taw's blog: CK2 Modern Times: Greater Punjabistan AAR

Post 1 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-11-16 10:11:34 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 01: 1815-1827: Family is Hell

Somehow I haven't played any Indians yet, and Modern Times has some interesting scenarios. Let's start with 1815 maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab (I even turned on local names for it). India starts about 1/2 British, 1/4 Maratha, 1/8 Mughals, 1/8 everybody else (Punjab, Sindh, and Portuguese Goa). The goal is to unite absolutely all of India and possibly a good chuck of lands West of it.

We start as 34 year old ruler with 3 underage kinds. 10/16/5/9/4 isn't awful, but ambitious craven brilliant strategist is a weird combination.

So time to arrange some marriages:

• maharaja Ranjit - Mogubai Bhonsle, 27 year old sister of samrat pratap Singh of the Marathas
• 14 year old son Kharak - princess Dandimahadevi, daughter of maharaja of Orissa (under British)
• 13 year old daughter Ramo - prince Anavota, heir to Telingana (under British)
• 7 year old son Sher - we'll figure something out

I'm guessing there's decent chance British part of India will fall apart soon enough.

Other than that build observatory, choose patron deity Ganga (+1 stewardship -1 martial), and tiger hunt time to maybe lose craven.

That didn't work, so let's prove we're not craven some other way - like holy warring Afghanistan, Sindh, and Mughals at the same time.

Troop numbers are pretty good:
• Punjab - 8.4k
• my ally Marathas - 10.7k
• Afghanistan - 8.4k (and wrecked by Persian 11k)
• Sindh - 6.9k
• Mughals - 11.7k

Counting every 1 Hindu as 2 Muslims we have an slight numerical advantage.

And then I discovered the first problem - apparently all those 20+ martial mayors in my realm - I can't appoint any of them as commanders as they're vaishya caste not kshatriya. OK, so apparently the nerfs for everyone non-Muslim continues. Fine, I'll spend my initial gold stash on some mercs, especially since Mughals did the same.

Afghans invaded, ignoring Persia completely, so I took them out, while Marathas crushded Sindh. Mughals just happily stood there with 15k stack.

Anyway, Afghanistan got crushed, so I got two counties of Punjab they had. And then I noticed my oldest son is of Brahmin caste, because my script was not very smart about any kind of family caste consistency... So I can give him a temple, nothing more.

And unfortunately Marathas had rebellion, so they abandoned almost finished siege of Sindh, and I was really low on money, so I had to disband mercs.

There was also a problem with one butthurt duke who had almost as much power in the realm as me - I might be craven but fortunately I'm not content, so he had to go. And his son. Unfortunately his daughter was no more accommodating, but let's leave her for now.

A much bigger crisis emerged - samrat pratap of Marathas died, and his 0 year old son does not think our alliance is valid even though I'm married to his aunt...

Mughals figured out that's good time to strike, and without merc or allies, I really couldn't do shit, so I gave them 700 gold plus some prestige and karma as war reparations. Bad times.

I somehow got myself out of debt, and managed to trim Marathas ruling family to just my wife, her brother, and second brother who was a brahmin and out of line of succession. Oh here's some fun - I made a baby with my wife who's heir to Marathas and an imbecile -8 to everything. Oh come on!

Well, at least maharaja of Sindh died, so I can go there and remove some kebab.

Oh and I discovered some real bullshit - I can no longer console switch to my landed son, arrange marriage as them, and switch back, somehow betrothal request would get canceled. So my son and heir Sher married rani Nihal of Gandhara who's #1 on my hit list - cancelling his previous betrothal and ignoring my console switched requests. For fuck's sake. It's India, it's feudal, marriages need to be double-arranged!

Well, spy focus, and try to murder her. Well, that failed, only getting her wounded. Oh, she's plotting to kill me? Let's arrest her. Oh she even rebelled, how cute.

Anyway, now the situation is:

• my oldest son Kharak is a priest and out of succession - fortunately he's married to daughter of king of Orissa which just got independent, sadly not before going Protestant
• my daughter Ramo is married to prince of Telingana (also unfortunately Protestant), which recently went independent
• my second son Sher is married to this traitor bitch Nihal, who's in my prison, unfortunately they managed to had a baby daughter before I could intervene - so currently her daughter is in direct line of succession after me, which is disgusting. If I execute Nihal he might remarry and find himself someone nice - or some lowborn dwarf just to spite me.
• my third son Bhaimani with Mogubai of Marathas is in line to inherit empire of Marathas - because of my plotting my brother in law never went out of hiding to marry. Unfortunately he's an inbecile and there's pretty much no way to overcome -8 to everything, -30 attraction, -10 vassal opinion, and -3 personal combat skill just to be sure. Mogubai is 39 years old and we probably won't have any more reasonable children
• my fourth son Bhagwant with a concubine is currently not causing any problems, but he's only 1 year old so let's give him time.

So that's the mess. I thought I'd have trouble with Muslims, instead it's my family which turned my life into hell. If only Mogubai had one more son...

I'm tempted to make Bhaimani my heir anyway, because Sher is really pissing me off and politically that would me huge chunk of India. All he really needs to do is have some non-imbecile babies before he dies to first plot.

In other news:

• Portugal tried to holy war Marathas - it even seemed that they might succeed for a while as Marathas were busy with rebellion, but they ultimately failed.
• Ottomans lost Greece to crusade led by king of Sicily
• I'm trying to get castle of Sunni holy order. Apparently ticking warscore doesn't work for such wars, so I'm at 84% and I'm not terribly interested in going all the way to Arabia to their nearest castle.
#ck2

1815 start

Post 2 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-11-16 13:38:54 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 02: 1827-1839: Succession is still a mess

So Nihal goes straight into oubliette with her duchy title revoked. She died soon afterwards, and now my granddaughter rules her 3 counties (I'm tempted to seduction focus her as soon as she comes of age, she's gay for some extra sin). Now if only Sher would remarry, hopefully someone less objectionable - and he got himself a lowborn Buddhist wench with no redeeming qualities.

Seriously game, why can't I arrange marriages for landed children?

Anyway, I'll try making some babies with my wife. I switched to family focus for that +25% fertility bonus to maybe have one more baby before my wife gets too old. I made her my spymaster so she'd get a better ambition - and she got "have a daughter". I gave her expensive gifts during Diwali festival as that's 30% chance of her becoming my lover.

Unfortunately my wife decided to instead cheat on me with my chancellor, who got imprisoned and executed for it, but I still need that heir, so she's getting away with it for now.

Finally after spending way too much money on festivals and gifts, we became lovers, but at age of 42 she's a bit old... And all got for my trouble was a daughter Lachmi. By the way Indian names are really cute somehow.

Well, Sunni uprising happened, so I declared wars on Mughals and Afghanistan, called Marathas and Telingana into it (Orissa wouldn't even consider it)

OK, time to focus. Heir to Marathas is nephew of current emperor. His brother was disqualified as temple holder, but he isn't.

• bribe some vassals so everyone likes me
• pass absolute cognatic
• nominate Lachmi as my successor. Being a girl is bad, still better than being a drooling idiot.
• press my wife's claim for Marathas - they have another independence rebellion over there and it's just regency

During the war my wife's brother died, so it was war against his nephew. And a fun race - I was leading armies (he had more than me, even with mercs), and my wife and spymaster was leading spies.

He did what AI loves doing, hired Hindu holy order against me, and with his illusory numbers decided to charge.

Well, so my wife got the title, unfortunately our imbecile son is her heir - and I got crown authority revolt because everybody's pissed about raised levies and changed succession laws.

Unfortunately the rebellion bugged out, rebel leader lost his title, and somehow my son duke of Bhakkar and another count became independent. The count accepted vassalization, but my son didn't. I can't stand this bullshit (how many patches did they introduce temporary faction titles? why are they still bugging out on regular basis) so I got him back by console.

I repeated the same trick with raj of Multan - take away traitor's title, throw him into oubliette where he dies of natural causes, then give title back to his heir, for instant +100 relations.

So, line of succession to Marathas is:

• imbecile son Bhaimani - amazingly he's 1/10/3/0/0, I managed to get him competent at one thing at least
• imbecile son's equally imbecile son Kharak
• my daughter and heir Lachmi

I'm seriously tempted to eugenics the hell out of this situation. If Bhaimani at least had a non-idiot heir...

But first I needed to finish assassinating the rest of Bhonsle family. There's still two kids with claims - former emperor's nephew and son of former emperor who seems to have been born posthumously.

Oh and Marathas are somehow agnatic-cognatic gavelkind now... I'm pretty sure they started primo.
#ck2

Post 3 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-11-19 16:16:32 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 03: 1839-1850: Sorting Out Succession

First, I eliminated two remaining nondynastic underage claimants to empire of Marathas, so now it was just a question of which dynasty member would inherit.

And that left me with a huge problem, as line of succession to the Marathas looked like:

• my imbecile son Bhaimani
• Bhaimani's imbecile son Kharak
• Bhaimani's healthy daughter Amro
• my daughter and designated heir Lachmi

Unfortunately apparently I can't plot against my children, so I couldn't just kill everyone and had Lachmi inherit it all - and I can't designate anyone except my children as heir, so I couldn't do anything cute like designating Amro. Oh well, I'll deal with it when time comes.

I passed time making various minors who case out of shattered Afghanistan into my tributaries.

My wife got into wars against various Protestant minors who came out of British India's shattering, losing one duchy and getting another. Protestants are also sitting on ticking warscore for Portuguese Goa, but it will take them a while.

And that leads to modding question - is there any way to block this demand conversion? I don't want Indian vassals to hate British queen as that would mean India instantly shattering, but I don't want them to love her so much they accept conversion. Right now I got worst combination - everybody converted, then shattered anyway. Thresholds for accepting conversion and for not joining factions are just too close to each other. Unfortunately this is one of few special interactions CK2 had before they switched to more moddable system, so it's very painful to mod anything here. I could make them tributaries instead of vassals, but tributaries don't work sensibly (they never break by rebellion, but always break by succession).

I'll leave modding for later. It's really time to fix succession or it will take forever to get anywhere.

• my imbecile grandson Kharak needs to go, I can plot against my own grandchildren, so that's easy, except my attempt got discovered (but not actual murder).
• my imbecile son Bhaimani, intrigue focus, spy on, abducted, oubliette - took him 5 years to actually get ill and die there

And that somehow put my daughter Lachmi over Bhaimani's daughter Amro in order of succession. Seriously, succession part of this game makes no sense, even on primo. So as far as everybody is concerned there was zero kinslaying involved.

So now it's just waiting for succession. I'm 68 and recently ended illness. My wife Mogubai is 61 and in hiding because apparently people try to plot on her life.

Lachmi just turned 17 and married younger son of khan of Xinjiang matrilineally - he has weak claims on both of Xinjiangs kingdoms, but that's a bit far, and it would be very difficult to send armies there.

Elsewhere what little was left of Ottoman Empire went Zikri, and Sunni caliph is some OPM relative of Ottoman emperor. This is the weakest performance by Sunnis I've ever seen- they're getting wrecked by Catholics, Shias, Zikri rebels, even Ibadi Oman. It was due to losing tons of holy wars and decadent caliph, which together stacked their authority to 0% somehow, making everyone go heretic.

Hindus are not doing too great, we only hold two holy sites, but if Punjab and Marathas unity, that's going to be half of India, and it shouldn't be too hard to cleanup Protestant minors.
#ck2

Post 4 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-11-19 18:37:17 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 04: 1850-1857: Seduction Based Government

I want succession to come as quickly as possibly, so rulership focus and hope for depression.

That did very little, but Ranjit died at age of 72, leaving Punjab to 21 year old Lachmi, whose popularity was:

• -10 female ruler
• -10 female heir (her niece for some reason)
• -16 short reign
• -10 medium crown authority
• -20 large feudal tax
• -20 incestuous adultress (for 20 years)

Seriously, my heir managed to get into incestuous love affair? I understand me doing this, but my heir on her own, and I can't even see with whom?

Well, that won't be easy. My husband's branch of family lost Xinjiang, and his stats were miserable, so I got him killed, and went seduction focus.

I got pregnant by some kind of miracle with game having no idea with whom (before anybody even got seduced, but quite some time after husband got killed). That's the first time I see this. I guess it could be delayed pregnancy event from before I got in power?

And of course there was inevitable lower crown authority revolt, which I crushed with my mother's help.

My mother died mid-revolt, I got male heir (+10), Master Seductress trait for +50 attraction opinion with all male vassals, +25 crushed major revolt (in all my territories, not just Punjab), and I made one of major rajas my lover, stabilizing the realm very effectively.

I also got my karma to -318 due to constantly getting caught in extramarital affairs, but apparently Gods consider +100 winning a holy war and -100 getting caught in illicit sex exactly karmically balanced. That's a suggestion how to proceed.

Now there's an awkward problem, in that we're the only Hindu realm in the world, and the only Buddhist one is Xinjiang. No Jains. Every single country in India other than us is Protestant, so I can just holy war them quick.

I'm wondering if I should maybe change to a different Indian religion, as being a Hindu doesn't seem to have much content so far. Other than Tiger Hunts and Diwali Festivals (which allow spending money for 30% chance of making spouse a lover, very useful) instead of Summer Fairs and Feasts, it's pretty much the same as any generic religion. For something that slows that the game so much I expected a bit more.
#ck2

Post 5 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-11-20 12:43:33 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 05: 1857-1866: What Would Buddha Do?

I thought about never marrying Lachmi to anyone, but annoyingly bastards have no caste, and that's a big deal for Hindus.

Oh well, as realm was united by everybody being really hot for Lachmi, I gathered the troops and attacked Muslims of all kinds in Central Asia and East Persia. Strong Persia would be huge pain when inevitable rebellion comes once Lachmi hits the wall at age of 45.

The biggest problem was coordinating all that, as total Muslim troops were more numerous than total my troops, I had to divide my armies due to supply limits, and there are apparently no rivers there to move quickly.

I got a white elephant as a gift - which obviously was not meant to be accepted if you have good sense. And obviously I was getting one bad event after another because of it. I think I lost about 2000 gold on it. I bet that's where the Jews gets their money - white elephant business.

The end result of white elephant was that I got independence revolt once my treasury was depleted to basically zero, and half my troops were gone from war against Persia. Well, ransoming traitors out was one way to get that white elephant fund back.

Well, there was important business to fix. Marathas were agnatic-cognatic gavelkind, Punjab was true-cognatic primo, there's no way to sync them in one lifetime, but I could bribe vassals to let me switch Marathas to agnatic-cognatic primo at least. The only reason I went true-cognatic with Punjab was because my older brother was an imbecile.

My nephew successfully used seduction focus on me - how could I refuse family? I guess I should switch religion to Zoroastrian or something, why even pretend? There are no Zoroastrians left in Modern Times? I guess Buddhist will do just fine.

The choice is between Mahayana (+5 vassal opinion), Vajrayana (+1 health), and Theravada (+1 learning). Health bonus seemed much stronger than other two.

Nearly all of my vassals converted almost right away with me - demand religious conversion is ridiculously overpowered like that, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just disable it outright if I can't easily mod it to require a lot higher relations (closer to +80 than current +36).

This leads to fairly unfortunate situation:

• Buddhist get 1 county holy wars, which are fairly miserable
• Everybody in India outside my empire is Protestant, and won't marry into my family (----- political concerns, even my damn nephew maharaja of Telingana won't marry his children), and claimants won't accept invitation
• Internally empire is very stable, with little to do
• Hindu or Buddhist, I'm not really getting any special Rajas of India content. Am I doing something wrong, or was there simply never much to do as Indian?
#ck2

Post 6 - Originally published on Google+ on 2015-12-01 08:43:26 UTC

Greater Punjabistan: Part 06: 1866-1878: Scripted Endgame

I wanted to have India campaign, but everybody went Protestant so it's just annoyingly like Europe all over again. Well, first fix, demand religion cost increased from 0 to 25 piety like it used to be in old CK2. I'd actually much prefer simply increasing acceptance threshold from >+35 to like >+75 or so, but that doesn't seem possible to mod.

Unfortunately since at this point damage was already done, I also wrote a quick script to reverse it and convert every Protestant in India to randomly one of 3 Indian religions. That leaves Sunni Mughals and a few Protestant Englishmen (Portuguese Goa fell long time ago). I should have done that ages ago.

Oh and while I was modding it, I already increased allowed number of commanders by a few. Game claims you can always have your marshal lead your troos, but that's a lie. Now dukes have 6 commanders (so 2 stacks), king 9 (so 3 stacks), and emperors 12 (so 4 stacks), meaning less silly reassignment. 8 commanders at emperor (so 2 stacks with all commanders and one with 2/3) was just silly.

So, let's do some Indian affairs. Now that people were of my religious group, some marriage alliances were possible - and I could help another batch of Indian minors (mostly Bihar) get independence from Britain. I'm not sure they needed that, they seemed to be winning even without me, even if not very decisively.

I got reduced to county level holy war, so I got Afghanistan's last county. And that's such a bad holy war it didn't even unland Muslim barons, I had to revoke them manually - or such an awesome CB if you want to milk them for +100 crushed for major revolt.

Simultaneously with this, I pressed someone's claim to duchy held by Mughals - and somehow I couldn't land him with my new Afghan lands. He's casteless Hindu, so he can't get granted any land, even though I'm Buddhist and don't care. Except he can get his claims pressed, so it makes about zero sense...

Well, other than that I just made a bunch of South Indian minors my tributaries. They were much stronger than they had any reason to be, and fighting in India is significantly harder than in Europe with lower base supply (a lot of jungles - at least it doesn't get winters) and longer average distance to coastline. At least I've been beelining military organization, so that's some decent supply limit bonus.

I got kingdom of Assam by subjugation. I tried to get kingdom of Tamilakam by dynastic scheming, but that was taking forever so I just invited some claimants to kingdoms of Orissa, Telingana, and Tamilakam, and went for it.

At this point India was completely dominated by me. There were a few minor things left over, but since challenge was nonexistent and I still wasn't getting any fancy Rajas of India content, I decided to just finish the campaign.
#ck2