Najd

[Orkonkel]

So. I've been playing a lot as Najd recently and I was hoping for some tips and pointers. In my current game, I'm at year 1710 and I only have 253 provinces, meaning I'm not expanding fast enough for the 'Jihad' achievement. If anyone here actually completed it, would you mind sharing a bit of strategy?

Currently, this is how most of my games go:
1. Vassalise Yemen, Hedjaz, Oman. Annex Haasa. Annex as soon as possible.
2. Ally with Ottomans to war Mamluks. Take all the northen provinces. Release Syria as vassal.
3. War Qara Quyunlu. Take provinces with Iraq and Persian cores. Release as vassals.
4. War Timurds. Return cores to Persia. Take provinces belonging to Afghanistan or other nations. Release as vassals.
5. Take all of eastern Africa. Start colonizing.
6. Make Incursions into India, eat up Mamluks, move west along the northen border of Africa. Vassalise Tripoli (if they're still around), go all the way to Marocko.
7. Hit the Ottomans if opportunity arises. If before 1694, take zones belonging to Byzantium. Release as vassal. In the next wars, return cores to Byzantium as part of peace deals.
8. Take India. Vassalise/annex going east at a steady pace. Take any western provinces popping up in India or around your colonies in Africa.

This last game, Nizhny Novgorod had taken all of Russia. Castille had found its way over to Japan and started colonizing Sibiria from east going back west towards Europe.

My ideas are Diplomatic -> Offensive -> Expansion -> Defensive -> Trade -> Religious. At this point, my army was 252,000 men strong but still muslim tech (western tech can't vassalise eastern/nomad techs). I still managed to beat France to take their colonies in India (they inherited Portugal). Coring takes forever. Also, muslims have some seriously insane events.

Like, just now, 'A New Sultan' happened for the third time in the same game, killing my heir and replacing the regency council with a 0-0-0 ruler. This event seriously is the most annoying thing ever. 0-0-0 with muslim tech is going to kill any progress and I've had to suffer through it three times now. I have no idea why the new ruler does not have randomized stats like all other rulers, but this is really painful. Not only does the ruler have craptastic stats but you also take a -25 legitimacy hit. It's so bad.


Anyway. If anyone have any experience playing as Najd and feel like sharing, I'd really appreciate it a lot. Thanks!

 

[Comes Imperii]

This. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?750788-Jihad-achievement

 

[Entih]

Be glad you can get that far with it. Been retrying this myself after having gotten to about 330-350 provinces the other day, and pretty much every run ends within 4 years with The Mamluks attacking me (breaking any alliance or guarantee they have) within 3 years game time, followed by Hedjaz, Haasa, Qara Qoyunlu, and Oman all declaring war on me simultaneously once my army is depleted, depending on who is still alive and independent. Everyone is always hostile to me, can never get any alliances. Bah.

However, what advice I might have is consider Admin Ideas. The -25% coring cost is a huge benefit, and I think it even helps cut down coring time (same with having a province claim). Perhaps shove your way into India and China as early as you can, before Westerners pop in and start the Westernization Party. My last semi-successful Najd game petered out because everyone (even Japan) became westernized, or were protectorates, meaning they actually started putting up a good fight. May have hit that 500 mark if I didn't get pulled into war with Spain every thirty years!

 

[Golladan]

Keep moving up towards Muscovy before focusing on Eastern Africa. Blocking them off from colonizing is very important. And gives you free provinces.

In your war to vassalize Yemen take Aden for yourself and core it. So you can fabricate a claim on (and later core) Adal. Adal and Hedjaz tends to ally so instead of declaring war on Hedjaz to vassalize them, declare it on Adal so you can annex Adal and vassalize Hedjaz in the same war. This gives you access to a province to colonize early. And if you're lucky the Mamluks breaks all relations with Ethiopia, so you can take Massawa and colonize the Funj area before Funj spawns.

Fighting wars on multiple fronts is key. As is early colonization. Expansion -> Exploration is probably best start.

 

[Orkonkel]

Yeah, I'm up at 350 provinces at year 1780 at the moment. Will probably reach 400 or so before the game ends but I'm not really doing this very optimally it feels like. There were lots of easy provinces to win in eastern europe, but I haven't moved east past India which seems like even easier ones. Got caught up in a war with Castille to boot them out of India which ate up all of my manpower, so meh. For my next run, I'll definitely try Expansion -> Exploration -> Administration -> Offensive/Defensive -> Innovative. I hadn't even realized that -coring cost also affected coring time. Duh. I also got caught up in several wars versus westernised Mali which also cost me a lot of time for very few provinces. My plan was to kick their butt and take lots of land quickly, but this all failed because they had some really high base tax in pretty much all of their provinces. Timbuktu alone cost 60% war score, and the rest were all ranging from 30-40% cost.

I'm still a bit on the fence about westernising early (or at all). I mean, I just beat Castille with my muslim tech units at year 1780, and being able to vassalise all of the India/Chinese/Hordes/Indonesia and feeding them provinces just seems like the best way to go. Taking it all in wars seem like I would be wasting admin points.