Tianxia Hsenwi: Part 02: 947-959: Maharaja of Shen

The whole South-East Asia (the area East of India and South of China) is split about evenly between Buddhist and Hindus, with pockets of various Pagans.

Buddhists have only one society - some kind of monks - and it's of course awful compared with every other society, but since I had no other choice, I joined them. I wasn't very good at this, and ended up stealing one of the bones of Buddha, and murdering one of the monks who caught me. It turns out I didn't murder all the people who saw, so they kicked me out.

King of Bengal who made us go Buddhist passed away, and the throne passed to his son - betrothed to my daughter. I ended up forming a lot of marriage alliances with Buddhist rulers around me, but I couldn't really cash in on that.

As a Buddhist, I just didn't really have any good CBs. There was a 6k tribal Sanamahist rebellion in the Da Yining kingdom to the North, I guess those guys really want those CBs. They managed to win themselves a 3 county realm.

I really wanted to get myself a coastal city, but the only way I could see involved creating two kingdoms - kingdom of Pegu to get proper coastal capital county, and first some early kingdom to get necessary vassalization CB - and best I could do was shitty 3-duchy kingdom of Shan. Back when I was pagan, my plan was to get much better 6-duchy kingdom of Ava through ambition to become king, which gives me good CBs, but non-pagans don't get that.

First problem was that as a tribal, I was really too damn poor, so I forced some neighbours to pay me tribute, but really it wasn't much.

In the meantime I also had to fight a lot of peasant rebels, and joined Bengal's many wars to gain some prestige, personally leading troops in battle for some prestige, and also because my stats are ridiculously good for such early game (+20% movement speed, +20% leading center, 21 martial, 82 personal combat skill).

I finally became king of Shan in 957, which got me good CBs, at very steep cost of 1000 prestige each. I could only afford one so far, so I declared vassalization war for Pegu, against my rival (former ally; all due to all that relic stealing business).

In this fight I even captured a Great Work - Shwedagon Pagoda, but it needs 480 gold for restoration work before it's useful, and I don't have anywhere near that kind of money.

Now being a Maharaja of Shen is absolutely not where I'm going with this long term.

My Moojkai kingdom, which if things go right, will become a merchant republic.

The easy way of just going feudal seems a lot less interesting.