Chapter 13: Preparations for decades of overseas coring
I used the short period of peace to sell Portugal a port province inside Bengal Delta (NE India) and then I declared on everyone and their mother around Qing. To be honest, I had no clue what to feed to Russia, Japan and Portugal, so I just declared on all, only to sort out what to feed to WHO later on
Russia attacked that 22k Qing stack and wiped it instantly. Tech difference in military makes it lot easier to flat out wiping an enemy stack. All troops destroyed.. *yawn*
As you can see, I got more then a million troops combined, counting all Pu armies and their colonial nations
And their combined navy! 127 heavies
, 875 trade ships
and 407 transports
Note that I sold transport fleets to many subjects, or there wouldn’t be as much floating around..
Time to prepare for a full-fledged invasion of India. I attacked Bengal first. Why? Because RUSSIA (yes Russia) took the “get the presence in India” mission, and because they had claims on the Bengal delta region ports (they colonized Taiwan, and got coring range into India from there).
You can see I also sold Portugal a port there. I won’t attack Orissa/Mewar/Koch (they are all allied to each other) until two subjects have a core in India. Why?
You will see later. I post this screenshot to show that planning ahead is vital in a WC, or a one tag.
I also took the mission, because why not.
Meanwhile, the nations that got fully occupied in Far East Asia got munched up by subjects. All troops were being brought in a position to invade India, after occupying all of it.
But before I did the invasion, I needed to manage the consequences of integrating my first PU subject
Spain is the first domino stone to fall. The goal in the end, is to make that RYUKYU tag in Europe a LOT bigger..
..I know, that red England core in Armagnac kinda ruins it
When you integrate monsters like this, you always end up with a messy situation.
All their armies are suddenly flagged as YOURS, and they can be everywhere around the map. Same thing for their fleet.
Best idea here is to activate armies/navies in the window at the right top, and to cycle all armies/fleets and to give separate orders.
You know whats weird? When you integrate a EUROPE western nation as ASIAN culture nation, the subject troops change into ASIAN tech troops
How that makes sense, I got no clue
Anyways, all their European Grenzer infantry turned into… Asian musketeers.
Yeah, sure, why not. It makes a lot of sense, after all
What I didn’t get is how they switched uniforms so fast!
Integrating Spain gave me an exact 267/267 army count, a navy consisting of 100 trade ships and 20 heavies, and more transports.
Note that the -160 ducat loss didn’t last, after re-assigning traders, trade fleets and ditching all the costly mercs Spain brought along. I never use anything else then merc infantry. The rest got sacked.
You know whats funny? Even the MERCS switched to Asian tech units
But they are supposed to be independent.. mercenaries! It seems I got greater integration capability then I imagined
Heres the diplomatic view of Europe after the integration. A bit of a mess. But in the end, that will get solved. I now had 478 provinces, and 1800+ tax base of my OWN (no vassals anymore).
Did you notice how much TARIFFS I get now, after integrating Spain? 77 ducats a month
Imagine what it will be after integrating Portugal and England..
More and more nations in Far East Asia got fed to subjects. I’m not going to show all the peace deals.. But this one was the last substantial feeding, since the subjects hit their overextension cap.
This is how the Qing region looks like now… The leftovers I will core myself, later on.
I used the freshly integrated troops in Europe to smash the usual Polish alliance web.
Revoking the privilegia isn’t in my goal. Feeding entire Europe to Austria, England and Sweden IS.
This was easy. Only France and their allies still pose a real threat in Europe.
Time for some REAL Business
I declared with overseas expansion cb on Orissa, and made Koch and Mewar co-belligerent.
I had placed half of my troops on the west side, and half on the east side.
The triple alliance was busy fighting France in Mewar, and their troops were concentrated there.
All the arrows are an inclination of my plan.
The India plan: start a siege on as many provinces in Mewar and Koch, to cut down the routing options for Mewar/Koch, while engaging their doomstacks head on.
Note that I read today that they patched the routing mechanic. So likely this trick is patched. Not sure though, feedback appreciated.
I’m not sure if I should be angry or proud that Paradox changes so many things in the patches (after 1.9.2) that are shown in this AAR..
But a change in this routing mechanic was long overdue, since it made wiping main armies easy, if you knew how to micromanage.
And I know
how to micromanage, if I may say that. I switched to speed 2, sent scouting/occupation stacks in all directions, and overview entire battelefield every week to adapt troop movements. The PU armies got guided to the front, and my own armies marched to start sieges in North India, from Baluchistan to Bengal.
I tried to engage the Indian armies in plains, to have maximum combat width. That is to my advantage here, as my army units are superior. They inflict best morale damage and casualties if I force the enemy to fight a row of 40+ infantry/cavalry wide backed by 40+ cannons…
I bashed the armies in the west, spread my troops across as many provinces as fast as possible across northern India, and meanwhile I advanced in the east, to intercept the routing army of Koch, and the Orissa stacks that walked north to intercept my moves.
As micromanaging India invasion wasn’t enough, I also had to watch the invasion of Canada in this continent…
…and also the invasion of the Polish alliance web in THAT continent.
Both those fronts were secured easily
Time for another front then. I attacked the leftover tribes in central America.
IF your colonial nation fabricates claim on a tribe/other CN, the overlord can use that claim to attack as overlord.
I had to wait for that to happen, as all tribes there were westernised and catholic.
But the real attention went to India. The benefit of doing a blitzkrieg across a large territory, is that you can catch small stacks unaware, and often they have no general leading them. Most stacks here did have generals, but I wiped them nevertheless.
If you invade like this, the AI usually tries to form a doomstack. Catching the moving small stacks is vital. Using high manoeuvre generals helps a ton here.
Chase and kill ‘m boys!
