The Panjab Problem -- Unifying India

[Redhead]

My experience with Panjab turned India (September beta):
- first set national focus on soldiers in Lahore, a year should be enough,
- simultanously get Sindh. Wait till they ask you for peace/annexation - you will save 1 diplo point
- switch focus to Clergymen for RP's
- improve relations with Afganistan above 0 and they will leave you alone. In beta your relations with UK are +125, which makes you safe from DOW. If you play 1.3 you should improve your relations with UK first.
- station your troops at Chinese border. There are 2 mountainous provinces there, if you get 2 decent defensive generals you are golden.
- When China attacks you use it as an opportunity to get prestige. Note it might be necessary to reduce your border garrisons to encourage the Chinese to come to you. Have your reserve nearby, your starting army might be not enough to win this war so build some more infantry.
- get the required techs (I start with Freedom of Trade followed by Idealism to get RP and other required techs).
- get Kutch before you civilize, you get Ahmedabad as state this way (all states you have remain states after you civilize, anything you conquer in India when you are civilized are colonies - unless UK made it state already).
- Civilize. There is a useful exploit here. During war your military score increases, but you can civilize only when at peace. So when you make peace pause the game immediately. You are at peace so you can civilize but you still have the higher wartime military score.
- get Mogadishu from Oman.
- get machine guns and Nationalism & Imperialism (and medicine of course - but that should be the first tech after you got the requirements for civilizing anyway).
- Colonize eastern Africa.
- Declare war on UK to get the Indian provinces when you are GP (unification war casus belli) and feel strong enough.
You might get lucky with "Crown from the gutter" event if Indian Pan-Nationalists hold an Indian capital for 12 months. You need to be GP for that, if you accept you become India and get a whole lot of accepted cultures. But the package includes 10 infamy points as well, so never exceed 15 when you conquer something.

 

[Selzro]

I feel I should add that the 'crown from the gutter' event is a very good deal for Punjab, in my experience. All of India becomes your cores and you get more prestige by liberating them than through unification wars. Also, any regions you may have already liberated as colonies can quickly be made into states, since they will be cored with accepted culture POPs, and you can get any other small Indian state in 'restoration of order' wars, for lots of prestige and no infamy cost. Finally, you won't need to capture places like Tibet to gather all the Indian cores you'd need for unification, which makes for a better map in my opinion. Your only worry should be to have no more than 15 infamy before getting the event, as Redhead said.

 

[Foxbyte]

Here's an image from my last Punjab game. It was a test game just to try some things out, and I learned a few things. It -is- possible to beat the British with numbers, but you'll need to focus heavily on +tactics and +attack techs; let them walk into plains provinces, then smash and retreat until they have nothing left. Machineguns really do change everything, so be prepared for this.

China is an awesome source of soldiers; you can see from the screenshot that one sulfur province is pretty much an unlimited source of soldiers. I'd say try to grab this state at all costs, it's so easy to mow through their troops if you focus on tactics and offense, and let attrition widdle them down. I would post more screenshots, but my Punjab album is mostly empty, I must have accidentally deleted them.

 

[Chino Pelon]

That won't solve the problem with the British, though. You just can't fight them successfully, even luring them into attacking mountains with a defensive general at best puts you even in numbers killed, and you can't replace the numbers like the Brits can..

Thats not true. Im started a game with Panjab many months ago. I beat the brits many times.
The first time you face them, just let them go inside your country. Let them suffer atrittion in mountains and wait them. Use Shun Tzu: DONT FIGHT IF YOU CANT WIN. Then, sooner or later, finally face them. Let them attack you, and reinforce the battle with small (but all) brigades you can replace continuosly. You re going to use all your army to win. But its possible. And don forget surrounding in this battle, so enemy can retreat. This way you destroy a hughe amount of brigades, hard to replace quickly (about 20-50 brigades in one battle!)

The first british war I just achieve a white peace with them and I celebrate like as if I had won WW2.
(All of this at the same time the Russians atack me from northwest and Otomans from west! This was the most challenging and exciting part of the game, many times I think I cant make it, but then I occupy 100% otomans and 3/4 of Russia. Just use the Persian mountains to defend and dont let the enemy break your line. If you cant hold the line, retreat to a safe position and wait again, but DONT BREAK LINE, IF YOU LOSE LINE, YOU LOSE THAT WAR.)

The second war, I obtained Malta (and his useful naval base to repair my fleet and reach the Atlantic), the liberation of 2 puppets (later Im going to anexe) and the Dehli region full of population. This region presents a problem: its a depression or valley surrounded by mountains and satellites: the brits attacks and retreat to his satellites, so you cant sorround them and you cant predict from where they come. And you cant ocuppy far from this region atacking from your country direction because the distances to the next regions are bigger than others and the enemy mountains make you suffer big attrition, then they attack you with a hughe army with +5 leaders, so you had no chance. Keep away from Dehli valley, its a mortal trap to the Panjab defensive strategy.
To solve this issue you need a big fleet and surprise enemy from behind (Bombay and Callicut region) so you can distract them a while, enough to take the Indian south coast and all his little islands diseminated around the atlantic and Indic. When situation was unsustainable I had to retreat (you need a fleet of 20-30 frigates at least in region to support dissembark because they go to attack you, after 11 days of sea battle, you can retreat them to a safe zone and in the end of war I sent them to Malta for reparations, so I need that island at all costs). They break my line in two. One part run to the ships in Bombay, but the other run in China direction. The second have no escape when they reach Rangoon region (my original plan was evacuate them by sea, but I have problems with that because they Indic Fleet was a wall. So I decided take the B plan, to save my men at any costs, and attack poor Burma, quickly and just for humilliating. When I occupied all the country I note that Burma gives british in some moment the military access, so I was in trouble again... I had to sacrifice a brigade to gain some time to save the others and repeat the same "retreat"...this time attacking defenseless Siam. This works, thanks God, and then I managed to conquer Johore and his Gold mines, turning a bad situation into a favorable one.

The third british war Im fighting now. I've attacked Spain after France destroyed his army and rebels ocuppied 90% of country. The motive was I needed the naval base of Manila to repair my Indic fleet once I have the control of the sea, so the spanish call Brits to help them. This was unespected and I had to think carefuly the strategy to follow for a couple of days (I was in truce whit them for a year more at least) Thanks to Alexandria naval base first, and Malta, and a hughe fleet of Man-o-war and frigates, I beat ALL the british fleet (they had now only 10 transport ships) and now I have blocked in their our islands and occuping the Ireland island, because I have all the seas blocked they cant sent troops from England. Control Gibraltar is the key to mediterranean (at least fighting against brits or other Atlantic powers), and control the Sout-african pass is the key to ALL ASIA!

Its 1866 year, Im civilized since 1862, and in 3rd place (I cant solve industry problem, it gives me only loss because I havent any technology I think, so most of puntuation comes from prestige and military) Once I discover State & Government 10800 points, im going to develop other tecnologies, because only this give you the plurality needed to sustain a respectable research points number. I learn this from previous games with other uncivilized countries.

So: You just can fight british or anyone, successfully. Just be patient and dont fight battles you´re going to lose.
AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL: Play at any speed in peace times, but PAUSE "DAY BY DAY" IN WAR TIMES!!! so you can see every movement of enemy. The computer sees everything and more, no matter speed, so if you try to play at high speed you are in disadvantage.

Its a great game!

(Excuse my poor english.)

 

[Had a dad]