Majapahit: Part 02: 1456-1472: Majapahit Empire Restored

Now that the disaster was over, I could do some expanding. Except everyone except me was on mil tech 4 or 5, while I was still at 3, so maybe that should wait a bit.

New 1.31 bugs

So now we get into another issue with 1.31. Majapahit is supposed to create vast empire of tributaries, and that used to work, except at one point they changed the code and you can only create tributaries you neighbour by land. Not by sea zone like with everything else (fabricating claims etc.). Oh and they removed most straits in the regions. Do they even have QA?

Anyway, I conquered myself a few provinces, and that let me ask 7 countries to be my tributaries. I have unique mission that converts all tributaries into vassals.

So why not get myself 7 new vassals this way, getting me massively over relationship limit? Well mostly because more bugs. New vassals get modifier that makes them very loyal - but that doesn't apply to my existing vassals, who look at relative strength including those new superloyal vassals. There's same bug with having HRE vassals swarm (who are correctly loyal) and some non-HRE vassals (who incorrectly look at HRE vassals swarm and decide you're too weak). So that's a third issue I didn't discover in testing.

No big deal, I'll just take my time and annex 3 existing vassals first. If I knew, I wouldn't have make vassals. In the meantime some more conquering.

Conquest plan

So basically I wanted to either conquer everyone south of Ayutthaya, or turn them into a tributary (as they'd then be a free vassal).

As nobody will accept being a tributary unless I neighbour them, that means I needed to conquer myself a lot of neighbouring. And there were also some OPMs I probably shouldn't have bothered tributarizing, as OPM vassals are a waste of vassal slot - even if I get 6 base, +2 strong duchies, +1 Majapahit mission.

Another thing is that I'll need to annex them eventually, so this is really asking for some idea group that gives diplomatic reputation, or extra diplo slots, or annexation cost reduction. Meanwhile I'd really much rather take religious or exploration. Well, can't have everything.

Enforce Loyalty

So after conquering my way around, I clicked the Enforce Loyalty mission button, converting all my tributaries into vassals. Now I control the whole islands except for Brunei and OPM Siak.

I annexed my old vassal Makasar, and my two other old vassals Tidore and Malacca got bribed into behaving.

So far I got up to 433 dev and 275 vassal dev, and monthly income of 39, making me 4th Great Power after Ming, France, and Ottomans.

My capital alone is 81dev, weirdly at 35/31/15, I guess that's a quirk of how concentrate development works (if it's not divisible by 3, it goes in order: tax, production, manpower).

And that's it!

Normally I'd play longer, but this campaign had zero challenge, and it's only going to get less challenging.

Concentrate development is ridiculously overpowered, and I didn't even abuse it, just pressed when it was easy.

Before the 1.31 patch most countries tried to build army up to force limit. This time they mostly don't, and it's common to have a country with 1k or 2k troops. Also everyone drills nonstop, even when I'm standing in next province at their border, so I can wipe out any army at any time.

I guess naval combat was the most challenging of it all, as I was usually seriously outnumbered, and with some straits removed, and hostile landing time increased, it was actually important to winning wars.

I can see how the disaster would destroy Majapahit AI every time, and if you're unprepared (or fall for the Muslim trader event - it's a trap, you must say no) it might be a bit of a challenge, but really, without simultaneous pressure by some foreign power it just didn't matter.

Maybe Khmer disaster is actually worse, as Khmer might need to face Ayutthaya and Lan Xang in the middle of its disaster, but AI Khmer is usually doing a lot better than AI Majapahit so maybe not.

To be honest, I'd still recommend playing 1.30 patch. Or some other game.

I look weird as I needed to border everyone to get them as free vassals, and I only figured it out halfway (because tributaries over sea zones used to work just fine; and requiring land connection makes absolutely no sense)

My Empire. If I conquer or vassalize something I don't even need to spend any mana, or missionaries, or culture convert, or deal with unrest or such - I can magically teleport a quarter of their population to my capital, all magically turning into right culture, right religion, and zero autonomy happy citizens.

There are cheesy ways to do it like vassalize Ming (with one of many magic CBs), then relocate 200dev of Chinese people on day one. I got bored before I even reached that point.

Majapahit: Part 01: 1444-1456: Fall of Majapahit Averted

1.31 patch has been a dumpster fire, but after a few hotfixes I decided to give it another look. And it's still a dupmster fire. So I started doing balance fixes until I got it to a somewhat playable state.

EU4 long had disaster system, where some countries which would otherwise be too easy like Ming and Timurids have a few extra early game challenges to face. These has been mostly trivial if you understand their mechanics, and once you overcome them, it's not like there's that much challenge other than speedrunning WC.

But now patch added two much worse disasters. The second worst disaster inflicts 114dev Khmer. The absolute worst one inflicts 87dev Majapahit, and that's the one I'll be playing.

Starting position

Majapahit used to be overlord of the whole Nusantara, but now we're reduced to half of Java, with just 4 small tributaries.

The disaster will start in a month, it causes -5 stability, +15% mana costs, +15% liberty desire, -50% average monarch lifespan, plus some bad events.

To overcome it, three missions need to be passed:

• have 5 loyal subjects
• have +2 stability, 90 legitimacy, and no rebels
• have 80% religious unity, no unrest, and be at disaster for at least 10 years

In other words - super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Before unpausing

Demand Loyalty mission is hilariously easy. We already have 4 loyal tributaries. We have 1 possible OPM vassal to make. I can finish it before unpausing.

I can then disinherit my 0/1/1 heir, deal with estates, rival back countries that rivaled me, thu usual.

War with Sunda

Now disaster starts December 1st and gets my stability to -3, and I can only declare war December 11th, so that would be a problem, right? Not really, I just keep that window open for a while.

As I declared war on my rival Sunda, I instantly lost 2 tributaries, as they were allied to Sunda. This is why I pre-clicked that first mission.

I was in a huge paper mana hole, so I just took their money, power projection, and pillaged their capital of 6dev.

War for gold

There was one thing I was willing to spend my paper mana on - gold mine on Borneo.

While I was doing this, there was a fun event chain, a great hero Damarwulan emerges, and if he wins 5 battles I can either make him my husband, or my heir. I picked heir, and that code was not actually implemented, instead I got an age 0 baby as heir. Comments in the file literally say "# convert general to heir # new effect" but looks like nobody bothered actually coding this.

Considering all other issues with 1.31, this really isn't big, but Majapahit was supposed to be the flagship country of the patch, and it's been like 10 hotfixes.

It was all ridiculously slow expansion but once developed that gold mine will produce about as my whole starting half of Java.

War for Makasar

Islands of Nusantara are a mix of Hindus, Sunnis, and Animists. Anh since nobody cares for the Animists, so they're the best target to deal with first.

I did second of my three missions Restore Order (90 legitimacy, 2 stability, and no rebels) without any special tricks.

I took some Animist lands as two vassals, and that dragged me into very convenient defensive war against another Animist minor, so I grabbed a total of 7 vassal provinces there.

Then the 10 year timer was over, so I had one rebellion to provoke on that gold province, and I could now finally pass Protect the Faith mission.

Prevent Collapse

The last mission requires three missions I did and also owning all my starting provinces - so I needed to annex that OPM vassal I released before. I still think this is easier than trying to get 6 subjects the hard way.

And with that disaster was averted. For literally the worst disaster in the game it felt pretty insignificant.

Renaissance

Unfortunately I didn't notice that I made burghers unhappy, so I had some dev cost penalty, but I can definitely live with that. I developed Renaissance just next to my capital, and embraced it without waiting for its spread.

Scorecard so far

Before:

• dev: 87
• income: 6.9

After:

• dev: 151 plus 55 in vassals
• income: 14.3

So you can barely see any difference on the map, but I pretty much doubled in power.

That red in East Java is me. It's not a strong start, but Majapahit doesn't really have any natural enemies it's afraid of. Brunei, Malacca, Ayutthaya etc. might become strong eventually, and Ming might get here at some point, but these aren't issues to worry about anytime soon

I only took gold mine on Brunei, there's another in West Sumatra.

Other than that I only did vassals and politely asking people to relocate to my capital, as I start with such massive mana deficit early game.

Note on Khmers

The other country I considered were the Khmer. They have (according to dev diary) less serious disaster, but also lower rewards for getting through it all.

Khmer gets one interesting feature as it has a choice of 3 religions as part of their disaster - Hindu, and 2 kinds of Buddhists. They can also flip Animist and then do something crazy as they have some Animist provinces. The "correct" meta choice obviously being Hindu. Anyway, this feels very similar to what already Hindu Majapahit is doing, so I thought I might as well do the "hard" mode. Turns out it wasn't particularly hard.