I challenged myself to make sure that the sun never sets on the glorious Sundanese Empire, my favourite nation to play as, and also one of my favourite cultures IRL. By 1589 I already got to a point where it was always sunny in Sunda, as evidenced by the map below, so I think I might be qualified to give others some advice and hopefully encourage more people to play in insular SEA (which would hopefully lead to Paradox finally giving this region some much needed love).
Here's the initial Sundanese invasion of Mexico, 1575:
And here's the situation now, in 1612:
There are no Europeans on the Indian Ocean yet, and I intend to keep it that way. Sadly, I was unable to prevent the English from gaining a foothold in Chile, I'll probably have to go all in on a war to eradicate them before they start jumping across the Pacific and spoil my colonial plans in Australia and New Zealand.
Some Sundanese traditional music for immersion (warning - as usual with traditional Asian music, vocals might take some getting used to):
Strategy advice:
Sundanese-specific part:
Your absolute priority is to eradicate Majapahit. You have pretty much no other expansion options, and Majapahit starts stronger than you, so waiting is not advised. Immediately rival them, start fabricating on them, and lower army upkeep to save money in the meantime. Pick Shiva as your deity for that sweet -10% coring cost, grab a 40 tradition general from the Kshatriyas and use the money you saved up (plus likely a couple of loans) to go over your troop limit and smash Majapahit. They are too big to swallow in one step, so leave them one or two shitty provinces, preferably not Bali (no strait, so requires an amphibious landing) but make sure to grab their capital. This is the only war you will ever wage as Sunda where you can ignore your navy and keep it in ports. Immediately after winning, start fabricating on Makassar and Luwu (you have grabbed one of the provinces allowing that, right?) to have something to do during the truce. Painful as it is, raise the autonomy of newly conquered provinces, Majapahit separatists can spawn in devastatingly large stacks.
Javanese-specific part (applies also if you play as Majapahit):
Once your immediate rival is crushed, the next step is to invade Celebes, starting from Makassar or Luwu if it still exists. The latter is a good first target because it is usually weaker, and it can be invaded overland if you land your troops on one of the uncolonized provinces (a good idea). It's very likely that either of them will be allied with Buton, annex it too if that's the case, distances in the archipelago are large enough that aggressive expansion can be almost ignored. The next step is another island hop across a narrow sea - this time to Borneo. Hopefully Kutai still exists. If so, it's a sweet target - usually weak enough for you to comfortably swallow it, and also Hindu, meaning no religious unity problems.
As far as allies are concerned, it's a good idea to ally someone on Sumatra, probably Pagarrayung (to deter the surrounding Muslim nations from swallowing them - Muslim provinces are harder to convert to Hinduism than Buddhist ones). Pick whichever nation in the Phillippines is strong enough to be useful and friendly towards you, they can be helpful against Brunei.
Regarding idea groups, IMHO there is only one correct choice for Sunda given the enormous colonization opportunities around it - Exploration. Pick it as soon as you can and start colonizing Palembang. As soon as Palembang turns turquiose (long before it is fully colonized) you can start fabricating on neighboring nations, so do that. By this point, you should have a moderately strong navy if you picked your naval battles smartly. If you don't, now is the time to build it. Once you have three large ships, use them for exploration whenever there is a period of peace.
Invade Sumatra, hopefully without triggering a war with Malacca and conquer whatever you can. While you wait for truces to finish and aggressive expansion penalties with your western neighbors to cool off, colonize Pontianak to be able to fabricate on all of Brunei (also because it's a lucrative province to have). Also start fabricating on Malacca. If Brunei is allied with Malacca, as they often are, use your and your allies naval superiority to block the strait of Malacca and prevent them from crossing to Sumatra while you smash Brunei. Once Brunei is done, turn towards Malacca and try to grab a province on the mainland, preferably Johor, in a separate peace with them. If you have a spare colonist, it's a good idea to colonize Tulangbewang to avoid having to cross uncolonized land when marching from Jawa to Sumatra, and Kendari to complete the lucrative Southern Sulawesi region.
Advice that applies to all or almost all Indonesian/Malayan nations:
Once you unify most of insular Southeast Asia, the game becomes a race to block or at least slow down European colonization of the Indian and Pacific oceans, so that you can take your sweet time doing it yourself. To this end, it is essential to colonize the most attractive (few natives, high development) provinces at the edge of the Indian ocean - Mauritius, Isle Bourbon and Cape. Doing that should heavily slow down European expension in your direction, as the AI judges the other provinces around unappettizing. On the other side of the world, you should strive to conquer Mexico and Peru before Europeans and in the long term colonize and/or conquer the entire Pacific coast of both Americas.
Trade income from controlling the Moluccas and Malacca is enormous, especially if you use some of your fleet to steer trade from China in your direction. It should be enough to allow for going above your "limit" with colonization (I mean recall a colonist when a colony is established and send him somewhere else), do that whenever you can. If you find yourself with a spare colonist and/or spare cash, use it to colonize some provinces in Indonesia and the Philippines, starting from the ones with high development and related culture.
Consider yourself lucky if:
Here's the initial Sundanese invasion of Mexico, 1575:
And here's the situation now, in 1612:
There are no Europeans on the Indian Ocean yet, and I intend to keep it that way. Sadly, I was unable to prevent the English from gaining a foothold in Chile, I'll probably have to go all in on a war to eradicate them before they start jumping across the Pacific and spoil my colonial plans in Australia and New Zealand.
Some Sundanese traditional music for immersion (warning - as usual with traditional Asian music, vocals might take some getting used to):
Strategy advice:
Sundanese-specific part:
Your absolute priority is to eradicate Majapahit. You have pretty much no other expansion options, and Majapahit starts stronger than you, so waiting is not advised. Immediately rival them, start fabricating on them, and lower army upkeep to save money in the meantime. Pick Shiva as your deity for that sweet -10% coring cost, grab a 40 tradition general from the Kshatriyas and use the money you saved up (plus likely a couple of loans) to go over your troop limit and smash Majapahit. They are too big to swallow in one step, so leave them one or two shitty provinces, preferably not Bali (no strait, so requires an amphibious landing) but make sure to grab their capital. This is the only war you will ever wage as Sunda where you can ignore your navy and keep it in ports. Immediately after winning, start fabricating on Makassar and Luwu (you have grabbed one of the provinces allowing that, right?) to have something to do during the truce. Painful as it is, raise the autonomy of newly conquered provinces, Majapahit separatists can spawn in devastatingly large stacks.
Javanese-specific part (applies also if you play as Majapahit):
Once your immediate rival is crushed, the next step is to invade Celebes, starting from Makassar or Luwu if it still exists. The latter is a good first target because it is usually weaker, and it can be invaded overland if you land your troops on one of the uncolonized provinces (a good idea). It's very likely that either of them will be allied with Buton, annex it too if that's the case, distances in the archipelago are large enough that aggressive expansion can be almost ignored. The next step is another island hop across a narrow sea - this time to Borneo. Hopefully Kutai still exists. If so, it's a sweet target - usually weak enough for you to comfortably swallow it, and also Hindu, meaning no religious unity problems.
As far as allies are concerned, it's a good idea to ally someone on Sumatra, probably Pagarrayung (to deter the surrounding Muslim nations from swallowing them - Muslim provinces are harder to convert to Hinduism than Buddhist ones). Pick whichever nation in the Phillippines is strong enough to be useful and friendly towards you, they can be helpful against Brunei.
Regarding idea groups, IMHO there is only one correct choice for Sunda given the enormous colonization opportunities around it - Exploration. Pick it as soon as you can and start colonizing Palembang. As soon as Palembang turns turquiose (long before it is fully colonized) you can start fabricating on neighboring nations, so do that. By this point, you should have a moderately strong navy if you picked your naval battles smartly. If you don't, now is the time to build it. Once you have three large ships, use them for exploration whenever there is a period of peace.
Invade Sumatra, hopefully without triggering a war with Malacca and conquer whatever you can. While you wait for truces to finish and aggressive expansion penalties with your western neighbors to cool off, colonize Pontianak to be able to fabricate on all of Brunei (also because it's a lucrative province to have). Also start fabricating on Malacca. If Brunei is allied with Malacca, as they often are, use your and your allies naval superiority to block the strait of Malacca and prevent them from crossing to Sumatra while you smash Brunei. Once Brunei is done, turn towards Malacca and try to grab a province on the mainland, preferably Johor, in a separate peace with them. If you have a spare colonist, it's a good idea to colonize Tulangbewang to avoid having to cross uncolonized land when marching from Jawa to Sumatra, and Kendari to complete the lucrative Southern Sulawesi region.
Advice that applies to all or almost all Indonesian/Malayan nations:
- Keep your navy strong at all times and use it to dominate the trade nodes in your area. When at war, use your navy to isolate enemy armies from reinforcements and retreat routes by blocking straits. Wipe a stack, rinse, repeat.
- Do not expand far into the Indochinese mainland - it will be a while before your nation starts becoming good at land combat, so it is usually more beneficial to keep that border safe by allying yourself with whoever is strong and friendly - Lan Xang is almost always a good choice, Ayutthaya and the Khmer are good too, although both tend to own provinces of your culture group, making betrayal tempting.
- Gradually conquer the Phillipines whenever you have nothing better to do, by this point you should have eliminated any competing nations that could expand there, so it's low priority.
- Policy towards the Moluccan micro-nations of Tidore and Ternate is a matter of taste - on one hand, they own very lucrative provinces, on the other hand these provinces need to have both their religion and culture converted before you can take full advantage of that. They can usually be safely ignored - if you play correctly, no one other than you should be able to reach and conquer them any time soon. This might even become beneficial, as they often turn colonial, reducing the amount of provinces in East Indonesia that you will have to colonize yourself to prevent the Europeans from doing so.
- Forming Malaya is a nice option, though not necessary - I have not yet done it in the playthrough seen above, and may never do as for me it breaks immersion - neither Majapahit, nor Sunda would ever refer to their empire as "Malaya". The correct word to use would be Nusantara, which means The Archipelago (as in, the archipelago that is our homeland). Paradox devs, if your read this, please take note.
- In almost every case, immediately increase autonomy of any provinces you conquer. Your manpower is in much shorter supply than your cash, especially given that many of the countries you aim to conquer tend to have large piles of cash for you to grab in peace deals.
- Hollhavai (middle of Indian Ocean) -> fabricate on Maldives and conquer them -> fabricate on whatever minor nation is vulnerable in South India and conquer that; if you have stability points to spare, it might be worth it to skip colonizing Hollhavai and just declare a war without casus belli on whichever South Indian nation is vulnerable.
- Taiwan -> fabricate on Ryukyu and conquer them -> fabricate on South Japan and establish a foothold there at first opportunity. Also allows to fabricate on Chinese coast if Ming explodes.
- South India -> Mauritius and Ile Bourbon -> South Africa. Get the lucrative Cape province first if still uncolonized when you reach it. If you catch a European power in the act and are not playing ironman (or are OK with having to start from scratch in case of failure), it might be worth it to go to war over it and raze their colony to replace it with your own - European ability to transport their armies that far is usually limited before ~1580, so you might even be able to raze their colony with impunity.
- Fiji -> Society Islands -> Rapanui -> Northern Chile
- Marshall Islands -> Hawai -> Mexico
Once you unify most of insular Southeast Asia, the game becomes a race to block or at least slow down European colonization of the Indian and Pacific oceans, so that you can take your sweet time doing it yourself. To this end, it is essential to colonize the most attractive (few natives, high development) provinces at the edge of the Indian ocean - Mauritius, Isle Bourbon and Cape. Doing that should heavily slow down European expension in your direction, as the AI judges the other provinces around unappettizing. On the other side of the world, you should strive to conquer Mexico and Peru before Europeans and in the long term colonize and/or conquer the entire Pacific coast of both Americas.
Trade income from controlling the Moluccas and Malacca is enormous, especially if you use some of your fleet to steer trade from China in your direction. It should be enough to allow for going above your "limit" with colonization (I mean recall a colonist when a colony is established and send him somewhere else), do that whenever you can. If you find yourself with a spare colonist and/or spare cash, use it to colonize some provinces in Indonesia and the Philippines, starting from the ones with high development and related culture.
Consider yourself lucky if:
- Ming explodes (grab a foothold in China ASAP, but do not overdo on expansion there, provinces on the coast have high development, resulting in massive aggressive expansion, and the last thing you want is a land war against a coalition of Chinese states)
- Southern India is not unified and thus ripe for you to conquer it
- Japan does not unify
- You manage to prevent the Europeans from colonizing South Africa and the Pacific coast of America
- Your initial ruler dies before you core the Majapahit provinces (he almost always dies without a heir, so your next ruler will have very low legitimacy, making it that much harder to avoid these devastating Majapahit separatist rebellions)
- You get a poor second ruler (the whole point of playing as Sunda, other than its cool name, is to avoid having to deal with Majapahit's shitty initial ruler and heir, getting an inadequate second ruler would nullify that advantage)
- Brunei conquers Kutai before you do it
- Malacca conquers most of Sumatra before you do it
- All of Southern India (including Ceylon) is unified by a strong country
- You see European settlers on any island in the Indian Ocean before 1580
