Yuan AAR (Death and Taxes MOD)

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Hello!
I’ve been lurking :ninja: and reading the AAR’s here for some time and have finally decided to make one myself. I consider myself somewhat experienced in the game so I hope it won’t turn out badly. We’ll see what will happen tho'
This AAR will be played on the Death and Taxes 9.5 mod (latest version). I have chosen to play as the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Here are some of the main goals for the campaign:

- Surviving the Chinese Rebellions ! ( ~ first 40-50 years)
- Conquer the remaining Chinese states and consolidate my rule in the region.
- Restore the Mongol Empire
- Expand west
- Dismantle the HRE

CHAPTERS:

1. 1356-1365
2. 1366-1394
3. 1395-1401
4. 1401-1406
5. 1406-1413
6. 1414-1432
7. 1433-1446

 

[ATBKING]

I shall be following. And Im sure a friend of mine named Gukpa will be following as well. He has been waiting for a Yuan AAR for Ages!!! I look forward to your progress. Oh, aand about the third goal, To hell with the Mongols empire. Make the greatest empire that china has ever seeeeeeeeeen!!!

 

[Gukpa]

This is the best day of all my life!oh my GOD!THANK YOU!!

 

[ATBKING]

Told you

 

[Gukpa]

And DO NOT create Mongols,you are Yuan

 

[blklizard]

This looks fun. Will be following. Remain Yuan since I don't think you can form Mongol Empire. I hope you are aggressive early on because, if you control all the provinces in China, you can get cores on all the Chinese provinces.

 

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Chapter One​

First let’s present the settings that we’ll use for the AAR.

Before we start the campaign let’s have a look at our country and try and analyze it

Yuan is a large independent nation that owns a large amount of Mongolia, as well as the majority of the central Chinese provinces. It starts with some unique features, such as our government – a celestial khanate – it makes us no magistrates, gives some revolt risk tho’ Another interesting one would be our leader – with that 2 administrative skill he’s probably the worst starting leader in the game. He also comes with similarly incompetent heir that has an average claim over the realm. I also forgot to add that most of our provinces aren’t cored. And have different religion. And we have a built in event for revolts that will spawn extra rebels. Aaand we have almost no money and can barely support our army. Nice.
Our state religion is Mahayana Buddhism. It is relatively weak, but gives some bonus to Heretic tolerance. And that is a big plus because ~80% of our provinces are Heretics that embrace the shenism faith.

Yuan’s primary culture is Mongol, which is in the Altaic culture group. This is good, because a large part of central Asia is populated by Altaic peoples, which would mean that if we inherit a PU it will be cored. Wait, what’s that? We cannot have PU’s with any of the Altaic nations because we are in a different religion group? Oh.
Not everything is so bad about our culture though. We have some unique state decisions, such as using Mongol bows (Gives a small bonus to leaders and +quality), getting cores in China (but only once all of the false emperors are destroyed), form the Mongol Empire, and reform the government (into Celestial Empire). Unfortunately these decisions have pretty difficult requirements and we probably won’t see any of them instituted for quite some time.
Okay then – let’s start this! We are losing 25 ducats/month and that is unacceptable. In an attempt to fix this our mighty Emperor orders all the ships to be burned, as he says “We Mongols have no use of wooden horses.” Destroying the ships actually helps, but only so much – we are still losing about 19 ducats/month. Anticipating the coming of the massive rebellions, removing men from the army would be a bad decision. That forces me to do something I usually hate doing – max the slider towards minting. It is necessary though, it’s either that or being slowly eaten by the revolts and our Chinese neighbors. We’ll need a lot of money to survive the first years.
Our first mission is to improve relations with Tibet – we won’t be looking to do that just yet.

What we also do it move our slider to Quality, so our armies can be somewhat competent on the battlefield. We get an unfortunate event and lose some 40000 manpower.
Now, the geopolitical situation. Even though we ‘re surrounded by potential enemies in the faces of the false Emperors we can exploit the fact that they don’t particularly like each other. So we’ll try to ally ourselves with the strongest of them – Ming and Dahan.
And also, since we now mint a fair share of ducats we can afford that cool 6-star advisor that will help us start the conversion to our true faith.
Also, before unpausing we’ll declare war on Xian. We need to annex them in order to have a bigger passageway to our southern provinces and since this is the start of the game I figure not many others will join their fight.

Well, we didn’t get both alliances, but at least Ming won’t bother us
After only two months the rebellions start firing.

As for the war – we are able to quickly overwhelm Xian. However they get help from Joseon and Dahan. Joseon cannot reach us, nor do they want to, for they have troubles of their own (Jurchens). Dahan proves a little more menacing however, but they after a couple of victories we manage to destroy their main army and occupy the country. In some 3 years the war is over and it seems to be a success. The next screenshot will show how it went.

The reason I don’t take any of Dahan’s provinces is because the Infamy would rise too high up, making it very hard to increase stability. And in our current rebellion situation the stability could be the deciding factor between life and death. Also having too much Infamy would make our relations with other nations suffer, and keeping in mind we’re playing on high AI aggressiveness - we don’t want to give them any opportunities to attack.

Some other things that happen during the war are that we manage to enter RM with Song, as well as giving them Military access. This essentially guarantees they won’t be attacking us, as if they do they’ll suffer a -7 stability hit. And the AI doesn't like suffering such hits.
Yuan also becomes Defender of Faith. The bonuses will be needed in the times of mass revolts and rebellions. Also keep in mind that there is no one of our religion capable of becoming DoF so basically we may as well be DoF for the rest of the game!

Another thing we do is moving the national focus to the province of Bayan Hot. Since it is huge it gives us national focus bonus on whole 10 provinces! We also get our first missionary to work there.
An year after the war we get a very very bad event.

I have to chose the 3% inflation hit because there is a fair chance the rebels will overwhelm us at -2 stability.
Later in 1360 we get an awesome event, redeeming the last one – it seems our 6-star advisor is doing work! We opt for stabilizing our realm.

Meanwhile…

News from the north reach our capital of our neighbors accomplishments. The Wild Jurchens eat up the Haixi Jurchens and Jianzhou Jurchens win their war against Joseon, also taking one province from them.
Meanwhile we manage to give Dazhou and Tianwan military access, essentially guaranteeing that none of the false Emperors will try to attack us.
In the next 3 years we get some cultural decisions, one of our provinces converts and we have a lucky event!

By 1365 we manage to complete our first mission. The next one doesn’t seem too hard to do as well, the false emperor of Xia initially refuses the preposition for royal marriage. Also, yet another province gets converted.

...End of Chapter One...​

 

[unmerged(727677)]

Holy crap 4 posts already? Thanks for the great welcome guys

I shall be following. And Im sure a friend of mine named Gukpa will be following as well. He has been waiting for a Yuan AAR for Ages!!! I look forward to your progress. Oh, aand about the third goal, To hell with the Mongols empire. Make the greatest empire that china has ever seeeeeeeeeen!!!

Thank you!

This is the best day of all my life!oh my GOD!THANK YOU!!

I THANK YOU lol

And DO NOT create Mongols,you are Yuan

Yes but the leader of the Yuan Dinasty is from the royal house of Borjigin, which is I think was started by Ghengis Khan himself, so I fugure it would be something like a goal for the Borjigins to restore the great Mongol Empire We'll see what happens tho' the requirements are pretty tough

This looks fun. Will be following. Remain Yuan since I don't think you can form Mongol Empire. I hope you are aggressive early on because, if you control all the provinces in China, you can get cores on all the Chinese provinces.

Thanks for following True dat about the cores but It's kinda hard to survive the initial rebellions, so I'll probably dissapoint you on the agressive note as I don't intend to start any wars (except 1 starting war) before my China provinces are cored. I'm kinda chill player, my style is usually not to be aggressive in the beginning, but rather when i have a strong rule over my realm.

Also, I have posted the first chapter, it's only waiting approval from a moderator

 

[Gukpa]

You are awesome!LONG LIVE YUAN CHINA!

 

[InvisibleSandwi]

You have quite a task ahead of you, but you already have fans. On one hand, I want to wish you good luck, since you'll need it. On the other, I want to wish you interesting times because that often makes for more exciting reading.

 

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Chapter Two ​

Time passes by, and more and more of the Chinese keep converting to our true faith. Unfortunately that doesn’t stop them from rebelling against us.
We are confronted by the decision to support dissidents in Tianwan and are kinda forced to pay the 50 ducats price, worsened relations as well. Better spend that than the potential -2 stability
Some nobleman dies, some start whispering he was assassinated, others take fright and the realm destabilizes . Nice. At least we get some quality wool to keep us warm in the cold scary nights.

By mid-1369 we have banked a fair share of money. A decision is taken to halve minting in the budget and spend more on increasing stability and technology. We start losing some 58 ducats per year, but can afford to do that for quite some time. Most of the nobility don’t like losing money and some decide to openly approach the emperor about the fiscal matter. He, on the other hand, doesn’t care about what they want. After a quick public discussion some harsh words are spoken and we lose stability again.

In 1370 we get to change our domestic policies. We opt to go for Free Subjects and are quite lucky as we get the Better administration event. Inflation is lowered to 13,9%.

Only an year after we set our National focus to the capital we manage to convert it to Mahayana Buddhism. We have 14,6% inflation by 1371. Below are the effects of it for those interested.

The Emperor dies next year. Some 3000 crazed Mongolians manage to escape their asylums and declare they would only serve someone with mental issues. The new emperor is not amused and sends his armies to slaughter them.

After the madmen have been dealt with appropriately some 175 of the young Chinese population in Luoyang get so inspired and decide enlist in the army.
Meanwhile we enter royal marriage with Xia. We complete the mission and the reward is nothing. The new mission we get is improving relations with Dahan. Sure, why not..

In the next 4 year an heir is born, unfortunately, he is similar to the previous rulers, and is pretty bad. To celebrate that we enter into a royal marriage with Japan and Ming. The stability is increased.
Also, merchants are sent to the Centre of trade in Nanjing so that we can the much needed bonus from Chinaware (+5% legitimacy/year). We also get the -33% cost for advisors bonus. The merchants seem to be unhappy because they have to actually work for once and start complaining.
I am honestly surprised that it was that easy to fill the CoT so quickly, being at -4 at Mercantilism/Free Trade.
Yet another province converts and we lose stability again. A comet appears and scares the people. The emperor issues a new law that forbids looking at the sky.

The year of 1377 is marked by a lot of large revolts. Some 16 000 men of the army are lose their lives to the rebels, following an ambush in southern China.
We also lower minting once again. I guess the goal would be for it to stay below 20%.

By the end of 1377 the risk of revolt for the most of the provinces is halved and is near the 4%. Some of the provinces have higher revolt risk because missionaries.
The next year we get our first boundary dispute. It is on a province in the lands of the false emperor of Song. We’ll keep an eye for it in the future. Also, apparently Improvements in Naval technology now mean that we get ducats invested in Trade. Weird.
We also get a great event in 1380 which improves our financial situation a lot.

In the next 2 years we manage to convert some more provinces, improve the government a bit and learn that people start noticing that after dealing with hundreds of rebellions, our army is quite formidable. We also hire a new High Judge. In attempt to make Ming trust us more we give them military access.

Time for a slider change again and once more we chose Free Subjects, and once more we get the -2% inflation event. Unfortunately our ducat reserves are thinning so we have to increase minting again, not by a lot though. Regardless, the Emperor decides he wants a new carpet. So he buys one.

Meanwhile, in the south, the Javanese of Majapahit and their numerous vassals invade the southeast Asian mainland. I wonder how far will they push…
At home we decide it’s time to introduce the heir and some guys gift us money.

Starting 1389 we get our second Boundary dispute – this time it’s for a province of Tibet. Soon after we advance in land tech and can now build armories. Not that we have the money to spend on such things.

Bad events follow in the next few years, causing us to lose 2 stability and the heir. Perhaps the Borjigin dynasty is at its end? We lose the 6-starred Theologian, but regardless are able to convert 2 more provinces. We acquire a new guy that will help reduce inflation. Also, our admirals grow more concerned as we continue focusing on the land.

We have to turn our eyes to the south again, as Majapahit continue their invasion and are now bordering us. We get a boundary dispute, but the emperor decides to settle the issue as we don’t need to lower relations with the Javanese people. Also if the dispute would’ve been accepted, that would have made us lose 0.9 prestige/month which is far too much.
Fortunately we have a new heir, who seems to be actually somewhat useful.

February 1394 marks the end of the majority of the great rebellions as we are now cored and accepting the 2 other cultures in our nation. And because the Chinese are a bunch of cowards we lose some stability and the remaining 68 000 manpower. It will replenish soon enough, though.
Now that we have most of our realm cored and doesn’t have to defend against rebels, it’s time to attack. It is quickly decided - the first target would be Tibet and the mission – the conquest of Kham.

…End of Chapter Two…​

 

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You are awesome!LONG LIVE YUAN CHINA!

Thanks! And amen that

You have quite a task ahead of you, but you already have fans. On one hand, I want to wish you good luck, since you'll need it. On the other, I want to wish you interesting times because that often makes for more exciting reading.

Thank you for reading! I can assure you, there are wars coming!

And also, the second chapter should appear shortly.

 

[Scorpi]

Awesome, im subscribed!

 

[EmperorG]

Subscribed, haven't seen anyone play as the Yuan yet.

 

[blklizard]

Good job weathering the storm. Must be boring fighting rebels all the time. I guess you're entering easy mode now. I'm curious, will you stay Celestial Khanate or will you become Celestial Empire?

 

[Gukpa]

Let's Unify China

 

[ATBKING]

Unify China?? UNIFY THE WORLD!!! But leave Scotland alone.

 

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Chapter Three ​

We lay siege to the Tibetian provinces that border us. Our armies outnumber theirs at least 3 to 1 so we are able to score 2 swift victories on the battlefield. As the tibetians retreat deeper into the mountains the soldiers start feeling the heavy attrition. Many lose their lives in the pursuit of the armies of Tibet and Guge. At the battle in U Tsang they are able to beat us and we are forced to retreat into Guge. As they are retreating the regiments that we left to siege the other provinces manage to occupy Kham and Qamdo. And so, with the Tibetian capital in our hands, they are quick to agree to our terms. The reconquest of Kham is successful and we also manage to barely save 2 of armies. I will not underestimate the mountainous terrain of Tibet next time.

In the following 2 years we replenish the ranks of our exhausted armies. We also manage to hire a 4-star land tech advisor that will hopefully help us catch up in that field, as we are pretty set back because of the amassed huge inflation. The Naive relative event pops up and the Emperor decides to be merciful. By April 1397 we gain cores on the former Xian provinces and another region gets converted.
After a couple of tries we successfully enter an alliance with Tianwan. It is important to note that Ming is also allied with Tianwan. This strengthens our position in China, as we now have alliances with both Ming and Tianwan and while they won’t be willing to help us in any wars against the other false Emperors, at least we have some sort of protection against the looming threats out of China.

And so, we set our eyes to the rest of the false Emperors. We cannot attack Song and Xia because they are guaranteed by Ming and even though we are allies with them I am certain they are just waiting for the opportunity to backstab us. And we are still not able to take on all of the Chinese, considering we had trouble fighting against Tibet. Fang and Dazhou are also out of the question as we have no border with them, thus having no cassus beli. That leaves Dahan. They are allied with Xia and Joseon. A decision is taken that they will be the next to fall.
By June 19, 1397 all of our armies have been relocated to the borders with Dahan and Xia. Two days later war is declared upon Dahan. Xia and Joseon join them…

We send 2 of our armies to deal with the Dahan defenders and we are victorious. The remaining one army is split to smaller regiments that are sent to lay siege on their provinces.
An unexpected turn happens at the Battle of Dali. The Xia royal army, led by their false Emperor himself, manages to trap both our invading armies and inflicts us horrible casualties. They quickly follow our after our retreat and manage to rout the 1 of the defeated armies. The second remaining army is ordered to fall back further into Yuan and is to await assistance from an eastern army before engaging Xia’s forces again.

The armies in the east successfully manage to rout the enemy, rendering the rest of Dahan completely defenseless!

Meanwhile, in the north, 10 000 koreans invade by ships and lay siege to a province near the capital. Regardless, more people arrive in Beijing. Also, Fang are given military access, to prevent them from potentially attacking us.

The situation near Xia is also dealt with in the beginning of 1398. As a part of the eastern army is relocated to the west we are able to defeat the Chinese at the battle Xichang. Then we quickly follow to rout the remaining soldiers with both of our armies in the west. After a quick fight we are successful and few regiments are commanded to lay siege on the Xia provinces. The remaining set straight to the north, hoping to face the Koreans before they arrive in Beijing.

By august 1398 the army sent to the north arrives and engages the enemy. A crushing victory ensues as the Koreans are forced to retreat to Jin. We cannot follow, unfortunately.
At the same time, we hit 20% inflation and decide that we have minted enough ducats. The time to reduce it has come and we stop minting at all. Some powerful people are unhappy and think we are losing control of the situation. We lose 1 stability.

The next year we have assumed total victory over Xia and Dahan and we give them our terms. They have no other choice but to comply. We annex Xia now and take the head of another false Emperor, gaining lot of infamy as well. We figure it is better to do that now because since they were guaranteed by Ming it would only mean that we’ll have to face them too if we leave Xia alive. Since we already got 12 infamy from Xia we decide to only take 1 province from Dahan. However we balance this with by forcing them to give us a large part of their fortunes – 1000 golden ducats are paid to compensate for the losses we suffered in the war.
Having a lot of Infamy is not a thing that is usually left unchecked by foreign nations. The Wild Jurchens send us a warning not to go to war with other countries. Well, we don’t plan going to war before the infamy goes down anyway, so nothing to worry about there.

There was also another reason for the unplanned annexation of Xia – they had a Center of Trade. And now it’s ours! This way it’s total value of trade jumps up from 600 to more than 1000. Maximum priority is set to the CoT as all 3 of our merchants are sent to trade there.
Meanwhile, both Jin and the Wild Jurchens accept the military access we proposed them, making us feel safer.

With the beginning of the new century we decide to tone things down in the military as we no longer expect the massive rebellions we had in the past. Also, since we no longer mint we have a negative yearly balance with full Land maintenance. So we halve it.
In april peasants get uppity and demand reforms. The emperor agrees as the Free Subjects slider slides right. We also convert another province.

And then, next year, suddenly…

… End of Chapter Three…​

 

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Awesome, im subscribed!

Subscribed, haven't seen anyone play as the Yuan yet.

Great!

Unify China?? UNIFY THE WORLD!!! But leave Scotland alone.

Let's Unify China

All in due time, gentleman. We still cannot take on all of China. And even if we do I'm sure it will attract a lot of foreign attention
About Scotland, sure , I'll leave it alone. Can't guarantee what the English might do to it tho'

Good job weathering the storm. Must be boring fighting rebels all the time. I guess you're entering easy mode now. I'm curious, will you stay Celestial Khanate or will you become Celestial Empire?

Sure, fighting the rebels wasnt the greatest thing, but sometimes they were so many that the armies that were on "rebel hunting" needed some manual assistance, so I had plenty of things to do
As for the government type, I'm currently content with what I've got, the +2 revolt risk may get troublesome in the future though. I'll probably change it later in the game when the time comes where I need magistrates, cause the Celestial Khanate doesn't give any.

 

[Herbert West]

Restore the Mongol Empire! Become the Khan Of Khans, as great as the sea, by the grace of Tengi, Lord of the Sea of the Sky! Tengri wills it so.


(why can you take that deceison?)