I'm trying to get something going as Mysore or Travanacore; both are small vassals of Vijayanagar who have to DoW on them to get freedom. Seems pretty much impossible, but has anyone managed to do it? Gamey tactics perhaps?
Anyone ever played as Mysore or Travanacore?
- Thread starter jez9999
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I gave Mysore a shot once, though didn't give it very long. I admit I chose them mostly because of their primary culture - the idea of making most of North America Kannada appealed to me.
Jokes aside, they play much like French vassals but in a worse tech group. The start is very slow, just remain their vassal while building up an economy and improve their sliders. Eventually, India will probably end up split in a three-way between Vijayanagar, Rajputana and Bihar (or something similar). At this point, make sure you're not allied with Vija and strike whenever your overlord is convincingly beaten (no army, 12+ WE, no allies, only a few provinces not occupied) by the other two nations. Siege a few provinces at a time while keeping a mobile army that sits on top of whichever enemy province will next finish building a unit and it should be doable with honest means.
Really, being a vassal isn't particularly bad for a minor as it offers a nice measure of security so don't rush to independence. While you remain non-sovereign, you may as well disband your starting army as you won't need it for anything, it just costs money. Don't bother rebuilding it until you have at least all tier-1 buildings up and a healthy economy running. Ships are different, they cost next to nothing to maintain but are much costlier and slower to build than armies. Cost reductions for ships also come only with the tier-3 building, while armies gets cheaper with the tier-one armory. Keep the starting fleet, disband the army.
Of course, there are gamey tricks that let's you beat Vija much earlier if you know them. The easiest exploit is that an AI army will not start moving if a smaller/weaker stack is marching towards it. By having a force do this perpetually (pause, cancel move before it completes, restart move, unpause) you can keep a doomstack in place with a single regiment - leaving the rest of your forces a relatively free hand. Takes tons of patience though as you probably need to cancel/restart the move lots of times during a single war.
I only use it truly bad situations though, like Kashmir vs. Timurids, Lorraine vs France+Burgundy or Navarra vs Castille (in all cases, I hadn't expanded prior to their attacks). It just isn't worth the time, concentration and effort for something where annexation isn't otherwise inevitable.
Jokes aside, they play much like French vassals but in a worse tech group. The start is very slow, just remain their vassal while building up an economy and improve their sliders. Eventually, India will probably end up split in a three-way between Vijayanagar, Rajputana and Bihar (or something similar). At this point, make sure you're not allied with Vija and strike whenever your overlord is convincingly beaten (no army, 12+ WE, no allies, only a few provinces not occupied) by the other two nations. Siege a few provinces at a time while keeping a mobile army that sits on top of whichever enemy province will next finish building a unit and it should be doable with honest means.
Really, being a vassal isn't particularly bad for a minor as it offers a nice measure of security so don't rush to independence. While you remain non-sovereign, you may as well disband your starting army as you won't need it for anything, it just costs money. Don't bother rebuilding it until you have at least all tier-1 buildings up and a healthy economy running. Ships are different, they cost next to nothing to maintain but are much costlier and slower to build than armies. Cost reductions for ships also come only with the tier-3 building, while armies gets cheaper with the tier-one armory. Keep the starting fleet, disband the army.
Of course, there are gamey tricks that let's you beat Vija much earlier if you know them. The easiest exploit is that an AI army will not start moving if a smaller/weaker stack is marching towards it. By having a force do this perpetually (pause, cancel move before it completes, restart move, unpause) you can keep a doomstack in place with a single regiment - leaving the rest of your forces a relatively free hand. Takes tons of patience though as you probably need to cancel/restart the move lots of times during a single war.
I only use it truly bad situations though, like Kashmir vs. Timurids, Lorraine vs France+Burgundy or Navarra vs Castille (in all cases, I hadn't expanded prior to their attacks). It just isn't worth the time, concentration and effort for something where annexation isn't otherwise inevitable.
Well, funny you should mention that gamey tactic because it's exactly the one I used as Granada against Castille and the one I used just now as Mysore against Vijayanagar to escape their yoke. Another war of reconquest later and:
I haven't got time to sit around as a vassal - I wanna form Hindustan!
The only annoying thing is that while I was fighting the initial 5 year gamey war, Deccan fully annexed Orissa. Now there are some annoyingly powerful Muslim states (Deccan, Khandesh, Dehli, etc.) Also I have no CB on Madurai which somehow managed to get peasant revolts and defect even though that country had no cores yet! Or actually maybe Deccan forced Vijay to release them in a peace negotiation. I may try to diplo-annex them.
I haven't got time to sit around as a vassal - I wanna form Hindustan!
The only annoying thing is that while I was fighting the initial 5 year gamey war, Deccan fully annexed Orissa. Now there are some annoyingly powerful Muslim states (Deccan, Khandesh, Dehli, etc.) Also I have no CB on Madurai which somehow managed to get peasant revolts and defect even though that country had no cores yet! Or actually maybe Deccan forced Vijay to release them in a peace negotiation. I may try to diplo-annex them.
Here's the latest from that game:
This pretty much completes the "expand Hindustan to its natural borders and then some" phase of the game - nearly all the Hindu world is part of my nation. Next up, wait to get Republican Dictatorship, and go Imperialism on our neighbours. As much world conquest as possible!
This pretty much completes the "expand Hindustan to its natural borders and then some" phase of the game - nearly all the Hindu world is part of my nation. Next up, wait to get Republican Dictatorship, and go Imperialism on our neighbours. As much world conquest as possible!
Welp, this is the way it turned out in the end:
We had 10 coastal CoTs, which gave us an extra colonist per year, helping with all the colonization you have to do in east Asia!
Pretty hard work but we managed it in the end; basically, our borders were everything from the east of the Caspian Sea to Kiribati.
Also got to 69 in every tech level, leading the world in tech, but couldn't get to 70 - the cost was massive and we were 15 years ahead of our time. 70 seems to be the holy grail though, if you can get your tech to that you've really done well!
We had 10 coastal CoTs, which gave us an extra colonist per year, helping with all the colonization you have to do in east Asia!
Pretty hard work but we managed it in the end; basically, our borders were everything from the east of the Caspian Sea to Kiribati.
Also got to 69 in every tech level, leading the world in tech, but couldn't get to 70 - the cost was massive and we were 15 years ahead of our time. 70 seems to be the holy grail though, if you can get your tech to that you've really done well!
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This Hindustan is scary, income must be incredibly high! Overall great work to get such an empire.
