Path to Enlightenment: Tibet WC VIP 0.4b

[ravensuominen]

It's nice to see a non-exploit WC for a change...

Up until now I have imagined playing Tibet is impossible. Prove me wrong, by all means! o

-- RS

 

[EvilSanta]

This will be interesting.

 

[Prufrock451]

Ah, WC with Tibet. That takes me back.

 

[Akaki]

Uhm... Could you post the first part...? Something? Anything? ^^

 

[unmerged(39597)]

Ah, WC with Tibet. That takes me back.

Yak Dung!

 

[King of Men]

For those poor n00bs who have no idea whereof Brother Prufrock, in his enlightenment, speaks, let them study the ancient works of the Enlightened One.

He Laughs...
...And Armies Perish"

"He Frowns...
...And Thrones are Humbled"



With that said, let me just say that I do not believe it. Falconhurst is not the Conqueror, and Vicky is not EUII. There is absolutely no way to make Tibet a Great Power without cheating. But I will be watching with great interest.

 

[Falconhurst]

With that said, let me just say that I do not believe it. Falconhurst is not the Conqueror, and Vicky is not EUII. There is absolutely no way to make Tibet a Great Power without cheating. But I will be watching with great interest.

Faithless unbelievers...

"If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

Victoria has been out for years, and still none are enlightened in the path of the conquerors?

The challenge is not of money, nor of arms, nor technology, but of enlightenment. Once you are enlightened, you can achieve the same.

 

[Falconhurst]

WARNING: This AAR may be dangerous to your preconceptions of what is possible in Victoria. I encourage others to apply these principles and see the results for themselves. It may take others slightly longer or shorter, depending on their micromanagement (mainly) and fortune (slightly). Yet the principles themselves are valid in a wide variety of circumstances and produce dramatic and myth-busting results when properly applied. I am confident in the ability of others who read and apply these principles to achieve similar outcomes.

March 1862

Jetsun Bdith Druk ("Lord Wise Dragon") sat in the counsel chambers of Lhasa as the messenger delivered him the news. France, the second-place world power, had declared war, attacking unarmed Tibetan merchant vessels. A great nation against the tiny nation.

As Druk, commander in chief of the Tibetan forces, gave the order, a hundred and fifty cavalry divisions poured across the border into France. Warships and transports anchored in Africa and North America sailed to the coast of France, where another fifty divisions of cavalry fanned out from the beaches to occupy the southern part of the country in complement to the land assault from the north. The French divisions were encircled and destroyed. Within a few weeks, Paris had fallen. Within two months, 75% of the mainland was held by Tibetan troops, or rather Chinese, Yankee, Punjabi, British, and Indian troops under Tibetan command. The French would soon be begging for peace

At the start of the war, Druk's statisticians had presented the data:

French divisions: 46
Tibetan divisions: 397
Tibetan provinces: 646
French provinces: 95
French population: 40,000,000
Tibetan population: 646,000,000

The tiny nation was France.

Over the prior twenty-six years, Tibet had overcome great obstacles to become the top world power and a civilized nation. The declaration of war by France -- the world number two -- barely made the headlines in the Tibetan press. Tibet had been through far worse, and at this late stage, the French armies amounted to little more than a pesky flea on the back of a yak.

This is the tale of what came before, and what came after...and how it was achieved.

 

[Falconhurst]

The Visions of Bdith

The young Bdith, herder of ralug (sheep), rama (goats), and yak, liked to sit under the shin dong (tree) and play on his shang (a musical instrument). Bdith frequently pondered on the words of Buddha. He cleansed his heart and mind to achieve transcendance, and meditated five times daily. He was honest with his neighbors and bore no malice nor evil thoughts towards anyone. He was an excellent worker and was valued for his good judgment and pragmatic sense, even in his youth.

One day the vision of Buddha came to him in the night. Buddha taught him until morning and filled his mind with knowledge and strange visions. The next night, Buddha came to him again. For three years, these visions continued nightly. He spoke to no one about the heavenly manifestations, but the villagers noticed a change in his countenance and profound wisdom far beyond his age. Bdith was much sought after as a teacher even by village elders many years his senior. The perplexing problems that vexed the wise men of the town were brought before Bdith, who in his quiet and unassuming way presented simple yet effective solutions.

After Bdith's wisdom helped defend a tiny town near Lhasa against an assault from Chinese forces that were numerically far superior, he was given the honorary title of "Druk" (the dragon") and was referred to as Jetsun Bdith Druk. The fame of Bdith spread throughout the land, and he was soon elevated from the position of herdsman to a province counselor. On January 1, 1836, he became the chief advisor to the monarch. In this position, Bdith's vision of the will of Buddha -- an enlightened and prosperous world guided by Buddha himself -- was put into action.

 

[Falconhurst]

Beginnings of Empire

Tibet saved up money and hoarded regular clothes, grain, and wool for irregular troops. As the irregular troops are considerably inferior to regular divisions, Bdith knew that Tibet could only overcome its neighbors by sheer numbers. Punjab, which had approximately 10 million people and was exporting 30£ daily, was a suitable place to start. Punjab had several divisions Tibet could see, and possibly as many as five or six. Therefore fifteen divisions were constructed as soon as 20 regular clothes could be purchased off the world market, some months after the start. As soon as the divisions were completed, war was declared on Punjab and the irregulars marched across the border. After some tough battles, Punjab was defeated and annexed. The Tibetans were demobilized while Punjabis were mobilized Afghanistan was annexed next, and then Bukhara. Regular clothes continued to bought off the world market. After some minor additional expansion, Tibet began to save money.

Economic settings:
Taxes: 32.8% all groups
Full tariffs
0% education
0% crime fighting
0% social spending
0% (or minimal) defense budget
full army maintenance (thankfully this is very inexpensive for irregular and native troops)

Immediately before Punjab was annexed, social reforms were enacted (suffrage, free parties, right to ban press, non-socialist trade unions, public unions). This would allow ongoing prestige gains while avoiding the disorder and negative relations that come with democratic revolution. Doing this immediately before the annexation of Punjab minimized the expense associated with reforms for a much larger population, while the income from conquered nations allowed this to be repayed quickly

Tibet began to save money and built claim buildings in the four provinces bordering Russia. Tibet also remained at war as much as possible -- declaring war on Kokand for many years, occupying but not annexing it. This increased yearly DIs from 0.5 to 1, and up to 1.13 when 25 prestige was reached. Tibet began to collect as many small arms, wine, and regular clothes as possible as well as some clipper ships. With no education and only minimal military expenses, almost all income was profit.

Disclaimer - minor modifications: The following two modifications were made at the beginning of the game.
1. Political parties. To do something as ahistorical as WC with Tibet, it seems not unfair to at least create a political party to reflect the political direction of the great counselor I modified the Tibet party to settings as follows: laissez_faire;protectionism;pluralism;full_citizenship;anti_military. The laissez-faire setting admittedly does offer some discount for WM purchases, although in the case of building armies, the costs of the army building itself, POP conversion, and army maintenance are far, far in excess of the minor discount of laissez-faire that applies to goods stockpile alone. Removal of the laissez-faire setting could result in some slight increase in required time but not much. I do not consider this a formal exploit as there are some countries with parties along these lines, and this is primarily a "flavor" or "style" change. Nonetheless full disclosure here.

2. On January 1 after saving as Tibet, I loaded as the UK and reassigned 5 workers to the 2 machine parts factories. The UK has two MP factories in VIP, one in South Scotland and one in the Midlands. However it only assigns 2 workers to each initially as the AI assigns other clerks and craftsmen in these provinces to lumber mills or other less-profitable factories. The AI does not appear to make allocations depending on productivity in any way. I thought it was not unfair to make the assignments as a human play would and put the workers in the most productive and useful factory, rather than leaving them minimally staffed for decades. No factories were created; this was only a reassignment of existing eligible in-province clerks and craftsmen. This resulted in MPs showing up on the WM a few years early (approx. 1856 as opposed to 1860 or 1861 in most of my prior games), but still not until 20 years into the game. As the reader will see further along in the AAR, this did not make any real difference in the progress of the nation, which reached great power status well before it came civilized. Civilized status also did not have any discernable effect on my WC strategy or on the progress by 1860, which as I will later describe, depended entirely on NATIVE quality troops---not regulars.

I have tested this both ways and the difference these minor flavor adjustments made in this particular case is quite small. In the worst possible case, their absence could potentially result in a small (3-4 year) delay in progress at the 25 year mark.

 

[Falconhurst]

The initial expansion served two purposes. First, it greatly expanded Tibet's economic and manpower base, with population going from 3 million to 20 million. Second, it brought Tibet into range where it could construct colony buildings in provinces adjacent to Russia. With gradual accumulation of funds, a colony building was built in each province. These were all finished by mid '44. Knowing that Russia would not readily consent to any trade with relations of zero, several saved up DIs were used to improve relations with Russia by donating 100£ several times to get relations into a modest positive range. DIs were very scarce however -- only one a year -- and so Bdith knew that he would have to make an unfavorable trade. Therefore he traded Russia all four colony buildings, which AI values highly, for only a few techs.

The single essential tech was flintlock rifles, which would allow construction of cavalry. He was also able to get Other valuable but non-essential early techs, depending on relations and ability to leverage a trade, include post-Napoleonic thought (to allow Jominian attitude), command principle (slight bonus to inf/cav ORG, but at a cost of increased supply), freedom of trade (more factories) and command principle (slight bonus to inf/cav ORG, but at a cost of increased supply), and water wheel power (for wood industry, allowing construction of lumber mills -- 1 MP each, as opposed to the 3MP default factories a civ starts with, to allow industrialization with only a handful of machine parts later in the game. How many of these techs can be obtained in a trade depends on how many buildings you have to trade (thus the need for four colony buildings here) and relations (mediocre here). Offering all four claim buildings to Russia was no bargain, but allowed Tibet to construct the cavalry.

Tibet had been hoarding wine, canned food, small arms, and clipper ships. Approximately 8 months before the last colony building was completed, 15 or 20 clipper transports were built. Immediately after the colony buildings were completed and the trade with Russia of colonies for tech was done, Tibet began constructing 60 native Pubjabi cavalry units. In this fashion the cavalry and ships were completed nearly synchronously, 4 months after the tech trade. Fortunately, Tibet now had an excellent economy (20 million people and no education costs), and the upkeep costs for native units are very small -- approximately one-tenth that of regular-quality units.

Luxury furniture and clothes were bought off the world market as soon as luxury furniture became available (early 1840s). Some Tibetan POPs were converted to officers to provide leadership for the upcoming invasion.

 

[Falconhurst]

The Invasion of India

The sixty Punjabi cavalry were grouped into twenty commands of three divisions each. Approximately 20 divisions boarded clipper transports, which were placed in four groups surrounding the Indian coast. The remaining divisions were placed across the Indian border. When the signal was given, war was declared on Beroda, a satellite of British India. War was not declared directly on British India to avoid mobilizing the UK and the entire British alliance. British India declared war honoring their alliance, and divisions waiting in ships and in the Himalayas rushed quickly across the border from all sides.

 

[Strategist]

Well, pretty much as I expected...

 

[Ciçatrix]

Ah, so no education spending, that is the thing that makes the economy go round.

BTW: Why have all your screenshots got "Demo" stuck in the middle of them?

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Neat. I'm kinda surprized though that you managed to defeat Punjab and Afhanistan with irregulars alone.You had irregulars withought army doctrine's wich should be very low morale ,and impossible to regain morale in the field (because of attrition) ,so either you had to have leaders with atrition or morale modifiers or you took Punjab really really fast ,same with Afhanistan.
While Punjab and Afhansitan had flintlock rifles and possibly jominion or clauswitzian.

60 cavalery ,thats a lot of cavalery pumped from the lands you have for an India campaign.Say you had 10£ profit from 38 to 45 (the date you DOW) ,then thats still only 3500£ a year or 25.000£ in 7 years ,while 60 plain cavalery devissions would cost you about 60 x 1000£ (=60.000£) to order alone ,not to speak of the raw costs for smallarms ,canned goods and clothes for manpower.Hmm when you traded away those claims did you get money in addition to tech? Though those claims must have cost a handsome price to.My rough estimate is that to be able to fund all youre expenses atm (irr. troops ,regular troops ,reform costs ,manpower cost ,claim building ,pop reforming ,goods cost etc.) you would have needed in excess of 140.000£ in 7 years ,or 20.000£ a year ,wich is roughly 60£ a day ,i have no idea where you got that kind of money.... (unless you went in serious debt)

Anyway ,60 Cavalery should bag the BEIC easily ,with a lightning strike you can make sure the UK annexes the BEIC by even once you occupy about 70% of it ,and youll be able to directly annex those lands in youre country withought war with the UK.Thake the rich northern province's.

After you get northern India ,i do not see what will stop you from there on.You will have hordes of good cavalery that will do it's work easily up until 1865-70 ,and you can build lots more to ,basicly Asia with all it's space is easy to conquer if you have lots of cavalery early on ,you can probably take it in a few years really after you have that income from Northern India ,and i doubt by the time you have reached Europe there will be few country's preppared against a horde of cavalery.

What is youre BB though ,and what are the changes (with you having selled claims to Russia) that Russia gets a land border with you?

 

[Falconhurst]

Neat. I'm kinda surprized though that you managed to defeat Punjab and Afhanistan with irregulars alone.You had irregulars withought army doctrine's wich should be very low morale ,and impossible to regain morale in the field (because of attrition) ,so either you had to have leaders with attrition or morale modifiers or you took Punjab really really fast ,same with Afhanistan.
While Punjab and Afhansitan had flintlock rifles and possibly jominion or clauswitzian.

Of course I had to take Punjab quickly...as mentioned the key was numbers, 15-20 divisions. Then I kept buying regular clothes and when a division fell to 3000 men or less, I reinforced by setting to full the defense budget, converting POPs to soldiers, and reinforcing. I used my strong armies with good morale to win the battles, and the reinforced ones with low organization to take provinces. You don't need any organization or morale to take provinces: only to win battles. Punjab and Afghanistan are also small countries, I think about 8 provinces for Punjab and 7 for Afghanistan. So the battles were over within a short period of time. If they had been any bigger, attrition would have been a bigger problem, but given the rapidity of the invasion it was not as much as I though. After Afghanistan and Punjab, the other minors were easy, as they only had 3-4 provinces each and only very small armies.

Try it yourself-- you can reliably beat Afghanistan and Punjab as long as you have at least 15-20 reinforced irregular divisions. 15 if you are very confident in your military tactics (i.e.: attack from 2 sides for flanking bonuses when possible etc), or 20 if you want a little extra security. Any less and you will lose though.

I did get Jominian attitude with post-napoleon thought, some months after the trade from Russia. I was in a hurry to trade for this as IIRC the possibility for Jominian attitude "expires" (i.e. the invention doesn't occur) at the end of 1845, and I got this in '44 or so. However, this was before the invasion of BEIC, but only after the invasion of Punjab, Afghanistan, etc.

60 cavalery ,thats a lot of cavalery pumped from the lands you have for an India campaign.Say you had 10£ profit from 38 to 45 (the date you DOW) ,then thats still only 3500£ a year or 25.000£ in 7 years ,while 60 plain cavalery devissions would cost you about 60 x 1000£ (=60.000£) to order alone ,not to speak of the raw costs for smallarms ,canned goods and clothes for manpower.Hmm when you traded away those claims did you get money in addition to tech? Though those claims must have cost a handsome price to.My rough estimate is that to be able to fund all youre expenses atm (irr. troops ,regular troops ,reform costs ,manpower cost ,claim building ,pop reforming ,goods cost etc.) you would have needed in excess of 140.000£ in 7 years ,or 20.000£ a year ,wich is roughly 60£ a day ,i have no idea where you got that kind of money.... (unless you went in serious debt)

Actually my initial profit as Tibet was 10-15 a day with only 3 million POPs. Once I took Punjab this rose to about 30-40 a day. The claim buildings cost 5000 each, or 20,000 for four.

From 1837-1844, (after the conquest of Punjab & Afghanistan) my balance sheet looked like this:
Tax income: 9/day (@32%)
Tariff income: 38-40/day (full tariffs)
Army maintenance: 2/day (full maintenance to whack rebels)

That's a positive balance of about +10,000 to +13,000 per year. Over an 8 year period, about +100,000 L. Plus four or five thousand in the trade with Russia, IIRC.

Total income: approx. +113,000

Minus expenses:
4 Claim buildings -20,000
Political reforms - 7,500
60 divisions - 60,000 (formation cost)
Supply cost: small arms are approx. 65 each, canned food @ 20, wine @25
= 110 for one of each, or 1100 per division. Since Laissez-faire gets a 50% discount on imports, this is 550 per division x 60= 33,000

Clipper ships: 65 each, 50% Laissez-faire discount = 32 each, 4 needed per transport x 24 transports = 3072 L
Clipper formation cost: 4 clipper ships + 500 L each, x 24 transports = 12,000 L
plus a few thousand more for the conversion of soldier pops and the purchase of regular clothes -- let's say 10,000
Total of all expenses:
142,500

As you can see this leaves a deficit of approximately 40,000 L, incurred approx. 4 months before the invasion of British India when the cavalry divisions are organized. Up until then, my balance was always positive.

As I recall, I was about 58,000 to 60,000 L in the hole (a loan) at the time of the strike on British India. This includes the 40,000 above, a small amount of interest, and also more because my micromanagement was not completely efficient. Sometimes I had paid more than was necessary for the purchase of some goods by getting them in too large quantities without managing the trade sliders as meticulously as I could.

For a country with 30 million people, a 60,000 debt is not bad -- especially for a short time. And it was being paid back even before provinces were won from British India. Taking British India, or at least key portions, shot the population up another 80 or 90 million...from there on the economy was a gold mine, +100 L a day.

Had I not had a Laissez-faire party, I would have been another 36,000 in debt for goods. Again this debt is incurred within the couple of years before invading India. Of course this is still easily repayable, especially after India falls. In the worse possible case, if you did not wish to go into debt, the delay would cost 2-3 additional years.

The main reason I had to wait from '38 to '44 before attacking British India related to 2 things:

1. You have to have a +5000 balance to build a colony building -- no loans allowed. The colonies of course were critical to the trade for tech that enabled cavalry. The colony buildings take about 3 years to build after they are started.

2. The accumulation of 600 small arms and other supplies off the world market took several years to complete.

You can verify these figures yourself by repeating this strategy. I've tried the initial phase several times and things always come out about the same, so I am confident in the reproducibility of my results.

What is youre BB though ,and what are the changes (with you having selled claims to Russia) that Russia gets a land border with you?

Currently about 600. At the time of the last update however before the invasion of British India, BB was 28 or 29. Russia took the claims, but does not have enough to make colonies -- so no formal land border. Within four years I was DOW'd by both the UK and Russia (colonial wars) as you will see later.

 

[Strategist]

What are those things with the dove on them at the right side of the screen btw?

 

[Falconhurst]

What are those things with the dove on them at the right side of the screen btw?

Message notifiers. Peace proposals from small occupied country I have been at war with for 7 or 8 years -- Kalat, I think -- to get the increase in annual diplomatic initiatives. The peace proposals are too obnoxious when they are constantly popping up on the screen, so I set them (right-click) to come up as message notifiers on the side.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Of course I had to take Punjab quickly...as mentioned the key was numbers, 15-20 divisions. Then I kept buying regular clothes and when a division fell to 3000 men or less, I reinforced by setting to full the defense budget, converting POPs to soldiers, and reinforcing. I used my strong armies with good morale to win the battles, and the reinforced ones with low organization to take provinces. You don't need any organization or morale to take provinces: only to win battles. Punjab and Afghanistan are also small countries, I think about 8 provinces for Punjab and 7 for Afghanistan. So the battles were over within a short period of time. If they had been any bigger, attrition would have been a bigger problem, but given the rapidity of the invasion it was not as much as I though. After Afghanistan and Punjab, the other minors were easy, as they only had 3-4 provinces each and only very small armies.

Hehe i hate irregulars ,i used them sometimes and i hate the micromanagement mess they are.I understand that manpower trick (set to full costs and convert a few pops for a one time reinforcement over the board) but it might annoy you in the future.

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.

Not saying that it's impossible now ,i figure the encirclement bonus is more than worth it in such circumstances ,but it takes some practice i guess.Same with Afhanistan ,though it has only 2 regular devissions they are both cavalery ,and they own irregular devissions.So to take such country's you need a very pre planned strategy ,take that key province in that time to advance there etc ,as to complete the conquest in an acceptable time ,and a quagmire can't be afforded. (once the whole army is out of morale and some enemy still remains youre in a painfull situation)

I do like irregulars though if i have plenty of coastline.If you have transports irregulars can be quite good ,in taking a country like Annam or even Japan ,hey japan has only 3 province's that are not coastal ,and it's a nice addition to youre income and prestige for a backward unciv.

Actually my initial profit as Tibet was 10-15 a day with only 3 million POPs. Once I took Punjab this rose to about 30-40 a day. The claim buildings cost 5000 each, or 20,000 for four.

calculations...

As you can see this leaves a deficit of approximately 40,000 L, incurred approx. 4 months before the invasion of British India when the cavalry divisions are organized. Up until then, my balance was always positive.

I see ,well some good financial planning,it's smart to acount youre costs in advance for such undertaking's.Indeed 40K debt is bearable if you take most of India ,and i'm pretty sure it's not that hard to beat the BeiC with that numbers of cavalery ,especially because youre also attacking from sea for optimal conquest speed.As for the rest once you aquire such a wealthbase as unciv in Asia combined with jominian cavalery youre extremely lethal ,though it will take you ages to actually aquire a capable naval fighting force. (unless fleet dodging is youre style)

As for tech and industry you don't have to much national pops ,once youre civilized research ccan come quick ,you also have some culture pops in China that you can take ,for the rest you can import pops for youre factory's from te rest of Asia.
So by a decade you should be easily civilized like any other (minus a number of techs) and a big native jominian cavalery army Able to cover whatever country in a minimal amount of time.So i don't really see whats going to be able to stop you now.

Currently about 600. At the time of the last update however before the invasion of British India, BB was 28 or 29. Russia took the claims, but does not have enough to make colonies -- so no formal land border. Within four years I was DOW'd by both the UK and Russia (colonial wars) as you will see later

Poor suckers ,especially Russia with it's asian steppe's...

 

[Strategist]

Message notifiers. Peace proposals from small occupied country I have been at war with for 7 or 8 years -- Kalat, I think -- to get the increase in annual diplomatic initiatives. The peace proposals are too obnoxious when they are constantly popping up on the screen, so I set them (right-click) to come up as message notifiers on the side.

Ah, nice, didnt know that. You learn something new every day