Tips for my first Timurids game?

[Gerfreckle]

Got 600 hours into the game but have never played further east than the Ottomans and Mamluks. Timur was a pretty cool guy so I thought trying to save and restore his empire would be interesting. I tried playing as the Timurids a month or so ago but within a couple of months most of my vassals rebelled at the same time and my pathetically small army was overwhelmed basically instantly, so I just quit the game.

I wanna do a historical Timurids > Mughal game, by the way.

[tonypa]

Timmys usually break down to vassal revolt early in the game. In last months I only saw 1 game where they survived initial independence war and kept the vassal. After that they ruled the region.

So, release some small countries. Smooch your vassals, so not all of them want to rebel same time. You should be able to get through it if few remain loyal and help against others. Try to get some allies even if it means going over diplo limit.

[Aelfric]

They may have cores I think in certain vassals if you want to release them. I haven't check though.

[Salty Platypus]

The Ottomans are your only real threat. Push north at the start and grab the southern turkish provinces before they do. Then when the Ottoman's go to war with someone in the west (e.g Venice) pile onto them and wreck them as best you can. Once they are ruined you should be free to expand into africa and asia fairly easily.

Edit: Whoops, i read this a Mamluks for some reason

[Omniconda]

start of the Timmy can be a little tough to settle down depending on when your -50 liberby desire ruler dies. if its year 1 your gonna struggle if its year 6 your set for a great run.

Why
Transoxiana has 17 units pushing relivtive strenght way to high and giving to much liberty desire.

Fix
Intergrate them asap Nov 1454 intergrate at least 2 vassels, you have Cores on pretty much all their lands (except parts of Afgan) so intergration is free and instant if they are loyal.

How
These first years you have 3 goals. build 2-4 over force limit.keep them Vassels happy and weak. to this end you wanna keep all diplos on improved relations and start a war with Ajam, Ajam has alot of your cores and will likly only have 1 ally (QQ) let the vassels do teh fighting and conserve your forces (merc up if you need too you can fix money later)
develop in Samakand to keep Transoxia in the war each dev is -5 liberty desire for a short time but use as little as possible at this stage.

Save your Monarch points.

the big finish

Liberty Nuke
as soon as Nov 1454 comes around you should have relations to 190 with at least 2 of your vassels (transoxia hopfully)
check alls set up and drop enough dev on them to get under 50 liberty for instant intergration.

once the first 2 are done everything settkes down you can spend a few years setting up the war for delphi

[Mr.M]

Set Mana focus to mil

Retake cores from Ajam asap

DONT release vassals

GG

[Mr.M]

Cored provinces cost 0 when annexing vassals, since half of your vassal have your cores you can insta annex them after the inital 10 years.

[Spude]

Placate Transoxiana immediately at the start of the game so they are not too grumpy and have one diplomat be there 24/7, royal marriage with them as soon as possible. Raise relations with Fars and Sistan as well.
Then attack Ajam as soon as possible, let your vassals do the sieging and fighting, keep your armies close to them so you can assist in those buttclenching fights, take as much as you can, Ajam lands are your former cores so it will be cheap and efficient to core them.

Now cool down a bit, raise and relatios with rest of your vassals and royal marriage them. Iirc you need to wait until 1454 until you can integrate. Integrate Fars, Sistan and Khorasan first, those are the quickest ones and it drops Transoxiana from disloyal and rebellious to cool and calm quite quickly.
Then integrate Afghanistan so you have wider way to India and then focus there so you can get those needed provinces for forming Mughals.

After forming Mughals focus on getting your economy running well, because during the second period Age of Reformation, Mughals can have exlusive bonus 'Mughal Artillery, -50% artillery cost'
This lets you house ♥♥♥♥-ton of artillery very early on. Helps with sieges a lot since there a lot of countries and thus forts in India. Helps in fights as well even if artillery fire damage is not that great early on.

Also GET ADMINISTRATIVE IDEAS. Mughals have -25% core-creation cost, this coupled with Admins second idea (also -25% core-creation cost) lets you have dirt cheap conquering.
Humanist is also good one but I personally went with Religious and converted to Sikh for that +10% morale bonus and -10% mil. tech. cost so I could Deus Vult around like idiot and conquer what I wanted.
Also stack Discipline as much as you can, Mughals +5% discipline national idea this lets you easily get 130% or so discipline when adding some ideas, policies, advisor and absolutism bonus.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1333008462 I usually play quite relaxed and focus maybe on my own goals more than achievements but even then it lead me to that.
Maybe one things I would've done differently was to focus on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ up Ottomans earlier, during late game they were real pain in the ass having allied tons of countries around me.