How to Form Mughals

[nsc esquared57]

I have wanted to form the ughal Empire for so long but when I start as Timurids I always explode with Timurid Tribes and Persian Rebels and my armies and manpower is very low and i have 5 loans. Any advise?

[Mr.M]

1. Raise autonomy in all provinces with unrest

2. Attack Multan, take one province to get access to Delhi and vassalize rest

3. Attack Delhi, take needed provinces

4. Get enough Development

5. Tadaaaa, formed Mughals in 10-20 years.

[tonypa]

You also need Central Doab from Jaunpur.

If you rush in and grab whole bunch of non-claimed provinces in single war from Delhi, you will generate millions of AE so whole India froms alliance against you. Not only that but so much overextension will also boost unrest in every single province you got. Autonomy will only make you earn less gold, there will be still unrest. You do not even have monarch points to core all these new provinces.

Next day your ruler will die and you will be hit by The Disintegration of the Timurid Empire and Ismail's Resurrection of Persia, plus all the rebels from overextension. And you will be broke.

[Mr.M]

I actually just formed Mughals today in 20 years with the strat i explained

Yes, i forgot Jaunpur - but i was acually even able to take 3 provinces instead of the needed one without a coalition forming big enough to be mentioned (dont forget that half of the nations in India are Sunni/Hindu, which means less AE for certain nations nations - Timus are also Horde which means 75% AE cb AND auto claim on all provinces)

Jaunpur and Delhi get into a truce with you, they cant join coalition. Bengals didnt get enough AE, no coalition. Not even speaking of Bahmanis who is even further away.

The only ones left shouldnt form a coalition until you either lose most of your army or the truces expire

Money aint a real problem. 2-3 loans and ~2 currency debasing (which ~is the amount you can/should have) are easily recovered once you are Mughals (more income + can drain gold from smaller countries in wars), just dont forget to loot as much in Delhi, Jaunpur as possible and dont build too many extra units (the ones you get from the start are far enough)

Monarch points aint a real problem - focus on admin at the start, raze the biggest provinces (the 20-28 ones, ~16-20 dev is still enough later on)

Only major problem is the unrest + rebellions in combination with high Manpower loss. Mercs arent really possible for timuds.

And yes, the ruler will most likely die soon - the stab loss aint good but you should have enough admin points. Just dont forget to disinherit the sucky heir (RoM required) or make him a general so he dies fast. You can eiher accept the new random ruler or restart until you get a decent one (or a 6/3/4 like in my case ;))

[Mr.M]

I can post you some pics later with the steps im taking if you want (OP and tonypa)

As i even did this

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=893362939

[tonypa]

Originally posted by E-Squared77:

I have wanted to form the ughal Empire for so long but when I start as Timurids I always explode with Timurid Tribes and Persian Rebels and my armies and manpower is very low and i have 5 loans. Any advise?

Anyway, this is going to be long post, only read if you want to do it slowly and enjoy yourself while playing, and not rush around like crazy.

As Timurids you need to deal with 3 main things:

- Unrest
- Gold income
- Horde Unity

They are all connected, so let's start.


Unrest

You start with many different rebels, and get more from events. You should raise autonomy for every province that has more then 1% unrest. It will reduce gold you earn, and manpower you got, but such a large country can survive with several provinces at 100% autonomy. Fighting off spawned rebels is even more wasteful.

If you can not raise autonomy anymore but unrest is still present, try to move your troops into this province. Troops can remove extra 5% unrest, which should be enough in most cases. If there are several rebel groups, move your troops between provinces so the overall progress gets reduced.

You should not really get any rebels if you do not get greedy and grab too many new provinces. Every time you conquer a province, your overextension will increase unrest in all provinces. It is essential to core these new provinces quickly so overextension gets removed. You should never start a war if there is rebels progress above 10% already.

If you can, always hire Theologian for National unrest: −2. This is only advisor you should hire until you get enough gold per month to spend it on others too.

Converting your provinces to Sunni will also slowly help to reduce unrest so get missionary at work early whenever province can be converted within 30-40 months.

Spending Monarch points to raise Stability to +1 should be obvious. Raising to +2 could be waste of points already, and there is rarely need to spend monarch points on +3 stability.


Income

At the start you are spending too much. You have to reduce your costs. Before even unpausing, delete or sell all your ships. Delete 5 cavalry, they cost too much and Timmy has biggest army anyway so they not needed. 30k you have left is really enough to get through until Mughals is formed.

Do not hire any other advisors beside Theologian (if he is available). Once your monthly income gets toward 5 gold, only then consider getting another +1 advisor.

You start with 7 forts, delete them all. They cost gold every month, even when mothballed, and we are not going to be attacked. We should never have enemy troops in our lands anyway.

Always, ALWAYS, ask gold and war reparations in every peace deal. Not only will it make your enemy lose their gold, but it allows to gather gold yourself faster. War reparations add extra gold every month too.

Do not use mercenaries, we got one of the largest army in the world. Do not hire more cavalry either, if you increase number of troops then only get more infantry. Only increase armies when manpower is full and your income every month is high enough to manage this.

When at peace, and your troops are not required to supress rebels anywhere, reduce army maintenance to half. They will not be very effective reducing unrest but it saves gold every month. Before starting wars, do not forget to get full maintenance to army few months early.

It is possible you have to take loan at first wars if unlucky things happen. Just gather up gold and pay it up. Specially if The Disintegration of the Timurid Empire event hits when your ruler is below 3 in all skills. It is about luck, maybe you avoid this disaster, maybe not. Anyway, you have to bribe the traitors and then wait to pay off loans. It will cost 2 years of income to bribe so make sure you got gold ready.


Horde Unity

You will constantly lose Horde Unity every year and low value increases unrest and reduces discipline, so must be avoided. Make sure tribes estate is loyal, above 40.

Now, you only have 2 ways to increase Horde Unity (with Rights of Man DLC you can also raise horde unity by spending military points). First, you need to be in war, you can not raise it during peacetimes, so make sure you fight wars with only pausing to core new provinces and regain lost manpower.

Once you occupy enemy province, there is green Loot Value bar in the Province window. This will slowly get reduced as long you have troops in that province, you will get both gold, and Horde Unity when this bar reduces. Never move into other enemy province when you still got loot to gain. When playing non-horde country it is not important to keep troops in occupied province but if you fail to do this as horde you will lose constantly Horde Unity. Once the bar is empty, no more loot can be gained from this province for some time and troops are not worth staying there. Move into next province.

Notice that provinces with forts will get looted automatically while siegeing them so there is no need to stay there after siege is over.

Again, you must loot every enemy province. More troops count loots them faster. This will provide valuable gold and unity. Do not end the wars too fast, at peace you can not do much anymore.

Now, even with constant looting, your Horde Unity may still go down too fast. To counter this, you also have to Raze. You can only raze provinces you own but have not yet cored so do it whenever you gained a province from the war and your Horde Unity needs refilling. There is raze button in Province window to do this. Razing will give you monarch points and increase Horde Unity so the new province will be cheaper to core too after razing. But the province will permanently lose development in each category.

Remember to raze before you start to core new provinces. And you can only raze provinces with higher then 3 development.


General tips

- Get mission Riches to India before unpausing at the start. This gives you claims on some of the provinces you need for Mughals.
- Start to build Spy Network on Qara Qoyunlu early, fabricate there while you fight Delhi. You should conquer their provinces so your AE in India region is not shooting up the roof. QQ is far enough so other Indian countries do not care about it.
- Try to send missionary into province where no unrest will be expected. Do not bother sending at all when your ruler has changed and Piety is low.
- Do not ally any hordes in the north, they will just fight each other endlessly and eventually Muscovy too. You do not care about them and have no time to fight there.
- Get Sind Sagar from Multan, either by war or by threatening with war.
- Declare war on Delhi and take Lahore. You should easily win this war even when they have got ally
- While peace with Delhi ticks away take some provinces from Qara Qoyunlu.
- Back to Delhi and take Sirhind.
- After that just keep picking few small targets at your borders but be careful not to get too greedy.
- Whenever you can reach next required province and have no peace with country holding it, go for it

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=966345257

You should be able to finish forming Mughals around 1492.

[Mr.M]

The problem about forming Mughals that late is that you have to deal with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Timurids all the way there. As much as i love Hordes, the Timus are one of the worst nation to play as in the game...

And i dont know why one needs claims as a Horde - as you get a special cb. Not sure if getting an extra claim reduces AE further, but i think it aint. So besides -10% Core Cost reduction it isnt doing anything

Also note that the point of increasing autonomy in Shia province is to terminate the risk of rebels there for the next 25 years - even with advisor you still have only a 0,2 unrest buffer, which means Horde unity cant go below 90 or you cant have more than mb 5% overextension or risk of rebels grows.

[erneiz]

There was this trick to attack Tabarestan and release Persia so the event that makes your Persian cores revolt disappears (because one of the conditions is for Persia to not exist). I don't know if that's been patched, but you can try and use that.

[OscarTheGrouchiest]

Or you can hope that Persia spawns in Qara Quonlu land, then attack them and make them revoke their cores in your land.

I wouldn't say Timurids start is easy, but it's still doable. Especially if you have patience and don't start conquering too much right from the bat.

Some other small tips besides what has already been mentioned in this thread:

- Get Humanism as one of your first ideas. Not only does it help with your startting unrest, it obviously also keeps unrest down in your newly conquered land.

- If at some point you are afraid of either a coalition, or maybe the Ottoman threath from the west, try to become a tributary of Ming. Problem solved. Plus this means you can freely start conquering into Asia.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by erneiz:

There was this trick to attack Tabarestan and release Persia so the event that makes your Persian cores revolt disappears (because one of the conditions is for Persia to not exist). I don't know if that's been patched, but you can try and use that.

The Persian revolt event Ismail's Resurrection of Persia is annoying but luckily only lasts for 5 years. I survived it in the run posted above without any rebels spawning. Unless you are in the middle of long and expensive war and having too much overextension.