Forming Yuan

[Aethis]

I am trying a few games to form Yuan and want to do it the 'proper' way, i.e no culture/tag switching to or from Manchu or Ming etc. I want the achievement as well.

This means playing as an Altaic horde ideally who is Tengri.

Out of them all Oirat makes a lot of sense, right culture and religion, strong ruler who is an excellent general. Only issue being a disloyal Mongolia blocking your Eastern expansion.

However is playing as Mongolia a better option? To reduce tech costs I need to rush Manchuria for their feudalism and the Buryata goldmine and I can get support from Oirat rivals for independence.

General play goes the same, expanding, looting and razing as much as I can, take humanism to avoid rebels.

With either nation when is the best time to break tributary from Ming? I know I need the unguarded frontier, I think I should try when they enact a reform and their mandate drops to 50, then once we go to war and the mandate stays below 50 as long as I don't get hammered in the first war I know by the second war their armies will be paper. I am struggling to get to this point however...

Other issues include tanking Horde unity once I break from Ming as I have nobody else to raze or loot until I fight Ming.

Any tips or advice welcome, anything I am doing glaringly wrong?

 

[Horn and Ivory]

Why not Korchin? Easier access than either Oirat or Mongolia for rushing the Manchus and picking up that gold mine, and you get to be pretty in pink. They're right culture and religion. You also start with syncretic vajrayana which helps keep horde unity up if for whatever reason you can't be conquering right this second.

 

[PhoenixG]

Starting as Mongolia is a decent option. If you set your sync faith to confucianism you can ask support from Ming. After you won the indepence war, become tributary and you can eat the whole north. Then you can start smacking Ming.. It's nice let the unguarded frontier disaster to fire, but for a horde it's only a cherry on top of the icecream. Same as low mandate. If you have one tech advantage and can field 30k, you'll beat Ming to a pulp. All other stuff are extra.

As the thing you doing glaringly wrong, is you underestimate horde units. Pre tech 10 they can beat countries with double their army size. Just avoid non-flat terrain like plague and fight on flat terrain (like desert, grassland and farmland).

As horde imo the best sync faith for Tengri is no sync faith. Just pick the yellow shaman when you have a sync faith. After you don't need it anymore swap to no sync faith. With that you can go full cav, and don't need to worry about inf/cav ratio.

 

[peterlj]

Hit them at mil tech 8. You get 0.8 extra shock that makes your cavs move down the chineese like wheet

 

[Zohtun]

Personally, I advocate for Oriat. You gotta eat the -3 STAB for attacking your liege/vassal so why not do it as the stronger liege rather than the weaker vassal?

Beforehand you can chew a little on Changai and take Sunni as syncretic to gain a boatload of potential allies (as well as easy conquesting westwards).

Once you have chewed some of Changai, submitted to Ming (to keep them from rolling you) and punched out Mongolia (half of which comes pre-cored!) you can annex Korchin (who probably has vassalised Buiyat, giving you a vassal there. If they've not then do it yourself as the next step) and can march east to take the Manchu tribes. State the Buiyat land with the gold mine, set the mine as your new capital (diploannex if you can) and state the better Manchu lands to gain cheap Feudalism. Develop the hell out of the mine to gain lots of ducats and Renaissance (it's far away from everything else that Ming, Korea and the rest won't benefit for at least 15 years if not more). You now have a nice advantage over your neighbours, alliances with some of the stronger Muslims in the India/Persia region and plenty of steppe land waiting for taking. Once you got a mil advantage on Ming (ideally before you actually take it), refuse tribute until they break it, fend off their retaliation using your steppe lands and then show them that Yuan dynasty best dynasty.

This is when I did it anyway. Although admittedly I've been tempted multiple times to go pure Tengri, since black shamanism means you can convert practically anything and your bonuses are more conductive to taking names.

 

[CaptainPolyp]

With Mongolia, you can get the Mandukhai Khatun event, one of the most awesome character in Mongol history (if you have the women in history dlc). You have to be in a regency before 1510 tho.

 

[TenshiN]

Oirat definitely - its one of my favourite starts in the game. For starters - you release Mongolia from vassalage, since you won't be able to make it loyal without spending tons of monarch power for developing its useless provinces. After that, you can hit Chagatai before it gets any allies. After that, you either hit on Kara Del and use its province to dev up Feudalism, or pray that your God-General won't die while you are chewing through Manchu and use Girin to develop institution at instead. When taking Manchu land, do not raze the 2 regions bordering Korea - instead state them to fund your army and provide more manpower, as they have good levels of development. Do the same with Buryatia for its gold mine.
After doing that, you will probably be able to take your first Age of Exploration bonus. Take the "Transfer Subjects at half-price" one and use it to vassalize Yarkand in 1 war. After that, you should have a decently strong army (i am usually able to afford at least two 20k full-cavalry stacks), which should be enough to take on Ming. Mil Tech 8 is usually a nice point to attack - Ming will probably be at tech 7 at this point, which usually makes its armies field big amounts of cannons, which are pathetically weak at this point. At war, stay away from Ming's northern mountain forts and try to siege the forts at Beijing and Shenyang instead, since they are plains and with decent supply.

P.S: Do not set any syncretic religions - bonuses from Pure Tengri are just too awesome to pass up, and Yellow Shamanism + Humanism ideas will nearly negate all the rebels.

 

[Aethis]

Thanks for the advice. It seems I am waiting too long and Ming get too powerful.

Still at 0 mandate and equal Military tech they still overwhelm me with their amazing generals and sheer numbers.

 

[Dominion]

Personally, I advocate for Oriat. You gotta eat the -3 STAB for attacking your liege/vassal so why not do it as the stronger liege rather than the weaker vassal?

Just stop paying tribute and have them break your relation. No need to take a stab hit.

 

[Zohtun]

Just stop paying tribute and have them break your relation. No need to take a stab hit.

The bit you're quoting is regarding Mongolia vs Oriat. Your comment clearly has misunderstood me as talking about Ming/Either Horde.

 

[Zephyrum]

Not sure if you count this as proper, but...

Timurids. They are right culture and have enough dev to start hitting the Ming mandate as soon as they get a border, which takes a single war with Chagatai.

The drawback? Religion has to be changed, but shifting as a Sunni is extremely easy, just use the Dhimmi.

If Persia becomes uncontrollable, drop them when it gets too bad, as long as the Ming takes the hit you'll be good.

 

[Zohtun]

Not sure if you count this as proper, but...

Timurids. They are right culture and have enough dev to start hitting the Ming mandate as soon as they get a border, which takes a single war with Chagatai.

The drawback? Religion has to be changed, but shifting as a Sunni is extremely easy, just use the Dhimmi.

If Persia becomes uncontrollable, drop them when it gets too bad, as long as the Ming takes the hit you'll be good.

Tried that, Harder than it sounds.

Although protip: Punch Tabarestan in the face and demand they release Persia. With Persia existing, the Persian rebellion events don't fire and you have fewer horrible BS events to deal with.

Tribute Persia yourself to keep QQ from wrecking them, since their erasing Persia again renders this plan pointless.

 

[PhoenixG]

Not sure if you count this as proper, but...

Timurids. They are right culture and have enough dev to start hitting the Ming mandate as soon as they get a border, which takes a single war with Chagatai.

The drawback? Religion has to be changed, but shifting as a Sunni is extremely easy, just use the Dhimmi.

If Persia becomes uncontrollable, drop them when it gets too bad, as long as the Ming takes the hit you'll be good.

doesn't work that easy for pagan religion. You can only break to animist. Other pagan religion won't swap you. And the only animist province in the area is in Ming's land.

 

[Zohtun]

doesn't work that easy for pagan religion. You can only break to animist. Other pagan religion won't swap you. And the only animist province in the area is in Ming's land.

This. Although breaking to one of the Buddhist sects or Confucian * is also an option. When I made my attempt, I broke to Confucian then harmonised Sunni to gain 100% unity.

That said the experience left me with a total dislike of Confucian's mechanics.

*Or Shinto but lets be realistic here who the *bleep* is going to break to Shinto?

 

[Aethis]

Actually Timurids sounds ok... Sort of like going back to your roots!

If I conquer the required provinces and then destate my old lands and state all the confucian lands I should be able to flip religion. Shame I can't become tengri.

 

[Zohtun]

Actually Timurids sounds ok... Sort of like going back to your roots!

If I conquer the required provinces and then destate my old lands and state all the confucian lands I should be able to flip religion. Shame I can't become tengri.

If you have Cossacks you can give the Confucian lands to the Dhimmi estate. Then piss them off (making a new tax usually works) and start revoking. Each revoke will trigger religious zealots. Then you kite them across your lands and watch the carnage.

Declare a war if you need to ensure that you don't break. Once you have 50%, or however many provinces you want to be converted, give in to their demands and boom. You're now a "reformed" Muslim.

Side note: You may need to reform to Mughals and Shan prior to this to gain Dhimmi unless you just eat the STAB and Admin cost to reform horde via decision.

 

[PhoenixG]

Actually Timurids sounds ok... Sort of like going back to your roots!

If I conquer the required provinces and then destate my old lands and state all the confucian lands I should be able to flip religion. Shame I can't become tengri.

religion doesn't work with state destate. It's work with the dev they got.

 

[Zephyrum]

Tried that, Harder than it sounds.

Although protip: Punch Tabarestan in the face and demand they release Persia. With Persia existing, the Persian rebellion events don't fire and you have fewer horrible BS events to deal with.

Tribute Persia yourself to keep QQ from wrecking them, since their erasing Persia again renders this plan pointless.

I found it awfully stress-free, other than my impatience to wait for truces with Ming and the bigger hordes around.

Rush Humanist, basically solves most rebel problems. Tributary the hell out of whoever you can in India, Middle East and Central Asia to keep a nice influx of extra monarch points to sustain your fast coring or teching up. If desparate, demand extra tribute money out of the tributaries, and don't bother them breaking free, you really don't need them. If done right, when you are EoC, you'll be safely within the positive mandate gain, too.

doesn't work that easy for pagan religion. You can only break to animist. Other pagan religion won't swap you. And the only animist province in the area is in Ming's land.

Confucian/Buddhist is always an option, too, though. Tengri is rougher to get, but imo you'll be better off with Confucian since Harmonizing with muslims basically renders all of that Sunni-Shia divide in your mainland worthless. What's best, this method allows you to harmonize with Zoroastrian from Yazd; most other nations would have a hard time saving the province from Timurid/Persian conversion for it. It gives a pretty massive +10% Trade Efficiency (stacks with the 5% from Muslim Group).

 

[bly08]

Hordes don't get Dhimmi, you have to convert via rebels.

 

[The Good Shepherd]

After many attempts at the Yuan achievement here's some input:
1) Oirat is probably best placed to start with, although starting without feudalism and disloyal vassal mongolia is slightly annoying. Korchin can quickly embrace feudalism through conquest of Haixi and can weaken Korea early if the opportunity arises.
3) In order to defeat ming you require AT LEAST 500 development; without the frontier disaster debuff to mandate, is is extremely costly and difficult to chip away at his mercenary meat army of death - breaking tribuary state before this is extremely risky, unless you have some a number of strong Indian allies (even then it is down to luck how they back you up in the war).
4) Adding Sunni as syncretic faith seemed to be quite powerful (escpecially coupled with humanist ideas). You'll need to unite the Altaic lands either way, and a good half of these are Sunni. The former timurid heartland (samarkand trade node) can provide you with a solid economic base.
5) MOST IMPORTANTLY - Do not form Yuan too early!!! If you rush into then you will be trapped in the downward spiral of no mandate, mainly due to bordering non-tributaries (I.E Ming, possibly Russia). I made this mistake at least twice. Sadly, it seems the only way to keep your previous power as emproer is to wait until you pretty much have most of China conquered.

In the end to finally crack this nut, I created a Tengri custom nation with a grassland capital of Tashkent, a small number of provinces, but powerful military and conquest ideas. Although its quite a "gamey" solution, I decided to resort to this so I could eventually weaken Russia, who had thwarted my last run as Oirat, and to team up with the Ottomans.
Although the start-menu assured me that achievements could be gained with this custom nation - the Yuan achievement didn't actually fire, atlough ALL the bloody requirements had been met.

In hindsight; I became obsessed with this one, more so than any other achievement in the game. So many bloody hours. Hollow victory. But I guess this sums up this game in a nutshell.