Invasion of China

[Max]

Hi all,

With my mighty Han (Chinese) Empire (Imperial Governement) ruling from Middle Steppes/ Central Asia to Andalusia/North Africa (I got the "Aladdin" achievement, which was the set goal of the game), before ending my game, I decided to attack China and put one of my sons on the Jade Throne.

I was confident, able to raise 170k troops. Alas, an attrition-free doomstack of 260k Imperial warriors appeared and never wanted to split. I maybe could have competed by forcing them to attack me in a fortified position, but in my case I DID have attrition. I couldn't lure them with little stacks because they were just sieging anything in their way and the warscore was dropping very quickly. They just butchered my men and burnt the land, and the war ended quickly, shattering my empire in a dozen of independent kingdoms.

Did any of you manage to win this war? Did I have too much Prestige / land / vassals, do their numbers scale in any way? I thought I was powerful enough, maybe I did something wrong?

[ambi]

I noticed that Chinese armies will scale up to twice the size of your own army. It doesn't matter who you are.

I guess the key to beating China is to field a smaller but more powerful army.

[Azunai]

haven't tried it yet, but i'm currently playing a game where i'm trying to restore a zoroastrian persia and if that turns out successful, i might also conquer india and tibet and take a shot at china eventually.

don't know which factors determine the strength of their stack, but i would assume that it is weaker when they face inner turmoil (peasant revolts, famine, plague, civil war) and stronger than usual if they are in a golden age. 260k seems gross. are/were they in a golden age?

no idea if you're supposed to be able to win that. perhaps if you'ce saved up an insane amount of money and can hire all mercenary companies at once and somehow get all of those plus your whole realm levy into one titanic battle against the superstack.

[Max]

Originally posted by klacoste:

I noticed that Chinese armies will scale up to twice the size of your own army. It doesn't matter who you are.

I guess the key to beating China is to field a smaller but more powerful army.

Thank you, I will try again when playing as a King, maybe in Tibet to be sure to force them to fight defensive troops in a mountainous area. Maybe it is the key indeed.

Originally posted by Azunai:

haven't tried it yet, but i'm currently playing a game where i'm trying to restore a zoroastrian persia and if that turns out successful, i might also conquer india and tibet and take a shot at china eventually.

don't know which factors determine the strength of their stack, but i would assume that it is weaker when they face inner turmoil (peasant revolts, famine, plague, civil war) and stronger than usual if they are in a golden age. 260k seems gross. are/were they in a golden age?

no idea if you're supposed to be able to win that. perhaps if you'ce saved up an insane amount of money and can hire all mercenary companies at once and somehow get all of those plus your whole realm levy into one titanic battle against the superstack.

Well, just before I could start the war, they were in a "Great Famine" period but it seemed that I couldn't attack them at this time. Then their status switched back to Stable and I could attack them, they were not in a Golden Age.

My army was composed of demesne & vassal armies (diversified troops), 4 mercenary bands (heavy infantry and cavalry) and my retinues (50k pikemen-archers, mostly Defense retinues and some cultural Chinese retinues with more archers). And of course I had 20+ martial commanders: Flank/Inspiring, Direct/Unyielding, Defender/Inspiring, if I remember correctly. A decent defensive army. But their army never split, I was vastly outnumbered and suffered a bit from attrition. I wish I could have a chance to meet them with my full 170k stack in mountains or across a river, but I couldn't.

Good luck for your game and don't hesitate to tell me about your Chinese invasion when you get there!

[Azunai]

Originally posted by Makk:

Good luck for your game and don't hesitate to tell me about your Chinese invasion when you get there!

thanks, but my plan didn't work out and i resigned that game. had a great run and almost fully restored persia, but made some crucial mistakes later on.

in case you're interested:

769 start, picked zheytsu (or something) nomad tribe. they start as tributary of uyghur tribe. expanded quickly thanks to OP tengri nomads. first generation got rid of the tributary status, build a mighty empire in the steppes and took over transoxiana from the muslims with the once per lifetime subjugation

2nd generation subjugated khorasan (independent muslim kingdom)

3rd generation subjugated the abbassid caliph, switched to zoroastrian, settled down in esfahan and built a super powerful demesne (duchy of jiba or something. i think that's the strongest duchy in the game - 6 counties with a total of 35(!) holdings and a silf road tradepost in the capital.

he only needed 2 more counties for the "become saoshyant" achievement.

so far so good. also managed to switch succession for both arabian and persian empire to seniority (couldn't do primo because it was only 830 or so and legalism level 3 was out of reach).

the critical mistake was that i forgot to switch succession in may main kingdom (persia), so when that epic dude finally died, the demesne (and also the king and duke title) was split among his sons and his primary successor was a practically powerless 1 county emperor. also, i ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up big time and released vassal levy fleet after crushing a revolt and my whole 8k retinue was on those ships.

it quickly went downhill from there. tried to revoke the kingdom & duchy and restore my demesne, hoping to turn it around and correct my mistake, but the guy who had the title was in a faction, so they all rose in rebellion against my tyranny and i had to abcdicate. the next guy in line was even weaker and had to release half the realm into independence. i resigned at that point. not worth the effort of trying to patch up that mess...

still, was a pretty cool playthrough. didn't even last 100 years, but it was certainly eventful. i think i could have made it if i didn't make those 2 stupid mistakes (messing up succession law and deleting my retinue).

if i ever try that again, i think i'll convert to muslim first until i can get legalism to level 3 for primogeniture. muslim succession law is just sooo much better than stupid early feudal succession laws in such an early start.

EDIT: alternatively, ot would have been smart to NOT create persia right away. having only 1 empire title is MUCH easier to manage than 2 titles. less hate from top tier king vassals in the 2nd empire and no need to sync succession laws so the 2 parts of the realm don't split. 1 empire is somewhat tolerable even with gavelkind as long as you don't produce too many sons and get some land from traitors to land the excess sons so they don't get titles from the demesne

[Max]

Originally posted by Azunai:

Originally posted by Makk:

Good luck for your game and don't hesitate to tell me about your Chinese invasion when you get there!

thanks, but my plan didn't work out and i resigned that game. had a great run and almost fully restored persia, but made some crucial mistakes later on.

in case you're interested:

769 start, picked zheytsu (or something) nomad tribe. they start as tributary of uyghur tribe. expanded quickly thanks to OP tengri nomads. first generation got rid of the tributary status, build a mighty empire in the steppes and took over transoxiana from the muslims with the once per lifetime subjugation

2nd generation subjugated khorasan (independent muslim kingdom)

3rd generation subjugated the abbassid caliph, switched to zoroastrian, settled down in esfahan and built a super powerful demesne (duchy of jiba or something. i think that's the strongest duchy in the game - 6 counties with a total of 35(!) holdings and a silf road tradepost in the capital.

he only needed 2 more counties for the "become saoshyant" achievement.

so far so good. also managed to switch succession for both arabian and persian empire to seniority (couldn't do primo because it was only 830 or so and legalism level 3 was out of reach).

the critical mistake was that i forgot to switch succession in may main kingdom (persia), so when that epic dude finally died, the demesne (and also the king and duke title) was split among his sons and his primary successor was a practically powerless 1 county emperor. also, i ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up big time and released vassal levy fleet after crushing a revolt and my whole 8k retinue was on those ships.

it quickly went downhill from there. tried to revoke the kingdom & duchy and restore my demesne, hoping to turn it around and correct my mistake, but the guy who had the title was in a faction, so they all rose in rebellion against my tyranny and i had to abcdicate. the next guy in line was even weaker and had to release half the realm into independence. i resigned at that point. not worth the effort of trying to patch up that mess...

still, was a pretty cool playthrough. didn't even last 100 years, but it was certainly eventful. i think i could have made it if i didn't make those 2 stupid mistakes (messing up succession law and deleting my retinue).

if i ever try that again, i think i'll convert to muslim first until i can get legalism to level 3 for primogeniture. muslim succession law is just sooo much better than stupid early feudal succession laws in such an early start.

EDIT: alternatively, ot would have been smart to NOT create persia right away. having only 1 empire title is MUCH easier to manage than 2 titles. less hate from top tier king vassals in the 2nd empire and no need to sync succession laws so the 2 parts of the realm don't split. 1 empire is somewhat tolerable even with gavelkind as long as you don't produce too many sons and get some land from traitors to land the excess sons so they don't get titles from the demesne

Hey, seemed to be a short but great game. Well, for the succession issues, it happens to me sometimes even though I spent nearly 3000 hours on the game. I tend to use nomads the same way as yours, conquering objectives then settle in Feudal, MR and even Tribal (I like this government, especially the terrible mess that is Elective Gavelkind, fun to manage).
And yeah legalism 3 is not reached quickly early game, but with careful management Gavelkind is not that bad for a start.

I have to admit I never have played Zoroastrian really. I got the Saoshyant achievement the gamey way (Abbassid -> conquests, revocations and so on -> got rid of the Caliph title -> converted by decision). I played some minor counts, e.g. the count of Esfahan in the 769 start (heretic Zoroastrian), but it didn't go well. I'll play a real Zoroastrian game soon, the mechanics/decisions such as Divine Blood, Sky Burial (like Tengri nomads), High Priesthood, etc.. seem really fun.

Btw I am actually playing a game in the Himalayas, I started as the count of Sakya in 1066 for the "Sakya Trizin" achievement. I swore fealty to the Queen of U-Tsang then conquered my entire de-jure duchy, built up my demesne and went independent again. I conquered the Kingdom of Nepal (with 1 Buddhist Holy Site) and two more Holy Sites from my Hindu neighbour of the Pala dynasty. BUT the 2 last HS are controlled by two big Sunni blobs (6 Kindgom titles each), I wanted to stay little, especially to test another Chinese invasion and see what happens, but I guess that I'll have to blob in Tobet in order to compete the Sunnis and get the achievement.

I noticed that the Muslims are way more stable with the new patch, am I wrong? Decadence revolts are very rare if not imaginary, the two Sultans next to me are stuck at 0% decadence, I've never seen Muslim blobs that stable before (oh, maybe the Umayyads in one game, but that's all I can remember).

[The Cure]

Yeah, since the Chinese stacks don't take attrition (which is dumb) you have to sort of game them. Horde money, artificially lower your levy count, then declare an invasion.

[Max]

Yeah, that, and you need to place your small stacks carefully before the invasion near your borders with the Protectorate and/or the eastern edge of the map. Then, with at least one or two organizer commanders, lure them where you want to fight, ideally across a river in a mountainous county (!!!)

Btw I just checked the requirements needed to declare an invasion: need to be an Emperor with at least 300 realm size. It seems logical that you can't decide to invade China with 20k troops, I should have known. So far for the "stay little".