Path to Enlightenment: Tibet WC VIP 0.4b

[Falconhurst]

About irregular tactics ,well to destroy an army you have to encircle it ,easy as that but irregulars are slooow and take a lot of time to take control while wasting away.I found that usually irregulars attrition so fast that you virtually have to attack a medium sized country from all around it to cover immediatly and encircle the enemy army if you want real succes.As to facing and killing the Punjabi army ,i don't know how hard it is but i figure it couldn't be to easy neither ,pitty that you don't have a battle picture.Did they reinforce their devissions on a critical moment? Normaly Punjab has 3 regular devissions and a regular cavalery devission + good morale ,if that force is staked in one prov it isn't easy to defeat with low tech irregulars ,since the more devissions you send into battle the more attrition they take ,and with Punjabi morale those devissions probably have fought to the last man ,i can only guess a high irregular mortality rate on that battle.Even if it's 20 devissions ,the more irregulars you have the more attrition they take..

My irregular tactics:

I divide the 15-20 divisions into commands of 3 divisions each. More than 3 will increase attrition too much.

For Punjab - I typically send 6 divisions (2 groups of 3) for the first border province attack, and then reinforce with an extra 1 group (3 divisions) once my initial wave starts to tire. Then a few divisions around the northern rim of the country, where the provinces are lightly guarded if at all. Simultaneous advances from the north and south let you attack any concentrated buildups from two divisions.

The tough battles with Punjab are in the first province and then in the capital. After you win those, the rest of the invasion is cake because the existing Punjabi forces never have time to recover their organization or morale. Even through your forces are suffering attrition, as long as they are winning battles, cleanup is pretty easy after you get the border province and the capital.

I didn't really pay much attention to whether the Punjabis reinforced or not. I think they probably did. This can work to your advantage because reinforcing an existing division can completely destroy its organization, reducing it dramatically, even to zero. Hit them once, twice, and plow through the country while stopping to take no prisoners. Don't let the Punjabis sit around and regain organization after reinforcing. The key to warfare with irregulars, as you have mentioned, is speed, as the troops don't have the endurance for sustained warfare. With speedy attacks, I have repeatedly been surprised that Punjab is annexed while my irregular divisions still have most of their manpower left.

Afghanistan of course is easier because they have (IIRC) fewer troops. They do have one leader, I think, but not a stellar one, and often he is only in control of one division and can easily be encircled and destroyed.

Of course Tibet has enough manpower that you can easily get forty, fifty, sixty divisions of irregulars if you have any concerns about the chances against Punjab. The real trouble initially is that I find it hard to get more than 30 regular clothes (for converting pops to soldiers in VIP) off the early market in a reasonable time period within the first year.

[lz14]

I hated the land trading AARs,
the new AARs are really awesome

[Lord Warchaser]

How did you get the necessary ind techs without first getting water-wheel power? AFAIK in vanilla, you need water wheel to get any +5 MP techs and freedom of trade. The thing is you had to get all your techs in one go, because you can't trade for techs if you have negative RP. So right now I'm assuming you just didn't get water wheel power and didn't get freedom of trade. Until then you can't get MP until 1856 (as you stated in your AAR) and you can only build factories that require 3 MP (correct me if I'm wrong). Seeing as how you conquered the entire world by 1860, I'd wager that you got the necessary 50 ind points before 1859 (Germany was white and UK was behind France so I'm also assuming you spent about a year trouncing them). You only need 5 factories to get the 50 ind points, but that would be 15 machine parts because you don't have freedom of trade. How did you get all this in a 3 year period?

[TheFlemishDuck]

How did you get the necessary ind techs without first getting water-wheel power? AFAIK in vanilla, you need water wheel to get any +5 MP techs and freedom of trade. The thing is you had to get all your techs in one go, because you can't trade for techs if you have negative RP. So right now I'm assuming you just didn't get water wheel power and didn't get freedom of trade. Until then you can't get MP until 1856 (as you stated in your AAR) and you can only build factories that require 3 MP (correct me if I'm wrong). Seeing as how you conquered the entire world by 1860, I'd wager that you got the necessary 50 ind points before 1859 (Germany was white and UK was behind France so I'm also assuming you spent about a year trouncing them). You only need 5 factories to get the 50 ind points, but that would be 15 machine parts because you don't have freedom of trade. How did you get all this in a 3 year period?

BeiC has 2 factories in south India ,i bet they will be part of Tibet when BeiC gets annexed by UK.

edit: Or better said ,the BeiC doesn't start with factory's ,but there is a chance that they build some.

[lz14]

He already said he traded for freedom of trade.

[Deo89]

None of the exploits listed on the Vickywiki page will be used:
http://victoria.nsen.ch/wiki/index.php/Exploits

several saved up DIs were used to improve relations with Russia by donating 100£ several times to get relations into a modest positive range.

I thought you wouldn't use any exploits listet in the vickywiki page
Anyway that exploit level is very low so don't i dont even consider it a exploit.

In the other way, another masterpiece by falconhurst. Next time you should leave us to decide what nation to chose

[Quirinus308]

Falconhurst,
I love your work, I've learned alot just by reading your AAR's. Here's my request for your next game: Start with a country that doesn't exist. For example start as Austria, and liberate a satalite such as croatia, and then save and reload as croatia and conquer the world

[Falconhurst]

How did you get the necessary ind techs without first getting water-wheel power? AFAIK in vanilla, you need water wheel to get any +5 MP techs and freedom of trade. The thing is you had to get all your techs in one go, because you can't trade for techs if you have negative RP. So right now I'm assuming you just didn't get water wheel power and didn't get freedom of trade. Until then you can't get MP until 1856 (as you stated in your AAR) and you can only build factories that require 3 MP (correct me if I'm wrong). Seeing as how you conquered the entire world by 1860, I'd wager that you got the necessary 50 ind points before 1859 (Germany was white and UK was behind France so I'm also assuming you spent about a year trouncing them). You only need 5 factories to get the 50 ind points, but that would be 15 machine parts because you don't have freedom of trade. How did you get all this in a 3 year period?

I bought MPs as soon as they became available on the WM ('56) and built a bunch of factories, reaching the 50 industrial score by (IIRC) about '58. It took a lot more than 5 factories since not all factories had fully efficient working POPs. Once MPs came onto the market there was a moderate abundance, and Tibet's prestige was #1. More details when I get to that part.

[Falconhurst]

Lord Bdith found that whatever its drawbacks, Tibet had distinct advantages as an uncivilized nation. When DOW'ing Beroda, an uncivilized minor in a colonial war and with British India honoring the alliance with Beroda, Tibet was able to invade the (non-colonial) territory of British India directly. A civilized nation could not have done this. A civilized nation would have had to challenge British India by a full-scale great war, which would have brought the United Kingdom and all of its allies into the war. Tibet therefore could ravage British India with relative impunity without fear of immediate war with the United Kingdom. British India was quickly captured.



Bdith Druk also took advantage of another unique scripting feature of VIP. When 45% of British India is occupied, the UK will annex British India, handing any occupied provinces over to the conquerer immediately without incurring any "badboy" points. The second and equally important aspect of this is that the event has an offset of approximately 15 days. In other words, after conquering the necessary 23 of 49 provinces, the invader has 15 more (days?) to take as many additional provinces as possible before the event fires and British India is absorbed into the UK.

Bdith's strategists planned carefully for this, taking 22 provinces to stop just short of the event trigger and then regrouping, reinforcing, and strategically repositioning troops as necessary. Then they simultaneously descended on the remaining provinces in order to capture as many additional provinces as possible within a 15 day window following the capture of #23. The strategy worked remarkably well: By the time the UK realized that British India was being crushed by the Tibetan invaders, only a few scattered provinces of British India were left.

The population of the Tibetan empire rose to over 110 million and the daily profit rose from approximately 30 pounds daily to 100-100.



China was next. Conquest of China would dramatically increase daily profits and turn Tibet into an economic powerhouse. However, Bdith Druk knew that China could be captured only with great speed. Overwhelming force would be necessary. India provided abundant manpower, yet Bdith did not want to confront the Chinese dragon unable to win a compelling victory. Even a slight delay would lead to a prolonged cycle of partisanship, and partisans recapturing a single province would make it impossible to annex China until that province was recaptured. In the interim, other provinces would rebel, and the rebellions would worsen with time. China, with nearly 130 provinces, offered no room for error. The attack must be precise and rapid from many different angles, quickly reaching and capturing every province in the Chinese empire without allowing significant time for large numbers of rebels to organize. The front-line cavalry would also have to be sufficiently strong to overcome the Chinese army.

China had been recovering from a war with the United Kingdom and British India immediately before the Tibetan invasion of British India. Chinese forces were at an all-time low, and China was in poor shape economically after paying reparations to the United Kingdom. Bdith desired to strike as soon as possible, but realized that preparation must not fall victim to haste. Starting even before the conquest of India, Tibet accumulated clipper convoys, arms, wine, regular clothes, and canned food, eventually forming nearly two hundred divisions of native cavalry. This incurred considerable debt, even with the new profits of India, but profit was Bdith's last concern at the time. Capturing China would quickly allow repayment of any loans. By this time, Bdith was able to find some luxury furniture on the world market and convert some large Tibetan POPs to officers, producing at least a moderate number of leaders for the reformed Tibetan army. Due to the slow trickle of small arms onto the world market, it took two and a half years after the fall of India for Tibet to accumulate a sufficient supply of arms to create the desired number of divisions.

The two hundred divisions, positioned strategically around China and from large transport fleets waiting offshore, began a synchronous night assault at his command. Many provinces had been overrun before the few and surprised Chinese forces could even react. The army in Southeast china and around Beijing caused some resistance that caused a slight delay, although this resistance was quickly crushed by a second line of Tibetan reinforcements. During the conquest, Bdith spaced his forces out across the country so that Tibetan cavalry would be able to quickly reach and destroy any insurgents before they could recapture any occupied provinces.






Even with the plan proceeding extremely smoothly, it still took the 200 divisions of Tibetan cavalry just over a year to capture all of China. Toward the latter end of the occupation, insurgents were cropping up nearly every day from a new province. It was only through Bdith Druk's profound foresight that the Tibetan cavalry was stationed carefully around the country was able to quickly crush revolutionaries before they regained territory.



However, just a few days before the annexation of China, both the United Kingdom and Russia declared colonial war on Tibet, whose badboy score was starting to make it quite unpopular. Thankfully no other major nations had borders adjacent to Tibet. There would be no rest after the Chinese war: Tibetan troops would head on to face new enemies. While Tibet had plenty of prestige (the annexation of China shot prestige to approx. 720, Bdith was not quite sure why) and Tibet had a strong military, it still had no factories and was moderately in debt.

Next: World conquest on a shoestring budget

[lz14]

Holy.... LOL. This is total madness !

The lama fraction is a pretty crazy party, lol

[TheFlemishDuck]

All pretty neat indeed ,though it was forseen that once you had India the rest is just adding more cavalery and riding along.Nice srategy though with calculating the amount of BeiC province's you can maximaly take before Uk annexes the scraps.

A little detail though: Won't every province you take as unciv become statehood when you get civilized?I'm not sure if you want China as statehood ,it will only increase youre costs later ,then again i bet you never bother anyway and just conquer the world before 1870.Understandable too ,after 1870 entrenchement bonusses begin to mount and world conquest gets harder.

Russia is toast ,it can't defend it's asian possesions very well and youre cavalery will rule their plains.As to the Uk ,i'm not sure where youll get the warscore to end that war ,youll probably have to go navely and that means clipper dodging i presume...

[Morpheus506]

Mmm, Falconhurst at it again. I love this stuff.

[Lurken]

Holy.... LOL. This is total madness !

The lama fraction is a pretty crazy party, lol

Depends on what lama you refer to, either the South American animal or the Tibetian Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, or the Pancha Lama, which is the other prominent Lama within in Tibetan Buddhism.

[lifeless]

wow....is that province to the left of the capsian yours ? its in the second pic

[Falconhurst]

A little detail though: Won't every province you take as unciv become statehood when you get civilized?I'm not sure if you want China as statehood ,it will only increase youre costs later ,then again i bet you never bother anyway and just conquer the world before 1870.Understandable too ,after 1870 entrenchement bonusses begin to mount and world conquest gets harder.

Yes, all of China got statehood with the transition to civilization.

This was something I learned in this AAR. When I annexed China, my education costs (after becoming civilized) were immense: some 3500 L a DAY!!! (since education is much more expensive for states than colonies) There was still a positive economic balance, but only of 500 or so with full education. If I had been able to take China as a colony after already being civilized, education would have been far cheaper leading to an enormous profit.

In this case, I took China simply as the next strategic step to improve economy, and it did, from 100L to 1000L positive balance a day as an uncivilized nation. And I had no idea when machine parts would show up on the world market. As it was, MPs appeared only about 7 years after the conquest of China. Now that gave me a lot of time to conduct other military operations -- Europe, North America, etc -- with a strong financial footing from the Chinese economic base.

In retrospect, the long term would have been significantly better economically if I had waited to become civilized before annexing China. Yet I didn't know if it would be 8 or 15 years before MPs showed up on the WM and wanted to make good use of my opportunities at the time. I also felt pressed for time as the Chinese forces were very weak in the late 1840s and I knew from past experience that they would get much, much stronger -- or at least more numerous -- in the late 1850s and beyond. With only native cavalry, I didn't feel that I could afford to sit around and wait a decade for the Chinese juggernaut to build up its forces before invading.

Was it the right decision or not? At the time I thought it was, although the exorbitant cost of education later makes me reconsider. Certainly it is more ideal if you can capture an uncivilized nation only after becoming civilized.

wow....is that province to the left of the capsian yours ? its in the second pic.

Yes, it represents an embarrassing relic of an ill-considered trade in an effort to cover all the bases that became a liability.

In my trade with Russia for the techs, after buffing relations for several years I gave four claim buildings for one province (Gandza, I think) and several techs (flintlock rifle, postnapoleonic thought, freedom of trade, and waterwheel power if I remember correctly -- maybe also the command principle).

My reasoning for wanting 1 province in trade was simply to get a land border with Russia, as the trade buildings don't count as a land border. I had hoped that perhaps I could "flip" the province to Russia some years later in a trade for a couple more technologies, as the AI values provinces that it has borders with far more than those that are inaccessible or remote. This was NOT a "beads for manhattan" trade: trading 4 claim buildings for a few techs and a single province which was inaccessible to me by land was, in terms of appraised value, a loss for Tibet.

As it turned out, this trade for Gandza was a foolish and dangerous mistake. In retrospect, I would not have traded for the province: I would have cashed in my claim buildings for the techs and a big pile of cash, which I more desparately needed at the time.

Why did Russia DOW me in spite of positive relations? It was all because of Gandza, and my rising BB score. Before the annexation of China, when Russia declared war, Tibet had no border provinces with Russia. Without Gandza therefore they never would have DOW'd me. It turned out okay as I was literally days away from annexing China at the time and could redirect my troops to Russia, but what would have happened if Russia had DOW'd Tibet early into the invasion of China or at some other inopportune time when troops could not have been spared for a second front? I have to credit some fortune on the timing here as I had utterly failed to consider that BB + border provinces = war, even with reasonably positive relations. But definitely a foolish move I would not do again. Not having a land border with Russia is a GOOD thing.

[TheFlemishDuck]

In retrospect, the long term would have been significantly better economically if I had waited to become civilized before annexing China. Yet I didn't know if it would be 8 or 15 years before MPs showed up on the WM and wanted to make good use of my opportunities at the time. I also felt pressed for time as the Chinese forces were very weak in the late 1840s and I knew from past experience that they would get much, much stronger -- or at least more numerous -- in the late 1850s and beyond. With only native cavalry, I didn't feel that I could afford to sit around and wait a decade for the Chinese juggernaut to build up its forces before invading.

Was it the right decision or not? At the time I thought it was, although the exorbitant cost of education later makes me reconsider. Certainly it is more ideal if you can capture an uncivilized nation only after becoming civilized.

Actually i would have gone strait for Europe ,or in this case russia ,there are more potential juggernauts there than there are in Asia.You need to take on those europeans as quick as possible.As to early civilizing ,you can also capture factories ,and Russia has some good ones ,you only need the province with the actual factory ,and you can let people immigrate to the factory easily by converting people even outside the province.
This way:
-you possibly don't have to rely on mp's from the WM to get the 50 industry.
-you create a staging point early for invasion of continental Europe.
-Instead of taking moneypots like China wich will become statehood if you capture to early youll be taking relativly low pop sized province's with factory's.Keep china as moneypot when you want to industrialize.
-You get more prestige for trouncing on Europeans = earlier MP's by WM

I would have gone ,after India ,straith for Russia ,capture lands with factory's at the baltic ,then use that as staging point to invade Prussia. (you don't want Prussia to grow much neither)

[Nameless]

Heh...heh....Um....Guys, I had this horrible dream that Tibet was conquering the whole world. Could you...like tell me that isn't possible. Thanks.

[Falconhurst]

Actually i would have gone strait for Europe ,or in this case russia ,there are more potential juggernauts there than there are in Asia.You need to take on those europeans as quick as possible.As to early civilizing ,you can also capture factories

-you possibly don't have to rely on mp's from the WM to get the 50 industry.
-you create a staging point early for invasion of continental Europe.
-Instead of taking moneypots like China wich will become statehood if you capture to early youll be taking relativly low pop sized province's with factory's.Keep china as moneypot when you want to industrialize.
-You get more prestige for trouncing on Europeans = earlier MP's by WM

I would have gone ,after India ,straith for Russia ,capture lands with factory's at the baltic ,then use that as staging point to invade Prussia. (you don't want Prussia to grow much neither)

I did invade Europe quickly as you will see. Nonetheless I was quite unaware at the time of the issues with becoming civilized after annexing China resulting in the entire empire having statehood and causing a huge inflation of the later education cost.

There are few if any Russian factories on the Baltics; Russia tends to build factories with the very few MPs that it has in ethnic Russian territories. The Germanic lands are a much better bet for capturing factories.

The catch-22 here is that as an uncivilized nation, you can only attack countries where you have a land border. So my attacks on Europe had to wait until after civilized status was granted. Attacks on Russia, with its 130-plus provinces, require a vast expenditure of troops and manpower. And the Russian army has a lot more technology than the Chinese! I wasn't sure at this stage of the game I wanted full-scale war with Russia. Fortunately, Russia didn't take Tibet as seriously as it might have since it was "only" a colonial war. I was suprised during the colonial war at how few troops were sent at me. Yet I think it unlikely that I could have captured any factories, even if the Baltic provinces had been obtained, and the AI likes to unload its border provinces first.

You are on the right track though and offer valuable suggestions. Thinking this through again, a better course than what I pursued would have been in the initial trade to get a province from Russia bordering Prussia, instead of one isolated in the Caucasus. Then DOW Prussia, and get a war going with the whole German alliance, annex all the small minors, and pick up some factories. After achieving civilized status then go back and annex China.

This alternative approach faces serious challenges however. Namely, getting territories with borders with the major European players while still an uncivilized nation with astronomic BB will inevitably lead within a short period to war with France, Italy, Austria, Russia, etc. To be honest things might not have gone well in a European land war against multiple majors at once. And, it's a lot harder to finance massive European wars with the 100L/day from British India than with the 1000L/day from China.

My initial plan had been to invade the UK and take south Scotland with its machine parts factory, which would generate an ongoing supply of MPs to allow rapid industrialization. However during the first colonial war with the UK I quickly found that this plan was not viable. Even with "run-away" ship tactics, I lost a few too many transports to the vast and technologically advanced British navy. Plus, even if I had been able to successfully land troops on Britain, it is highly unlikely that the UK would have been willing to part with them in a peace deal even with an excellent war score. The AI will freely divest itself of all of its vast colonial holdings before even contemplating giving up national culture cores. Having a MP factory of course would be huge, but I couldn't seem to find a way to pull it off.

Certainly there are ways the strategy could be improved...good for thought, and I appreciate the feedback. Yet the die is cast for better or worse, and our tale continues.

[Falconhurst]

The colonial war raged against the United Kingdom. In spite of capturing almost all colonies, it took a couple years before the UK would agreed to a peace and let the war-weary Tibetan people rest.





Russia was the first to agree to a suitable peace.



Persia was then invaded.



A screenshot showing the budget. Although over time the budget drifted closer to +1000L daily as pops cash reserves dwindled, finances were excellent. Tibet had little to spend the money on, and so massive cash reserves accumulated.



The small Asian minors were systematically annexed. Similar annexation (not shown) was occurring across Africa and Tibetan claim buildings were going up around the world.



The North American minors are invaded and annexed. Bdith Druk, ever the opportunist, sought to strike quickly before they could become incorporated into the United States.

[el presidentse]

Sweet fancy Buddha!