How the F beat Ajam as timurids

[Inardesco]

Started Timurids cuz people say they fun.

Ajam beats my troops with ease.

Vassals all throw big middle finger when Shah ruk dies.

After death of Shah my troops become even worse than before ? and my vassals are just chilling in their own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ country.

I run out of manpower but Ajam just keeps pumping troops left and right....


Honestly seems easier to just play Ajam instead of Timurids and form Mughals like that....

[Kapika96]

Ajam has a lot of mountain provinces so my guess is you're attacking them on the mountains. That gives a -2 to all combat rolls and makes a pretty big difference.

At game start there's no quality difference between their troops and yours. You're the same tech group and have equal tech levels. There are no ideas etc. that boost quality for either your or them either. You also outnumber them, by a fair bit so should be able to win just through that.

Avoid attacking onto mountains, instead wait until they move to flat provinces (plains, drylands etc.) then attack. Your vassals will do a lot of the work for you too.

As for when the Shah dies, if that comes very early (as in before you win the Ajam war) it might actually be worth just restarting. Otherwise you really want to start improving relations with your vassals ASAP. You can also develop their provinces, or placate them (at the cost of prestige) to lower liberty desire. Focus on the vassals you have cores on. Since you have cores on all their land you don't have to pay any diplo points to annex them it will be done as soon as the month ticks over. You can even do 2 at once or something. So basically as soon as the 10 years are up and you can start annexing you want to be in a position (190+ relations and <50 LD) to annex 1 or 2 of them ASAP. That will give you a big power boost and massively lower liberty desire for the others.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

Ajam has a lot of mountain provinces so my guess is you're attacking them on the mountains. That gives a -2 to all combat rolls and makes a pretty big difference.

I attack them on mountain fort I captured and they just stackwipe my troops with ease.

Originally posted by Kapika96:

Your vassals will do a lot of the work for you too.

No they don't.

Once Shah dies they won't do squat.

Originally posted by Kapika96:

As for when the Shah dies, if that comes very early (as in before you win the Ajam war) it might actually be worth just restarting. Otherwise you really want to start improving relations with your vassals ASAP. You can also develop their provinces, or placate them (at the cost of prestige) to lower liberty desire. Focus on the vassals you have cores on. Since you have cores on all their land you don't have to pay any diplo points to annex them it will be done as soon as the month ticks over. You can even do 2 at once or something. So basically as soon as the 10 years are up and you can start annexing you want to be in a position (190+ relations and <50 LD) to annex 1 or 2 of them ASAP. That will give you a big power boost and massively lower liberty desire for the others.

I'm not interested in starting and restarting cuz of rng.

I'll just start as Ajam, ♥♥♥♥ over the Timurids, become the Timurids and form Mughals...

Seems less of a hassle than wondering of the game will ♥♥♥♥ me over with rng or not.

[bri]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

I'm not interested in starting and restarting cuz of rng.

I'll just start as Ajam, ♥♥♥♥ over the Timurids, become the Timurids and form Mughals...

Seems less of a hassle than wondering of the game will ♥♥♥♥ me over with rng or not.

Then you may well often find the game frustrating, especially when not playing the "easy" nations as rng can quite easily ruin a campaign for many nations. You could restart as Ajam and have rng allow the Shah to live another 10 years and get smashed by the Tims just as easily but if you play as the Tims you at least have some things you can do to alleviate the issue while as the much weaker Ajam you just have to pray for a quick death...

[Marquoz]

Beating Ajam as the Timurids is quite simple:

--Grant the Strong Duchies privilege
--Royal marry all your vassals
--Use "Lenient Taxation" for your Iqta
--Use your diplomats to max out relations with your strongest vassals ASAP, especially Transoxiana
--Set your vassals to aggressive so they try to fight battles and lose their own troops
--Hire mercs to make your own starting army stronger
--Go to war with Ajam for your cores and take 100% warscore worth

Once the war with Ajam is over, your vassals will remain loyal.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by bri:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

I'm not interested in starting and restarting cuz of rng.

I'll just start as Ajam, ♥♥♥♥ over the Timurids, become the Timurids and form Mughals...

Seems less of a hassle than wondering of the game will ♥♥♥♥ me over with rng or not.

Then you may well often find the game frustrating, especially when not playing the "easy" nations as rng can quite easily ruin a campaign for many nations. You could restart as Ajam and have rng allow the Shah to live another 10 years and get smashed by the Tims just as easily but if you play as the Tims you at least have some things you can do to alleviate the issue while as the much weaker Ajam you just have to pray for a quick death...

And Shah did indeed continue to live when I played Ajam....

Which pissed me off and now I'm back at Timurids...This time he died 2 seconds after I declared on Ajam but I had made a save a few days before war decs were allowed and reloaded it, then he finally died when Ajam was fully occupied aside from a single province.

By this time I had garnered enough money and prestige to bring them down to 50% of liberty desire and then I saw the button for devving provinces...Which to me sounds way too overpowered to just get rid of 5 liberty desire for 5 mana points...

So I clicked the heck out of it.

Meaning those morons aren't being a complete asshat and I can focus on expanding instead

The Shah dying is pretty much the same as when I did my Aztec run....Godtier general and then he dies marching into his first battle....

[RCMidas]

Welcome to the inescapable reality of RNG. Millions of games being played results in the law of averages demanding the most extreme of outliers MUST occur eventually to someone. And neither Rukh's death nor a general's combat longevity are particularly extreme outliers.

[Horo]

So the choice of Ajam's allies mattered in a couple of my starts. Sometimes they went with Uzbek and I thought I had to fight on two front, but that was not the case at all. Transoxiana was in their way. So although my vassal was uppity, they did involuntarily participate in the war when Uzbek started invading them and they fought back.

It was hilarious.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Welcome to the inescapable reality of RNG. Millions of games being played results in the law of averages demanding the most extreme of outliers MUST occur eventually to someone. And neither Rukh's death nor a general's combat longevity are particularly extreme outliers.

Exactly this. It's a point I make over and over when someone is certain the game is rigged. No, it's not rigged. If a million EU4 campaigns are played, than a "one in a million" chance is going to happen to somebody, guaranteed. The game would be rigged if it didn't happen!

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Welcome to the inescapable reality of RNG. Millions of games being played results in the law of averages demanding the most extreme of outliers MUST occur eventually to someone. And neither Rukh's death nor a general's combat longevity are particularly extreme outliers.

Exactly this. It's a point I make over and over when someone is certain the game is rigged. No, it's not rigged. If a million EU4 campaigns are played, than a "one in a million" chance is going to happen to somebody, guaranteed. The game would be rigged if it didn't happen!

RNG sucks.

I don't care if some uber heir dies when I'm having a stable run but having the start of your run linger on: How long will this dude survive? Is it 5 days or 5 years? is rubbish.

That said, once that phase of Timurids has passed its quite easy. Lots of nations in the area want to become your vassal so they can escape Otto's or Mamelukes. Hisn Kafya somehow took out Aq Qoyunlu and was very happy becoming my vassal. QQ somehow released Iraq for no reason and after I vassalized Hisn Kafya I took them down a peg before vassalizing them.

Now it's just about moving into India while taking notches out of QQ to consolidate those areas before I focus on Ottos or Mamelukes.

[bri]

I don't care if some uber heir dies when I'm having a stable run but having the start of your run linger on: How long will this dude survive? Is it 5 days or 5 years? is rubbish.

Well, the players didn't much care for it when the opposite end of the spectrum with rulers living exactly as long as they historically did was the case either. Of course there were some obvious other issues involved in that era of the game as well but it was considered boring, deterministic, etc. that you knew exactly when a ruler was going to die.

Personally, I'm not overly fond of playing highly rng reliant starts either but the Tims are a somewhat special case.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Exactly this. It's a point I make over and over when someone is certain the game is rigged. No, it's not rigged. If a million EU4 campaigns are played, than a "one in a million" chance is going to happen to somebody, guaranteed. The game would be rigged if it didn't happen!

RNG sucks.

I don't care if some uber heir dies when I'm having a stable run but having the start of your run linger on: How long will this dude survive? Is it 5 days or 5 years? is rubbish.

This is the direct result of literally thousands of posts on the EU1, EU2, and EU3 forums complaining about how railroaded and samey every game was. The developers listened to these endless complaints by adding RNG to the game, the same RNG you are now complaining about.

You won't ever get what you want. The pro-RNG crowd is larger than its opposition by orders of magnitude. If you don't like it, don't play EU4.

[beegee84]

yea timurids can take a few restarts if your ruler dies too soon but after that your a power house

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Originally posted by Inardesco:

RNG sucks.

I don't care if some uber heir dies when I'm having a stable run but having the start of your run linger on: How long will this dude survive? Is it 5 days or 5 years? is rubbish.

This is the direct result of literally thousands of posts on the EU1, EU2, and EU3 forums complaining about how railroaded and samey every game was. The developers listened to these endless complaints by adding RNG to the game, the same RNG you are now complaining about.

You won't ever get what you want. The pro-RNG crowd is larger than its opposition by orders of magnitude. If you don't like it, don't play EU4.

I never played 1,2 or 3 so can't really talk about those.

That said, they could do other things than random chance. Lots of the European nations play practically the same everytime with the only variation being the alliance blocks that you have to manouver around.

[RCMidas]

Yeah, that's the HRE and France taking most of the brunt of that. Poland getting Lithuania in so many games doesn't help either, and Castile absorbing Aragon too, as that doubles the number of phat countries dominating the region before the Reformation even starts.

[naked yoga instructor]

this guy doesnt know the game obviously, play more beginner friendly nations first sir.