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Great AAR! I hope one day to see what it's like to take a loan out for 700+ ducats.

1) How's the economy looking? I've never done an Asia game let alone a Ming game so I'm not sure what the ideal strategy is.
2) Any further insight on why Expansion ideas? Do they combo nicely with some of the Ming ideas or do they play a role in the long-term game?
 
1.)
Economy is... decent. I have a level 3 and two level 2 advisors, what I consider a rather low amount of forts, and am well below my land forcelimits. I already built temples in all provinces where they're giving +0.2 or more ducats a month, and my income is still very low (turning negative when reinforcing).
That said, I am using a lot of mercenaries for my infantry, and the advisors cost a fair bit as well. Plus I started my first colony already. Still, the 50% autonmy floor hurts a lot in that regard, my economy is much worse than both my size and the quality of the provinces would suggest.

2.)
There's not much reasoning to the Exploration ideas, beyond me wanting to colonize as much as possible as fast as possible. I neither have to worry about my military nor am I bleeding military monarch points yet, nor would I feel comfortable with an administrative idea as my first pick.
There are several other diplomatic ideas that would very strong for me (Diplo, Influence, Trade), but I think Exploration both brings very fast results (I can start colonizing with the first unlock) and sets me up for later in the game (colonial nations).
 
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1.)
Economy is... decent. I have a level 3 and two level 2 advisors, what I consider a rather low amount of forts, and am well below my land forcelimits. I already built temples in all provinces where they're giving +0.2 or more ducats a month, and my income is still very low (turning negative when reinforcing).
That said, I am using a lot of mercenaries for my infantry, and the advisors cost a fair bit as well. Plus I started my first colony already. Still, the 50% autonmy floor hurts a lot in that regard, my economy is much worse than both my size and the quality of the provinces would suggest.

Why don't you just dismantle your forts completely? If you play well enough, no forts are necessary. in my opinion. Not that they don't have their uses, but they're just better only against really strong nations in case you border such... but you are the strong nation here.
 
Why don't you just dismantle your forts completely? If you play well enough, no forts are necessary. in my opinion. Not that they don't have their uses, but they're just better only against really strong nations in case you border such... but you are the strong nation here.
I guess that would save a bit of money, but tbh, I'd rather have more forts than even less. Actual defense is one thing, even if it will only start to matter once I meet the Europeans.
But another thing are the rebels. I'm expanding fast enough that I'm getting rebellions now and then even with the Mandate of Heaven, and if I ever do lose the mandate again I'd really prefer to have everything covered in forts if possible.
I might rethink it if the economy gets any worse or I urgently need more armies, but for the time being I won't delete any forts.
 
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Nice AAR.

Are you going to do the Kow-Tow achievement? (Having a vassal of those religious groups: Christian, Muslim, Dharmic, Eastern, Pagan)

Also, now that you're animist, do you want to switch to another type of pagan. I'm thinking Tengrist there, as the religions is great for stability purpose. :)
 
Yeah, if I don't completely forget about it while playing I'll get the Kow-Tow achievment.
And no, I'm not planning on converting again. One of the meso- or south American religions would be tempting, but I don't know if they actually work for nations not starting with them now. Plus it would be a huge pain to convert again with how big I already am.
 
Why didn't you declare a war when animists were close to occupying 50% of your total provinces? Rebels can never break your nation if you are at war.

Resiege capital if needed, and let them force convert you 100% ;)

You also don't need to mothball your forts if you want to keep your army tradition intact. You can do a sortie, and let them lose. Fort lost immediatly, while it being active ;)

Nice concept for the AAR.. Animist Ming...
 
Why didn't you declare a war when animists were close to occupying 50% of your total provinces? Rebels can never break your nation if you are at war.

Resiege capital if needed, and let them force convert you 100% ;)
I did that, several times actually. I guess it would have been smarter to let the rebels rampage for a little longer, but I just lost patience after a while and wanted the conversion to be done and over.
I was also worried about other rebels, since I couldn't negotiate with the animist rebels I didnt want to break while having any other revolt risk anywhere (progress towards enforced demands was the same as towards breaking at all points).

You also don't need to mothball your forts if you want to keep your army tradition intact. You can do a sortie, and let them lose. Fort lost immediatly, while it being active ;)
Sortieing (sp?) costs monarch points though (unless that was changed in a recent patch), and I mostly mothballed the forts as the rebels got closer.
Between the increased upkeep and paying military points to sortie I'm not sure if it would have been worth it for what would have been like half a point in military tradition at most.

Nice concept for the AAR.. Animist Ming...
I'm sorta sad that I only thought of the possible title "Animing" about 2 chapters in... :(
 
Chapter 4: Thinning out the neighbourhood

Continuing on in the same line where we left the last chapter, I'll just keep on expanding. As long as I'm a little carefull with the alliances there's no real danger, and we have yet to meet someone who would be able to take us on 1vs1. So for the time being mopping up weaklings is where's it at. :)
10zpzz4.jpg

The plan for this was to feed Korea to a vassal, but apparently I goofed that up a little.
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Turns out you can't transfer occupation across a sea tile, whoops...:oops:
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Looks like I'll have to shell out some admin points and core this myself, I don't really want another vassal in this region anymore.

I also declared war on Dai Viet in the meantime. Annoyingly Khmer declared on them as well right away, and snatched one of their provinces before I could get there.
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Oh well, I'll get to them later...:mad:

Next up were some last minute adjustments to Kham's borders, before I finish the annexation:
2gwrej8.jpg


The war itself wasn't very eventful, but some other things happened during it:
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While the monarch points were a bit tempting, I went for the 5 points of mercantilism instead. I'm making a lot of money from trade already, and that will only increase in the future. Hopefully I'll be able to get some additionally merchants from colonial nations later on to make full use of it. It's even more important to me than it usually is, since the trade income is not affected by the 50 autonomy floor I'm suffering.

2enydcp.jpg

And that's the other one, that should allow me to snake my way towards the Americas soon, once I get a level of diplo tech or two and increase my colonial range a bit.

Back to the war, turned out I once again didn't take into account that unjustified demands cost diplo-points, so I had to keep the enemy occupied a little longer than was neccessary. :rolleyes:
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I really want to get Religious ideas next, the better conversion rate would be nice as well if I want to spread the Animism.

Emboldened by their recent victory against Dai Viet, Khmer decided to attack Ayutthaya and her allies.
xepvzp.jpg

Once again reminded of this useless alliance I declined a declared a war of my own. :p
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Finally that waste of a diplo relation is gone, should have done that decades ago...
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I thought about making a seperate peace with Ayutthaya to get more from the war, but decided against it in the end, I don't really want to waste any more diplo points than neccessary. There should be enough time to finish off Indochina later.

Next up was another visit to Japan, my vassal Shiba still had a lot of cores there:
iqj051.jpg


During this war the annexation of Kham finished, that should open some new routes:
j5in7l.jpg

Annoyingly there's a big 3-ways alliance between Yarkand, Delhi, and Bengal going on, so I'll have to be a bit patient there. I probably could beat them if I focussed on them for a while, but I think my armies and time are better used elsewhere for the time being.

And this one made me laugh:
34hj9nc.jpg

I don't think so. :D

Anyways, Shiba got a lot of new territory from the war:
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I'd actually have to improve relations for a while to get them to loyal again.

And right after another player left the field:
2ebee0p.jpg

With the Manchu region under my control, I started the annexation of Haixi. Thanks to the diplo-rep penalty from having annexed Kham so recently not much will happen for a while, but I wanted to start it in one of the few windows where I'm not at war and Haixi has a good enough relation with me.

Having started the annexation doesn't mean that I couldn't feed them some more of course. :D
2hf6xyv.jpg

Oirat was fighting the Uzbek in the west again, so it was a pretty easy war for me.
zmk1mg.jpg

Uzbek was looking pretty huge though after their war finished, will have to look out for them later on.

And finally some more probing into India:
241vwax.jpg

I seized the opportunity to get an Indian vassal that'll do all the coring in the region for me:
wrm2s0.jpg

And just took the rest for myself. :p
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Jharkhand has a few cores and claims scattered around, so I should be able to grow them pretty quickly. If I want to go against the big Indian nations I'll have to commit a lot of soldiers though, between wanting to increase my army size and wanting to colonize more, my economy still is looking weaker than I'd like. I should probably focus on getting rid of my loans a bit more, but on the other hand I want to get all the buildings I can in the relatively few provinces where they are useful despite the autonomy. Hopefully that'll pay off in the long run.
 
Show us religious map. And I guess you wont get Smiling Buddha event anymore?
Not sure about the event. I'm assuming you mean the Buddha's Smile event (it's called "Outbreak of Buddhism" in the files now), that can change a province's religion to Mahayana Buddhism and gives a base tax?
If I'm reading it correctly the province has to be Confucian for that event, your state religion doesn't matter. With the MTTH and its modifiers it doesn't look that great though, even if free base tax is always nice. Or did you mean a different event?

As for the map, here's the current political and religious maps:
b8a655.jpg


21lscnp.jpg

In hindsight I probably should have taken Yeren as the vassal for the Manchu region so that I wouldn't have to worry about converting that part of the world, but oh well.
If there's any chance that I'd ever get rid of the AE penalty with them I might vassalize the Oirats in the next war though. If I'm not mistaken I could force them to become Animist via the subject interactions, and they lost a bunch of their cores in the west by now.

But yeah, until I get religious ideas conversion is really slow, about 1.5 to 2 years per province. It still won't be any good even with religious, but it's something at least.
Maybe I should just conquer Najd, convert their provinces, and release them as an Animist nation to let them do some of the heavy lifting when it comes to converting...
 
If you can stand re-subdueing a vassal, it might be a good idea to force religion on your current vassals, to speed up the conversion.
Can't force religion if they are from a different religious group. I'd have to annex them, convert more than half of their provinces, and then release them again, which doesn't really seem worth the effort to me at this point.
 
Oh ok, sorry
No need to be sorry. I'm grateful for any ideas and tips you people have, so just keep it coming even if you're not 100% sure on things. :)
 
Chapter 5: Confused rivalries

As I said previously, religious conversion was still being a huge pain, and getting a pagan vassal to help at least a bit with it would be really nice. The only candidate in a decent position and within reach were the Oirats, but after several wars and the amounts of AE I got all around me I didn't really think they'd make a very good vassal (AE can take a long time to tick down...).
I still checked of course, and got a nice little surprise:
esjokp.jpg

A whopping 17AE after all I've done to them and their neighbours in the east. :eek:
Guess I didn't really consider the effect the different religions make on the AE gain enough, very nice. For now we still have a truce, but I'll come back to them later. ;)

For now I'd start to give my latest vassal some love:
257de0p.jpg

Bengal and Jaunpur both had very strong alliance networks, so I went for the small frys for the time being.
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Forgot to transer occupation of the province of Khurda, whoops.
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Easily solved in this case, but still annoying how often I still do silly mistakes like that... :oops:

And what's that, a new potential rival? :eek:
2luymbt.jpg

They seem a little weak to be my rival, but I'll take it. :D

The next war saw me getting started on the islands in south-east Asia.
oqy3nr.jpg

I had a colony on the small island of Nias just off the coast of Pasai, and a few fabricated claims later I declared for them. Been a long time since I fabricated as many claims as in this campaign...

The most exciting thing that happened during the war probably was me losing Delhi as a rival again, which wasn't too surprising.
veqe07.jpg

Pasai did have a fairly big army, but I had two which I kept in close support of each other. My vassals had some trouble understanding this plan, but it all worked out in the end.

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There were a fair amount of potential vassals I could have released in this area (I was considering going for Malacca as well since they were reduced to an OPM), but in the end I decided on the one with the most difficult name. :p
4fz5ns.jpg

(plus they had the most cores and these provinces cost me no diplo points)

In hindsight I guess I could have gotten one of the small one-island-nations to the east instead, since they were Animist already. Not sure if could have sold them a province this far away already, but it would have made conversion a bit easier.

Speaking of which, it was time to pick a new idea:
2ci9y4g.jpg

It was a really tough choice between admin and religious for me, but seeing how my religious unity was down to about 60% already, and with diplo points being a bigger concern for the time being, religious came out as the winner for me.

Shortly after I got the option to build a grand palace again:
33dk20i.jpg

I'd be really really grateful if I can get this again if I ever have legitimacy problems again...:rolleyes:

Continuing on in this region:
2inuhx.jpg

Hm, the more I look at it the more I think either of these small Animist nations would have been a better choice as my vassal for this region than Pagarruyung. Oh well, too late now...:oops:

And since I still had enough admin points left after coring these 2 provinces, it was finally time for some holy warring.:D
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Forward, in the name of God the spirits that guide us (something along the lines of that, I think?). :mad:

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Next rookie mistake that took me a while to realize:
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I cut myself off from any way to get a good CB on either Ayutthaya or Khmer there. Guess I'll have to take a province from Pasai before working on these 2 some more...

And look who's back as a rival:
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Even weaker (at least in comparison) than before...

And then my strong 5/5/5 Emperor sadly passed away:
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As much trouble as he gave me, he really was a great ruler and lived longer than I thought. His reign felt pretty short to me at first, but thinking back on it he lived to the age of 61, and sat on the throne for 35 years. That's pretty impressive for a 5/5/5 I'd say⸮ :p

The next in line to the throne couldn't quite reach him, but they still were better than average. If my previous campaigns are anything to go by that probably means the I'll get a bunch of idiots on the throne later on...:rolleyes:

orpeep.jpg

Again, not too surprising, but it was getting a bit silly.

A short war against another of the small island nation later, and all of Sulawesi was under my control (or yet to be colonized):
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And once that war was done:
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...:confused:
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o_O
I know that rivalries get screwed up once you grow powerful enough, but this was just dumb. Was I just edging around some treshold there, or should I file a bug report for this?

And it continued for a while longer after that. I got Bahmanis instead of Delhi for a change too btw:
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It went the same with them though:
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Back to Delhi:
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I guess you're getting the picture by now...:confused:

Back to the main topic, the truce with Japan ran out, so it was time to continue unifying Japan under my vassal:
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Almost there...
As I realized soon after I should have taken at least one province for myself to get the Holy War CB on them for the final war(s), but Shiba was happily fabricating claims until then so I didn't think of it at the time.

Oh well, apart from a few silly (but luckily mostly without much of a negative impact) mistakes it was still going well all in all. After colonizing a few islands in and around Indonesia to get a way to the nations in that region, the next tough question would be where to colonize next.
As I see it I have 4 options for now:
One is to go west, towards Africa and the Cape, and from their wrap around to get to the Europeans already.
Next one is further south to Australia, to get a colonial nation asap. The wealth and strategic position of Australia make that the least appealing option though, in my opinion.
3rd one would be to get started on Siberia, and maybe get an alternative northern route towards Russia and Europe.
And the final one is to go east, towards America. Either via Kamchatka, the Kurils, and Alaska, or by some island hopping. This one is what I'll most likely go with, mostly because I want to get some colonial nations asap.
But that's something for the next chapter(s). ;)
 
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Chapter 6: The vassals are growing stronger

We're starting this chapter with something I've been wanting to do in the previous chapter already:
1499hdu.jpg

Getting myself a strong (-ish) pagan vassal. :D
Since I had too little diplo points and was only getting like one or two a month at that time, this war would have to go on for a while though (Iirc vassalizing the Oirats cost some 90 diplo points). :rolleyes:

This war also saw one of the very few times so far, where I payed some admin points to get my stability back up to +1:
21n3b86.jpg

Between the buffs to economy, missionary strength, and lowered unrest, I just didn't feel comfortable leaving it at zero. And despite the still relatively low religious unity it was cheap enough that I was fine with it (not gonna pay to bring it past +1 though).

And while I was sitting out the war with the Oirats I shifted my focus to the south again.
First towards India:
2yvmjr7.jpg

The two big blocks in northern India at that time (Bengal + Delhi + Yarkand, and Jaunpur + Bahmanis + Multan) were in a big war, so I decided to use that opportunity to finally push further into India.
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That would shift the balance of power of course, but I could always worry about the other block later...;)

Still not enough diplo points for the peace deal with the Oirats, so off to Indonesia we go:
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Once again it probably would have been a good idea to take one of the provinces for myself to get the Holy War CB, but since I used the Reconquest CB I didn't really want to spend the diplo points at that time. Especially since Call for Peace already started to kick in...
Luckily I finally had enough diplo points now:
24qprmx.jpg

They still hated me of course, so I'd have to wait a bit before forcing them to convert to Animism (they must not be over 50% liberty desire for that), but that's the whole north under my control now.

And to welcome our newest vassal:
29wpmky.jpg

Time to push west. :)

Sadly our Emperor then died after only 10 years on the throne, and was replaced by a still good, but also worse successor:
24fa4hy.jpg

And as I feared, the bloodline was weakening more and more...:(

The war against the Uzbeks continued undisturbed towards my total victory though. Persia actually did send a big army over, but I just avoided them. :p
10qxs0n.jpg

And once again I cut myself off from a direct connection towards them, I promise I'll learn this one day... :oops:

Oh well, since my troops already were in that region, we're just rotating south from there.
ji2lqx.jpg

With how strong my vassals already were, and me falling behind in diplo tech, most of them were above 50% liberty desire already, so I had to do most of the fighting myself.
It cost me the rest of my manpower, but with all four of my armies being active in that war it still went well enough:
9pw02g.jpg


That whole vassal situation was actually starting to worry me a bit, but I wasn't really willing to slow down my expansion for it, nor did I have the admin points to core everything myself. So other than continuing on, paying prestige to keep at the very least Haixi below 50% liberty desire (to keep the annexation going), and hoping to catch up a bit in diplo tech, there was not much I could do about it then.

Besides more wars to make my vassals even stronger of course. :p
k3m48z.jpg

Between not being able to take everything in one war anyways, and not wanting to spend any diplo points on it, the peace deal was relatively tame:
2yy30pl.jpg

So I was happy to bring them below 100 warscore cost, and getting the opportunity to finish them off with a Holy War.

Something similar would have to be done with Pasai:
wr0tuv.jpg


In the meantime I got the Oirats below 50% liberty desire, so I immediately forced them to convert to Animism:
14j9s0n.jpg

I figured the earlier I do it, the faster it will tick down again, and the earlier they can start converting their land (hopefully). Was more worth it to me, than them supporting me in my wars already.

Back to the war with Pasai, my goal was to take the province on their border to Ayutthaya, so that I could Holy War both Pasai and Ayutthaya later on.
2mwb4f5.jpg

Annoyingly Ayutthaya jumped Pasai after I beat their armies, and sieged that border provinces, so I had to hope that they'll win the war and take that province.

Next up we're going back to India, after we tipped the balance of power there the next war between the two blocks went much more decidedly.
2wf24nt.jpg

We're still attacking the losing side of course. :D

The only thing of note happening during that war, was a big map reveal of western Africa, south America, and the capitals of the colonizers:
ve6k3t.jpg


Also note how I'm colonizing Hawai, after some to and fro that's the direction I settled on. Next stop would be the western American coast, and the AI isn't really ahead of me in that regard. I should be able to get some big colonial nations going soon-ish. :)

Back to the war in India, I decided to spend some valuable diplo points to make a seperate peace with Delhi:
2el9j15.jpg

Maybe that border to the Timurids would prove useful in the future, and I couldn't have taken much at all from Bengal if I took those provinces in the main peace deal.

Sadly I still couldn't take everything from Bengal, so I'd have to pay them another visit later on:
1233121.jpg

Oh look, I locked myself out from any chance to get a CB on them...

Meanwhile the annexation of Haixi was progressing nicely, I regularly had to pay prestige to keep it that way though:
4hqmua.jpg

And to keep the Oirats below 100%, a big independence war could get really ugly now. Luckily not having any rivals means that noone is willing to support the independence of one of my vassals. Hopefully the relative strength will be a bit more in my favour when Haixi will be gone, I'll also need to catch up in diplo tech after that.
Between being a fair bit over my relations limit, annexing Haixi, and wanting to advance the Exploration ideas some more, there aren't many points left for diplo tech, so the +5% liberty desire per tech level you're behind is really showing...

We're gonna worry about that some more in the next chapter though. I did manage to get some more playtime the past couple days, so there should be another chapter either later today or tomorrow. Also means I'm a bit ahead with the campaign though, so any requests might take a bit longer than usual till they're answered in-game.
 
Funny that you know all of South America, but not the way over there.:p
 
Funny that you know all of South America, but not the way over there.:p
Yeah, that one weirded me out to. Might be related to the slingshot technology used by all envoys in EU4. :p
 
Chapter 7: Progress on all fronts

As I said previously, I saw no reason to slow down despite my vassals starting to get a bit uppity. I had to hope that I'd be strong enough for them not to actually do something, and once Haixi would be gone that should shift the balance of power in my favour some more again.

First I continued the conquest of Indochina, Khmer conveniently had a province adjacent to the one I took from Pasai earlier, so I could holy war.
1e41l3.jpg

Probably should not have taken, so that I could holy war for it again... :rolleyes:

Next up was Japan. Once I'd united all of Japan under my vassal they'de probably the next to be diplo-annexed, since I don't really want to rely on the AI's naval landings when I want some military help from my vassals. Plus it'd be hard to get any more use (coring) out of them then.

During that war I also enacted the "Ritual Education" decision, really nice that the basic Pagans get some additional help when it comes to converting now too.
o5yhdy.jpg

It's still not very much, but it's something at least. Some way to get another missionary too and I'd be happy already, really.

On a more worrysome note: :eek:
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This one really worried me for a while, but luckily noone followed up on that. And I was planning on finishing of Ayutthaya soon anyways.:D

Anyways, the war in Japan ended in my vassal gaining total control of the islands (expect for Okinawa and that one province I kept to holy war), and something unexpected happened:
2aiowi1.jpg

Didn't think that could fire for vassals. o_O

To put an end to them supporting the independence of my vassal, Ayutthaya was the next to fall:
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And I even remembered to take a province for myself on the Cambodian border. :)

Next stop was the western front again, getting my troops in position for another war against the Uzbeks.
And apparantly my weak heir got under the influence of the Bureaucrats, too bad that he has weak stats with a strong claim, and can't really make use of that...
2upajck.jpg

I really could have used some 80 or so years ago, but the wheels of bureaucracy do tend to mill a bit slowly sometimes I guess...:rolleyes:

Anyways, I had to use a Reconquest CB on the Uzbeks, so I wouldn't be able to get too much out of it (Oirats had only two more cores).
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Next time will be better though. ;)

And then it was time to pick the next idea. I originally wanted to take a military idea to spread my ideas out, but decided on something else instead after some thinking:
dyu4rb.jpg

I don't really mind falling behind a bit in Admin tech for a while, and it just solves too many of my problems for me to pass up on it.

Since my armies were already in the area the next war was against Yarkand and Delhi, both severely weakened by now. The war itself wasn't very exciting, but some interesting things happened during that time:
igl2k1.jpg

The people are very happy with our policies, whoever is responsible for our propaganda deserves a big bonus. :D

The provincial leaders on the other hand...
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...are a bit out of whack. "Lack of Autonomy", yeah right...o_O

The peacedeal in the war against Delhi and Yarkand mostly saw some big territorial losses from Yarkand. I did have the core-cost reduction from admin ideas already, but I still didn't want to core too many of the rich Delhian provinces at once and on my own.
jgr6rk.jpg

That direct border to Multan might come in handy though. ;)

Continuing the counter clockwise rotation, the next stop was Indonesia again.
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Pasai shouldn't take much more, and I also started fabricating on Brunei and Majaphit already. Even if I wasn't quite sure yet how I'd handle the coring there. I was considering just taking their land for myself directly, but Pagarruyung could also core it for me...

And then it was time for a trip to the far north, the land and people of Kamchatka were to become part of our Empire.
2lsunag.jpg

I really wasn't sure how I felt about this. :confused:
He was a weak heir, and already in his 30ies. But he wasn't absolutely terrible either (1/3/2 Iirc), and more importantly had a strong claim. My emperor was in his late 40ies already, and didn't have another crownprince at that time, so this had the potential to get really ugly.
Fate tempted me with an event about a talented daughter (something along the lines of an 5/4/5), but the weak claim was just too dangerous imo. I still had the risk of simply getting a worse heir with a similarly weak claim, but I felt I had to hope for a better claim.

Regardless of these considerations, the mighty Kamchadals stood no chance and soon had to surrender:
sb4jh4.jpg


And true enough, a son and heir was born soon after:
jag7lj.jpg

That's... much better than anything I hoped for. :eek: Even a regency council would be better than someone without a strong claim imo.

And while I was still celebrating this, the annexation of Haixi finally finished:
10dz5ab.jpg

And just in time, the other vassals were getting more and more cranky. It still wasn't pretty, but once the new balance of power got calculated and I got a diplo level it started to looked like something I would be able to handle again.

A bit of shuffling around and rearranging my armies later, and Indochina was only one more war away from being under my complete control:
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The next was a bit more messy, in an attempt to break the big Indian blocks I attacked first the Timurids and Multan, and then the Uzbeks and Persia (Timmies and Persia were at war at that time, so that helped :D).

The war against the Timurids and Multan had little territorial gains, but I made sure that this would be different for the next wars in that region:
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Multan had a little OPM vassal, so I took that. They were in a great position to both get western India and expand into Persia, and with Haixi gone a new spot for a vassal was open. Well, as open as it gets when you're 3 over your relations limit.:p

And amidst all this warfare, I finally managed to repay my last loan. :eek:
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Some events cost me a lot of money, and I spent a lot on buildings and my armies, so it took a bit longer. Butit's finally paying off now. :D


Meanwhile an expeditionary army reached the shores of the far east:
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Once I'd core these provinces I'd finally have my very own first colonial nation. :)

Meanwhile the war against the Uzbeks and Persia was reaching its conclusion as well:
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Once again I cut myself off from my target, but luckily I should be able to just go through whoever is in the Terra Incognita over there.
If you're looking very carefully, you might also be able to spot an unhealthy yellow/golden glow along the western and northern border of Uzbek. Looks like we're not too far away from our first direct contact with a European nation. :)