Saturday, May 1, 2021

Tianxia China: Part 01: 936-943: Cishi Lin Zheng of Huizhou

The start is as low as it gets, except for decent stats

Japan was really bugged, but I still want to play on Tianxia's expanded map. So this time in a bit later bookmark, from "Iron Century" bookmark, or as it was known in China - time of "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms".

Now there aren't really that many characters to choose from, as the mod doesn't generate many counts and dukes, and mostly just gives top level ruler 20-30 county demesne, under assumption that they'll give away excess to the vassals, so it will all be fine. And it is, about a year after starting. Or I could start game, create some vassals, and switch character. So it's not a huge deal.

But I found a nice one-count coastal count, a vassal of Han Emperor (known as "Southern Han" in history books, to distinguish that empire from the earlier "Han" empire). An obvious long term goal would be to unify China under my rule, but I'll see where it will take it. Maybe I'll become Jewish Emperor of Ethiopia or something.

I customized the character to be Han Taoist, shy, quick, humble, administrator, mastermind theologian, 8/8/15/7/17. A Confucian scholar who did really well in imperial exams, and as the first in his family managed to get an important assignment running a county. Based on traits, he might also be somewhat of an anime protagonist, so I'm sure he'll do well.

As every ruler starts with massively oversized demesne, first thing that needs to happen is waiting for titles to be distributed, and I hope I'd get some of them. Amazingly that actually worked.

I got married to a daughter of some North Chinese duke, and got myself 3 concubines from various parts of the world.

I was nominated as my emperor's marshal, despite this really not beig my strengh. We had good times hunting a tiger, which I slayed personally.

I got third county in my duchy by force, but unfortunately that duchy was also included by emperor's capital, and he created duchy title for himself instead.

My chancellor instead managed to prove beyond any doubt that I'm the rightful ruler of duchy of Zhanjiang, a bit to the South, as it had no ruler at all right now and its two counts were not rightful rulers of their counties.

Finally a few fights and a lot of gold spent later I became gongjue (duke) of Zhangjiang at age of 22.

Meanwhile all claimants to imperial throne are fighting. My liege is winning as he's the strongest claimant in the South, but North Chinese claimants have far bigger armies.

Not the duchy I originally planned to get, but so much content is locked behind a duke tier, that it simply must be the priority when playing as a count. I even thought about getting tribal Taiwanese duchy, but I let it go.

I have no way of creating vassal kingdom as long as my emperor has average or better Mandate of Heaven (he's at average). Even duchy creation would be banned if his Mandate of Heaven was good or higher. The whole Mandate of Heaven system is completely undocumented, so I have no idea why different emperors have different mandates.

Original 6 emperors were Han, Jin, Wu, Shu, Min, and Tang

Liao (former Khitan horde) joined as new claimant emperors. Tang, got conquered by the Jin. Min doesn't look too good, and many minor dukes and kings are also suffering, caught between fights of the emperors.

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