How do I Ainu?

[Makkovar]

So, in my last game as a European state, at some point I noticed that the Ainu have conquered half of Honshu in the early 17th century. I thought to myself: "If the AI did it, a player should have little problems".

Here's how my second attempt at crafting an empire out of Ainu is going:

Japan unifies pretty quickly, and as soon as they declare war, it seems to be game over. From this point on, there's no stopping them from going after the rest of the country in subsequent wars. Here I just delayed them once but couldn't build up enough forces with the time bought. All of what you see here are 1-base tax provinces, I have gained 3 base tax across 2 provinces throughout over 100 years of game time. I also have 3 provinces in Indonesia, one of them a colony in progress. I earn little (so mercs won't help) and my force limit at this point is 10 to Japan's 27 or so.

In my first attempt I got an alliance with the then-powerful Haixi and conquered some delicious Asian coast, but that came to be my undoing as my ally then backstabbed me over these same provinces.

I'm wondering whether there are people who could weight in on how to make this nation work best. So far I mostly played Eastern states and didn't care much about mid-maxing (or colonization). This is the first 'primitive' nation I'm trying and I'm definately fuzzy on some of the mechanics, although learning. It seems like an interesting problem to solve. Now, I went for colonization ideas first, mostly to be able to discover and conquer the Kamchadals, opening the possibility to claim and core the other Siberians at all.
Over 100 years in, I still didn't complete the ideas to reform my government. It only recently dawned on me that having done that I would've been able to do Royal Marriage and perhaps get an Alliance on the mainland; that's the one thing I can think of to rectify. Are there some other 'hidden' benefits to reforming the government I didn't quite get?

Being Animist I apparently cannot convert my nation, or get enough missionary strength to convert anyone other then Totemists. Shouldn't there be a way to change my religion? I'm politically isolated in part because of it.

I'd like to see some discussion about overall strategies for primitive nations and the Ainu in particular as well.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

"Get on the boat"





Trade --> exploration --> something to reform government --> religious. I converted to Shinto after letting patriots appear while using a missionary, 5 years later the -20 unrest went away and Shinto zealots were the leading rebel in that province.

Each merchant over 2nd gives a fixed 5 naval FL. My early game opening was to strait bait Yeren, then Haixi (took war lead when I vassaled Yeren). Then I did what you see in the first picture, took 100% including Ouichi as a vassal (Japan and most other Daimyo were forced to delete units due to occupation taking all their money) and taking the provinces needed to release full sized Uesegi. I then immediately broke truce, bought up stab and down WE and full annexed Japan. Some of the Daimyo were pretty hot and bothered but eventually they calmed down.

 

[Makkovar]

That's a lot of gamey stuff for me to stumble over, but I guesse it's tried and true. My attitude was just that I get more powerful the more provinces I take. ;P
Thanks.
Just out of curiosity, did it take multiple tries for you to figure out or did you plan that from the get go?
Also, any thoughts on salvaging my game?

 

[Pellucid]

I think even if you didn't plan to be gamey like Team likes to be, the best bet would be to play the Japanese political game and try to slowly eat Japan. Wait for some chaos there and try to snag some vassals.

 

[Santoes]

I'd much more prefer Khodynt as then I could use the migration ability. Migration is great as it gives you MP when ever you move. What I tried to do was humiliate all of the tribes that I could rival by moving close to them. After that I worked my way to Buryatia.

A little trick to get your migration faster is to have -3 stability. So I'd declare with a cb on the first one, then break truce, vassal, and then move to the next two to declare humiliate. Since you need to boost stab again, break a truce and take another vassal. You'll gain MP from the PP and a little bit from the migrations. It should give you an alright tech advantage to attack Buryatia. I'd humilate them and then break truce to vassalise. After that just migrate around until you can diplo annex Buryatia, and tech up a little. You have to have borders to diplo annex so pick a spot before you do.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's a lot of gamey stuff for me to stumble over, but I guesse it's tried and true. My attitude was just that I get more powerful the more provinces I take. ;P
Thanks.
Just out of curiosity, did it take multiple tries for you to figure out or did you plan that from the get go?
Also, any thoughts on salvaging my game?

I had a failed game earlier as one of the northern tribes before doing a successful one then this run (also it was Jianzhou that is my vassal, not Haixi). In that run I tried to hit a Daimyo while it was warring Japan. What inevitably happens is that they concede defeat or do a deal where they don't become shogun even while Japan is losing then the whole place dogpiles you to death.

You can also go exploration first and colonize Alaska ASAP --> play as CN, choosing to go back to Asia or stay in the new world. You can reach Alaska at DIP 3 exploration 3 if you have the NE most province. This bypasses a need to reform your government.

I'm not sure where strait blocking falls on the gamey scale. It's obviously a WAD feature, and there would be some harsh consequences for the AI if it DIDN'T unsiege its islands too.

 

[Makkovar]

I wasn't talking about strait baiting in particular, more the guided rebelions and taking over wars at just the right time. Imma fail at that.
In my first attempt I also took a bit of northern Japan, planning to eat it bit by bit, but then it was just reason enough for Japan to start warring against me and for the 'dogpiling'...

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I think the AI succeeds when individual daimyos declare war on Ainu, and then Ainu can eat them up in a defensive war without fighting all of Japan. As they gain more and more Japanese land in defensive wars, they become a bigger and bigger target for other daimyos.

That's the only possible route of expansion for the AI that I can think of, anyway. And it's not a sure-fire thing for the player, because it relies on having multiple DoW's from daimyos before Japan gets too unified, and you have to be able to defeat each daimyo (and possible alliances) in each war - one loss and you could be screwed for the rest of the game.

 

[achmedino]

My attempt so far. What I did was: attack Yeren as soon as the Manchu hordes attack them, use Sakhalin as a war goal, you should be able to block the straight by building 1 galley and 2 cogs to add to what you started with. Over time, Yeren will lose a bunch of provinces to the other hordes, be careful because if the hordes get high enough warscore they will vassalize Yeren, which will cause them to become warleader, which sucks. I think it's best to take two, maybe three provinces at most from the war, rebels are incredibly annoying, so be careful. If you get really lucky, you might get the chance to vassalize them in your first war, but make sure they don't have more provines than you, cause they'll get pissed. When you're done with the war, if you're lucky yeren has not been vassalized (if you occupy a significant portion of their land during the war, the hordes will be eager to peace out when all provinces have been occupied, because you have occupied most provinces, they can't get enough warscore to vassalize and end up taking some provinces instead.)

From there on in, ally one of the hordes or Korea, wait for the hordes to attack eachother again, and go to war against the weaker one once they've taken a beating. You should be able to gain some more provinces that way. As for Japan, it really depends on the situation. If you're lucky Japan might've started the game by attacking Hosokawa, who has often already gathered some allies by the time he gets attacked, all of the countries (so Hosokawa and any allies) will no longer be Japanese vassals. This means that you can just attack them without too bad repercussions, this will give you provinces which are Japanese cores though. Assuming you have decent allies, Japan won't attack you even though if you do get attacked your allies are almost always of no use as they don't leave the mainland (aside from korea, they actually invade Japan most often.)

Once you've gained this much power I'd say it's probably a good idea to start working on making sure Russia doesn't take all of Siberia, I always start with the exploration group just to do this. At first you won't be able to afford colonies, but if you take Kai from Japan, you'll get about 5-6 ducats just from that province. Which gets me to another point, which is that i converted none of my provinces and took just enough of Japan's provinces to convert to shinto.

You won't get any shinto rebels in Japanese provinces though, which means you have to make Japan release date in one of your wars with them, you then need to sell Shiribeshi to Date, have them convert it to shinto (They will core it first) and then declare war and reconquer it. all rebels in the Japanese provinces will be patriots or nationalists of some sort, since Shiribeshi is Ainu culture, the only rebels that can rise up there are peasants and zealots, and in this case they will be zealots. If you don't convert gold provinces will get you basically no money from production, also the +10% morale from shinto is nice.

You could also convert to confusion, since you can do that earlier, using Jianzhou provinces, I have no idea how you would be able to get the rebels to pop up though. If you can get them to pop up though, this will save you a lot of rebellion problems, since having heathen provinces for 70+- years isn't very fun.

 

[Oryxslayer]

If you have been watching ddrjake, do exactly as he did. If you haven't, he did the following tricks.
1) Conquer all the siberian tribes, as the ainu, this might meen a no-cb war.
2) Focus diplo and race to tech 3, as well as tech 4 admin. Pick up exploration ideas and race to the quest for new world.
3) Colonize 5 provinces, get colonial alaska, sell your land to alaska, and release play as your colonial nation. Pray you get a republican government.
4) Vassalize you're former self, colonize america, and westernize.

The only differences I can think of as ainu are that japan may dow you. I would be prepared to give them hokkaido if you want to survive. Maybe you can even become their vassal and release the colonial nation before you are annexed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can get Shinto zealots in Japanese provinces lol.

 

[bbqftw]

3) Colonize 5 provinces, get colonial alaska, sell your land to alaska, and release play as your colonial nation. Pray you get a republican government.

you left out a pretty important part of this that will probably be patched out. Chain bankrupting yourself for colonization only works because of an oversight that allows you to get exactly +0 colonial growth/year even while bankrupt (so you can still rely on colonist chance)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

you left out a pretty important part of this that will probably be patched out. Chain bankrupting yourself for colonization only works because of an oversight that allows you to get exactly +0 colonial growth/year even while bankrupt (so you can still rely on colonist chance)

TBH I'm surprised it wasn't already. He actually bug reported it in a previous patch haha.

These starts have surprisingly more options than one expects on first glance. Besides, he was just speed optimizing because he didn't care about his nation. If you're willing to take maintenance down a little you can afford a colony, it's just much slower than running 2 for more settler chance.

You could easily do what I did taking out Japan and then CN it too, if you want to stay in Asia just move the capitol back there with some selling shenanigans.