign-controlled settlement that borders you, just to cause opportunistic civil unrest. Perhaps even a revolt which will keep that faction busy. You can do long-range scouting by sticking a spy on a ship and coasting about seeing what's happening around the place.
Assassins can accelerate that process (through sabotage), or hamper their attempts at diplomacy by killing their diplomats whenever they try to engage with a faction you want to keep them at war with, or prevent from making an alliance. You've also got to keep their assassins and spies out of your patch, too.
Diplomats for bribing away enemy stacks and funding the enemies of your enemies to make their lives more difficult. If you're waiting around anyway, you have the time and energy to look at creative ways to use diplomacy to advance your interests.
Then there's use of your armies for things other than conquest. Helping your allies defeat a mutual enemy, by destroying their armies, without taking any land. The odd punitive expedition where you send a mercenary army with a disposable FM deep into enemy territory, engaging as many of their armies as you can along the way. Maybe you take a settlement here and there, but you don't keep them, you abandon them shortly after. You let it revolt so that it's a problem for the AI to deal with as your army moves on. Or intervening in a distant war that has no chance of blowing back on you, just to stir things up and keep the AI factions weak, preventing a victor emerging stronger from the conflict.
There's lots you can be doing when you're waiting to assimilate a place.
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