Hello everyone, and welcome to another AAR of mine. It's been quite a while, and I'm still sad about how the last one ended prematurely, but I felt like giving this another try. As usual this will be pretty image-heavy, and mostly focussed on the game play.
And I'll do my best to see this one through to the end again.
Overview:
Chapter 1: The Wars of Kapilendra - Starts further down in this very post
Chapter 2: The Cult of Jagannath
Chapter 3: Over the Mountains we go
Chapter 4: Looming Disaster
Chapter 5: Civil War!
Chapter 6: A new rival appears
Chapter 7: Breakthrough in China
Chapter 8: Troubled times for our rivals
Chapter 9: Dynastic Woes
Chapter 10: Pent-up
Chapter 11: Shiva the Destroyer
Chapter 12: Shiva the Destroyer - continued
Chapter 13: The fall of an empire
Chapter 14: Steady progress
Chapter 15: Praise be to Vishnu \o/
Chapter 16: Acceleration and a bit of a lull
Chapter 17: First tussle with a western nation
Chapter 18: A Foothold in Europe
Chapter 19: Stepping Stones
Chapter 20: Goals in sight
Chapter 21: Final Sprint
So, Orissa. I still didn't get around to play any Hindu nation for more than a little testing since they got their personal deities, so I'm happy to finally go for that. Plus they got the option for some interesting (imo) achievments.
Goals:
My goals for this are pretty straightforward. Become the Foremost Servitor of Jagannath, and see to it that The Sun Never Sets on the Indian Empire.
So that means getting all provinces with Tropical Wood, and getting the Cape, London, Ottawa, and Hong Kong.
Past that I'll just see how things develop and if I can pick up any other achievments along the way (both Steam- and self-set ones).
Gameplan:
Yeah, as usual not too sure about things here. I don't think I'll go out of my way to westernize asap (so no tentacle of wisdom or early no-CB wars to get to the Europeans faster). I'll probably do a bit of colonizing later on, but I won't pick up Exploration as one of my first ideas.
I'm not too sure about some of the newer mechanics (as I said, only one campaign in 1.14 and 1.15), but I think I should be fine just going at my own pace, hopefully that won't come back to haunt me later on...
Chapter 1: The Wars of Kapilendra
So, let's look at our situation first:
We start out medium-sized with some good provinces along the coastline, and even got our own vassal already. We're a bit boxed in between several bigger and stronger nations though, so we'll have to be a bit opportunistic and/or get some good allies early on.
Our starting rivals are Malwa, Bengal, and Andhra, and in addition to these 3 Jaunpur rivalled us as well. Neither Bahmanis nor V-J to the south though, so hopefully I can get one of them as an ally.
We got a great starting ruler, and a below-average heir. Problematically our ruler is also a great general (5 shock), so hopefully we won't get too the heir too fast and for too long...
Now to a very cool part, the Hindu deitis:
With the exception of maybe Ganga these are all great, but for the start cheaper cores and less AE sound the best to me.
I also got a nice mission to start out with, conquering one of my rivals:
Sadly they allied V-J right away before I could jump then, so fulfilling that mission will probably take a bit...
I started by fabricating on Jharkhand and Bastar, both of them very weak and without allies (so far). Since V-J was a potential enemy due to their alliance to my rival Andhra I decided to go for an alliance with Bahmanis early on, securing a royal marriage to get to the alliance faster:
Jharkhand was my first target, apparently my vassal was thinking along the same line as I did, fabricating a claim on them as well:
Might as well save the admin points and feed it to them I guess...
Next up came the first very tough decision. I did not yet have the alliance with Bahmanis, when a big war broke out:
It was V-J and their vassal, as well as Andhra, against Bahmanis. That made the alliance with Bahmanis a moot point (even if they suddenly felt more positive about the idea), the real questions now were a) wether to jump them as well, or go after Andhra, and b) jump into the war right away or wait a bit longer and go for the losing side.
Since there were no deceisive battles yet from what I could tell I just continued going after the easy targets and kept watching from the sidelines for a bit longer:
I'll be taking that for myself, since it opens up some more options.
Since I still didn't have any allies now I decided to accept Mewar when they offered it:
Not the strongest option, but should be enough to deal with any problems should Malwa or Jaunpur get uppity.
Since Hindu has some good religious decisions I decided to spend some admin points to up my stability and go for the one that reduces unrest in addition to stronger missionaries:
While I kept on watching the big war to the west a literary golden age begun, giving me the option of a half-priced Theologian without having to pay an estate for it
I was actually making some pretty good money from trade already, so I got him right away.
The last of my small neighbours devoured, and still the war to the west carries on:
It was swinging against Bahmanis now, but both sides' armies still were mostly intact, so I decided to wait a bit longer.
Apparently the historic Kapilendra (my ruler) went pretty crazy in his wars, so far I couldn't really compete with his achievments:
Hopefully that will change soon.
Still, seems like a good deal to me, some small money for less unrest and more legitimacy.
With Bahmanis looking worse and worse in their war I decided it was a good idea to start fabricating some claims on them, and I broke our royal marriage with them. (It's only been 3 years my dear, but don't worry. It's not you, it's me~ )
Shortly after Bahmanis finally fell:
And while I had no illusions about this lasting very long, I secured an alliance with V-J:
Should at the least keep me safe from any opportunistic rivals while I'm busy. And if I can get them to join some other war I might be able to jump Andhra in the meantime...
Speaking of which, a claim fabrication later (Andhra took the province I originally claimed) I finally declared war on Bahmanis:
AI was starting some serious dogpiling already, and I wanted a piece of them as well.
I was considering vassalizing Mysore to the south in this war, and try feeding them the other small nations to the south, but that definitely would have ended the alliance with V-J, and I wanted to keep them around as an ally for a little longer. At least until I dealed with some of my rivals...
And after Malwa and Gujarat finished their own wars with Bahmanis they actually were small enough to be vassalized, with all the cores they just lost that seemed like a very good option:
Even though I usually try to wait for some neighbour bonus, in preparation for my next war I went and bought the next level in military tech at full price:
Didn't think I'd get the bonus with me having a ruler with a 6 in military and nothing else to spend the points on anyways.
Plus the extra level served me pretty well in my war against Bengal:
Scared them so much that this turned out to be the only battle in the whole war...
With the Bengal Delta and Dhaka both having river estuaries that should secure my grip on the Bengal trade node.
In hindsight I should have taken the province in the north as well, and go into Tibet from there, but oh well...
So as it was I was in a bit of a stalemate now, everyone I could get (or already had) a CB on had some pretty strong allies, and I couldn't get V-J to join an offensive war yet either.
I was actually considering a no-CB war into Indonesia at that point. I think it would have been a strong option (still a fair amount of smaller nations over there), but eh...
My ally Mewar getting attacked turned out to be a possible way out, but looking at their enemies that was a pretty tough choice as well:
And we'll see how that turned out in the next chapter. With this screenshot also giving a good overview over the current situation in India I feel like this a good spot to take a break.
With the exeption of some small nations in the very south almost all the smaller nations have already been eaten or vassalized, definitely feels like the AI has gotten better at the early expansion. Just means I'll have too be more on the lookout for opportunities, since any war now promises to be a big one.
And I'll do my best to see this one through to the end again.
Overview:
Chapter 1: The Wars of Kapilendra - Starts further down in this very post
Chapter 2: The Cult of Jagannath
Chapter 3: Over the Mountains we go
Chapter 4: Looming Disaster
Chapter 5: Civil War!
Chapter 6: A new rival appears
Chapter 7: Breakthrough in China
Chapter 8: Troubled times for our rivals
Chapter 9: Dynastic Woes
Chapter 10: Pent-up
Chapter 11: Shiva the Destroyer
Chapter 12: Shiva the Destroyer - continued
Chapter 13: The fall of an empire
Chapter 14: Steady progress
Chapter 15: Praise be to Vishnu \o/
Chapter 16: Acceleration and a bit of a lull
Chapter 17: First tussle with a western nation
Chapter 18: A Foothold in Europe
Chapter 19: Stepping Stones
Chapter 20: Goals in sight
Chapter 21: Final Sprint
So, Orissa. I still didn't get around to play any Hindu nation for more than a little testing since they got their personal deities, so I'm happy to finally go for that. Plus they got the option for some interesting (imo) achievments.
Goals:
My goals for this are pretty straightforward. Become the Foremost Servitor of Jagannath, and see to it that The Sun Never Sets on the Indian Empire.
So that means getting all provinces with Tropical Wood, and getting the Cape, London, Ottawa, and Hong Kong.
Past that I'll just see how things develop and if I can pick up any other achievments along the way (both Steam- and self-set ones).
Gameplan:
Yeah, as usual not too sure about things here. I don't think I'll go out of my way to westernize asap (so no tentacle of wisdom or early no-CB wars to get to the Europeans faster). I'll probably do a bit of colonizing later on, but I won't pick up Exploration as one of my first ideas.
I'm not too sure about some of the newer mechanics (as I said, only one campaign in 1.14 and 1.15), but I think I should be fine just going at my own pace, hopefully that won't come back to haunt me later on...
Chapter 1: The Wars of Kapilendra
So, let's look at our situation first:
We start out medium-sized with some good provinces along the coastline, and even got our own vassal already. We're a bit boxed in between several bigger and stronger nations though, so we'll have to be a bit opportunistic and/or get some good allies early on.
Our starting rivals are Malwa, Bengal, and Andhra, and in addition to these 3 Jaunpur rivalled us as well. Neither Bahmanis nor V-J to the south though, so hopefully I can get one of them as an ally.
We got a great starting ruler, and a below-average heir. Problematically our ruler is also a great general (5 shock), so hopefully we won't get too the heir too fast and for too long...
Now to a very cool part, the Hindu deitis:
With the exception of maybe Ganga these are all great, but for the start cheaper cores and less AE sound the best to me.
I also got a nice mission to start out with, conquering one of my rivals:
Sadly they allied V-J right away before I could jump then, so fulfilling that mission will probably take a bit...
I started by fabricating on Jharkhand and Bastar, both of them very weak and without allies (so far). Since V-J was a potential enemy due to their alliance to my rival Andhra I decided to go for an alliance with Bahmanis early on, securing a royal marriage to get to the alliance faster:
Jharkhand was my first target, apparently my vassal was thinking along the same line as I did, fabricating a claim on them as well:
Might as well save the admin points and feed it to them I guess...
Next up came the first very tough decision. I did not yet have the alliance with Bahmanis, when a big war broke out:
It was V-J and their vassal, as well as Andhra, against Bahmanis. That made the alliance with Bahmanis a moot point (even if they suddenly felt more positive about the idea), the real questions now were a) wether to jump them as well, or go after Andhra, and b) jump into the war right away or wait a bit longer and go for the losing side.
Since there were no deceisive battles yet from what I could tell I just continued going after the easy targets and kept watching from the sidelines for a bit longer:
I'll be taking that for myself, since it opens up some more options.
Since I still didn't have any allies now I decided to accept Mewar when they offered it:
Not the strongest option, but should be enough to deal with any problems should Malwa or Jaunpur get uppity.
Since Hindu has some good religious decisions I decided to spend some admin points to up my stability and go for the one that reduces unrest in addition to stronger missionaries:
While I kept on watching the big war to the west a literary golden age begun, giving me the option of a half-priced Theologian without having to pay an estate for it
I was actually making some pretty good money from trade already, so I got him right away.
The last of my small neighbours devoured, and still the war to the west carries on:
It was swinging against Bahmanis now, but both sides' armies still were mostly intact, so I decided to wait a bit longer.
Apparently the historic Kapilendra (my ruler) went pretty crazy in his wars, so far I couldn't really compete with his achievments:
Hopefully that will change soon.
Still, seems like a good deal to me, some small money for less unrest and more legitimacy.
With Bahmanis looking worse and worse in their war I decided it was a good idea to start fabricating some claims on them, and I broke our royal marriage with them. (It's only been 3 years my dear, but don't worry. It's not you, it's me~ )
Shortly after Bahmanis finally fell:
And while I had no illusions about this lasting very long, I secured an alliance with V-J:
Should at the least keep me safe from any opportunistic rivals while I'm busy. And if I can get them to join some other war I might be able to jump Andhra in the meantime...
Speaking of which, a claim fabrication later (Andhra took the province I originally claimed) I finally declared war on Bahmanis:
AI was starting some serious dogpiling already, and I wanted a piece of them as well.
I was considering vassalizing Mysore to the south in this war, and try feeding them the other small nations to the south, but that definitely would have ended the alliance with V-J, and I wanted to keep them around as an ally for a little longer. At least until I dealed with some of my rivals...
And after Malwa and Gujarat finished their own wars with Bahmanis they actually were small enough to be vassalized, with all the cores they just lost that seemed like a very good option:
Even though I usually try to wait for some neighbour bonus, in preparation for my next war I went and bought the next level in military tech at full price:
Didn't think I'd get the bonus with me having a ruler with a 6 in military and nothing else to spend the points on anyways.
Plus the extra level served me pretty well in my war against Bengal:
Scared them so much that this turned out to be the only battle in the whole war...
With the Bengal Delta and Dhaka both having river estuaries that should secure my grip on the Bengal trade node.
In hindsight I should have taken the province in the north as well, and go into Tibet from there, but oh well...
So as it was I was in a bit of a stalemate now, everyone I could get (or already had) a CB on had some pretty strong allies, and I couldn't get V-J to join an offensive war yet either.
I was actually considering a no-CB war into Indonesia at that point. I think it would have been a strong option (still a fair amount of smaller nations over there), but eh...
My ally Mewar getting attacked turned out to be a possible way out, but looking at their enemies that was a pretty tough choice as well:
And we'll see how that turned out in the next chapter. With this screenshot also giving a good overview over the current situation in India I feel like this a good spot to take a break.
With the exeption of some small nations in the very south almost all the smaller nations have already been eaten or vassalized, definitely feels like the AI has gotten better at the early expansion. Just means I'll have too be more on the lookout for opportunities, since any war now promises to be a big one.
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