Ideas for Bengal?

[✪ Maguro Man]

A brief break-down of some good ideas to take at the start and the coreisponding stratagy

[brian_va]

bengal tiger was one of the harder ones ive done, still good fun.
orissa is likely the first mission target, the small guys out to the the east are probably a good place to start building a decent size.

admin ideas are almost always a good idea, maybe not first but the reduced coring costs are worth the investment if you are planning on going big. tech cost reductions is also welcomed. with the good income, mercs are a valid option and the cost reductions make it less costly. Innovative ideas stack pretty well with this.

its also hard to agrue against offensive ideas; the siege ability to me makes it worth it and the others are a bonus. a good argument can be made for quality, as a strong navy can come in handy.

diplomatic or influence are also both great options depending on how heavily you are depending on vassels.

if you are simply going for the achievement, snaking your way to the goal is a valid approach but expanding in all directions is fairly easily done.

[Tiny Tyrant]

I actually just did a Bengal Tiger run, and the first thing I did was become a Tributary of Ming. That way I could expand into South East Asia, but it also protected me from being attacked by non-tributaries in India. Which is good, because by doing this you can essentially ignore coalitions; up to a point.

As for ideas I took Quantity, Influence, and Trade. In that order. Quantity allowed me to constantly be conquering, Influence helped me with annexing vassals and keeping AE down, and Trade made me incredibly rich. Bengal also has NIs that further increase manpower and trade power, so it works great.

I tried uniting my Culture Group first, with the exception of Sinhalese in Ceylon. I feel that this gives you a fantastic base to conquer all of India from; you need to conquer half of India to get to Samarkand anyway.