Playing as Korea.... Help me!

[highsis]

After buying AOW, I started playing as Korea.

I ended up conquering Manchue, Northern China, and whole Japan in 100 years and felt bored so I restarted with Hard AI, AI bonus, and Historical lucky nations.

150 years into the game. I've progressed 30 years further from this screenshot, and I'm in a predicament I've never been in before.

Point forms of what has transpired:



1. I allied with Ming, Manchu A, Manchu B, and Japan. When I saw an opportunity, I seized it and conquered Manchu B. I built all buildings in every province, had max fleet and army, 20 ducats of profit per month, and 800 ducats of cash. All was going so well. I thought I would win this game just as easily as the previous attempt.

2. Manchu A invaded me with Oirat's aid. Oirat crushed Ming, my only ally, and despite me spending 800 ducats + 2000 ducats of dept to resist Manchu(which BTW was smaller than Korea!), Manchu forces were too superior for me to deal with. Ultimately, I had to take 1000 ducats of extra loan to barely white peace Oirat and defeat Manchu.

When I finally turned the table against Manchu, Japan invaded. Ming refused to help, and Manchurian rebellion was at 95%. I was about to bankrupt as well. I WPed with Manchu and then went bankrupt. Japan conquered a province in manchuria from me.

3. 10 years later, Japan invaded again with Manchu, their new ally. I took 6200 ducats of dept to repel the invasio, and I had to take lands from Manchu and Japan because I couldn't deal with their power with current holdings.

This is the point at which the screenshot was taken. It looks OK on surface, but I was rolling downhill to an impending doom at this point I foresaw but couldn't prevent.

4. I carefully cored Japanese provinces, then went bankrupt. 4 years into bankruptcy, Manchu invaded and rebellions rose up; my 36k army(virtually useless with bankruptcy) I raised didn't deter the war at all. (it couldn't be helped despite my best efforts to deal with autonomy. Good Job, Paradox; I'm not being sarcastic. I love this kind of realism.) My entire lands got seized and I lost Beijing, northern manchuria, and all lands in Japan. After the war, Ming, Japan, Manchu, a Japanese daimyo joined coalition against me.

5. Coalition war broke out 10 years later, with Japan leading the invasion. Oirat, my new ally, refused to help. I lost all of Manchuria and southern province of Korea.

6. Third invasion from Japan and Manchu. Japan forgot how to use transports so they are simply blockading my ports while 60k strong Manchu forces are pouring in from north against my 20k army that is less combat-effective against Manchu.(in fact they are despotic monarchy and has the same mil tech). I'm thinking of abandoing Korean peninsula and migrating to Ryukyu to survive, but other than that I can't think of anything else to do at this point.



I've gotta give credits to Paradox and its amazing 1.8 patch. I've never, ever lost single province to AI or rebels in hundreds hours I spent in EU4 since I first played it; I felt the game was extremely boring past its initial stage despite only playing OPMs in the past. Now I'm at mercy of AI although I started playing as a relatively strong nation, Korea. I first applaud Paradox for making rebels and AI aggression much more interesting, and second I need an advice to survive this crisis. What should I do other than restarting?

 

[IIWW]

I've gotta give credits to Paradox and its amazing 1.8 patch. I've never, ever lost single province to AI or rebels in hundreds hours I spent in EU4 since I first played it; I felt the game was extremely boring past its initial stage despite only playing OPMs in the past. Now I'm at mercy of AI although I started playing as a relatively strong nation, Korea. I first applaud Paradox for making rebels and AI aggression much more interesting, and second I need an advice to survive this crisis. What should I do other than restarting?

Korea is harder than most (especially HRE) OPM's. It was made easier in 1.8, but not much.
Well, If You really don't wan't to restart, then migration seems like the only option. And later expansion into indochina maybe. Can't You migrate directly to Malaya?

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

Good god, that is absolutely amazing that the AI is doing so well against a human. That being said, perhaps it was because the AI was on the offensive this time; players never pick wars that they'll lose after all. I wonder if Paradox could make the AI more aggressive to replicate this.

Korea is a pretty fun but highly difficult country, as IIWW says. Manchu ends up allying with Ming if you even lay a finger on them, sorely lacking in manpower, with such limited room for expansion. I've never played them with 1.8, but the OP sure has motivated me to try.

That being said yeah, you're screwed if you've gone that far. You might as well take go and take over Ryukyu and start plotting from there, xD>

 

[Mztr44]

Interesting that Japan got naval superiority over you. I don't think there is a whole lot you can do to salvage your current game other than what you said, and even then it's going to be difficult to make much of a comeback.

Korea isn't that difficult in my opinion. It's main hurdle is that it has no cultural unions to start, so until you conquer enough territory to get an accepted culture, rebels can be an annoyance. My main tactic with Korea is to go after Japan early. Use your superior, consolidated navy to gain control of the smaller islands first, not allowing Japan or it's vassals to retaliate while you siege them down. Then in a later war you can bait the bulk of the Japanese army onto one of those islands and trap them there while you siege down the rest. With Japan under your thumb, you get a monopoly on the Nippon trade node without needing to field a large fleet of light ships and can focus on heavies instead. If you rival Ming, you should be able to secure an alliance with the Oirat horde which can dominate them easily. Take rich, coastal provinces from Ming and continue to grow your navy. If you can catch a smaller Manchu tribe when it's weak and vassalize it you can feed it the other ones. Once you are able to core down in Malaya/Indonesia, you can expand there a bit more easily than you can taking chunks of expensive Ming provinces. With control of the islands you can push all your trade there and collect an incredible amount of ducats. You can do just about anything from that point.

 

[Less]

Never rely on Ming if you can, and certainly NEVER send them money. Sending AI money often isn't a great idea even at the best of times since generally you'll be able to use it better. With Ming's paper-thin troops, its basically throwing cash down the gutter. Going bankrupt doing that completely kills your army morale, and is probably the reason for everything else that followed.

On the diplomatic side, you probably would have been saved had you lured the Oirat to be neutral or friendly earlier. They are the powerhouse in the region next to a unified japan. You'd have been best off high-fiving each other as you both carve into Ming. Use Ming as an ally at the beginning but lose them as soon as possible, you need a strong AI ally with a lots of manpower who can soak up some losses and keep fighting.

Since everything between you and Japan is inland seas, you should have good luck galley spamming against them. You might have to go over your forcelimit but so long as you only build galleys you'll pay far less than you did fighting them on land.

Good luck on your next game.

 

[highsis]

Interesting that Japan got naval superiority over you. I don't think there is a whole lot you can do to salvage your current game other than what you said, and even then it's going to be difficult to make much of a comeback.

Korea isn't that difficult in my opinion. It's main hurdle is that it has no cultural unions to start, so until you conquer enough territory to get an accepted culture, rebels can be an annoyance. My main tactic with Korea is to go after Japan early. Use your superior, consolidated navy to gain control of the smaller islands first, not allowing Japan or it's vassals to retaliate while you siege them down. Then in a later war you can bait the bulk of the Japanese army onto one of those islands and trap them there while you siege down the rest. With Japan under your thumb, you get a monopoly on the Nippon trade node without needing to field a large fleet of light ships and can focus on heavies instead. If you rival Ming, you should be able to secure an alliance with the Oirat horde which can dominate them easily. Take rich, coastal provinces from Ming and continue to grow your navy. If you can catch a smaller Manchu tribe when it's weak and vassalize it you can feed it the other ones. Once you are able to core down in Malaya/Indonesia, you can expand there a bit more easily than you can taking chunks of expensive Ming provinces. With control of the islands you can push all your trade there and collect an incredible amount of ducats. You can do just about anything from that point.

I used that tactic against Japan at No.3 to take provinces from Japan, then at No.4 Ming joined the coalition war and destroyed my fleets, from which I never recovered from.

Both Manchu and Japan seem to consolidate their power very quickly. When I took down my neighbouring manchu tribe, all other 4 were united in vassalage and overpowered me quickly with Oirat/Japan's aid, and it was especially hard because the unifier of Manchu had despotic monarchy which allowed them to have numerical superiority and matching tech against Korea.

In the current war, I fended off Japan with stronger navy, and again was forced to take 3k ducats of debt to fight the 3 times larger, much stronger per regiment Manchu army, then went bankrupt again. I managed to regain control of the Korean peninsula, but I can't stand off the pressure of an invasion every 10 year, and supporting rebel is pointless due to AI bonus giving them unrest bonus. At this rate, I will simply get crushed again 10 years later, and with Ming, Manchu, Japan setting me as their rival and Oirat being an ally to Manchu, I have little hope of finding any exterior help.

I want to salvage this as best as I can though. It's almost humiliating to see OPM Ryukyu fielding 7k troops which is 70% of my standing army!

 

[josh127]

If you can't get any friends, and are constantly losing the war on land, how about the sea. Can you take Japan on their island? Perhaps suckering them into attacking you across a strait, or getting their main force trapped on a remote island? If so, you could possibly gain ground there while sacrificing part of the homeland. Then start working your way back into things. Also, can you vassalize Ryukyu? or rush the spice islands for a vassal or two? If they can field 70% of your army, that's a potential 70% increase to your army size. Just need them to feel safe leaving their island.

Not the soundest of tactics, but was trying to think of how you could take advantage of the few things that are going right for you.