The AI takes conscripts into account when estimating strengths in a diploplay and I will use that fact to beat persia with afghanistan very fast immediatly after game start in victoria 3.
I looked into the game files to better understand how backing down works. With this knowledge, i made this short indepth guide to conquer Sistan (or any single province really) from persia as afghanistan at gamestart. This video was made with the 1.5.13 Patch.
There are the following Chapters:
0:00 Beating Persia
1:33 Doing it Again
1:52 Bullying more Countries