Give this man a raise.IMO those are credible great powers in India if we remove the Mughal Empire.
They are the ones that start out in control of the core areas that was/can be used for the rise of great empires.
- Jaunpur may not have lasted long but given the extremely nice lands they controlled in 1444 they would have had lots of things speaking for them if they had survived their infancy (this is after all one of the fought over regions in the "CK2 era" as well as the core of the Delhi Sultanate and later Mughal Empire).
- Delhi being able to recover like they did under the Lodis was not the most obvious development in 1444 (as anyone can see in game too).
- Malwa being strong initially and then collapsing is historical and is made likely by their actual in game position so I'm more than happy with that and it doesn't always happen.
- Gujarat, the arch rival of Malwa, did really well until the Mughals came along, later on it's not an insignficant part of the domain of one of the Maratha states.
Bengal was used as a base to conquer all of northern India by Sher Shah Suri and was one of the stronger Mughal successor states later (and indeed was the seed of British domination of India eventually).- Vijayanagar and Bahmanis both being quite strong is also historical, what doesn't happen is that they should both splinter (and for similar reasons) into a number of successor states. This is mostly down to empires being more stable in EU4 than in history but we could nudge things along a bit more there. Note though that the later Hyderabad state and Mysore states are not that far off from VIJ and BAH really if you look at controlled territory (less true of Mysore than Hyderabad).
- India is indeed dominated by Muslim states in the north, but that's not really an odd thing given our start date. Muslims have been in control for quite a while there in 1444 and even if we have plenty of states collapsing there historically (even to Hindu nobles like how most of Malwa broke off) the Muslim states continued to dominate up until the Mughals conquered them all. Bengal even had a Hindu vizier seizing power a while before the game starts but still ended up with the Muslim aristocracy getting their power back (the way this happened is what the event that can convert Hindu Sultanates is loosely modeled after).
- That said I do see Mewar and Orissa do well from time to time, which I think is fine as they're both credible alternatives (Orissa is perhaps less likely but around our start date Kapilendra was really doing well for himself).
Conversions I'm less happy about but it's something that's pretty easy to do worldwide and this is just one of the places where it shows. If southern India (even the Muslim controlled parts) stay more Hindu then that's actually another point for history as while even in the north conversions where not a big thing Muslims where even more in minority in the south.
Sikhs are a very nice addition to this region but a strong Sikh state is a very lategame development in game terms and those are always tricky to get to happen. Sikhism already converts a lot more provinces than would be historical (province you'd likely not have a single province with Sikh majority if going by history, even within the later Sikh state). A strong Sikh state would be nice but given that they're supposed to pop up right in the way of Mughal or Afghan invasions I know what I'd prioritize if I had to choose for the sake of the big picture.
Where I think things could improve is the things that really changed midgame or lategame:
I'd love to see the Mughals and the Marathas more often (and I don't believe one would have to exist for the other to be born).
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The AI generally only sends missionaries to provinces it doesn't have positive tolerance towards, presumably because missionaries can cause revolts and the AI is worse at handling revolts than the player. Due to NIs, the Ottomans will only have negative tolerance of heathens in the very early game, or when they have low Legitimacy.
Give this man a raise.
Wouldnt giving Hindus a -1 or -2% Local Missionary Strength solve the problem? Making it harder for the Sultanates to convert them, and give Sikhs a 1 or 2% Heretic Missionary Strength to compensate and boom problem solve.(It would be harder to convert India to Buddhism tho, whatever that achievement was too easy
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