Lan Na, 1552
This game went bonkers pretty quickly. Dai Viet was really into this idea of declaring war on Champa despite having only me as allies and our total forces being around evenly matched with Champa + Khmer. I had absolutely no interest in obliterating myself in yet another pointless battle with my manpower exhausted, so I broke the alliance. After that war, and another that followed immediately upon the truce ending, Dai Viet was reduced to an OPM and became a vassal of Ming.
Meanwhile I fabricated on Sukhothai and declared immediately upon that truce ending. I won easily, but before the war finished Ayutthaya declared reconquest on Sukhothai, bringing in no allies. This was perfect. I force-vassalized Sukhothai and took over the war with Ayutthaya, taking as much land as I could easily manage. Thanks to events (and honoring a war for Ava) I never dropped into poor Karma territory.
Then I got a mission to vassalize Arakan, whose only ally was... Ayutthaya. I happily went to work, bringing in Ava to join the party, and reduced the once mighty Ayutthaya to a OPM (that was swiftly gobbled up by hungry Malacca), feeding most of the conquered land to Sukhothai.
Meanwhile Champa had crumbled to Dai Viet rebels. Great news for me -- I had a claim or two on Champa territory and went after them. Bolstered by my vassals, it was an easy war, letting me cut the country in half and start work on religious conversion. I integrated Sukothai and Arakan, then diplo-vassalized Taungu. One treaty end later and the rest of Champa is mine.
Khmer was next on my list, but two things happened. First, rival Malacca fell into civil war. That's good! Second, a powerful and stout Ming declared me as rivals. That's bad!
My plan was to Westernize off South Africa, then use eventually superior tech to destroy my foes. I had a string of poor military monarchs (and a regency), leaving my tech far behind everyone else. I've finally managed to catch up to within 1 military tech, but that's not good enough when Ming can run an army almost four times the size of mine. So how's South Africa looking?
Huh. Well. Maybe time for Plan B?
Unfortunately I don't really have a Plan B. I am up to 3 colonists now, and I've managed to get 3 or 4 gold provinces colonized (including Cape, woohoo!). I'm colonizing everywhere, focusing on Malacca and South Africa for now (Tiwi was a Mission). That's not going to give me anywhere near enough power to stand up to Ming, though. And my best options for allies are rivals instead (Bengal, Malacca). Even with the shared rival modifiers, I can't manage alliances with powerful nations Jaunpur or Bahmanis either. Instead I have Ava, Mong Yang, Brunei, and Tibet. Inadequate.
It's a crapshoot. Ming has a Conquest CB on me, but they also have Conquest on some hordes in the northwest, a direction they already started pursuing. Their young ruler is an Administrative type, so perhaps he will largely ignore me (though he might come for my Cheng Du provinces).
In other news: Muscowy is doing pretty well, Poland is not (Lithuania is independent), Ottomans are steamrolling, Japan is united, and (from a cheat-peak at the world map in the load screen) Spain isn't yet united. Portugal is also lagging behind; they have only 6 ideas and a terrible ruler, though they've conquered a good portion of Morocco. Castile has a good presence in West Africa (southern coast near our previous Zazzau LP), while Portugal has only a single province there. Portugal is actually focused on North America, while Castile is in the Caribbean. Great Britain has already formed, though they're barely colonizing, and Provence ate Brittany.
It's probably going to be another 50 years before I can Westernize at the pace the Iberians are going. I can't explore to West Africa, so I have no idea how long it'll take me to make contact.
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