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WC with Malacca in IN 3.1 – Complete Insanity???

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Got to agree with Chief Ragusa there, Islamic countries that don't know where Mecca is really should get that sort of event.

There is a lot of time left, run down your BB and do your buildings and conversions. Is Taiwan available to colonise, if so it's worth having as it's a high value province and a great staging post for an attack on Japan.
 
Feedback​

Kami: Will definitely be hoping for warnings to pay off.

On Maka, the province is quite good and has base tax of 8. I am hoping to take all of Brunei plus the island of Bali (base tax 7) pretty soon. At that point I will create a floating rebel patrol to handle all those provinces plus Aceh…so won’t be too much extra effort to send them to Maka when needed.

On the manpower, yes I am thinking crazy thoughts about Ming :wacko:


Aldriq: Yes all the provinces of Aceh are dirt poor. Somewhat offsetting this is that they are all same-religion and same-culture. On Mecca, we are a directionally-challenged people.


Naggy: Love the mission idea!


Chief Ragusa: Now that is a mission I would do in a heartbeat. Having an explorer would make life sooooo much easier.


Enewald: I do have both the money and the colonists to create colonies. Have held off so far as may want to use the money for a bunch of new armies instead…


PrawnStar: Yes Taiwan is available and explored. Will include thoughts on Japan in the next update :)

On the BB, yes I am well over my desired cap. Have lost a couple merchants so far, but not nearly as many as expected. The change in AI behavior on sending fewer merchants is helping me a lot.
 
Update -- Jungle Madness ​

11/1422 I decide to roll the dice and cancel a mission. The old mission was “build a proper navy” which I was never going to do. The thinking is that will be at peace for a few years and prestige will be declining, so now is a good time to take the –5 prestige hit from canceling a mission. I get lucky and actually get a mission I will do.


We now have 4 forts under construction, including 1 in a province won from Aceh. In the notes at the bottom, we are already seeing map spread from the TI next to Maka. This was much faster than expected :)




4/1424 Time to move a slider. I hold my breath and go more centralized…and lose 1 stab. Definitely not what I needed, as would have much preferred a revolt. Part of the reason for this slider move is to be in position to choose Militia Act decision as soon as possible. I need -2 centralized for that decision, so will be able to choose it in around 12 years when the slider is open again.


With today’s stab hit, I will be at +2 stab in 1 year. As soon as that happens will be attacking Brunei. Would like to take all their provinces except the capital. No luck so far on warnings and guarantees, so going to have to do this the old-fashioned way…


In other news, the fort-building program continues and a couple more missionaries are now preaching the true faith. All this building and preaching is taking a toll on the bank balance.




And now we check out everyone’s favorite Beast of the East…Ming. Our only options for good land are Ming and Japan, and Ming has much better land than Japan. In addition, Japan has a ton of alliances and a crazy large navy. Ming has all these beautiful provinces, and they are currently being meanies beating up on all their neighbors. Wouldn’t it be nice to give a bit of that land to us? How about a few of those provinces that have 8 or 9 base tax?


Well, things are not looking so good. Ming has the largest army in the world at 95k troops, and Malacca at 13k troops isn’t even on the first page of the army ledger. Ming is steadily growing and recently annexed Shan. It looks like the changes in 3.1 are working great for them, and they are quite effective at crushing rebels as soon as they appear.


In spite of all this, the Malaccan high command is undaunted. In a secret meeting at an undisclosed location deep in the Malaccan jungles, they lay out a 10-year strategic plan that involves attacking Ming after Brunei is eliminated. The plan becomes known as 3M, for Malaccan Munching Ming.


The key elements of the plan include:
1. Attacking soon before Ming gets too far ahead in Land Tech (it is already 4 to 3)
2. Preparing the country for a very long war
3. Gaining mil access with Ming’s neighbors and invading from multiple directions
4. Fighting the war on vassal or Ming’s land wherever possible, thereby keeping Malaccan WE low.
5. Scorching land and using attrition against Ming (this part is ultra-secret, as the Malaccan peasants wouldn’t be too thrilled at being Scorchees).
6. Sniping new army recruits with a highly mobile assault force.
7. Focusing on driving up Ming’s WE until rebels start popping.
8. Protecting any nationalistic rebels that might appear, particularly if they are loyal to the oppressed peoples of Xia, Qin, or Wu.
9. Avoiding at all costs direct conflict with the Ming super-stacks.


Obviously the changes in 3.1 making WE only worth 0.5 points of RR make this plan much more of a challenge than before. The high command seems to think that this plan could actually work, but perhaps they had a bit too much beer at that meeting…



5/1525 Yet another bad random event. They sure have added a lot of those in this patch.



6/1425 And now back to our regularly scheduled program, with a DOW on Brunei. No luck on getting Brunei and Aceh into an alliance with each other or a war with anyone else, so time to move on my own and take the stab hits.


Yeah, this DOW is earlier than expected. The original plan was to let BB cool off for quite a while. Thanks to a king with 3 ADM, my BB is only down to 15.00. I have been looking for a decent diplo advisor for several years, but no luck on that so far.


However, my merchants are still sticking in the 2 non-owned COTs, and the Settsu COT still has 1 open slot. Clearly the AI mechanic on merchants has hugely changed, so am revising upward my self-imposed cap on BB.


The main trick for the war will be landing troops on Brunei without getting creamed by their navy. I have 2 carracks, while they have 10. Up top my carracks are waiting for Brunei to start chasing them, while down south there are 6 transports with troops loaded up and ready to invade.




4/1427 The war with Brunei is winding down, but rebels are still going full speed.


My crappy king finally dies in a battle with rebels in the jungle. I am not sad to see him go, but would prefer him to die when I am at better stab than 0. The new guy is not perfect, but much better. My only complaint is that due to low MIL I can no longer pass the Militia Act after the next slider move.


Stab recovery at full investment now takes 21 months per level, so since I am at –1 it will take 7 years to get back to full stab. That also means another 7 years of no investment in government tech towards our first NI.




11/1427 Peace with Brunei for 4 provinces. No cash again for me. The changes in 3.1 to limit cash in peace treaties is really cutting into my income. BB after the deal will be 19.87, so will need to cool off for a while.



4/1432 Majapahit annexes Brunei. This is great news!!! Maja isn’t Muslim, so I can DOW them without a stab hit. Planning to attack them as soon as I can get rid of a few rebels. Will be looking to take the former capital province of Brunei as well as Bali, since it has great base tax as well. I can’t completely take out Maja since 2 of their territories are TI to me.


The high command still has crazy ideas about attacking Ming, so they ordered a military build-up to 17k troops. Ming has insulted Korea a couple times, so think they may be starting a war soon. Would much rather attack them while they are already at war if possible, as their army count is truly scary.


Stab is back to +2, so rebel pops should start slowing down sometime soon. We also sent out a 4th missionary. None of them have had success so far, so maybe we need to try a new position…


Last but not least, the high BB finally started hurting trade. We are down to 3 merchants in Settsu and compete odds aren't high enough to try to replace them.



5/1532 Good news, bad news, worse news.


The good news is that I have gotten mil access with all of Ming’s neighbors and sent a few troops over to check out the situation. The bad news is that this new AI has figured out how to guard territory, and Ming has armies in practically every province. The worse news is army count. Ming has gone absolutely ape on recruitment and now has 149k troops. Let’s see, 149k versus 17k would be a ratio of 8.8 to 1.



11/1432 BB has dropped down to 16.4, so time for a DOW on Majapahit.


4/1436 Well I got what I wanted, but it took forever. Peace with Majapahit for 2 provinces and 25 ducats. We had endless circling around islands trying to avoid their navy. It didn’t help that rebels were popping every couple of months. BB after the peace deal will be 15.51. It sure is nice to have a ruler with decent BB burn-off.


In other news, Ming has been sitting on the sidelines for the past 4 years. Start a war already, guys!


I guess the current position was working ok for the missionaries, as one of them recently won a conversion.

Also good news on merchants. A couple of annexations opened up slots in Settsu, and we are back to full count there.



4/1436 It’s time to move a slider. I go another step towards centralization and get a nice large revolt. This is much better than a stab hit, so not complaining.


I could now choose the Militia Act decision if I had a leader with MIL of 7+, which is certainly not this guy.

 
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Rastar said:
... the Malaccan high command is undaunted. In a secret meeting at an undisclosed location deep in the Malaccan jungles, they lay out a 10-year strategic plan ... known as 3M, for Malaccan Munching Ming... Malaccan peasants wouldn’t be too thrilled at being Scorchees... Avoiding at all costs direct conflict with the Ming super-stacks... but perhaps they had a bit too much beer at that meeting…
Click to expand...

:rofl: Beer? Opium more likely :rofl:
The chances of Ming overrunning one of your small buffer vassals are quite high, but it may be worth the try.

Brunei sorted in a blink, you are keeping a good pace of expansion.
 
Are you certain you can hurt Ming enough for a war to be worthwhile?

Oh by the way jokes about positioning missionaries, really! I mean I would never do that, oh wait I did :rolleyes:
 
Declaring war on Ming is easy.
Winning war against Ming is not so easy.

At least this isn't patch 1.1 or 1.2 where Ming was reaching the Black Sea by 1500.
 
Impressive playing style, compadre. Watching and learning, that's for sure.

When planning a war with Ming, perhaps building a colony on Taiwan isn't the greatest of ideas. I'm guessing Ming's navy is a bit bigger than yours, so if they take the colony from you, recovering it might be a pain.
Good to see the merchants still in their CoTs :).
 
Feedback​

Enewald: Yep :cool: It was great to avoid the 6-point BB hit from annexation plus the 3-point stab hit from having to DOW them again!


Kami: I have about 20 years to go until cores start popping. There are still a few minors in northeast India that could be vassalized, and could also go after a larger vassal target like Tibet if they weren’t allied with everyone. WE has dropped to 0. I had to wait a long time in these wars for stab recovery and to avoid navies, so had lots of time to burn off WE.

On Ming and the NI, my plan involves a whole lot of me dancing around and very little of me fighting. I am 100% cavalry except for the 1 infantry regiment I started with. If it goes as planned, the war should use very little manpower. Right now my biggest concern is fielding enough troops to even get things started, so am leaning towards National Bank to help me afford as many as possible.


Aldriq: Malacca does own the golden triangle, so opium is a real possibility :rofl:

On Ming, yes I expect them to overrun a good portion of the vassals. In almost all cases, the buffer between Ming and me is at least 2 provinces wide. Even better, all the land of mine that has cores is way down south, so the income effect of Ming occupying some of my provinces would be quite small.

A lot of the vassals’ land still lacks forts, and I actually look at this as a good thing. While it allows Ming to take the province instantly, I can just as quickly sneak in behind them and take the province back. If Ming and I end up playing cat-and-mouse in vassal land, they will take tons of attrition damage.


Ulmont: Heh heh. Yes the 3.2 beta would make the plan for Ming much easier. However, I am curious to see if it is even possible to do the WE-implosion plan under 3.1, so not planning to go to the beta just yet.


PrawnStar: That is the $64MM question. The goal would be total destruction of Ming. If I don’t think it is at least possible, I don’t pull the trigger. Ming being Ming, they will not agree to anything better than a white peace unless they are crushed.

On missionaries, some jokes just never die eh? :rolleyes:


Demon1: Ummm…I suppose that might be possible ;)


Naggy: Completely agree. Yes this is a better Ming to attack than the 1.1 or 1.2 version, but not as good as the 3.0 version. Your attack on France is about the only instance in 3.1 where I have seen someone take out a hugely larger power.


Oddman: Thanks, and glad you are enjoying it! Yes, Ming’s navy is much larger than mine and they could easily take over a Taiwan colony. The same is true of Japan.


Rasmus40: Yes, Ming would certainly be a challenge. I am ok with a really long war, even 20 years or more. I have a ton of BB to burn off and there isn’t much other good land in sight, so can be extremely patient in dealing with them. As long as Ming doesn’t occupy my provinces down south that have cores, I can maintain a war practically forever.
 
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Update – In which we club some baby seals​

11/1437 A look around the country. BB is currently 14.41, and WE is 0. Religious conversions are going well, with 3 successful so far and 4 more underway (the 3 in the screenshot plus Bali down south).


We are about 2 ½ years away from Government Tech 4, giving us our first NI plus the ability to build temples.



One of the masters of mint advisors died recently, and we replaced him with the best of a pretty bad selection of advisors. The other 2 mint advisors are still hanging in there, but getting a bit old.


The big stash of cash is gone, used up in fort building and missionaries.


And yes we have the big red oval, which shows how Ming has been crushing the Khanates recently.



11/1437 Remember that 10-year plan that the Malaccan high command thought up deep in the jungle? The secret project code-named 3M? The one that involved Ming? Well it’s not working for me any more. And why is that, you might ask?


1. They have had a long run of success over the last years, including wins/annexations over Shan, Manchu, Mongol Khanate, and Oirat Horde.
2. The plan relied a lot on maxing out WE. Well Ming’s king has 8 ADM, meaning -.13 WE burn-off per month.
3. The disparity in army size is sickening. I don’t even count my vassals’ troops, as am sure they would plant them in front of a big Ming stack and get overrun within a couple months.
4. I don’t have the cash or the income to build a bunch more troops.
5. Last but not least, the 3.1 AI has learned about fortifying borders with troops. I need to siege provinces from all directions in order to drive up WE and distract Ming’s mega-stacks.
6. In short, I just don’t think it is possible to take them on my own right now. However, if they get in a war with one of their neighbors, I would be more than happy to join in the fun.


So…what is the new plan? How about the time-honored tradition of beating up on the helpless? We are desperate for more good land, and there are a couple of crumbs still available. That seems like a fine plan while waiting for something to shake loose with either Ming or Japan.


The first crumb is named Champa, and a very tasty crumb they are at 8 base tax. The only reason I didn’t annex them before is that Ming had a mission to eliminate Dai Viet, and I didn’t want a border with Ming. Ming now has a new mission, so it is open season on crushing Champa. To sweeten the pot even further, Champa has a 3-star Sheriff that is a lot better than my 1-star trade guy.



The second crumb is named Pegu. They have the best land of any of my vassals, but the only province above 5 base tax is the capital.


The plan here is a bit trickier. Would like to have a first war that leaves them with Pegu and Chittagong, and then have a second war and take Pegu. This would leave them as an OPM with a poor province and keep me from taking the 6 point BB hit from annexation.


One of their advisors is a 4-star master of mint, so may end up wanting to annex them anyway if my mint advisors die off all at once.



Beating up on the helpless will not help me that much and it will cost me some prestige to drop vassals, but it is the best that I can get at the moment. Once the crumbs are done, we are then back looking for a real meal. Assuming Ming doesn’t get into any wars, the next target is Japan.


Japan has 36k of armies and alliances with Manchu, Tibet, and Korea, so this will not be easy at all. However, I have military access to Japan and can DOW them through their ally Tibet. Japan has a COT, a gold mine, and quite a few good provinces, so they make a decent second choice to Ming.


4/1438 DOW on Pegu.


10/1438 Peace with Pegu for the 3 provinces I wanted plus 25 ducats. In the notes, you can see that Ming has gone on a binge of warning people. Who knows what might happen.


 
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Update – In which we club some baby seals (continued)​

11/1438 I drop alliance and vassal with Champa in preparation for DOWing them, and they are immediately guaranteed by Maja. That is fine by me. I can’t take any more of Maja’s territory since 2 of their 3 provinces are TI to me, but it is about time for them to join the happy kid’s club of vassals.


12/1438 Ming DOWs Kazakh, bringing in their allies Golden Horde, Sibir, and Khorasan. Very interesting! Between all 4 countries, Ming’s enemies have 36k of armies. Ming obviously outnumbers them by a bunch, but a lot of battles in winter far away in the northwest would be great for me. Will be watching to see if Ming pulls any armies away from its Southern and Eastern fronts.


1/1439 DOW on Champa, bringing in Maja


Ming has pulled a few troops away from their borders, but nothing massive yet. My troops in Manchuria are really enjoying their assignment. No rebel killing, no marching around, just watch the border and report back what you see. A good life it is for them.



2/1439 Kazakh bails from the war with Ming, giving up 1 province. Wow, that was fast. They were not the alliance leader, so the war continues.


A few more of Ming’s troops are headed northwest. Ming’s troop count is still 148k, so no decrease there yet. I need to start seeing some decreases in Ming’s army count, or jumping into this would be a really bad idea. All of this war is in TI to me, so army count is the only way I have to tell how things are going.


6/1439 Annex Champa. Crumb #1 is done. No luck so far on landing troops on Maja’s land, as their navy still outnumbers mine.


7/1440 I did finally land troops on Maja and that war is basically over, but am milking it for war taxes.


I have troops sitting in Tibet, and they report back very interesting information. Ming continues fighting with Golden Horde, Sibir, and Khorasan. As you can see, Ming is now sending lots of troops on the very long walk to Siberia. In this screenie we have 13k troops moving through a poor province, and in the blue oval it looks like Ming is starting to see attrition.




7/1440 Clearly the war has not impacted Ming’s troop count yet, as they now are up to 152k troops. This is another 13k of troops headed north, with another bit of attrition showing.




7/1440 Ming has left a very small number of troops behind in the south. Here we see 11k troops moving north and 1k staying, along with another spot of attrition. Most of Ming’s borders are now undefended. The story is the same on the Eastern front where my troops are hanging out in Manchu.


One of the generals grabs the 3M plan from the top-secret vault, dusts it off, and orders the recruitment of some more troops.




10/1440 Government Tech 4!!! For those of you keeping score, this is my first tech level in anything and we are 40 years into the game. All of those random events, slider moves, and wars causing stab hits made a big impact. I choose National Bank cause I like money. :rofl: All investment is now focused on Trade Tech. Current pace is for a tech level every 15 years. If I keep on this pace, we will see Trade Tech 7 (and QFTNW) right about 1500.


Ming continues moving north. My new regiments are about ready, which will increase army size to 22k troops. As you can see from the cash balance, we are thin on cash to afford more even though with National Bank we could afford their maintenance. In the background, you can see a bit of fun with our endless stream of rebels.




4/1441 Almost all of Ming’s armies just turned around and are heading back south. I am guessing that they just won a siege or destroyed an enemy army. Ok it’s decision time. If you want to DOW Ming while their troops are a long ways away, this is as good as it gets. Naturally, we have screenies so you can see the situation.


Here we have some of Ming’s troops headed home. There are about 16k troops in the red circles, and most of them have some attrition damage. It is a really long march from here to the edge of my vassals' territory, probably around 12 months.


Check out the RR from WE. Since I’m playing 3.1, this means that Ming’s WE is currently at 12.90. Wow. I can’t tell whether this is from attrition or fighting or enemy occupation. I suspect a good chunk of it is from attrition. If this is so, then WE should continue going up for a while as these troops are marching south.


Revolt risk in recently won territories like this one is now fairly high, but we have not seen any rebels yet. In Ming’s core territories, RR is only at 1.3%.



4/1441 Ming’s troop count has dropped from 152k to 128k. I suspect that they haven’t lost too many regiments (if any), and this could just be all under-strength regiments. The real wild card is how full is the manpower pool. It seems that Ming has suffered a lot of attrition, but since they started the war at 92k manpower and get a huge number of refills every month it takes a lot to empty that pool.


Malacca has finally made page 1 of the army ledger. We recruited a few more troops with the money from national bank and are now at 24k. So let’s see, Ming now only outnumbers me by 5.3 to 1.


In the background, you can see that the Manchu border is totally undefended.




4/1441 And here is the southern border, completely undefended.


The only Ming troops in the entire shot are headed even further away. Lots of Malaccan troops are sitting on the border, ready for action if needed. If I attack, I should have smooth sailing on sieges for quite a few months.





So…Do you do the DOW?
 
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AAR's name is complete insanity and so is dowing Ming with 24k troops, so be true to your style and do it!
 
... It should be possible to cause a small bit of rebellion - especially, if you do the cat an mouse thingy in vassal territory (hopefully rebels will pop there to delay ming as well.

Go for it. It would be so sad to see the chinese send their massive armies towards you, when they are ready for it.

Hows BB affecting merchants?

Alternatively you could wait for the cores to start popping, but its a WC, so you have to weaken ming sooner or later. Perhaps Japan will join the fun :)
 
This has made a fascinating read so far, I must say. Every time you mention DoWing Ming, I think to myself: Is this guy nuts?

But then, the way you are playing, you might just pull it off. What is your vassal's troop count? I know they will likely be fodder for Ming's troops, but am curious to know how much they might contribute to the overall effort, and how many troops Ming might send their way, rather than at your besieging armies.

I am kinda torn. On the one hand, I want to see you continue your reckless expansion. On the other hand, gaining lands which Ming will have cores on (or are you going to get lands they annexed from other powers and have no cores on yet?)... I can't see that being a good thing unless you can hurt them so badly that they can't recover. And at the moment, I just can't see that.

So, a part of me thinks that going Japan first would be much better. And conquering any other nearby countries (even India eventually, even if it will take a loooooong time), just to give you that better edge for the final conflict with Ming. Ming will no doubt be in a similar position later, and I am not so sure that poking the bear in its den, even if it is slightly licking it's wounds, is a good thing.

Ah, decisions, decisions. Will keep reading though, it has been very entertaining and fun so far. :)
 
You have my permission to make a one-time save to return to in case of excrement impacting the air displacing device when DoWing Ming.

You're going to disregard this permission, I know - just be aware that I, for one, am in favour of DoW. No risk, no gain, but I'm pretty sure you've got that adage down pat.
 
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