Chapter 8: Colonial Ventures
Our latest vassal, Sind, still needs a proper welcome, so that's what we're starting this chapter with:
I figured the Ottomans are far enough away that they won't pose much of a problem, and I should be able to deal with Gujarat relatively quickly.
Also not Jaunpur having almost 50k soldiers is Delhi. And Bahmanis is at about the same level. If their alliance doesn't break any time soon this will be one tough war when I finally (have to) go for it...
A small army was also sent to the far north again, apparently one of the Kamchatkan tribes was trying to hide from me.
I'm also almost done locking the coastline off, but would have to focus more on the inland soon. That golden hue along Uzbek's border was spreading...
I also kept on colonizing along the American coastline, and once I finsihed coring the provinces I took in the earlier war in central America I got my first colonial nation.
They should be able to grow nice and big relatively quick there, with all the natives still around.
And then, for the first time this time, I got a regency council.
Not too long luckily, but still annoying. Especially since my legitimacy took a pretty big hit from that...
At least I got the stability back pretty quickly.
Since I didn't want to wait out the whole 5 years (or bring the fight to the Ottomans), I soon made a comparatively tame peace deal with Gujarat:
And I even thought of taking a province for myself in a decent location.
What happened was a rare period of peace (lasting almost 3 years), with the only thing of note happening being me starting to annex Japan:
My diplo rep was a bit sucky at that time, so hopefully I'll be able to beat the time shown there...
And soon enough we got a new Emperor, and he even brought a heir along:
The heir is pretty meh though, and more importantly, only 7 years younger than our new Emperor. I don't think I'd be too sad if he had an accident some time soon...
Anyways, under the new emperor two wars were started almost right away, one against Pasai, and one in the far east.
In America the Salish were first to fall:
Pretty close to getting a Californian colonial nation too now.
And annyingly enough, in Indonesia Pasai's provinces were worth just over 100% warscore, so we had to settle for this:
Oh well, I can always get them later...
Under the new Emperor a new golden age started:
I'd have preferred it if a more... useful province got improved, but for free it's still nice.
Next we started another war against the remains of Yarkand and Delhi, plus Nogai and Persia. I also finished the administrative ideas:
Guess I can start teching up my admin tech again.
Another army was moved to Indochina and completed bringing that region under our control:
I'm starting to think that that blue dot of Bengal is gonna stay there until I'm getting Imperialism...
And for our domestic worries, I got some nice events to bring up my legitimacy up a fair bit, first by 10, and almost right after another 5:
I think that was the first time I took that over the flat 40 admin power.
In our ongoing war I decided to spend a lot of diplo points to get yet another vassal:
I really should get Influence ideas asap, but with how short I am on diplo points all the time I'm not sure I'll be able to fit it in...
Also note that I did not get dragged into Nogai's other war, since Persia was fighting on their side in that one.
I didn't really feel like sieging down all of Persia or wait the full five years, so I made peace with Yarkand soon after as well:
And with my troops already in that region I declared on the Timurids right after. They still were pretty much crippled from their own war, so it was over very soon:
Everyone gets a peace.
A shot of the religious map:
To my profound disappointment Oirat didn't really seem to do any converting at all. Upon closer inspection they picked humanist ideas, useless tolerant savages...
And as usual our newest vassal gets a welcome:
Would have been easier if I still had a province next to the Uzbeks it would have been easier, but at least I got a CB. And I should be able to get a more useful border province again. If I remember about it...
In the meantime we got our second colonial nation:
Would take a bit for their provinces to connect and they can become useful, but it's a start.
And then peace was made with the Hordes:
I couldn't take a province from the Golden Horde, and with Muscovy already wrapping all the war around Uzbek I took a province in the north east in the hopes of cutting them off from colonizing any further east.
After this, without even having discovered Europe yet, we finished the first circumnavigation.
The flavour text really is meant for Europeans I guess...
It was only the second fleet I sent on the circumnavigation mission, the first had to sacrifice themselves to get rid of the remaining terra incognita. I did cheat a little by sending a second fleet to unite with the first one on the eastern coast of south America, but in the end that wasn't even neccessary (one more attrition tick and all the original ships would have sunk though).
And despite our economic situation still being pretty good, a couple bad events resulted in a few new loans again. Most annoying so far was this one, since I got it several times already:
But I also had to pay off the nobles, appease the peasants, etc..
You can also see me working towards a colonial nation in south America there, even if the Inca proved surprisingly tough for the one army I sent over there.
First we ended our war with Gujarat though:
Still didn't find an opening to go against Jaunpur and Bahmanis, and Bahmanis just keeps eating away at V-J. Not quite sure if I should get all my armies together and go for an all out war, or just keep on ignoring them for the time being until I grow even stronger.
In the peace deal with the Incas I made a bit of a mistake by taking only 3 provinces, which meant I'd need either another war or another colony in that region to get my colonial nation.
Still, other than along the eastern and north eastern coast of south America there's not much signs of the Europeans yet, and with all the natives still being around I should be able to get my colonial nations very big pretty fast.
On the continent we are starting to face some tougher opposition now. In India the Jaunpur + Bahmanis would require more ressources than I'm currently willing to invest, to the west we're getting closer and closer to the Ottomans (and Persia is pretty big too, even if I already beat them), and further north is a Muscovy that looks pretty huge from what little I can see so far.
Out of these 3 Muscovy seems to be the most likely target (besides all the smaller wars of opportunity that are almost constantly going on), since they have no strong allies. Unless the Livonian Order and Theodoro somehow turned into powerhouses of course, but I think that's a risk I'll be willing to take...