Tien Shan Moonrise — A Western Far East Mod Proposal
Greetings fellow CKII players! I am Fumaria and I am currently trying to persuade people to make a mod with me. Though I have no modding experience at all …
But first,
What is wrong with the base game?
It's 769. You are General Guo Xin, son of the great General Guo Ziyi. Since your father went back the Central Plains to help the Emperor save the Empire from the barbarian who calls himself the Emperor of Yan, you have been left with this vast Western land to protect.
That is, until the Tibetans took the Hexi Corridor. Now surrounded by the massive Tibetan forces, you are forced to make do with the little undersupplied force you are left with, since the majority went with your father. The only hope seems to be the Uyghur Khaganate to the north, who might help you with payment of something … Anything …
Then you remembered something. You went into the CKII world. Now the Emperor is assumed by the game to be able to reach the edge of the map. Since the Corridor is off map, you now have the entire Empire behind your back. You are now capable of wielding doomstacks, beating those pesky Uyghurs and dreaded Tibetans into submission. Yay! It's so nice that they made you an unplayable character!
It's 867 … Wait, 867 is relatively fine. Let's do this again.
It's 1066. You are Emperor Yelü Hongji, Emperor of that land whose name you just changed to the Liao Empire. You live in the Paramount Capital, Linhuang, off the map. You are the ruler of a rich-ish, administrative Empire, and have been able to fund many Buddhist pagodas with taxes you squeeze from the people. Some people are getting angry, particularly that Wanyan clan in the East, from Manchuria.
But in a certain game by a developer far to the west, you are a *gasp* nomadic ruler ruling over four clans, one of which is that Wanyan clan, who somehow moved to Mongolia! Wait, there is one powerful empire that wants you as their tributary. *Gasp* It's the Song! That state which your ancestors beat into … well, into paying quite a bit of tribute every year. They earn it back through trade, but still. You should be at least equals, right?
It's 1200. You are the ruler of Dege, in the Khams region. Some state called the Western Xia wants your land. You are scared. You want some protection of a greater power. But who can it be?
The Jurchen Wanyan Jin empire, ruling over the Central Plains, is definitely one option. But is there no other choice? Their rival for a long time, the Southern Song, who has mostly given up on their promise to take the central Plains, in action at least, is — wait, where are they?
Not to worry, there's also Dali, who are under decline but still stronger than you — wait, where are they again? AAURGH!
So what you are saying is that the map doesn't include enough land, right?
Right.
But there's this mod that …
I believe you are referring to Tianxia, which is a nice mod, at least. But the thing about Tianxia is that it attempts to include all of East Asia, which, to me (and you if you join the team), is detrimental to immersion. It is very difficult to stop China being too powerful while not breaking immersion, for one. (Of course, as Tianxia is still in the making, I hope that they'll surprise me. I am not very optimistic about this however. Keep up the good work!)
So what are you proposing?
The mod Tien Shan Moonrise, as it's name implies, focuses on Western China and Southeast Asia. The part included on the map, by using a rectangular section from a conical projection, will only be Afro-Eurasia to the west of a line joining Kharkhorin and Surabaya. We might shift Indonesia a little bit to include all of Java and even Bali though. But back to China.
The China between the line and the eastern border of Vanilla includes:
Sichuan presents more problem. My proposal is simply to make a 29-province kingdom that is occupied by Celestial Bureaucracies under one Governor (a simplification — throughout the game, there has been between one and five governors of Sichuan; we simply make them duchy-level).
Thus there is a need to add more Chinas; I propose looking into possibilities of one guy being in charge of two offmap powers with separate governors. If that is possible, I would make four; if not, make them as the history goes.
Then government forms. Seriously, this requires quite a few government form additions:
Religions are not fixed yet; I get some ideas but not finished ones.
Cultures are even further from finished; one thing I know is that Japanese culture would be included despite Japan not being on the map. Making the governor of Annam in 769 Japanese is definitely a possibility (It's Abe no Nakamaru, who historically went back to Chang'an two years prior, but still alive; he wanted to go home, had his ship blown off course to Vietnam, then the Emperor decides to appoint him to the gubernatorial post while he was there).
Also casus belli; I currently have two in mind. One to simulate the Tibetan takeover of Western Protectorate, stopping the Governor from calling for help from the Central Plains; the other to simulate Tai invasion of Indochina, representing the ethnogenesis of Thai and Lao peoples.
So that's it for a proposal.
Where did the name come from?
明月出天山
蒼茫雲海間
長風幾萬里
吹度玉門關
漢下白登道
胡窺青海灣
由來征戰地
不見有人還
戍客望邊邑
思歸多苦顏
高樓當此夜
歎息未應閑
— Li Bai, "The Pass, The Mountains, The Moon" (關山月)
One translation available here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/28utscprojects.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/038/amp/
Note that Tien Shan simply means "Sky Mountains"; though Li Bai probably was not thinking of the mountains we call Tien Shan now, it's the same word in Chinese.
Greetings fellow CKII players! I am Fumaria and I am currently trying to persuade people to make a mod with me. Though I have no modding experience at all …
But first,
What is wrong with the base game?
It's 769. You are General Guo Xin, son of the great General Guo Ziyi. Since your father went back the Central Plains to help the Emperor save the Empire from the barbarian who calls himself the Emperor of Yan, you have been left with this vast Western land to protect.
That is, until the Tibetans took the Hexi Corridor. Now surrounded by the massive Tibetan forces, you are forced to make do with the little undersupplied force you are left with, since the majority went with your father. The only hope seems to be the Uyghur Khaganate to the north, who might help you with payment of something … Anything …
Then you remembered something. You went into the CKII world. Now the Emperor is assumed by the game to be able to reach the edge of the map. Since the Corridor is off map, you now have the entire Empire behind your back. You are now capable of wielding doomstacks, beating those pesky Uyghurs and dreaded Tibetans into submission. Yay! It's so nice that they made you an unplayable character!
It's 867 … Wait, 867 is relatively fine. Let's do this again.
It's 1066. You are Emperor Yelü Hongji, Emperor of that land whose name you just changed to the Liao Empire. You live in the Paramount Capital, Linhuang, off the map. You are the ruler of a rich-ish, administrative Empire, and have been able to fund many Buddhist pagodas with taxes you squeeze from the people. Some people are getting angry, particularly that Wanyan clan in the East, from Manchuria.
But in a certain game by a developer far to the west, you are a *gasp* nomadic ruler ruling over four clans, one of which is that Wanyan clan, who somehow moved to Mongolia! Wait, there is one powerful empire that wants you as their tributary. *Gasp* It's the Song! That state which your ancestors beat into … well, into paying quite a bit of tribute every year. They earn it back through trade, but still. You should be at least equals, right?
It's 1200. You are the ruler of Dege, in the Khams region. Some state called the Western Xia wants your land. You are scared. You want some protection of a greater power. But who can it be?
The Jurchen Wanyan Jin empire, ruling over the Central Plains, is definitely one option. But is there no other choice? Their rival for a long time, the Southern Song, who has mostly given up on their promise to take the central Plains, in action at least, is — wait, where are they?
Not to worry, there's also Dali, who are under decline but still stronger than you — wait, where are they again? AAURGH!
So what you are saying is that the map doesn't include enough land, right?
Right.
But there's this mod that …
I believe you are referring to Tianxia, which is a nice mod, at least. But the thing about Tianxia is that it attempts to include all of East Asia, which, to me (and you if you join the team), is detrimental to immersion. It is very difficult to stop China being too powerful while not breaking immersion, for one. (Of course, as Tianxia is still in the making, I hope that they'll surprise me. I am not very optimistic about this however. Keep up the good work!)
So what are you proposing?
The mod Tien Shan Moonrise, as it's name implies, focuses on Western China and Southeast Asia. The part included on the map, by using a rectangular section from a conical projection, will only be Afro-Eurasia to the west of a line joining Kharkhorin and Surabaya. We might shift Indonesia a little bit to include all of Java and even Bali though. But back to China.
The China between the line and the eastern border of Vanilla includes:
- Gansu (occupied by Tibetans, then Xia, then Mongolia)
- Yunnan (just, effectively, another Xia that happens to last longer)
- Very small pieces of Shaanxi (we can just join them to Gansu and pretend that they aren't on the map)
- Zhuang (Tai) parts of Guangxi, and most of Guizhou (and a small part of non-Zhuang Guangxi as well, which takes up … what, two provinces?)
- Sichuan.
Sichuan presents more problem. My proposal is simply to make a 29-province kingdom that is occupied by Celestial Bureaucracies under one Governor (a simplification — throughout the game, there has been between one and five governors of Sichuan; we simply make them duchy-level).
Thus there is a need to add more Chinas; I propose looking into possibilities of one guy being in charge of two offmap powers with separate governors. If that is possible, I would make four; if not, make them as the history goes.
Then government forms. Seriously, this requires quite a few government form additions:
- Jimi (As given above)
- Jiedushi (To represent China and Vietnam during 769 and 867)
- Warlord (What Jiedushi can become in an unstable China)
- Tellurocratic Mandala (or just Mandala since it's a long word; represent Indochinese mandala)
- Thalassocratic Mandala (Maritime mandala: noted for being closer to a merchant republic than the above)
Religions are not fixed yet; I get some ideas but not finished ones.
Cultures are even further from finished; one thing I know is that Japanese culture would be included despite Japan not being on the map. Making the governor of Annam in 769 Japanese is definitely a possibility (It's Abe no Nakamaru, who historically went back to Chang'an two years prior, but still alive; he wanted to go home, had his ship blown off course to Vietnam, then the Emperor decides to appoint him to the gubernatorial post while he was there).
Also casus belli; I currently have two in mind. One to simulate the Tibetan takeover of Western Protectorate, stopping the Governor from calling for help from the Central Plains; the other to simulate Tai invasion of Indochina, representing the ethnogenesis of Thai and Lao peoples.
So that's it for a proposal.
Where did the name come from?
明月出天山
蒼茫雲海間
長風幾萬里
吹度玉門關
漢下白登道
胡窺青海灣
由來征戰地
不見有人還
戍客望邊邑
思歸多苦顏
高樓當此夜
歎息未應閑
— Li Bai, "The Pass, The Mountains, The Moon" (關山月)
One translation available here:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/28utscprojects.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/038/amp/
Note that Tien Shan simply means "Sky Mountains"; though Li Bai probably was not thinking of the mountains we call Tien Shan now, it's the same word in Chinese.
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