Korea in 1.8

[Mztr44]

I just got done with a brief game as Korea in 1.8 and planning on starting over and doing a couple things different. Here is my new plan for going about it and then a question or two.

1. Max out FL, ally Haixi, fabricate on Jianzhou and vassalize Jianzhou.
2. Use Jianzhou Tribal War CB to vassalize Yeren. Use Yeren Tribal War CB to vassalize Korchin. If Yeren or Korchin ends up with a visible and connected Buryatia province, vassalize them as well.
3. Drop alliance with Haixi, Tribal War CB and vassalize them, make alliance with Oirats.
4. Use Oirat alliance and Jurchen Tribes to smash Ming for Shun & Zhou cores. Annex Jianzhou.
5. Annex Korchin, convert Jirem province to Confucian, release Confucian Mongols and give them Cachar culture provinces.
6. Drop alliance with Oirat, Tribal War/Reconquest CB and feed Mongolia back to itself and westward ho!

This pretty much sets the stage for absolute Asian domination. From there I can gradually annex the other Jurchens as a released Shun & Zhou grow a little bit. Then alternate wars to push westward on the Oirats with Mongolian vassal and south into Ming. When Japan is nearly unified I mix in wars with them as they will have a terrible FL due to Autonomy and be easy to crush vs trying to attack them early when they can field 35-40k troops when there are multiple Daimyos.

One question is, how best to Westernize? I can think of 3 possibilities. For two of them, I go Exploration ideas and either island hop my way around the Cape to the Carribean, or go the other way up to Alaska and back down to Mexico and into the Carribean. The other option is a bit slower/riskier and would involve a massive push into the west and try to destroy Muscovy to meet up with Sweden, which would let me go Influence first for easier vassal integration.

The other question is a bit more simple and maybe not an issue. I intend to release Confucian Mongolia instead of just feeding Haixi because Haixi doesn't seem to do Religious ideas early and gets a penalty to Religious conversion due to unaccepted cultures while headed west. I figure a Confucian Mongolia even without Religious will be able to convert all the horde owned lands headed west due to cultural unions and no penalty for unaccepted culture? Am I correct in this? At the very least I expect they can do all the Buddhist provinces, without Religious they would have trouble with the Sunni ones i'm sure.

 

[Alsn]

Easiest way to westernize is to pick exploration as your first idea and then sail to the east coast of Brazil around ~1500. Portugal usually colonizes Rio de Janeiro and one more adjacent province. Wait until the second province is almost done, declare war, attack and seize it and then camp it until it grows to 1000 population. Now you have a core next to a Portuguese core and they haven't yet discovered your homeland so they can never gain enough war score to do anything.

It's a bit cheesy though.

Edit: The "proper" way to westernize as an east Asian nation is probably island hopping the pacific and meeting up with Castile and/or Portugal somewhere in Mesoamerica or South America. I'm unsure of which direction is fastest, although I'm thinking Alaska is easier than the Polynesian islands since most of those islands are tropical.

Edit2: I don't think you can release a Confucian Mongolia since Buddhist is the same religious group. They would just be released as Buddhist if their potential capital was Buddhist. You would have to release them, war them into forcing religion, and then war them again in order to vassalize. That's a lot of work for little gain.

 

[Less]

That's pretty much what I did. Things to know:

- Haixi WILL drop alliance with you the moment you vassalize Jianzhou. Jianzhou will also probably be attacked by Yeren once their army is gone during your war, so you'll inherit that war upon vassalization. The hordes also all out-fight you early on pretty heavily, so watch out.

- Destroying Muscovy isn't hard. 50/50 Kazan or Uzbek will do it for you. If you stay on Mil focus you should have no problems at all, especially with an early Ming consumption. You don't even really need to westernize, with early level 3 advisors you'll probably have to intentionally hold back on teching in order to westernize.

- Japan is a pretty big thorn in your side, and Ming's navy is painful before you eat into their coastline. Try not to let the two get in a coalition/alliance against you.

- Personally I kept Mongolia Buddhist so that I could force-feed them as many provinces as possible without the revolts getting too big. Took religious for Deus Vult's ability to feed everyone at 0-dip cost. If you make them Confucian they shouldn't have problems converting the Buddhist provinces even without religious though, they are all low base tax.

 

[Mztr44]

Edit2: I don't think you can release a Confucian Mongolia since Buddhist is the same religious group. They would just be released as Buddhist if their potential capital was Buddhist. You would have to release them, war them into forcing religion, and then war them again in order to vassalize. That's a lot of work for little gain.

I could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure that by converting Jirem to Confucian, and it's the only Mongolian province I would own from annexing Korchin, releasing Mongolia would make them Confucian because their capital would be Jirem at that point?

That's pretty much what I did. Things to know:

- Haixi WILL drop alliance with you the moment you vassalize Jianzhou. Jianzhou will also probably be attacked by Yeren once their army is gone during your war, so you'll inherit that war upon vassalization. The hordes also all out-fight you early on pretty heavily, so watch out.

- Destroying Muscovy isn't hard. 50/50 Kazan or Uzbek will do it for you. If you stay on Mil focus you should have no problems at all, especially with an early Ming consumption. You don't even really need to westernize, with early level 3 advisors you'll probably have to intentionally hold back on teching in order to westernize.

- Japan is a pretty big thorn in your side, and Ming's navy is painful before you eat into their coastline. Try not to let the two get in a coalition/alliance against you.

- Personally I kept Mongolia Buddhist so that I could force-feed them as many provinces as possible without the revolts getting too big. Took religious for Deus Vult's ability to feed everyone at 0-dip cost. If you make them Confucian they shouldn't have problems converting the Buddhist provinces even without religious though, they are all low base tax.

In the game I did prior, Haixi didn't drop alliance with me upon vassalizing Jianzhou. They did attack Yeren though and stole a province from them. Then they allied Oirats and vassalized Korchin. This to me would be the tricky part is the Oirat+Haixi alliance that usually forms. I would either have to blitz Jianzhou and Yeren fast enough to get Korchin first, or drop alliance with Haixi after taking Jianzhou before they can ally with the Oirats. Or, if I can get Jianzhou, Yeren, and Korchin all as vassals quickly enough and let them rebuild their armies a bit, I could position my troops next to Haixi's and then declare on Haixi, smash their troops immediately and follow with a stackwipe, defeating the Oirat troops should be pretty doable from there and I should be able to rival Ming by that time and with a little relation improving, RM->Ally them for war on Ming.

Like I said about Japan, when Japan is almost unified (has like all but 4 or 5 provinces consolidated), it has a lousy force limit, like 17, and a lot of provinces with high local autonomy. By that time I should either have a larger force limit, or be capable of spamming out enough mercs to overpower them for the first battle and then stackwipe them after a second or third battle followed by carpet siege. By taking 5 or 6 provinces the first war, they will never be able to catch back up and future wars with them will be quick and easy.

Confucian Mongolia shouldn't have too much trouble as long as I let them keep up with conversions. The cultural union with all the horde lands will keep the initial unrest factor from conquering down in the 6-9% range which will drop even lower after they core. The first war to feed them will be easy anyhow since i'd be feeding them all their cores and rebellions would be pretty much non-existant.

Ming navy is a non-issue, their navy doesn't protect them from troops on the ground.

Muscovy is really my main concern. In my prior game the reason I decided to end it was because they had become too strong and I hadn't expanded far enough west. I tried to invade them in what I thought was a moment of weakness and got my ass handed to me, only making off with a few colonial provinces, but not in such a way that I could prevent them from continuing east. Then later on as I was trying to push into Persia they declared on me with a fricking 6/6/6/2 general. Even being only a single tech behind there was no beating that. A monstrosity like that can field a huge army through Siberia without hardly any attrition and can chase you down so fast his troops almost appear to teleport. I gave it an honest shot, I pushed that war for 20 years trying everything I could to separate that beast from the rest of the army enough that I could ambush the weaker generals with overwhelming troops and not have him reinforce. Basically if I put any troops where Russia didn't have FOW, he was after them like a bloodhound and on them within months. He simply would not die even though my generals tend to drop like flies when i'm pushing them through low supply jungles and deserts


Edit: Just to remove any doubt. Confucian Mongolia...which doesn't appear to take Religious But Humanist is good for it, it wont have much trouble with rebellions when being fed.

 

[Less]

For me it was an Oirat+Korchin alliance. Either way try to ally Oirat yourself and then DoW Ming with them before DoWing your ally, they can't be with you and against you at the same time.

Ming's navy is a problem because trade is like 2/3rds of your income early on. You want to move into the Beijing node immediately and have lots of trade ships up to completely dominate their trade. Japan is still very strong in that it has vassals with lots of power and it gets additional forcelimit from vassals. While you are stuck with a forcelimit around 20 you're only option to attack them is to block a strait, which becomes impossible if Ming's navy is around and you end up just being stuck.

Dunno how fast you are going or what your situation was, but when I crashed borders with Russia I had nearly 4x their base tax and about a third more manpower. A 6/6 is pretty bad luck, though if you rolled enough generals you should be able to get close. Make sure you are farming Army Tradition in wars, don't get complacent and simply let your vassals do all the fighting or you'll be in for a rude awakening when you realize you are at 5 army tradition vs. Russia's 80 or something.


Worst case you could probably just wait around and watch Russia westernize, then westernize off them. In every 1.8 game I've played Russia has westernized.

 

[Mztr44]

For me it was an Oirat+Korchin alliance. Either way try to ally Oirat yourself and then DoW Ming with them before DoWing your ally, they can't be with you and against you at the same time.

Ming's navy is a problem because trade is like 2/3rds of your income early on. You want to move into the Beijing node immediately and have lots of trade ships up to completely dominate their trade. Japan is still very strong in that it has vassals with lots of power and it gets additional forcelimit from vassals. While you are stuck with a forcelimit around 20 you're only option to attack them is to block a strait, which becomes impossible if Ming's navy is around and you end up just being stuck.

Dunno how fast you are going or what your situation was, but when I crashed borders with Russia I had nearly 4x their base tax and about a third more manpower. A 6/6 is pretty bad luck, though if you rolled enough generals you should be able to get close. Make sure you are farming Army Tradition in wars, don't get complacent and simply let your vassals do all the fighting or you'll be in for a rude awakening when you realize you are at 5 army tradition vs. Russia's 80 or something.


Worst case you could probably just wait around and watch Russia westernize, then westernize off them. In every 1.8 game I've played Russia has westernized.

I had abandoned that other game, Russia would have just continued to whittle me down with Overseas CB and i'd end up in a death spiral. Here is my current game situation.

I mostly did the strategy I outlined with a couple hiccups that couldn't be helped since the Jurchens are all eager to go to war with each other and Haixi ended up taking Jirem, the province I needed to release my Confucian Mongolia. I still ended up with all of them vassalized within 20 years and change. I started annexing Haixi, got Oirat to help me with the first war to get Shun and Zhou cores out of Ming, and then betrayed them right afterwards while they were recovering to feed a new Mongolia vassal. Issue I ran into with a released Mongolia was that I hadn't accounted for it taking my government type so I couldn't execute my plan of using Tribal War CB's to expand west. Other issue i've got right now is that since it went Humanist, it doesn't care about having a ton of Buddhist provinces due to Heretic Tolerance so it doesn't convert them. I've got it expanding into Sunni lands now though and it did convert one province so far, so thats hopeful.

Japan was a pushover like I said, once it owns 2/3 of the provinces it can only muster up a FL of 17 and has almost no navy to speak of because of all the Daimyo wars constantly wiping them. I dropped a stack of 25 troops in and just wiped them out -> carpet siege.

The ideas i've taken are Diplomacy->Innovative->Influence->Quality, i'm only 2 spots into Quality right now. I doubled up on diplo ideas because it was going to take an absurd amount of time to annex Shun/Zhou and I got excellent back to back diplo rulers for 70 years but poor to average military.

Russia has just begun it's colonization of Siberia and I intend to stop them shortly. I've got near full manpower, a slightly larger army, 2 miltech advantage, Commandant in my advisor pool, 90+ tradition and prestige, all ready to help me win the day. It has a fair sized Brandenburg ally as well as Denmark but Brandenburg is helping in a war against France and has a rivalry with Lithuania who should block it's armies. Denmark can get through but it can only ship 6 troops at a time and I should be able to crush the Russian troops before they become a considerable factor. Timurids and Lithuania are allies but they are both wiped out and wont join at the start, I might be able to call them in a few years.

I probably wont bother with Westernizing at this point since it's a bit late. Once I have Russia contained I intend to secure the Bengal trade node and absorb Mongolia to stop it from pulling ducats west and essentially giving them to Lubeck for free. Timurids don't have an alliance with Ottomans and haven't been forced to release any Persian cores, so that will be in the works as well. I'm on the verge of an economic boom as well since all of the Chinaware, Tea, Iron and Spice events will be firing soon and increase my income by like 50%.

 

[ahyangyi]

Easiest way to westernize is to pick exploration as your first idea and then sail to the east coast of Brazil around ~1500. Portugal usually colonizes Rio de Janeiro and one more adjacent province. Wait until the second province is almost done, declare war, attack and seize it and then camp it until it grows to 1000 population. Now you have a core next to a Portuguese core and they haven't yet discovered your homeland so they can never gain enough war score to do anything.

It's a bit cheesy though.

Wow the cheesy way does look interesting for me... Does it work for south americans if I migrate to somewhere inland?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Easiest way to westernize is to pick exploration as your first idea and then sail to the east coast of Brazil around ~1500. Portugal usually colonizes Rio de Janeiro and one more adjacent province. Wait until the second province is almost done, declare war, attack and seize it and then camp it until it grows to 1000 population. Now you have a core next to a Portuguese core and they haven't yet discovered your homeland so they can never gain enough war score to do anything.

It's a bit cheesy though.

Edit: The "proper" way to westernize as an east Asian nation is probably island hopping the pacific and meeting up with Castile and/or Portugal somewhere in Mesoamerica or South America. I'm unsure of which direction is fastest, although I'm thinking Alaska is easier than the Polynesian islands since most of those islands are tropical.

Edit2: I don't think you can release a Confucian Mongolia since Buddhist is the same religious group. They would just be released as Buddhist if their potential capital was Buddhist. You would have to release them, war them into forcing religion, and then war them again in order to vassalize. That's a lot of work for little gain.

Even if you don't seize, you can use a support rebel CB on the Middle East to get a vassal, core adjacent to vassal, and stick Kilwa. Doing that means that you need only a single colony to meet the AI in Cape or elsewhere, freeing up your others to go in more lucrative directions.