I recently finished a Hindu Manchu one tag on 1.22.2 and wanted to share my run as well as get some feedback on my strategy and expansion path. I converted to Hindu for the RCC, went Admin/Influence/Humanist, switched out Influence for Diplo, Exploration, then ended with Offensive and three ideas in Quantity.
Early game was straightforward, formed Manchu asap, DoW'd Korea to get to 300 dev, refused tributary demands halfway into the war, DoW'd Ming as soon as tributary was broken:
A land bridge to Mong Yang was made from the peace deal. Assam was then taken to start spawning Hindu zealots. To speed up rebel progress I truce broke Ming, but in hindsight this was probably unnecessary.
I realized stupidly that the mandate CB and its 50% WS cost would be lost through conversion, so I left one province occupied by Hindu rebels while DoWing tributaries to white peace Ming. Meanwhile I got started on Bengal for their CoTs and land bridge to other Sunni Indian nations. Finished up Korea when the truce ended. I tried to keep SEA in fog of war to lessen AE by not allying or making any tributaries, not sure if that helped. The plan was to eat through Sunni land to border Timurids/Persia then go for Buddhist and Hindu.
Qi was my only Ming vassal. I prioritized the Southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to state them. Southern Jiangsu has close to 100 dev alone and is ideal for developing Colonialism. The rest of the early peace deals with Ming were for forts or cheap land that I could feed to Qi. Adm was conserved to rush max RCC.
After fighting Delhi, I released Punjab to feed it HCC land. Qi and Punjab were my only two vassals for the entire game.
Due to the threat of coalitions I couldn't border the Ottomans as soon as I would've liked. Siberian horde land was ignored since Humanist wasn't taken yet and Northern horde rebels would have slowed down blobbing in India.
After Ming was whittled down to around 200 WS, I converted to Hindu and enforced religion on Qi. Ming was finished around 1550s. In hindsight I should have blobbed slower in India/SEA and faster to border Ottoman. I planned to move the capital to Constantinople and make TCs, which would ensure that both Global Trade and Age of Absolutism begin on time. But Constantinople needed to be the highest value trade node to get Global trade which in turn required owning more of India and SEA.
Constantinople was taken from the first war. This might've been a mistake as I needed to control Aleppo first to boost Constantinople's income. I wanted to truce break at this point but was behind on tech. Qi and Punjab were annexed but Influence wasn't switched out quickly enough. Thought about making Adana capital but the development difference vs. Girin was too high and would have cost 700 adm.
I made a bunch of costly mistakes around this time. First, Global Trade didn't spawn on the dot because the Constantinople node's value was lower than the English Channel's. It instead spawned in England several years after 1600, which delayed Court & Country. I then decided to forgo Court & Country because I didn't know if Exploration would have been finished in time for its ToH policy, which was needed to boost max absolutism to 65. Enacting C&C would've also meant 20 less absolutism for 10 years. At this point I was still aiming to finish the one tag around 1660s. I also could've moved my main trading port to Basra sooner if I knew I couldn't get Global Trade.
After Age of Absolutism began it was standard end game blobbing. I lowered autonomy to get to max absolutism instantly, took African gold and coastal provinces down to Kilwa, created a land bridge through Muscovy to Denmark/Scandinavia, allied PLC, Austria who was emperor, and later France to safely expand into Spain and Scandinavia. Golden Age was enacted around 1620.
For the rest of the game I played badly and made more big mistakes that delayed the finish. I had a coalition form when I broke off my alliances, but didn't know that I was on the brink of its dissolution had I built to force limit. I also needed to finish off the Ottomans to control trade instead of expanding into areas that didn't feed into Constantinople.
I tried too hard to form CNs myself by demanding CNs from colonizers when I could have just inherited all of them. Also should've fog busted everywhere asap and switched out Exploration as I didn't need its policy anymore. Lastly, I should've focused on every nation that had >100 WS instead of trying to eat all the smaller nations. PLC was left alone for way too long which resulted in a >400 WS monster.
One tag was finally completed in 1699:
A note on colonial nation rebels: they were by far the biggest nuisance in late game. After making Spain cede most of Eastern America and Mexico, I dealt with monthly revolts in the new world for about 3-4 years straight, and bi/trimonthly revolts until the end of the game. I understand that CNs are dumb and bad at coring, but feeding them large chunks of land is required for non-colonizer WCs unless they're inherited at the very end or formed early. Inheriting them late means not knowing where natives are gonna end up, getting there early is not ideal for most WCs.
Thanks for reading. Comments and advice on my general strategy are appreciated.
Early game was straightforward, formed Manchu asap, DoW'd Korea to get to 300 dev, refused tributary demands halfway into the war, DoW'd Ming as soon as tributary was broken:
A land bridge to Mong Yang was made from the peace deal. Assam was then taken to start spawning Hindu zealots. To speed up rebel progress I truce broke Ming, but in hindsight this was probably unnecessary.
I realized stupidly that the mandate CB and its 50% WS cost would be lost through conversion, so I left one province occupied by Hindu rebels while DoWing tributaries to white peace Ming. Meanwhile I got started on Bengal for their CoTs and land bridge to other Sunni Indian nations. Finished up Korea when the truce ended. I tried to keep SEA in fog of war to lessen AE by not allying or making any tributaries, not sure if that helped. The plan was to eat through Sunni land to border Timurids/Persia then go for Buddhist and Hindu.
Qi was my only Ming vassal. I prioritized the Southern Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to state them. Southern Jiangsu has close to 100 dev alone and is ideal for developing Colonialism. The rest of the early peace deals with Ming were for forts or cheap land that I could feed to Qi. Adm was conserved to rush max RCC.
After fighting Delhi, I released Punjab to feed it HCC land. Qi and Punjab were my only two vassals for the entire game.
Due to the threat of coalitions I couldn't border the Ottomans as soon as I would've liked. Siberian horde land was ignored since Humanist wasn't taken yet and Northern horde rebels would have slowed down blobbing in India.
After Ming was whittled down to around 200 WS, I converted to Hindu and enforced religion on Qi. Ming was finished around 1550s. In hindsight I should have blobbed slower in India/SEA and faster to border Ottoman. I planned to move the capital to Constantinople and make TCs, which would ensure that both Global Trade and Age of Absolutism begin on time. But Constantinople needed to be the highest value trade node to get Global trade which in turn required owning more of India and SEA.
Constantinople was taken from the first war. This might've been a mistake as I needed to control Aleppo first to boost Constantinople's income. I wanted to truce break at this point but was behind on tech. Qi and Punjab were annexed but Influence wasn't switched out quickly enough. Thought about making Adana capital but the development difference vs. Girin was too high and would have cost 700 adm.
I made a bunch of costly mistakes around this time. First, Global Trade didn't spawn on the dot because the Constantinople node's value was lower than the English Channel's. It instead spawned in England several years after 1600, which delayed Court & Country. I then decided to forgo Court & Country because I didn't know if Exploration would have been finished in time for its ToH policy, which was needed to boost max absolutism to 65. Enacting C&C would've also meant 20 less absolutism for 10 years. At this point I was still aiming to finish the one tag around 1660s. I also could've moved my main trading port to Basra sooner if I knew I couldn't get Global Trade.
After Age of Absolutism began it was standard end game blobbing. I lowered autonomy to get to max absolutism instantly, took African gold and coastal provinces down to Kilwa, created a land bridge through Muscovy to Denmark/Scandinavia, allied PLC, Austria who was emperor, and later France to safely expand into Spain and Scandinavia. Golden Age was enacted around 1620.
For the rest of the game I played badly and made more big mistakes that delayed the finish. I had a coalition form when I broke off my alliances, but didn't know that I was on the brink of its dissolution had I built to force limit. I also needed to finish off the Ottomans to control trade instead of expanding into areas that didn't feed into Constantinople.
I tried too hard to form CNs myself by demanding CNs from colonizers when I could have just inherited all of them. Also should've fog busted everywhere asap and switched out Exploration as I didn't need its policy anymore. Lastly, I should've focused on every nation that had >100 WS instead of trying to eat all the smaller nations. PLC was left alone for way too long which resulted in a >400 WS monster.
One tag was finally completed in 1699:
A note on colonial nation rebels: they were by far the biggest nuisance in late game. After making Spain cede most of Eastern America and Mexico, I dealt with monthly revolts in the new world for about 3-4 years straight, and bi/trimonthly revolts until the end of the game. I understand that CNs are dumb and bad at coring, but feeding them large chunks of land is required for non-colonizer WCs unless they're inherited at the very end or formed early. Inheriting them late means not knowing where natives are gonna end up, getting there early is not ideal for most WCs.
Thanks for reading. Comments and advice on my general strategy are appreciated.
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