Mugh-ALLs - Full Core Everything + One Culture 1.30.4 (very hard)

[Pureanger]

Preamble

Greetings AARland! I´m back! Has it been that long? Just checked the date and couldn´t believe it. My last AAR is almost 2 years old ^^. Tbh it gave me a pretty good burnout. I clocked 10k+ hours and there wasn´t any real challenge left that was interesting to me. Might as well grab my hat and head for my deserved eu4 retirement.

Finally I had free time on my hand and didn´t have to chase rebel stacks all day long. I combed my hair. I cleaned my apartment. I even went outside once or twice. It was great... Then the lockdown thing happened... and I got bored again. Maybe play some computer games. But what to play?! Arr, who am I kidding, there is only one game...

So once again back from retirement I sit here brainstorming what challenge I could set for myself. Haven´t played the game for over 18 month, nor have I watched any educational videos about eu4. My conquest skills might be a bit rusty. Probably a good idea to start easy, don´t want to pull a muscle. Before I quit I had an idea for an campaign "broke as a mughal": do a bankrupt wc. The modifiers are interesting, however you can´t declare war while being bankrupt. Gave it a try but it was too much of a hassle gameplay wise. I hadn´t really played the mughals since forever and tried out the assimilation mechanic yet. I also had a pretty sweet opening for the mughals for my bankruptcy campaign I am eager to show off. So it was settled. In my next campaign I will play as the mughals and ease into the latest patch.


PureAnger goes back to (eu4) school

I have a rule to not play with a vassal swarm and hordes are only an option for the most extreme challenges. I know the mughal mechanic is very strong, but is it as broken as hre swarm or hordes? Let´s find out. I shouldn´t set the bar too low however...

The goal is to:


Conquer the world and: full core every province
As side goal: one-culture as cherry on top




The rules:

- As always no hre or shogun vassal swarm
- No turning horde
- I don´t have to full core everything right away (having to do so would make for some interesting gameplay. Might give it a try in another run).


The settings

- Eu4 1.30.4
- All dlc activated
- Ironman
- Very hard mode
- Exploits off (nothing game breaking anyways)
- Savescums on (I try to keep them to a minimum, particulary bad rulers, disasters, major f*ck ups that would require me to restart a campaign or go back 50 years.)


This AAR is complete.


Chapter 1 - The ol' switcheroo
Chapter 2 - Shades of green
Chapter 3 - Silk road
Chapter 4 - Good Karma
Chapter 5 - Purgatory
Chapter 6 - A slice of heaven
Chapter 7 - Mandate of chaos
Chapter 8 - Long live the viceroy
Chapter 9 - Colonizing europe
Chapter 10 - Absolutely new
Chapter 11 - Centralizing power
Chapter 12 - All out war
Chapter 13 - Pockets of resistance
Chapter 14 - You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Comments, feedback and or questions are much appreciated. It brings the AAR to life and boosts morale to write these things. Enjoy!

 

[HistoryDude]

Subbed.

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 1 - The ol' switcheroo


Where are my warriors? Come out to play-ay! What are we playing? Yeah right, europa universalis IV. That´s what it was called. Man that thing looks dusty ^^. Mughals, right... I remember now. We are not doing "true heir of timur" here so we aren´t restrained in our choices which nation to play and form the mughals. Our restrictions are:

- Is not persia, mughals (duh), ottomans or hre
- does not have celestial empire government
- is iranian culture group or trukmeni, uzbek or kyrgyz
- is muslim
- owns dehli and of of three (doaba, lahore or central doab)

If you want to form the mughals the fastest way possible there are couple of usual suspects. Timmy is a good choice, mighty uzbek has the right culture, Delhi has the required provinces. We are going another route however... Jaunpur might have an ace up it´s sleeve. Game setting to very hard. Let´s go!

The start is critical. We move our armies to the delhian border on day one and wait...

No. Not for this one. Delhi was split into two parts several patches back. They have a powerful vassal, sirhind who declares independence almost immediately. We could support them get a decent ally, but we have other plans.

Oh. Snap, I see how it is.

We better get ready then. We should disinherit our shitty heir. Being muslim we don´t run the risk of falling under a pu and having no heir is even somewhat preferable as it gives you a chance of getting my favorite a talented daughter event at higher age. However having prestige is nice as well for reducing ae and we don´t have any. Maybe we should wait a bit.

5% isn´t much, but every bit counts.

One or two restarts here to get ourself a decent general with siege bonus

The estates thing is new to me. I feel like it is one annoying thing less to handle, however I´m not sure on how to make the most of it. I just going to click some buttons which seem useful to me and try to click the seize crownload button as often as i can to be able to click more buttons.

Pretty lame ass start, I know ^^. Even though we play on very hard, we are one of the most powerful nations right from the get go. Europeans are missing, but still...

Last minute alliance.

Let´s rock ´n roll For the background. Jaunpur having a diplomatic insult BEFORE sirhind declares independence isn´t a 1:10000 chance lucky start. I stumbled upon this several patches ago. Not sure what triggers it, but it seems to be somewhat hard coded. Maybe historic rivals or something like that. Anyways I did several restarts for this campaign and it did happen about one in three times. Getting this cb is curcial, as creating a claim would take too long. Sirhind declares independency within the first few month. A no cb would give us quite some ae and we would have to deal with coalitions right from the get go.

The beautiful thing is. Sirhind has a high liberty desire. He won´t lift a finger to help delhi and will keep his troops in his own territory. He also can´t declare his own war against delhi.

Getting useful allies as jaunpur can be difficult as many of the big players rival us. Chagatai has yarkand as a vassal. They are not the strongest, but we don´t want any of their clay and having them as an ally would mean only to have to fight on three fronts instead of four.

Stack-u-wipu

Sirhind is just watching. While delhi is getting murdered. Guess who is going to be next ^^

We are making the money.

Could have made a difference sirhind. But you had to be a sulky little b....

Lol, they are totally apathetic!

They are like, do whatever... we don´t care anymore...

Timmy´s vassals have declared independence. Interesting.

Being weakend, this let´s us marry timmy.

Which let´s us finish a mission. -15% ae for 20 years. Useful!

That is perfect time to peace out delhi. Let´s take all his cores and his money. Who is upset about it? Only delhi

Uhhh yeah baby. Full annexing delhi gave us their vassals for free and no extra ae )) Sirhind does have high ld, but they have a truce with us.

109 admin is a steep price, but worth it.

Ae map is laughable for what we just did. We basically doubled our dev.

Formalize our partnership with chagatai.

Strong (apathetic) duchies.

Sure Sindh, join the party.

The merc system is new to me as well. I have mixed feelings about it. In general I like the concept, but it still seems bugged. Knowing what I know now i should have gotten more of those early companies.

Sirhind does have a claim on multan. Let´s make use of that

Lul, just surpassed the ottos.

Sirhin again with the claims. Thanks bud.

Things are looking good for jaunpur.

We finished our core on delhi and annexed kashmir.

Damn. Must have forgotten to core panipat and upper doab from delhi.

Full annex multan. Coalition almost possible, can´t form as multan will be annexed and afghanistan is still at war with timmy.

We are at peace, which let´s us press this fun button. By owning delhi as a core province, we can reform delhi. This includes free claims, better ideas and we don´t even have to core panipat and upper doab, because guess what. They already have delhian cores, lul.

Yes please.

Only 38% oe to core...

Scornful insult to get our pp above 50. Haven´t forgotten everything

Malwa is next.

We humiliate them and take their vassals land, which gives us a long truce with them...

Claim on Roh.

... and we can finish two missions, which give us perma claims.

I have been watching the timmy war closely. Although timmy is loosing, transoxiana is getting war weary...

This is the time to strike. We declare on afghanistan while they are still busy with timmy. Without transoxiana this should be a cakewalk. Just have to watch that they won´t peace out timmy and become their vassals again as this would put us at war with a strong timmy.

We swoop in just after afghanistan has taken back roh. 100 garison, easy game.

Innovativeness?! We are the first, wth? Guess we didn´t have to core that much yet...

Full annexing afghanistan would be too much hassle. We are going for speed and leave them one province. Coalition can´t form because of truces.

Can´t core the afghani land because we don´t have a connection to our capital.

Jangladesh, do you mind? That´s better...

100 prestige and peace. It is time to get rid of our shitty heir.

We got out at the right time. Timmy made peace with everybody.

Where to expand next? Keeping a close eye on our neighbours. Bengal is at war with orissa.

Malwa suprisingly likes us now. They probably realized that they live in a scary neighbourhood and are open for grabs. We got enough diplo slots open and aren´t planning to expand southward for now.

No, we are going east. We do have a few claims on bengal.

Bengal has military tech 4, but so do we now...

Their armies are busy sieging up orissa still. Fine by me...

We get access to the indian ocean and a lot of dosh. Also bengal is less likely to take orissas land as they don´t have a connection to it anymore. This war wasn´t high on the list, but a super-bengal might have caused problems.

We can annex sirhind for 167 dip (that´s like 17 dev). It is extremely cheap as delhi has cores on sirhind land... and we became delhi. It used to be that all of their provinces were cores and you could annex them instantly for 0 dip. Oh well, can´t have it all, can you....

Our 2 low dev province vassal baghelkhand cost 95 dip by comparison.

We start a bunch of wars with minor neighbours to get truces. I don´t take any land we don´t need at this point.

Hmm, 72/162.

I´m thinking I´m so smart at this point, but this is going to bite me in the ass at a later point

Sirhind integrated 2 days later. Tadaa!

Yay, completed missions.

India is home to some strong nations, but we aren´t exactly weak... and we got several allies. 10 years into the game and hardly anybody can touch us.

The best thing. Hardly anybody cares... muahaha.

Pretty decent start, wouldn´t you say? Ok, ok. We haven´t formed the mughals yet and the jaunpur and delhian idea set are kinda crap, but still we have a very powerful base. Eliminated a lot of little nations which can be a pain and join coalitions. We have allied chagatai, gujarat, sind and malwa... medium powers, but also candidates for a coalition but are on our side now. The remaining powers we have already fought and truces with. Bahmanis, vj and to some extend mewar are still dangerous, but they have different religions and won´t gain as much ae as the others. We will have to be careful and balance taking land from muslim and hindu nations. Especially a muslim coalition can potentially span half of the globe. So relax, take a breath and tune in next time... bye!

 

[MachopPower69]

You doubled in size and nobody cares. Hmm... BTW, will you go colonial soon?

 

[Pureanger]

You doubled in size and nobody cares. Hmm... BTW, will you go colonial soon?

I do put high attention to minimizing ae especially at the beginning. Beside from the fact that I got 100ish dev without any ae cost from inheriting sirhind and jangladesh. The one jaunpur mission gave -15% ae for 20 years. Full prestige give another -10% ae and +50% improved relations. +20% improved relations from advisor and 15% from trade node. I always build up spynetworks on my next big targets. That´s up to another -10% ae reduction. I actually f'd up and forgot to improve relations with that hanbali nation to invite the scholar for yet another -10% ae. Those things add up, even in a short amount of time. After that there is still improving relations, getting truces and or becoming just big and scary.

I don´t want to spoil too much of the next plans. I thought about taking colonial ideas early. Eventually we have to move our capital to the new world. If I say full core everything it needs to be everything, so no colonial nations. Being able to spread bridgeheads all over the world would have advantages too. We would divide the ae spread more evenly. This can backfire too though and might force you to deal with a global coalition. The biggest argument against it is however that there are so many other idea groups that synergize so well with mughals and are mandatory for rapid expansion. I will elaborate on that later in the AAR when we get to that point.

 

[HistoryDude]

That's an amazing start.

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 2 - Shades of green


Ahhh, I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning. Ready for the next chapter? Great. Last time we turned jaunpur into delhi and created a north indian powerhouse. It might have seemed that expansion was very rapid. That is true, but it could have been even quicker if pushed to the max. Much more imporant was the efficiency! We conquered only very specific provinces to complete missions and take decisions. We do have to watch ae and we do want to tech and take ideas asap. Grabbing and coring land that isn´t required atm isn´t the smart thing to do. After all the goal is to full core and culture convert the whole world. Every dip and adm point is precious.


That being said. We still need a few provinces from timmy. We did fight his vassals, but that was during their independence war. They lost and we don´t have a truce with timmy himself. On paper they outnumber us...

... but most of the subjects do have high liberty desire and will stay on their turf

I did get rusty. Totally forgot to improve relations with najd (didn´t it used to be dawasir?!) for the extra -10% ae. Better late then never.

Mostly minor nations, but I take it.

Always consolidate before battle commences...

Baghelkhand will be integrated soon. That opens up a free diplo slot. Usually I do not mind going 2-3 slots over the limit, but this run I will try my best not to do so.

Najd is almost willing to ally us. If we can score a royal marriage we are golden...

hey transoxiana, you have 100 ld... why you siege up provinces that aren´t yours?!

Whoomp. There it is!

Noice, first idea set unlocked.... what will it be?

0.6 innovativeness. Being en par with tech gives you 0.005 inno every month, which is nothing, but being behind costs you 0.03 which is half a point per year. If we want to culture convert the whole world and don´t want to rely on our golden age, which is only 50 years, we do need 50 innovativeness as we are missing 5% to max out to 90% with -15% parliament debate active. So staying ahead in tech and innovativness is important. I will take every event no matter the downsides...

Which idea group shall we pick? ... and the winner is ... diplo?! Not a bad group at all, but odd choice to pick first you might think. Correct, but I´m not planning on taking any ideas yet. I´m just using it as a placeholder until I have enough points to take the first decisions of my real pick. It is free to change idea groups anyways. Why do that? There is a 5 year tick that triggers events related to which idea groups you chose. Diplo has very nice events 2 or 3 of those give you -5% ae reduction for 5 years. The best ae reduction event "just cause" gives you -20% ae for 10 years, but it is an influence idea event. I prefer diplo though, because you have a higher chance to get one of those events because there is more then one. In later game when you have picked several idea groups the chance to get one of those events is fairly low as there is a higher number of events the game chooses from. In the beginning with only one group the chance is fairly high. Maybe one in three I´d guess...

That´s all of timmys troops wiped. If only I could peace out the golden horde without having to walk to their capital...

Maybe wiping their troops as well might do the trick. Let´s set a trap for them.

Always worth to check arrival times. You are late golden horde... the high ground is ours

Wha-bamm!

2 month later the other stack in a mountain fortress....

Damn it, only medium...

Diplo tech 4. We do have some money to spare and the central trade node in doab is quite bad to collect from. A marketplace isn´t the worst investment.

100 government progress. We could take our first reform... or we could wait...

Wasn´t able to peace out the golden horde, but timmy eventually got the memo.

Conquering afghanistan gives us 10 army tradition, hooray!

Stupid me. That is one of the first things to get when playing sunni. -10% ae.. No reason to restart though. Things are moving along well enough.

We spend some precious power points to dev central doab to 24.

The founding of agra event gives us another 6 dev.

Now we have a 30 dev province and completed age goal for extra splendor.

Hmm, is this new? I don´t recall mong kawng being a tributary of ava and there being a mountain ridge between ming and them. Might be dementia...

Btw. How is ming. Hmm stable it seems. Chagatai isn´t a tributary, but his mandate growth is still positive...

Who is next? Orissa. We haven´t had the honor. They actually stronger then they might look. 4 vassals. 102k force limit ^^^But no major allies and few troops. They are hindu, which is good, because it is the muslim nations coalition I´m worried about. The thing is. We aren´t actually looking for land to take, as sweet as it might be. We are just passing time and wait for ae to cool down and have something to do in between truces. Have to stay efficient for the time being. So we are using humiliate cb for a change.

Oh boy, timmy is in trouble again

We let Orissas troops pass. We kept several forts we conquered. Before they found one we will be done with theirs...

Don´t mind if I do.

More perma claims.

It is actually kinda crazy how many perma claims you get with nations in india. Not only jaunpur, delhi or mughals....

Ha, see... Chances aren´t that bad. 5% is not 20%, but the unjustified demands add up as well, especially when you have influence ideas finished (-50%), which we of course haven´t....

We don´t take any land or money. We show strengh, which gives us 300 power points in addition to 30 pp.

Mil tech 5. We are a bit behind, because of our shitty starting ruler.

Dafuq is this? It is 1461, what am I supposed to do with 47k merc stacks. Let them protect my capital province and keep them there for 150 years out of fear from attrition?! Stupid ignorant me doesn´t know yet that the current merc system is kinda broken. Otherwise I would have bought smaller companies while still available :/

Our -15% ae from the jaunpur mission will run out in 5 years... Should remember the exact date.

Map is looking good. Beefy delhi. Strong friends. Truces all over the place....

Sure transoxiana. Looks you are getting your independence this time. They are strong, sunni and we have no plans to expand in your direction. Perfect ally.

Balkh needs to be a state, naturally...

... and afghan our new primary culture...

... abandon those...

Yes, yes, YEEEEESSSSS... can you feel the power?! Also much nicer green!

Mughal power activated. This is what we have been secretly working on. While checking of all requirements to form the mughals, we also conquered every province of hindustani culture. This is arguably the best culture group for the mughal assimilation mechanic and gives us -10% core creation cost

It was also pretty nifty to not take the first government reform, because when you form the mughals you get the first two reforms for free, so all the progress can be invested in tier three

Here I did f*k up. Remember sirhind? Where I thought I´m smart and seize a province to speed up integration? Well, that mission requires that autonomy in those sirhind provinces is below 30...

Looks like I even increased autonomy. 93... that will take a while before i can use that mission path.

172 / 750. I guess we can grab a couple more provinces.

We do have a few claims.

... and 40% reduced ccr. With perma claims that is already 65%... but we won´t stop there.

Let´s put them to work then. Our allies are eager to eat some land as well, but we will call them a bit later, once we have sieged down the provinces we want to take for ourself....

639 dev... ming we are coming!

Our forcelimit and manpower isn´t rising as quickly though. 28k isn´t that much. We are very careful not to waste any men and use mercs whenever possible or affordable.

We do fight a lot though and 70 army tradition eventually gives us decent generals eventually. army professionalism can be turned into manpower, so generals are usually a good investment at this point.

Sneaky me called in gujarat and promised them land a month earlier. Now they are in a war together with us and can´t join a war against us because we co-belligerent sindh in another war

What is going on?! Can I trust my tired eyes? Bahmanis wants to marry us? Yes, I will

Time to abandon diplo ideas and go for the real stuff. Admin or religious are the best choices. Religious because of the deus vult cb and admin because the ccr synergizes so well with mughals. I choose the latter option, as we do have a couple of claims left, don´t need to convert much atm and deus vult won´t be available from the get go anyways. The question is basically what points we need to safe more. I reckon it to be admin points so we go with admin ideas. We did safe up over 1080 admin points so we can pick the first two idea of the bat.

Hehe... with perma claims we have 90% ccr (-5% is from war exhaustion).

Right, being muslim enables us to do the debasing thing. Basically means that we don´t have to take any loans. I´m more interested in another muslim mechanic though...

Have to peace out sindh before peacing out the mewar war. Otherwise gujarat could join.

Basically free realestate. 10 admin points to core 10 dev. 13 month to core. coring time reduction is actually the more important side of ccr.

Mewar is hindu, so basically nobody cares if we take half their land.

Rival time. I´m happy that we still have options, we are allied to most of them though. Have to break up with malwa if we want to land a diplomatic coup. Also they are on our menu pretty soon.

f* u, vj

I royaly messed up here. Can´t reduce autonomy until 1484 ^^

Grand, another -10% ae... our -15% jaunpur mission bonus is about to run out though...

Unbelievable. An alliance with bahmanis...

Didn´t see that coming ^^ Guess we are coalition proof now. I love the position we are in now. We can finish off all the small countries that are sandwhiched between us and bahmanis. We are in a very strong position already and it is only 23 years into the game. Trade and manpower/forcelimit could be better, but that will eventually fix itself when we unite more of india. It will be very hard to controll myself and to not already go nuts and conquer things left and right. Pace yourself we still have centuries left and need to be as efficiently as possible.

Aight, that´s it for today. Until next time!

 

[Pureanger]

That's an amazing start.

Thanks, I do like it very much myself. For the most part I prefer to play small starting nations, but I really like this one

 

[HistoryDude]

And so the Mughals emerge...

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 3 - Silk road


Ready for the next one? Perfect, here we go... Last time we formed the mughals and ramped up our ccr to 60%, which isn´t bad at all for being just 25 years into the game. It´s not horde level of opness, but it is pretty powerful Today we will consolidate our power and prepare for the next steps without becoming megalomaniac hopefully.


Institutions are a problem in asia. If possible I want to spare myself the points to spawn it by deving. I do have a plan, but I´m not sure if it is going to work. There are nations who like to dev for various reasons. Good rulers, good land, suitable ideas. Malwa starts out with a 6/6/6 ruler (or something close to it). They are basically drowning in points. They also have good land to develop. They already started. Problem is, they split the deving between different provinces.... What if I leave them only one province to develop? Even if they don´t fully spawn the rainessance. They might develop it to 80% or so, making it very cheap for us to finish it.... Let´s give it a try. For science!

Having chagatai as ally is primarily aimed to prevent them to accumulate too much ae. Since we accumulate favors anyways, we might as well spend them.

Spending 10 favors to prepare them for war did the trick. Now they will join in against bengal and will help to keep timmy and their other allies busy.

On the other hand. We do have good land to develop as well and just got another -15% discount.

We take 3 provinces from timmy in a seperate peace and criple bengal. The bengal node is much better suited to collect in then the doab node. We still have a small share in it, but now we can use light ships and bengal can´t anymore.

Thanks chagatai, but now after you helped us in a war, i realize that i don´t want to be friends anymore. in fact i hate you and you can go to hell

Not a moment too soon. I actually had to go back in time, because ming was dead set on tributising chagtai. Don´t want to go head to head with ming yet. They have 10 times the numbers we have...

That is only income and military wise. Comparing total dev we are almost equals.

20% progress. Let´s act on our plan to force malwa to concentrate development to fewer provinces.

Shit, I really want to keep the alliance with bahmanis, but it is very frail...

We take the annoying forts and leave them with 3 suitable provinces to develop...

We finish a mission before coring and get perma claims on the region we just conquered.

December 31st, that is 11 month from now. We are getting quick at coring.

They do like us still... a tiny bit...

Ok, further east... where the silk comes from. Taking those juicy trade centers on the coast along the way...

Man... that sh*t will take forever to come here... not sure if i have the patience.

We are conservative with our point spending and do get several tech cost reduction modifiers so we are able to stay ahead in technology.

Pegu is at war with mrauk u as well and they have occupied the second province before we could reach it. I´m betting here he will take it for himself as (checked the desired land mapmode). As he will get 100% occupation instantly we shouldn´t have to wait too long if my bet is correct.

Winning By total chance the exact same province pegu just took is the target of a diet i just fired. Guess where we were heading in 2 seconds

Let´s make ayutthaya a rival....

and then co-belligerent them!

Hmm, seems like chagatai is holding its ground against ming...

29k, good for you, good for you...

vj and bahmanis going at each other over ceylon...

Now it pays of that we didn´t spend the goverment reform points. We can invest it all in tier 3.

I feel like the viet cong here. junge fort fighting skills to the max.

Damn, malwa´s op leader just died. Guess our little rainessance experiment is going to be a dud.

Malacca is another contender. They do like to develop down here, even though it is jungle terrain. It is particulary annoying to search for those manually developed progress provinces. The mapmode only marks provinces that have ticking development. Everything else is grey and you have to hover over each province to see the progress... Like we have nothing else to do.

I´m torn. We do have prime land ourself. 26 points at 10 dev. That is a bargain.

I your face ayutthaya. *Little victory dance* That instantly adds multiple buddhist countries to a potential coalition though...

We need 12 month to core those provinces...

We are starting to earn some serious money. Trade is still a small share. In total we have already conquered 118 provinces.

Guess that was inevitable. I´m confident though that they won´t declare as we do still have powerful friends. That might change however if bahmanis is losing the war...

All in all the ae map doesn´t look too bad. We do have a couple of sunni nations ready for coalition in the west, but we have truces with those nations. The north and south don´t care. South east asia is basically the coalition area. Now here is the thing. SE asia is a small theatre consisting basically completely of nations of different religions and cultures then other close by theatres like india and china/ming. That means the ae won´t spread arround over distances as quickly as, lets say I would conquer sunni land. That opens it up for a blitzkrieg approach where we can hit them fast and hard. nobody else but themselves will care, and if they don´t exist anymore... the only nation we need to watch out for is ming. They do have a different religion, but some of those nations are tributaries of ming which gives ae spread a little boost. Don´t want ming in the coalition, currently at 18 ae...

Vj won, but bahmanis is still strong enough to stay our ally. If not it will be their death sentence.

Yeah, well no progress here. I still do think it is a viable strategy to safe some points, but without their supreme leader there will be too little progress...

Hmm chagatai has guge as a tributary. this might be an easy option to get a border with ming. not sure we want that yet though...

Finally we can make peace with pegu. We are commited now and have to eat se asia....

I like that we still have plenty of candidates for rivalries...

Ok, let´s get it over with. Upgrade trade center for another -5% dev cost...

welcome to india renaissance!

blues vs. reds

forcelimit slowly growing.

Lol, that much to our plans to get a border with ming....

He is breathing down our neck ^^

Let´s have a look at some charts... ehm, interesting...

This is all theravada land and potential rebel country. The hindu provinces aren´t that much of a problem cause of estate priveliges. Let´s a a missionary. Lazy sob was sitting on his lazy ass for 3 decades...

Let´s clean up some minor states. Gujarat is still allied to us and inviting him into the war minimizes the ae he will get.

Sick.

Forgot to break of the rm. Well since we are rivals, it won´t cost us stab.

This frees up a slot which is immediately filled up by malacca. Once again perfect ally. It acts as a buffer between us and other potential candidates who might join in the coalition. Eventually we want to conquered them very much. Need to finish up the buddists in se asia first. malacca is sunni and their provinces spread ae as far as egypt...

... or even worse to constantinople when they start to see us, which could be sooner then later...

i guess it is official now. that also means we are strong enough for them to consider us as a rival. go us...

Would love to take the other coastal provinces from orissa, but that would put us at odds with bahmanis. still need them as insurance against ming.

The other small fries he don´t care about...

Heat is rising.

I guess it´s gonna be one of those hate love relationships.

We need that clay for missions. Also it is time to remove as many small tags as possible. Many small nations are tougher then a few big ones in a coalition.

Gimme that money!

Pesky rebels...

Embrace the damn thing already, -32% jesus...

Time to go shopping...

And our next idea group will be.... religious! I know, I know... two admin groups in a row. I activated the option to let me do that. I could deal with having to balance idea groups, but since the option is there and doesn´t break ironman, i´m gonna take it without regrets. I´m old and lazy

... and on that bombshell, I´m going to end this chapter for today. Take care guys. Read you soon.

 

[HistoryDude]

The Mughals are still victorious!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 4 - Good Karma


Welcome back to school, and happy easter kids! Took a few days off, but don´t wand to keep you hanging for too long Coffee pot on the cooker, get the old typwrite and get the party going. Last time we did things. Not sure what, but must have been something... pretty sure. Man I´m tired af, lol Ah yes, coffee, slurp. I´m also confused about what we are going to do today so I suggest we jump right in... This is going to be great


Ah yeah, the dipalpur f* up. Guess we are almost below 30 autonomy soon to finish the mission.

As a wake up routine, let´s do a little morning exercise.... (it is 8 pm btw)

Hmm, vj at 48 ae

Man, I feel like I went on a drunk rampage last time and blacked out. Everybody is pissed at us, and I don´t remember sh*t, lul.

Probably robbed a bank or something....

Damn 1300 dev, 200 more then ming... thic.

Why is pagarruyungyungung so mad at us? Ah right, they have this funny theradataya religion, nobody can pronounce. I recall fragments of last chapter.

4.7 innovativeness. Could be better, could be worse.

Man, why are some many countries in the coaltion? Nothing major though... Uprising of the dwarfs.

Let´s convert those hindu provinces. We are sunni after all and we do have quite a bit of missionary strength as it looks like.

FINNNNAAALLLLYYY!....

We peaced out malwa in the bengal war for 0 warscore earlier. We dowed them again 5 years later and can finish bengal up as well.

I like the mughal mission tree...

Now we can abandon those forts finally.

Aight. Time to pay attention to. For most of you this is old coffee, but for me this is news. The new min max meta with states is that you actually don´t use states...

In short we are going to only use a couple of states on our main region, india for now. Everywhere else we will add tcs to trade centers and if no trade centers in that area a tc to only of of the provinces. That allows us to use the trade company investments basically in every area. Understood? Great...

This also allows us to get extra merchants in almost all trade company region. I´m still not used to the fact that there are so many now and that you can tc europe... totally op ^^ I used to be happy if I get 10 merchants... now you can get dozens, lul.

Malwa gone as well.

Let´s do something about the coaltion. One of the mongs or mais isn´t in it, so we immediately dow him.

The other half of the trade company / territory lession: We want to have tcs everywhere, so we can´t use states. So everything else is territories with 90% autonomy, right? So the next thing to do is to stack "reduced minimum autonomy in territories" modifiers. At first it is slow like these -5% min autonomy trade company region wide investments, but it adds up. Since it is multiplicative it will become very powerful in late game.

Age of discovery will end in 10 years...

Those merc companies are total garbage...

Great. Just a moment 8k stacks... now only 40k stacks available... good job pdx

We bribe, we influence... do whatever to get countries out of the coalition...

I´m starting to watch ming more closely. They have passed the first reform and are at 50 mandate. Now would actually be a good time to border them to tank it... hmm.

Taking land from non co-belligerent ayutthaya. 50 ae to buddist countries, but they are all in the coalition anyways. Hit them fast and hit them hard I say...

... and then become them. Wait what? We buddist now?!!!?

Turning buddist killed our first government reform, indian sultanate , which is pretty great btw with 3 tolerance for heathans. We are a monarchy now... If you paid close attention we had those religious rebels running arround for a while spreadning our new faith....

What do you know. We can get tributary states now.... for free even

Now that is a nice improvement and will come in handy. State edict and trade company investment mapmode in the macro builder...

Sistan becomes another tributary. Even gujarat is close to accepting. Won´t tributize them as we want to conquer them soon. I remember tributaries to be completely broken. Aside from them giving you extra monarch points, they do not get ANY ae from your expansions and you could give them up in a peace deal which resulted in ae reduction to other nations like giving up land or vassals. 5 seconds later they will join you to become tributaries again for free... Wonder if that is still the case. If so I won´t abuse it in this run...

Our first extra trader. I have to shimmy shammy arround a bit, make some trade company investments to get extra trade power in tc provinces. If it is close and gets you above the threshold i guess it is worth it....

Our forces are growing... not as fast I´d like though...

Huh, looks like we are no cbing vj here. I guess my thinking was that we can get an easy war against vj with the support of bahmanis and gujarat... as well as 4 of their allies who we can take out of the coalition. Worth 2 stab....

Holy crap, even transoxiania what´s to become a tributary. I have to sleep on that. They might be still useful as an ally for now...

Ah sh*t forgot about the religious unity penalty... that was a 300 admin joke...

Wiping that coalition opm from the map gives us claims over gujarat...

That´s another expensive joke, but I told myself I will take every event that gives innovativeness.. no matter the downsides.

Look at that, lol. Ming f*ed up and took a province from chagatai and now they border us... bye bye mandate

We take a huge bite out of vj.

We release mandurai, one of my favorite vassals in the region, from 2 provinces. Next war against vj we can return all those juicy provinces at the coromandel coast.

Killing off those opms in india did the trick. Now the coalition became so weak that it colapses....

Beautiful, deus vult finished. That will serve us nicely and save up tons of tip and ae...

Unfortunately we can´t use it against buddhist nations.... as we are one ourself :/

Lan Xang is the powerhouse in the region. Once we have a truce with them, there won´t be a coalition. Ava has several tributaries nowadays. Dealing with them will be easy....

It´s only half as bad as it looks. The important part is to prevent ming from joining the coalition. So we try to not be too greedy and take war reps and money as well....

What did I just say...

... guess you get a free pass this time, ava.

So many rebels... 0 stab... and why is our legitimacy so low?! Hate to spend mil power for this... but I also do hate getting disasters...

Thanks game... was just talking about that...

Let´s get in a quick war against vj. Since we took most of their forts it will be over quick.... Also timmy just became tributary. That means we are secure on 3 fronts. Time to take a closer look at china...

Slacken standards for 21k men. Constantly running low on manpower... At least we get good generals this way....

What the hell ming?!?! Why are you still gaining mandate while having a border with us. Well, today I learned... something in the game has changed ^^ After doing some research, I realize that I screwed up here. There is no way to reduce the mandate before a first altercation... and we had the chance to do so at 50 mandate. Now it is at 70 again, which means we either have to fight him at full strength or wait for him to pass another reform :/

Ain´t that peculiar? Didn´t we just get 21k men for slackening the standards? Now we get only 15k men. Turns out when you restart the game and slacken standards before the first month tick, the game hasn´t factored in the autonomy of provinces and gives you more men. Works the same for exploiting dev btw, as I find out later. Looks like my game is going to crash more often

Enables religious conflicts... you bet it does

Since we do not have exploration we have to rely on our allies to share maps with us. Better save up that prestige...

That event always warms my heart

It is getting late here, my internet connection is starting to die down and I´m afraid that something goes wrong and I have to write the whole chapter again. Maybe it is a good point to end it here for today. I hope you enjoyed it, albeit my apparent sleepyness and confusion. Maybe tomorrow evening if I can find the strength after a full day of easter egg hunting I will write the next one. If not I will probably do so on monday. Take care guys!

 

[HistoryDude]

The Mughals are Buddhist? Interesting.

India is getting more and more green...

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 5 - Purgatory


*Yawn*... A new dawn, a new chapter. Hope everybody had a nice easter holiday. I feel way better rested then last time ^^ and eager to dive in. We still have a fill quite a few pages before this journey ends. Last time we crashed the coaltion that was forming in se asia and turned theravada. Taking muslim land would be very dangerous right now, but there no plans to do so in the near future. Only hindu and budhist provinces and taking the latter will make them much less rebellious if we are budhists ourselfs.


I want to pump up our economy asap. To do so buying brokers exchanges are a good choice in the beginning. Especially with 4 or more provinces in a territory. Each provinces gets 0.3 goods produced, which is this example 1.5 gods for 400 ducats, vs. 1 from a manufactory. It also is available instantly instead of 5 years.

Keeping up in tech is also a thing high on my priority list.

We do have quite a high governing capacity. For the time being I don´t mind to have a lot of stated lands as long as we are under the limit. I have no clue how well the groth of the limit will keep up with our rapid expansion. The penalties for going over the limit are steep. Increased ccr, ae increase and less improved relations. If we are getting close to the limit we might have to take some drastic measures, but we will deal with it once we get there...

Our investments are starting to pay of. Manpower could be higher....

We are working currently only with 40% religious unity :/

We max out or estates with privileges. Looks like our killing machine of a country is set up and well oiled!

What, whaat... a sneak attack!!! Our allies refuse to help us??!

Let´s go back a few days. Ming attacking us is one thing. Loosing half of our alliances is another...

... also some reconnaissance shouldn´t hurt. 200 men, interesting...

There are no useful alliances available. So we take what we can so ming might refrain from attacking us...

Ok he is commited to taking us down and he got us off guard and low on manpower. He is at 80 mandate and won´t be getting much stronger. Good for him.

We haven´t finished cleaning se asia yet and a couple of truces are about to run out. Luckily we already kicked vj in the balls that he isn´t as much of a threat then before...

We do have similar numbers on paper, but a lot of those are coming from allies and vassals. Those are notoriously unreliable, so it is more like 1:3...

He even out-morales us... uff.

... but that made him cocky and led to one crucial mistake. He should have paid earlier for his fort in yunnan. We breach the walls and take the provinces within days. The province is highlands, has several rivers close by and a long travel time from neighboring provinces. This is where we will make our stand!

The first battle has started and even though he rolled better then us, his death toll is much higher. We do have better manouvre and he doesn´t have a general...

Song La will be be our second stronghold. The province is mountainous. We do build a fort there, but it hasn´t finished yet. We will place our armies in sourrounding provinces and wait for ming to enter one of these two death traps

Gotcha....

A promising start...

But those relentless ming troops keep coming. They also opened up a second front by walking thru tibet. Our manpower is dwindeling. no allies in sight..

Have to use every trick in the bag. We scorch earth to delay their reinforcements.

Another fly incoming....

Naturally we scorched earth in yunnan as well. I check arrival dates on every entering army stack. Often times the ai uses seperate stacks and enters at different days. We make the most of it by entering at full force once the first army is locked. Sometimes the ai stops the other advancing armies only to start moving towards the target as soon as our armies are locked. Because of the long travel times, increased by scorched earth we are able to wipe the first army before the second army arrives...

Like in this

Not 100% certain, but I believe our allies are walking into terra incognita, which takes forever.... I was hoping they would be just a little bit useful :/

Ming just keeps hitting us with doom stacks. Our manpower is almost non existant...

Lucky for us he makes the same mistake over and over again...

Rainessance is about to spread to canton. If he get the next military tech we could be in serious trouble...

Damn it. He still has 135k manpower left and after that he can still merc up...

At least this constant slaughter reduces his war enthusiasm.

Wth. How are you suppose to get the mandate down these days?! He is still gaining mandate... I guess devastation is one way to go...

That´s what I was afraid of. Vj... don´t get any ideas or I swear I will burn down every viallage of yours and salt the earth...

It´s better we pull the trigger. Vj would form a coalition and that might really become a problem. We will deal with this later.

80k running arround unchecked in our backyard. What´s the worst that can happen ^^ During the first war with vj we took all his forts and gave it to mandurai. I´m counting on that he will go for those first and will be slowed down by it a bit...

250 mil for 26k manpower. Seems excessive, but we got not much choice. Hiring mercs will kill our professionalism and gives us 40k stacks that will be at 0 reinforcements because of attrition...

Pattani... I see you have some maps for sale...

At least now we won´t have to walk 10 years thru the fog...

The third of our army that was protecting the himalaya front from ming invasions takes care of smaller allies of vj and keeps them in check a bit...

Actually more then a bit. Vj doesn´t has only his capital fort, which is quickly breached...

Fighting all over. Gujarat and bahmanis relief troops have arrived on the yunnan front, which gives us a chance to go for canton. We engange vjs trade fleet in hope of capturing a few light ships which we will sell of for salors. It is dangerous, as mings fleet is arround the corner and still outnumbers us in heavy ships...

I take a half win at this point. We annexed orissa and andraha and have overexension anyways. This will give us a long enough truce and free up troops for the ming front.

Our allies openend up another front in the north of china, which keeps mings weak underbelly unprotected. We take our chance and go for it...

The chinese lands are soaked in blood...

Meanwhile a new threat grows far away in the distance...

We earned those mountains...

Our slowed down expansion let´s us finish up our admin ideas at least...

Zabt system finished as well...

Lul, stupid f*cker enacted another reform... How lucky can you get

As if we planned this, religious wars finishes in time. 25% less warscore... mjam.

Colonialism deved in sambhal Those indian provinces have low dev cost as f*k...

Canton has rainessance. Gotta take this province in a future peace deal for sure.

LOL Ming probably got stuck in terra incognita as well...

Ming is toast. We can fight them with one arm now. Time to start working on se asia again... I do see an opportunity.

Aight, devastation is the way to go it seems. He won´t recover from this.

Man that war was brutal, and we don´t even get at lot of provinces from that. 94% oe nontheless. We take his most important forts in the south, so next time we can instantly carpet siege and devestate his lands. Also 2600 ducats. His mandate will stay in the dumster in recon...

This was the opportunity I reckognized. Majapahit got stomped by sunda and is small and vassalizable. Taking him as a vassal is beneficial for our future expansions. Will elaborate at a later point.

Sun Tzu said... kick a man while he is laying on the ground. We do this of course to shorten truce timers with ming....

... and get some more coin out of him while he is still big.

That took care of the coalition.

Ming will be in our regular war cycle from now on...

... the money is spent partly to embrace colonialism. 13 years in... I bet earlier then most european nations.

Time to manage our diplo slots better...

Oh sh*t, here comes trouble ming. They might even get a nomadic frontier event...

Ava... Lan Xang...

It is not the grandest ability, but this also does reduce reinforcement and maintenance cost for cannons. Time to go shopping...

Ava takes a punch to the gut...

More perma claims.

Sure... what is the worst that can happen...

Ding, ding, ding... round two ming. This time we are prepared

We will try to beat his navy this time as well. Hire a naval moral guy...

Oh crap. 14 Month isn´t long...

Didn´t pay attention there. Our flagship almost got killed, but could flee to unite with the remaining fleet.

Beijing down.

Next phase: carpet bombing .

His fleet is gone as well.

Hurry, no time to lose, 6 month left... breach the walls...

This was a cake walk compared to last time

... and the rewards are a bit higher thanks to our cb. 243 oe We take as many forts as possible, split his lands in parts and have it set up in a way that...

... we can optimally feed our newly released vassal, Shun.

We also treat ourself to a new alliance with oirat. They are supprisingly strong and I don´t want them in a coalition against us.

We have reduced our oe to 100 by feeding shun, so it doesn´t matter that we are instantly at war again with ming...

Again?! This is becoming annoying....

Hello vj

Next idea group... diplomatic ideas. Mainly for the extra reduction of warscore cost. Everything else is nice too...

It is extremely annoying and difficult to steer rebel armies, but you can do so by occupying one of their occupied provinces. A 1k stack is sufficient. Once you do so they will come after you and you can flee. This will give you a chance that the rebel stack will move to another province next time. It is still somewhat random and they seem to be attackted by certain provinces, like your capital, more then with others...

Ming took a white peace. Their tributary got a bit smaller....

UHHHH YEAAH, BABY. Sweet child of mine. How I love that event!!!

Let´s end this chapter on this high note. We certainly turned lemons into lemonaid this time and the heavens seem pleased and send us a godly heir. Not sure when I can tackle the next chapter, but I sure hope you will tune in again. Take care!

 

[HistoryDude]

The Ming are humbled! Good. Very good

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 6 - A slice of heaven


Hello again. Ready for the next one? Have to hurry a bit cause pdx is taking the forums down in 7 hours. Don´t want to write this chapter twice . Last time ming did a pre-emtive strike on us, which made my palms sweaty to be honest. We managed to defend against their onslaught and finally pushed them back. Today is payback time!


... a few changes to our diplomatic relations first.

Somehow jianzhou is mighty enough to be a rival of ours..

47k not to bad...

Mong Yang steamrolled the burma area, but this is our clay...

Next up ming. We could call in oirat, but would have to promise him land.... naaahhhh

He isn´t motivated from the start...

... he probably knew what was coming. We take all provinces bordering oirat, so they don´t get any funny ideas.

We feed most of the provinces to our new vassal yan and shun.

... and immediately go for the next round.

At the same time, we start an invasion in indonesia. Sunda owns cores of majapahit and is allied to kutai. Perfect opportunity to get a foothold on borneo.

We eat all of kutai and not all of sunda. This was actually a bit tricky, since both nations together had more heavy ships then we did.

Dealing with rebel pests in our backyard..

Deus vult!

How much a good cb can make a difference. Only 85 oe...

Ae map looking very managable.

No 1

no 1

Money, claims and a war against pasai.

This will be a big bite. We finish our diplo idea that further reduces war score cost.

357 oe

Even majapahit needs to help out coring. Not sure that I have seen this event before...

SE asia completed....

.... except malacca, but the don´t seem to like us anymore anyways.

Hmm...

maybe if we...

malacca gets on the menu.

Those spice nations can afford a lot of heavys...

Don´t matter. Now our movement can´t be blocked anymore.

claims, claims, claims... i love claims.

Peacing out the rest of the war participants at once to save diplo points and ae....

This was a lot of sunni territory. We are budhists so ae spreads arround quicker. The mamluks are at 49 ae, so we need to take a break on taking sunni provinces for the time being.

Ming isn´t sunni, right?

We do have a coalition again... members currently... guge.

ottomans are on a expansion spree themselves.

Vj get´s peaced out first.

Look at this sh*tshow...

Rebel occupation devasted most of our mainland.

Aye, that´s it boys, it is time. We claim the mandate of heaven! This was of course the only reason for us going budhist as probably all of you have seen from a mile coming. You need to be of pagan or eastern religion to claim it. We needed to start of as sunni as you need to be sunni to form the mughals. As if we weren´t powerful enough before, we are basically minghals now, giving us mughal ideas and assimilation mechanic as well as making us emperor of china with additional 20% ccr (with enough reforms) and still being able to make tributaries. Time to get schwifty.

Our first government reform, indian sultanate (3 tolerance of heathans) will be replaced with 300 government capacity, everything elese stays intact. This is important as we need the other reforms to finish our mughal deccan mission for the extra 10 admin efficiency.

Not all is milk and honey though. There is fineprint, you actually have to keep peace and stability for the mandate. Devastation is acutally a huge problem.

One efficient way to combat devastation quickly is suprisingly forts. They reduce devastions by 1 every month in surrounding provinces. So we build forts... many forts...

Crap, crap... we have 2 disasters triggert. Nomadic frontier...

...and empire of china in name, which is happening, because we don´t have 2 accepted chinese cultures. -0.3 mandate per month. We are already loosing 0.9...

Damn it. The mughal assimilation would work here, but we do have to own all those provinces ourselves. We gave some of the chinese provinces to our vassals, so they don´t become accepted. I thought we had two cultures, but it turns out the zhuang aren´t chinese :/

I guess it is a good time to integrate them.

This should fix our unguarded frontier problem. First I thought it would be oirat that triggered it, but we don´t border them at all. It was actually jianzhou. An alliance stops the disaster.

Here comes magic trick no 2. We are turning back sunni. It was obvious as well if you paid attention. We don´t need to stay pagan/eastern to be the emperor. We just need to be when we take the mandate. The trick was to keep a close balance in the numbers of province religions. You need a majority, not 50%, to switch religions. In the beginning we still had many hindu provinces and I started early converting them to sunni to move the sunni share up. When we changed back to sunni from budhist we didn´t acutally need that many conversions anymore.

Converting as many provinces before flipping as possible was just for convinience, but it turned out to be a nightmare. The rebels kept going for the capital in delhi and refused to move towards se asia. I tried my best to make them more there, but they sieged down delhi like 6 or 7 times and kept huge parts of the country occupied. At the time i didn´t mind very much, but this increased devastation levels to the extent that it is a huge problem in combination with the mandate. oh well.

Why sunni? Well several reasons. Being i.e. hindu would have given us another 10% ccr. This would max out ccr, but i reckon ccr isn´t the worst bottleneck we do have from this point on since we already do have plenty. Remember we also do have a side goal, a one culture and for that we also do need to convert the whole world. I haven´t played sunni for ages and I want to test how strong their trade company conversion mechanic is. On paper they do have something like 7-8 missionaries max, which should be sufficient. With those trade conversions, it could be quite a bit more. Let´s find out.

We can choose a religious school, -10% ae, thank you and get 50 relations will all muslim nations.

We can already start a few propagate religion policies.

70 religious unity. Could be worse.

1416 of 1937 government capacity. That is pretty good for 1543, isn´t it?

Alright, back to our devastation problem...

Another way to remove devastation is development. It is expensive, but we have no choice here. If we lose the mandate or get a disaster we are in serious trouble. Not to mention we need mandate to get the celestial reforms...

Money won´t be a problem anytime soon, if ever ...

We still have a bit till absolutism...

Event´s giving us mandate i will always take, no matter the downside. Same like innovativeness... Our mandate is dropping like a stone.

There is another trigger for the unguarded frontier. Uzbek has a border with us. They are sunni as well, which denies us deus vult cb, but we do have a new force tributary cb now.

70% ccr... i like

We can use unify china cb again korchin, still a tributary of ming as well an ally of oirat. it gives us a possibility to score more chinese provinces to hopefully avert the chinese empire in name disaster...

Devastation is going down, not quickly as needed though...

Still got a few points left to tech. Innovativeness at 20...

... another short break to catch air, phew...

Right we got this thing again too. 2k ducats every 5 years. Too bad we can´t buy mandate for cash...

Just need 2 of those... Can´t be that hard...

... and ming takes another punch... poor ming. Basically ate their whole country with 27 years. That is without absolutism and admin efficiency!!!

Well that felt good to get revenge on ming. Now we have to take further steps in their shoes. Turns out it is quite difficult to run when you have lotus feet. Will the mighty minghals survive and thrive or will be defeated by hordes or crumble to inwards perfection standards. Find out in the next chapter. See ya!

 

[Pureanger]

The Ming are humbled! Good. Very good

Indeed. Thanks for those posts history dude. Stynlan seems to have left the forum and without you it would feel like I was writing for myself

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 7 - Mandate of chaos


Hey guys. Today is aar day again. Let´s recapitulate what happenend last time: We murdered ming in one episode. We became emperor of china. We turned sunni again. We were about to get two disasters and our mandate loss was out of control. Well todays topic will be disaster control and our next goal is to turn mandate growth arround and complete the celestial reforms up to the fourth level that will give us another 10% ccr, adding up to 80% in total. Pretty insane. It is not the highest level achieved ever, but it is pretty op, especially with all our other bonuses and mechanics combined.... and we even haven´t had printing industry fire yet ^^


... but first we must deal with this mess

Right, we are also still at war with uzbek and oirat. Well hordes don´t fight well in mountains...

Poof, the big reveal. So far not much out of the ordinary

Except maybe this ^^

I thought we were no1... sniff. Oirat crazy strong...

Not sure how we stoped the other disaster, but it seems like we did... good, good..

Peacing out the other war participants.

Err, sweden seems pretty big as well... Not the worst for us. Keeps muscovy in check and cock-blocks them from forming russia.

Ok, we seem to get the mandate loss under control by dealing with devastation. To make matters worse, I gave beijing to a vassal of ours. *facepalm*

We build forts in strategic positions that don´t overlap each other. Especially in high dev provinces with high devastation. Provinces with super high devastation we develop to bring them to the same levels.

We still have to be careful with taking sunni lands. Just need enough so we can release kazakh, which will act as a buffer state and prevent the unguarded frontier event from ticking. We also will be able to return quite a few cores.

We slowed down the disaster progress. Not sure why the game shows our development. It should show the development of the horde bordering us. Probably oversight...

Propagate religion seems to work pretty well. Look at all those religious centers

Oirat is finally taken down.

That stopped the unguarded frontier disaster... pfew...

both oirat and uzbek have less then 300 dev now

Kazakh nation is born.

Meanwhile we are still investing tons of money in our economy. State houses not only decrease our minimum autonomy -10% in states, they also decrease statewide governing costs in provinces by -20%. Quite nice. Not as powerful as manufactories maybe, BUT if you build them in glas, paper or gems provinces the effects are doubled, which makes them very competitive. Especially in high dev areas.

Jackpot. Otto knows that it is better to stand with us, then against us...

Let´s have a look at religion numbers. Sunni is actually the strongest religion on the planet, but over 2000 provinces don´t follow the correct faith yet. I have now clue if it is realistic to make it in time. Last thing i remember was that using vassals for conversion was total dog sh*t, because none of them actually converted land. Well guess we will find out.

We starting small war´s here and there to clean up borders.

Nah, sunni all the way. Being confucian would be memey, because of the assimilation mechanic of mughals. This would prevent us from converting the world however which is a prerequisite for culture converting the world...

We also need to start to demand tribute from the world. Smaller nations have to suppy manpower, which is the best option here. They have to give 300 men even if they are a 3 dev nation. Bigger nations have to pay power points, which can add up quite nicely. Best thing is however, tributaries don´t gain ai... and can be used to reduce ae in peace deals (we aren´t doing that however unless absolutely necessary).

Again with the disasters. Now we have a civil war looming. Will this nightmare ever end. Wait WHAT?! We need to have 75 mandate, not meritocracy.... F*ck me, how are we supposed to get that.

I´m struggeling to keep it above 50, argh...

We stopped the bleeding, but 25 mandate before the disaster hits and there is no direct way to buy mandate except with events...

India starting to get the right color. Gujarat annexed.

Printing industry hits. We snatch 2 innovativeness...

Phillipines turn green.

Peacetime. We took a few provinces from oman, so we border haasa and can make them a tributary. If you can manage to get enough cbs this frogleap strategy is very powerful.

Next up our ally bahmanis via kotte.

We hit them hard within the first month. 39k casualties before they could organize themselves...

Damn it. Mandate is below 50 again...

Top event, at the worst time... totally useless for us ^^

Would have liked to take 2 provinces more to finish a second mission...

... , but this one gives us plenty of claims over the remaining lands in india.

10 month coring time.

Buying maps let´s us work on the remaining hordes and japan. Both trade nodes will earn us tons of cash... assimilating the japanese cultures also gives our armies +10% morale.

This however started the unguarded frontier disaster... they will be cut down to the right size soon enough, i guess... Still no clue how to stop the civil war. Guess we will have to get super lucky with events or something.

That´s a good size.

Meanwhile in the spice islands.

Horde land is cheap...

Yay, we stopped the bleeding...

How does europe´s trade look like?

Can´t keep up with bengal...

We make twice as much as otto...

Printing press has arrived in india.

There is a tiny bit of ming left..

I love that event as it gives 3 innovativness, but it starts to become costly. 3k ducats ^^ What is money...

Two years till civil war... and 25 mandate to go.

The ae map. Doesn´t look bad, but taking the brunei provinces will put mamluks in the coalition.

Awesome. Civil war. There was no way I could see how to prevent this. Usually it is tied to legitimacy. You can buy legitimacy for military points. When you are emperor of china that is not an option. It shouldn´t be possible to buy mandate for mil points, but maybe the disaster should be tied to meritocracy. Seems unfair... Ok well, haven´t had a civil war for so long, acutally had to check the wiki. Base modifier is +10 unrest in all provinces. Pretty bad, but we could take that for A WHILE. What seem´s f*cking even more unfair is that you get monthly ticks to events that give you options to get legitimacy in return for other downsides. However you don´t get any mandate on those events according to the wiki, just legitimacy. If that is true, we are royally f*cked and I will probably rage quit this run, because we will need 90... 90!!! mandate to end this disaster. This would take forever with regular events and our natural growth...

Rebels already see their time coming. With 89 oe we have +5 national unrest in all provinces... oh boi.

Holy crap, the wiki is wrong. These monthly events do give mandate. The run is saved!!!

It is costly, but it accelerates mandate growth extremely... this acutally gives me an idea...

.... what if we use this to our advantage....

... and instead of ending the civil war... we use those events to reform our empire, *evil lough*

It will eat tons of monarch points, kill our prestige and we will be rebel central for a few years. HOWEVER reforming the normal way would take with 1-2 mandate growth and a +5 mandate event every 2-3 years, arround 50 years until we finish the fourth reform (+10% ccr). Via civil war we could do it in maybe 5 If we survive... Let´s give it a try. At least 1-2 reforms we can manage I believe.

Asia getting a bit greener, but still very colorful.

Love me some traders. We buy trade company investments that give +4 trade power and do everything else to get over 51% to get the extra trader...

Even with the civil war going on. We start a new external war. Fighting uzbek allows us to return tons of sunni lands to kazakh at reduced ae. This also doesn´t give us oe and further unrest...

1800 of 2000 governing capacity. We are always close to limit, but so far haven´t gone over the limit.

Finally our talented daughter is in power. Even has a silver tongue. Isn´t she a beauty!! 15 admin, 16 dip points each month... Let´s eat the world!

Those mandate events also cost quite a bit of money. We are already at 11 loans. Well, I said I will take every event option that gives mandate, no matter the downside...

The upside is we have already our second reform finished. I for the next event that would give us 100+ mandate, finish the reform and then accept the event...

The uzbek war turns out more costly then planned, but our own armies mostly take care of rebels. Our ally transoxiania and vassals fight the war...

Nobody really cares...

Stability would be nice too, but our prestige is constantly at -100 due to the civil war events. Getting 50 prestige at this point are preferable to us...

Reform no 3.

Look at all those rebels on the right side. ^^ Probably have a 100 factions in our country...

Manpower is constantly drained. Without slacken standards, we would have a serious manpower problem.

Oirat is no superpower anymore...

Well if that is the last available option... I take it I guess...

We did it boys! We reached the fourth reform. Within 5 (painful and expensive) years ^^. I timed it that I could finish the civil war in the same month while still getting one final civil war event that gives mandate. The end of civil war also gives 10 mandate and 3 stab.

So we do get our 10% ccr and are almost instantly out of rebel hell. There is one more reform, a lot of debt and -90 prestige... but we have reached our final form. Well not final final, but ccr wise. We can go full rampage mode, while our wounds heal, until absolutism hits. Fun times ahead That´s it for todays episode. Until next time. Bye!

 

[Pureanger]

Chapter 8 - Long live the viceroy


Greetings. Hope everybody is doing fine. Our little mughal empire certainly is. The celestial emperorship is reformed and reigning with a firm hand. Rebellions have died down. All peaches and cream. Well, not everything, but we have reached most of our early game goals.


Stability is up and most of the rebellions will disappear.

Mandate is relatively stable.

47000 ducats in debt, but we still have positive income.

Bahmanis is still holding some provinces in india.

80% ccr... lovely!

100% occupation and still got 8 reasons to stay in the war... hmmm.

70 prestige. Let´s us finish 2 more missions.

Ae map. We are gaining ae even with spain now...

We are strong, but lack of manpower is a constant problem. One thing in this patch I noticed is that resources like money, manpower and forcelimit have become fairly scarce. I mean we are very powerful, but in the patches before we would be unstoppable by now. I do like it a lot, you actually have to manage your economy to keep up...

We desire the riches of japan. No kamikaze blowing to stop us...

Always suprising how many man japan can maintain...

No deus vult cb. Next time...

We can embrace printing press...

New ideas

Next up influence ideas. It will help us integrate our numerous vassals and we need it later for the culture conversion cost reduction policy... Also unjustified demands reduces 50% costs. All in all we will save tons of dip points. A currency not to underestimate if you want to do a one-culture.

Cleaning up girin.

It is time to start our expansion westwards. We use a war against sistan to break with our long-time ally transoxiania.

We take only samarkand.

France and england have arrived in the indian ocean.

This should suffice.

Our next war we can use religious cb again, because khorosan is shia.

Finally...

We can release deccan

But first, we full core the whole region....

10% admin efficiency... permanent. 8)

We have to wait 10 years, but integration costs only 97 dip... because we have full cores on all deccan provinces. Interestingly we haven´t integrated mandurai yet and those province are not touched by the deccan release.

Time to integrate our vassals...

We continue on the arabian peninsula. Those nations steal quite a bit of trade from india.

We are nice and pay back ashikagas debt.

so they can help ryukyu to fight against us...

Having no legitimacy gives us no downsides to royal marriages. We can marry everybody we have a diplomatic relation with. This increases improved relations by 1% per marriage. Not much, but every bit counts.

Frog leap province.

13 points to dev, haven´t even focused on reduction... lul

Foothold in the horn of africa and the one province missing in persia...

To finish afghan frontier and timurs dream. Which both give us claims all over persia. I was careful to take as few provinces in the area as possible to finish both missions.

... claims aren´t permanent though I realize now. Not sure if it was worth it to be so careful :/

They would become our tributaries... just have to ask nicely.

New theatre of war. Uniting the ethiopian cultures give us a free missionary.

Lul, we could tributize the mamluks ...

I already knew the outcome, but for sh*ts and giggle I made them a tributary. This would cost us our alliance with otto as they desire mamluks provinces. Restart the game...

Expensive, but innovativeness is our friend... 36

6300 dev by 1575, not too bad...

I love that mil tech now gives innovativeness too. Seemed unfair...

Our government progress would let us enable parliament now, but we delay the decision...

Mecca and medina are ours, we get a third missionary...

The muslim world isn´t too happy with us. We will need to tributize, ally or eat them before taking on the christians.

- 25% diplo annexation cost.

Majapahit is at 80%

We force kazan to give up perm as a vassal

Closing in on europe....

Now we can tributize kazan for free. The having subjects of their own would have prevented this.

6 month coring time

We just annexed ashikaga... 228 oe... a bit much, but with 6 month coring time (with claims..) rebels don´t have enough time to get to 100%...

Sweet. Huge ass tributaries for free... this is op.

One rebel army poped. Right on time...

We claim this land!

Argh. Did not see that coming. Should have taken all coastal provinces of anizah... I swear if otto takes exploration...

Coalition is growing again...

Well, then we have to eat the coalition.

Governing capacity is always close at the limit...

Let´s grant more privileges. Going over governing capacity gives steep penalties...

Cock-blocking otto and gaining access to the mediterranean

Would have loved to take more provinces, but since otto desires this land, we have to tread careful...

Owning jerusalem gives us our fourth missionary.

Yikes...

Used an assassin to kill of the otto ruler. New one isn´t a militarist anymore

Ae spread to africa. We do have 50+ ae with otto, so it is very important to keep the alliance.

10 years have passed. We can integrate deccan!

... but we will do so in the next episode. Going to watch some tv now Probably write another chapter tomorrow. Have a pleasant evening everybody.

 

[HistoryDude]

The Mughals are doing well. China is pacified.

Soon, even Europe will fear them!

Truly, they are the heirs of Genghis Khan...