Chapter 1 – 1444 to 1453 – Establishing the Core
Chapter 1 – 1444 to 1453 – Establishing the Core
Strategy
As Oman, the beginning National Ideas are all Naval - 50% cheaper naval maintenance and +0.50 to naval morale. The Religious Ideas for Shiite nations also give a +0.25 to Land Morale. Combining this with the Piety concept giving even more morale for choosing positive Piety decisions gives Oman quite a bang for the buck with both the Land and Naval forces. This is important because the force limits and manpower is low for Oman. As more and more ideas are earned, they serve to increase trade power, trade steering, and trade income. Clearly our path to economic success will be through the trade system. Let's take a look at how that looks at game start. We have two merchants, one is in our home node of Gulf of Aden collecting income and one is in Indus steering trade towards Gulf of Aden. Our economic strategy will be simple: put a lockdown on all trade leaving Gulf of Aden by first securing it with our Light Ship navy and then by conquering every province contributing to that trade node. We will turn all of our native production and as much trade as we can steer into income. You'll notice that all naval trade from Asia and India is routed through Gulf of Aden. Even Indus doesn't have another outlet. This will make us rich if we play it correctly. By the time we finish the Trade and Expansion ideas we’ll have a total of 6 merchants which will go in (priority order) Gulf of Aden, Indus, Ceylon, Basra, Alexandria, and Zimbabwe. The AI should take care of pushing Bengal and Kashmir our way for us so no need to worry about that.
Trade Routes of the Indian Ocean - Game Start
As a very small nation surrounded by some very large neighbors (Ottomans, The Mamlukes, Timurids, and Qara Qolunyu) we are going to need to carve out a territory expansion plan that ensures that everybody doesn't turn on us while building a force that can one day help with the Ottomans, who in the end will be the real enemy, particularly if (when) The Mamlukes can't hold Syria. Our goal here is going to be to force vassalize the Arabian peninsula as quickly as possible so that we can have a military force far greater than we could afford on our own, or more importantly larger than our land force limits and manpower would allow. Nations have a base force limit and manpower and so to some extent a series of vassals expands our available military might more than annexation would. This has diminishing returns depending on your Diplomatic Relations score. This is the number of simultaneous active relations you can have before there is a monthly penalty to the accumulation of Diplomatic monarch points. The good news is that with the Diplomatic and Expansion idea trees we will get bonuses to this which will allow for a larger number of Vassals at one time. Look at the following map of the region:
Political View of the Arabian Peninsula - Game Start
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Each of our neighbors (Hassa, Najd, Hedjaz, and Yemen) are all slightly smaller than we are and so we do have some good choices if we were to simply conquer but let's look deeper. First, we have a few missions to take territory in the neighboring provinces of Najd. For conquest that's a good choice in that it will give us an immediate Casus Belli. We share the same religion as Hassa so a diplomatic union might be best there. Finally, Yemen and Hedjaz are slightly larger and farther away so those would be secondary targets - we'll figure out our strategy when we get there. If we can force vassalize that would be great, if not we'll pursue other options.
Initial Diplomacy with Hassa
One of the more interesting game aspects is the change in the emissary capability. Rather than an emissary doing a one time job they now are assigned a task and work at until it's complete or an event sends them home. Diplomacy is no exception. Take a close look at the Diplamacy view for Hassa. Our goal is to eventually request that they become our Vassal. In order to do that they must be an ally and we must have relations of greater than 190. Unfortunately there is no way to bribe them all the way to that level anymore so we'll have to find other means. Our tools are marriage, alliance, some gifting, participating in ensuring their wellbeing in wars and defending their territory, and simply having an active ambassador assigned to them improving relations. Right now they show a hostile attitude towards us as indicated by the drop of blood next to the +15 relations indicator. We need to improve relations first to clear that before we can further progress through marriage, alliance, and hopefully vassalization. We'll assign one diplomat to this task for the foreseeable future. Our goal is to change their hostile attitude so they are more amenable to diplomatic actions. The higher the relationship for a longer period of time, the better their attitude. If a country ever gets to outraged or they declare us to be a rival (more on that later) then we will really need to be ready to defend ourselves because they will declare war when they get the chance and think they can win.
Selecting the First Mission
In the meantime let’s decide the route to take. Out of the gate we have two missions to conquer provinces in Najd. That will give an immediate Casus Belli on them (the 5 prestige is irrelevant as a reward – the CB is reward enough).
We select the Liwa mission since it’s adjacent to our territory and set it as our war goal. The war goal defines a criteria that, once met, will cause a ticking war score every month. This can be a tremendous advantage when the war goal is easy to achieve and easy to prevent the defender from retaking. The war goal province is usually quite a bit cheaper on the peace table as well. From a tactical perspective we have 5,000 troops to their 3,000 and our navy is also superior. We declare war and fight our way through the four provinces on our side of Hassa. Even though our combat navy is only 5 cogs it's more than sufficient for naval supremacy and blockades, which helps quite a bit in sieging coastal provinces. We win our way through to Hassa at which point they are happy enough with us for a Royal Marriage and Military Access. I stop Improve Relations long enough to send a diplomat off for those requests and we continue with conquering Jabal Shammar and Najd. At the same time we start Fabricating a Claim on Mahra in Yemen so that we can continue with them immediately after the Najd war is complete.
We finish the last few provinces of Najd and Force Vassalize them. This gives us a significant savings on the Aggressive Expansion (AE) relations malus for our neighbors but costs a bit more war score than annexation at the treaty table. Later, when we use our diplomats to annex our vassals, they will come with their provinces assigned as cores to us which is a significant savings on admin monarch points. Notice the AE for Najd and Yemen is quite high because they are neighbors. AE does accumulate for countries farther away, but at a lower rate. In this example, the Timurids received a -7 relationship modifier for AE from the Force Vassalization, but since AE degrades at roughly 3.5 per year a 2 year relationship hit is not bad at all. Where you want to be concerned is when the AE hit starts overlapping between conquests because then it adds up quite quickly.
Hedjaz/Najd - Attempting to Enforce Peace
One timing issue happened with the peace deal that will come up later - Hedjaz decided to take advantage of Najd's weakness and declared war on them before they were my vassal. As Najd is not yet very fond of me, I cannot yet intervene in that war. We will move on to Yemen while our diplomatic corps is improving relations with Najd in the meantime. Najd needs to have a +100 relation with Oman in order for me to intervene in the war on their side.
With no friends for Yemen or distractions for Oman the Yemen war is over relatively quickly resulting in another Force Vassalization. We’re also aided by the armies from Najd that are now fighting on our side. Vassal armies can really add up quickly, particularly in the early game.
At the end of 1450 Hassa also has a high enough relation with me and is small enough to accept peaceful Vassalization. They need to have fewer than 3 provinces and I need to have 3x as many provinces as them in addition to the relationship requirements to pull off a requested Vassalization but it is worth the restrictions. One of the items that helped with this quite a bit was our selection of a Diplomatic advisor with +5.00 Diplomatic reputation. Diplomatic reputation (coming from the Sultan, Advisors, or National Ideas) can significantly increase the chances for diplomatic actions as well as speed up various activities such as annexing of vassals. Diplomatic reputation will be key to our success with this strategy.
Some additional patience and our relations with Najd tick over the +100 mark, allowing us to enforce peace with Hedjaz. They are stubborn, refuse the peace deal, and as a consequence I am immediately added as war leader. This is an incredible stroke of luck as it allows me and my vassal armies to conquer Hedjaz without any Casus Belli. One of the issues with using Vassals to guard your borders is that you cannot Fabricate a Claim to create a Casus Belli on a remote country without a neighboring core. The defeat of Hedjaz results in yet another Vassalization in 1453 completing the consolidation of the Arabian Peninsula.
Diplomatic Checkpoint - 1453
This ends the first phase of the Oman grand strategy. We’ve achieved our short term territory and trade objectives, have a good income stream from trade and vassals, and are ready for the next expansion push. Note the final diplomacy view – Timurids and Qara Qoyonlu are Royal Marriage partners in preparation for more diplomacy later. Hassa, Najd, Hedjaz, and Yemen are Vassals. We’re protecting the northern flank with diplomacy and we’ve secured our home base. Next steps will be to increase our trading portfolio and begin the expansion into Africa.
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