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Introduction/Table of Contents

firezatswill9

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Aug 26, 2014
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Hello all, and welcome to the horde! We'll be taking the reigns of a giant powerhouse in Asia, Sarig Yogir! OK, Sarig Yogir may not be a powerhouse JUST yet, but by the time we're done, well... Let's just say, things will be quite different.

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As you can see, we are a tengri horde that is synchronized with one of the three sects of Buddhism. We may only have 7 development between our two provinces for now, but those provinces are already a force to be reckoned with!

Our idea group is generic horde ideas, which are excellent. Hordes are probably my favorite tech group/government type nation in the entire game, since it's high risk, high reward. And with a much larger horde to our north, Ming to our east, and Tibetan Buddhists to our south, we've got plenty of risks to take!

I'd put the goals here, but the biggest goal is a secret, and the goals I WOULD put here would give away what my main goal is. So, you'll just need to check back here after I reveal my not secret goals, because you won't get a word outta me just yet!

Goals

1. Form Yuan.
2. True One Tag.
3. Animist One Faith.
4. Paint the world 3 shades of red: Animist, Communist (revolutionary), and Yuanite.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Horde of the Sands
Chapter 2: The Northern Block
Chapter 3: The Golden Rule
Chapter 4: Strategic Expansions, Not Just About Development!
Chapter 5: Cleaning up the Borders
Chapter 6: Jungle Warfare
Chapter 7: The Man-D'OH! of Heaven
Chapter 8: Making Good on a Promise
Chapter 9: A Trap of my Own Design
 
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Sounds fun
 
subbed
 
and the goals I WOULD put here would give away what my main goal is.
And what about taking Beijing, rename it and make it the highest developed province in the world, is that also top-secret ;)? Subbed, hopefully everything will go fine with all those bigger nations around.
 
May I ask, will you be posting through updates or planning to show us your success at end?
 
Good luck, and godspeed! It's always great to see major work done in East Asia, which never gets enough AAR love despite being a fun place to play when you want to escape the big blue blob in Europe. :p

Cheers!
 
And what about taking Beijing, rename it and make it the highest developed province in the world, is that also top-secret ;)? Subbed, hopefully everything will go fine with all those bigger nations around.

Don't worry, I didn't forget about that. I mean, you DID win the grand prize, after all!

May I ask, will you be posting through updates or planning to show us your success at end?

I plan on updating after every session I play through. Right now, I'm doing some test runs, and I'm finishing up some general testing in non-ironman games. Hopefully I can get an update out soon, but that's all dependent on my free time. I'd hate to make an update that just covers a few months!

And, since there's no impending patch/DLC combo on the horizon, I'm not in any rush to finish this run, like I was with my Zoroafrica run. So I don't feel pressured to play a lot to update every single day, which should hopefully give me more time to theorycraft.
 
Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Horde of the Sands

Welcome to Sarig Yogir, the best horde this side of the Tibetan Mountains! We have 7 total development between our two provinces, and while we're tengri, we have no tengri land! Just some vajrayana land. I mean, this is a start that rivals the likes of the Ottomans, France, or even the mighty Ulm!

While we may be a great nation, our khan is, well, less than ideal.

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Yeah, those stats are less than great. Better than Castille's ruler, but that's literally as low as that bar can go.

Side note - This is not the ruler we have in the current game, I had to go in and take another screenshot of our initial ruler, since I may or may not have accidentally deleted that screenshot... But don't worry, he's still as trash as ever.

While we may only have two provinces, we give one of them to the cossacks, bringing our largest province, a 1/1/2, up to 50% autonomy. It's not the greatest, but it DOES let us raise a host, giving us 5 FREE cavalry, and at no cost to us! We can use this action every 10 years, iirc, and we always will. Even if we don't have the FL for the troops, we can stop them from being produced for a free 5k manpower, and a free general.

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We spent a couple months getting relations up with Oirat, and we formed an alliance. And to consummate that alliance, we turn our eyes to Chagatai and their vassal, Yarkand. While Kham is the easier, and more obvious, target, we NEED to take down Chagatai before someone else does, or before they become Ming's tributary.

So we go to war, promising land to the Oirat. Which we will TOTALLY do, we're DEFINITELY not going to take all the land we can and leave Oirat with nothing. ;)

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:eek:

I swear, if this kid becomes khan, I'm going to cry from sheer joy. But with our current khan pushing towards his 70s, I think I'm going to be crying for another reason (and it's not because I was chopping onions!)

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And this is why we allied the Oirat. Even though Mongolia will not help, due to 100% LD, the extra 12k men help with dividing and conquering.

Plus, it lets us siege up as much of the bordering land as possible, while saving manpower. Win-win-win.

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DE-STROYED.

Cavalry, don't be caught dead (as a horde) without it.

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While the mercantilism may have been nice, it's nicer to suck up to Ming. While we don't plan on staying their tributary forever, we will need to kiss the ring for the time being.

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Peace deal time! Wait, what's this? Oirat, you don't seem to have any land being given to you. Huh. Must be an oversight. Oh well, I'm sure it'll work itself out. ;)

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We're going to be heavily reliant on these decisions to help us, since we're pagan. The unrest reduction is great for any nation, and an absolute GODSEND for a horde. Thanks to a random stability event we got during the war, we're able to get this, E-Z.

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What? Oirat doesn't like us? Oh, well, I'm sorry there, bud. :(

(I'm not sorry :cool:)

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Well, Timmy here doesn't like that we're, y'know, being A HORDE. So they've threatened us with intervention if we were to war with any nation we both border. I don't need an intervention, I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM! I CAN STOP WHENEVER I WANT! I just don't want to...

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Now, on to the obvious target. Should be a piece of cake, even though they've got hills, hills, and more hills. Guge has no way of getting to us, since they won't be able to get access through U-Tsang or Lakdah, so it's just Kham in our sights.

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And man, is it even easier when the enemy goes to flat terrain!

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Fighting a horde in the desert is a bad idea? How... SHOCKING!

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Well, hopefully their corpses will help fertilize the desert. Sarig Yogir is NOT known for their forgiveness.

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DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THE FACE OF MERCY TO YOU?! :mad:

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Full annexation, and pillaged coffers. In addition to looted provinces. Gotta pay the army somehow!

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Huh, the Oirat have seemed to have forgotten about our... mistake. Weird. Maybe we'll have that alliance back, maybe not.

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But for now, we're definitely friends with Uzbek. They're just a little extra protection from any tributaries of Ming, just in case they get some "bright" ideas.

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Thanks to razing our conquered land (I mean, really, the Gobi desert may as well be glass at this point), and setting our focus to military, we're one of the first nations to reach mil tech 4!

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And after a quick test against rebels, tech 4 really shines through!

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Fine, Oirat, we can be friends again. I just hope this isn't a mistake...

Spoiler: It was a mistake.

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Time to get more Vajrayana land! Gotta bump up that RU somehow!

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More razing power and morale? Why is there a second option here, who in their right mind would pass this up?!

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While it's not tengri, I'd rather Kuqa, our GOLDMINE, be vajrayana instead of sunni. It'll be easier to switch later, thanks to it NOT being sunni.

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Time for peace. Unfortunately, Koch and Assam had sieged up the 3 provinces I didn't take. But that DID mean that we could empty the U-Tsangian treasury AND get more provinces! Plus, we were planning on fighting those two eventually, anyways.

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Time to snag ourselves a much inferior horde!

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No contest.

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We annexed Kara Del, and finished our mission. More admin is ALWAYS welcome.

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But then, our khan died, and I'm about ready to cry. Here comes the 1/0/-5... :(

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:eek::D

Or not! This guy is even BETTER than that silly child! And, while it hurts a bit, we use 200 mil points to raise our horde unity. But it's a lot less painful than the alternatives.

Also, the keen observer will notice that the Oirat are sieged up by Ming. I noticed that as well, and dropped the Oirat like a lead weight. We'll get them later.

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And, since we've got an EXCELLENT khan, we take the time to get an extra 2 tolerance of heathens (which is anyone not in the pagan group. SUPER strong for us. Well, it WILL be). The other choice we could have gone with would have given us an extra 2% missionary strength, but would require us to have no synced religion, which would be a death sentence for us.

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Like I said, Koch must die. Both their allies are unable to reach us, do to a lack of access. So once more, it's a simple war for us.

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Too bad we need to play tag with Koch's army! Or maybe they wanted to see the desert before they died, who knows. :rolleyes:

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Now their bones are bleaching in the sun. Talk about the ULTIMATE suntan!

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Gotta love free stuff, especially when it makes you more stable!

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We ended up needing to knock out Tirhut to get peace. So we made sure we had the BEST possible engagement with their army.

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CRUSHED.

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All those shekels, I love it. They'll pay off a couple of our loans, which we've constantly been running due to lack of other income. But hey, that's the horde life for ya!

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More land, more dosh, more points from razing. Everything's coming up Milhouse.

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Not to mention, Koch had a couple provinces with Feudalism. So we lose the painful 50% tech cost from not having that. The best part? The embracement cost was payed for BY Koch. Thanks, buddy! :p

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Ah, Uzbek needs our help. Why, of course! So long as we get land, we'll HAPPILY help our allies!

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Free war exhaustion reduction? We should have babies more often!

Also, we've done a LOT of heavy lifting in this war. We sieged down 90% of Chagatai, and ALL of Yarkand, so we BETTER get land. Sure, Uzbek fought their army, but we did the important task.

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Knowing full well that the AI wouldn't give us anything, we peaced out early. We couldn't get those two provinces of Yarkand's without getting more WS (more than 98%? I don't think the war'd last that long), so we left those as an enclave. We'll get them later, for now, we want the land that's worth the most.

Plus, we only lost 10 trust with Uzbek, so we're still allies!

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Looking good! Too bad we couldn't get those provinces, otherwise we'd have a pretty big name, the ultimate measuring tool for power!

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For our first idea group, we took humanist. It's going to be utterly necessary for my plan. Plus, being able to have PERMANENT 100% RU, so long as our heathen and heretic tolerance is 2 each, is beyond useful!

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More war for the horse gods! Gotta stop Nepal before they get too Prussian-like!

Plus, they have a healthy amount of development to burn.


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Hi Assam. Bye Assam!

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Jungles are no problem for our elite horses!

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Time to join the greatest horde on earth! Thanks for the fun, Nepal!


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And this is where we are as of now. We're about 24x LARGER than we were back at the start date. And we're developing our goldmine to get the Renaissance, using only our excess points. We've also got a few provinces switched over to tengri, which is great. Right now, we're waiting for Timmy to not defend the Oirat, so that we can eat as many of the manchurian tribes as possible. And, we're looking to eat Jaunpur, because they have a LOT of tasty development to raze.

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter!
 
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For our first idea group, we took humanist. It's going to be utterly necessary for my plan.

wait....what? Humanism in a HORDE?

And we're developing our goldmine to get the Renaissance, using only our excess points.

this warms my heart.

the economy, fools!

I hope you can get Persia as a vassal at some point, if Timmie is weak.

You reached India before the situation there settles into three-four big nations...

Time to start some SERIOUS warmongering.

Hope you enabled popups and interesting nations etc, because I smell opportunity.

To fish..

I have fond memories of my Yeren khan providing the delicious Bengalese fish to his unhappy cavalry!
 
Great progress so far it seems, and you're very lucky with that new Khan. I'm curious to find out what the next moves will be.
 
wait....what? Humanism in a HORDE?



this warms my heart.

the economy, fools!

I hope you can get Persia as a vassal at some point, if Timmie is weak.

You reached India before the situation there settles into three-four big nations...

Time to start some SERIOUS warmongering.

Hope you enabled popups and interesting nations etc, because I smell opportunity.

To fish..

I have fond memories of my Yeren khan providing the delicious Bengalese fish to his unhappy cavalry!


Humanism as a horde may be unorthodox, but it will be absolutely vital. However, after having spent time looking at the situation in India, I've actually swapped it out with admin ideas. I don't have the "idea group limits" on, so admin was going to be either my second or third idea group. So bumping it up to first is no sweat. I did have a slight change of plans, and immediate humanism was a relic of the old plan.

And yes, my immediate goal is to become the powerful "northern block" in india, since I doubt I'll be able to stop Bahmanis/Vijayanagar before they consolidate the south. Pretty much all of india is considered interesting to me, so if anything happens in the thunderdome, I'll know.
 
Fun HordARR, subbed.

Try getting colonization ideas and blocking the path o Russia somehow, that would be interesting, otherwise, maybe waiting for Mingsplosion and grabbing some sweet chinese land for the greater glory of Sarig Yogir would be nice.
 
Ready to descend from the mountains and the plateaux to plunder the weak low-landers? :D
 
Chapter 2
Chapter 2: The Northern Block

Where we last left off, our horses had finished grazing on Nepalese spices.

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To prevent a large alliance-chain, or several large blocks, forming in India, we look to destroy any northern Indian states, to prevent them from consolidating power and making India into a gross hug-box.

Jaunpur, you're first on the chopping block!

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Hah, that's a cute 9 there, Jaunny boy! Too bad you have nothing to shoot at us...

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But we have plenty of horses to run you down with!

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SPREAD OUT AND TAKE EVERYTHING THAT'S NOT NAILED DOWN!

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Having fully sieged down, and looted, Jaunpur, we decided to DOW this little guy here. We're hoping that Multan dropping out of the war will make it so we can get more land, but it's unlikely, if I'm honest.

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We also were waiting for points to get the best idea in the admin tree. We swapped out humanism for the time being, we won't be needing it JUST yet. Plus, the points we save with admin ideas will be HUGE, especially since we got it early.

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Our heir had a bit too much curry, and it turned out that he wasn't sweating from the spicy food! It's something dangerous, something deadly... a mild cough! Welp, better pray to horse-god, he might be able to save him!

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Well, we asked horse-god to save our heir. But he said "neigh".

It's too bad we went from an average heir, with stats in the wrong places, to a terrible heir, whose stats make horse riding and hunting mandatory for him.

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Mo' money, mo' power.

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Unfortunately, there was no way to completely box in Jaunpur and keep other nations from taking their land. So we ended up taking their most valuable provinces, which included both of their forts. While we have the inklings of a coalition to worry about, they're nations that will join the Greater Yogirian banner soon enough. So unless things go HORRIBLY wrong, we've nary a thing to worry about.

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Noticing that the Timurids are no longer allied to Oirat, we jump on the situation, calling in Uzbek to help us out. We have a single mercenary regiment ready to siege up the land that Uzbek would want. Don't need them keeping us from taking the lands we want!

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Looks like vajrayana might be spreading more often now, thanks to all those monks coming in and teaching their practice! Eh, it's fine, I guess. We're still synced with them. For now... *DUN DUN DUNNNN!*

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Oirat never stood a chance. Taking on a better horde, who has more than double their cavalry, in the DESERT? They were asking for a stackwipe with those conditions!

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Thanks to developing the goldmine of Kuqa, we're able to embrace the Renaissance! Huzzah, there shall be many a painting of the almighty horse-god, in the horse-tine chapel! Located in scenic "Middle of the Desert", right next to picturesque "Mirage of an Oasis" and tourist favorite "Skeleton of Lost Traveler"! :p

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We take the following land, making sure to block Uzbek from the Oirat. We are the ones who will unite our culture group! Not you!

We're also working on eliminating Mongolia, to keep Ming from taking any of their land in any tributary wars they may want to declare.

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Tech 7, hello cannons! Time to unleash our horse-mounted cavalry upon the unsuspecting Indian nations!

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Bagelkhand must fall! Firstly, they claim to be a "khan" without being a horde! Secondly, they claim to be a khan of bagels?! No way, no one can be khan of a single food!

We're also doing this to break Delhi's alliance with Bahmanis, since fighting them both would be kinda silly.

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Jaunpur was guaranteeing Kangra, who we made a co-belligerent. Unfortunately, taking any land from Jaunpur would get us a one-way ticket to Coalition City, so we settle for some cash. Not what I wanted, but better than the alternative, unfortunately. :oops:

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I can't recall ever seeing the Ottomans have to deal with a peasant war, here's hoping this hampers their push out from Anatolia! :D

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Our Khan had been speaking with his horse, asking if horse-god is displeased with his policies. And horse-god said "neigh", and the people rejoiced! The realm stabilized, showing that nomadic ways are far from dead!

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Delhi's out, we'll be seeing them in 6 years. We could have taken their money, but we don't want to risk having too long of a truce, since the Timurids have already taken some of their land in the past.

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Thanks to Kashmir jumping on Kangra, we can only get the one province. But that's fine, it's one more than we expected to get!

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And tonight, we dine on Bagels! On a side note, the reason we're not attacking Jharkhand is because they're a tributary of Ming. So they're not in any danger of being annexed. Plus, they have pretty bad land, mostly 1/1/1 stuff.

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Lower corruption? Yes please. Lower autonomy, yes PLEASE! :)

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It's been a few years, Jaunpur, time to finish the job! Unfortunately, Delhi had taken some of their land, but there wasn't a thing we could have done about that.

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Speaking of Delhi, looks like they're in a spot of trouble! Good thing we went for the short truce, this is a golden opportunity.

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Jaunpur, you're done. And get your stinkin' cores off of MY land!

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We're going to keep on preventing a northern block from forming in India. How? By BECOMING the northern block, of course!

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Thanks to not having the limit on idea groups, we're able to get humanist ideas now. We're going to be getting the group fleshed out ASAP, to make our realm more stable.

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For our first age ability, we get the AE reduction we so desperately wanted. While the cavalry ratio would be nice (thanks to hordes now only having 75% cav. ratio, which is pretty bogus, if you ask me), we're taking a lot of land rapidly, so less AE is welcome.

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We had eaten our latest target, then turned our eyes to Delhi, the last nation capable of becoming powerful in Northern India. Too bad Sarig Yogir runs things around here!

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DONE...

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... AND DUSTED.

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No peace window shot this time, but here's an overlook at the situation. We have the majority of the high dev. land in North India, with only a little left to seize. Bahmanis & Bengal are fighting against a coalition made of most the other Indian nations, Delhi is split in two, and we're eyeing up the rest of the minors in the area. IIRC, we're somewhere around 300-400 development now, pretty good for starting as a 7 development 2PM.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter!
 
I am looking forward to the clash with Ming with relish.