New session. Wonder what's going on with our neighbours?
What? Timmies haven't exploded? It's 1449. Shah Rukh is 71. He isn't dead yet. What's going on?
Nice. Only ally is Vij, the goal is to force them to annul with Orissa, and we take Andhra for ourselves.
Mercing up is not an option. We need men, quickly. Fortunately we're rolling in cash so it isn't much of an issue.
What? Vijayanagar has peasant rebels sieging a fort down and they're not interested? Good. Less work for us.
We switch to the wartime cabinet. We hire the advisor from the Marathas for that +5% discipline in combat. Will be very helpful, people still aren't at mil 4 yet. We have the advantage.
Vij attacks our west, we attack them south and east. Those peasants are sieging away, we let them have it.
Renaissance spawns. All available monarch points get spent on the capital. The faster we can get renaissance, the better. Either we get it or we don't get it at all.
We beat Vijayangar and siege their capital. We take their capital, we drop them out of the war. Their capital is lv1, ours is lv3. They will be there for a long time.
Rinse, repeat. Bait the enemy in, crush their dreams with reinforcements.
Huh. A stackwipe. We could push our agenda even further, but Vij isn't co-belligerent. Not worth the AE getting our cores back.
Their capital drops, we make them annul with Orissa. They won't find allies fast enough, because we're about to show them who's the better fighter.
We give two provinces to our vassal Telingana, take one for ourselves and vassalise the remains. We also steal 85 ducats, then we pay off their debt. Fun little tactic gives us -50% LD because we paid off their loans, which are tiny. Means we can get them into the action VERY quickly.
We declare on Orissa, and get a popup saying we can call someone in. Just Mewar, but they won't get anything except a few ducats.
Garjat moves in and we respond with a stackwipe. Mercs get hired, wartime cabinet is selected. Money isn't an issue.
We close in Orissa's forces to seal the deal.
and...
In the peacedeal, we take 4 provinces and steal Jeypore, Parlakhimidi and Garjat for ourselves. We're nearly 3 times the max diplo-relation slots, and our grip is weak over there at best.
This is going to be bad if we don't manage it right.
We need to integrate somebody first, probably Telingana. Then we integrate Khandesh. By that point it shouldn't be a big issue. Dip tech will fall behind heavily, but we don't plan on building a navy. Need to keep mercs, as they're the ones holding the empire together. We're going to merc up to forcelimit, because we NEED them desperately.
Next issue is where to expand next.
We just moved into Orissa, but we need our tasty cores on Vij back - they don't expire til 1594. Plenty of time. Can't move north into Malwa, they allied Bengal. If we attack, we have to wait until Bengal dishonours the CtA.
Vij is not going to find strong allies anytime soon, so we probably attack down there for our cores once truce is up or they'll give our vassals funny ideas. Don't make them do anything stupid.
6 cores can be used for that sweet sweet reconquest CB, which gives 25% AE per province that has your core on it. Easy way to grow in size, the rest we can simply make up with ducats to keep the treasury strong/pay off vassals.
We've already won the first war with Vij, so it probably won't be too big of an issue. They may AA net a bunch of minors, though. Minors are minors, so we just stackwipe them and force them out quickly. Once we get them down that initial fall, it'll be easy to keep them moving down.
We can placate/develop our vassals if we need to, but as a last resort we need to let one go. Probably will have to be Garjat. However, vassals can't declare independence while at war, so we use that to our advantage by being at war for as long as possible. We also let them do all the fighting, because that reduces relative power of all vassals to their suzerain.
Play this right and we can rule India. Muck it up and we die. Tricky, reaaaally tricky.
