Paradox keeps nerfing Exploration ideas and buffing Expansion. Exploration used to have 2 colonists and the only way to explore the map. Expansion was just 1 colonist and some trade stuff instead. Then they moved the 2nd colonist from Exploration to Expansion, added buying maps, stealing maps, and now as long as you have any colonists you can buy explorer from your merchant estate. That interaction has a bunch of restrictions, and 3rd colonist is nice, but unless you go full colonial rush like Portugal, I think the meta is to take Expansion only and just not bother with Exploration at all.
This is a bit of a problem as now I want two paper idea groups in a row - Expansion to get to Europe, and Admin for more gov cap. Meanwhile I'm quite good with bird mana, and literally overflowing with sword mana even after paying 50% extra for each tech due to not having Renaissance.
Well, it got even worse. I accepted event chain to flip me Confucian. It's not a good religion (used to be literally the worst in game), but it has some new mechanics, so why not. And Confucian apparently really wants Humanist for extra harmony and harmonization speed, so I took that second instead of admin. Expansion into Humanism, what a weird combo.
And even worse, now I want Expansion, Humanist, Admin as my first three idea groups. This is going to hurt.
I got Shinto harmonized for free from event (otherwise switching would be ridiculously painful), and the first one I picked for harmonization was Hindu. There's some bonuses to harmonization speed, so it will take about 25 years per religion.
Somehow, and it really doesn't make much sense, I was able to setup a trade league with Australian OPM tribes. The whole Australian trade was wort like 1 gold, but at least I'm doing something new here.
I kept expanding in Hindu parts of Malaya, so Sunnis (and one Theravada country) won't care. It's going really slowly as I'm trying to minimize both mana and AE cost, and it's not really a priority. There's a lot of money there, but I'm already nearly as rich as Ming at 98 income, with two gold mines about to get captured as soon as truce timers expire, and Farm Estate manufactory spam will soon start paying off.
My route towards institution reached the Maldives. But now there's a problem. There's no uncolonized islands near Arabia, so I can either get legit CBs on Kilwa (or even worse Madagascar or India) and very slowly get from there to Egypt. Or just no-CB someone. But if I wanted to no-CB, I could have done this 50 years ago and saved so much mana. I don't even need any coring range, there's exception for vassals on same continent, so an Arabian vassal in Asia would let me core there (no-CB wouldn't quite work in Africa).
I might go the Kilwa / Madagascar route. There could still be some opportunity to reach Arabia from there with enemy alliance networks, and there's a few gold mines there.
I finally managed to convince Korea to join my wars, so I took some land from Orochoni, while Koreans ate the attrition to fight Orochoni ally Oirats. It's not about the land at all - it's about border with Ming I'll need to challenge them soon. I think I'd have decent chances against just Ming, unfortunately my armies and fleets are split between Manchuria, Malaya, and soon maybe Africa.
I can't call Korea or Dai-Viet into a war against Ming, as they're Ming tributaries. However I can call them into a war against another Ming tributary, to break that relation. At least for Korea there are some good options, less so for Dai Viet, but I'll try to figure one out.
Ottomans got Renaissance. The Mamluks are almost ready to get some loans and press embrace button, except AI doesn't actually try to speed embrace institutions like a human would. Somehow the Golden Horde got it before the Mamluks, so it's now very slowly spreading into Persia.
It took me a while to get border with Ming, but I plan to only challenge them once they start falling apart, so there's no rush. Manchu lands are annoying as I can't make a trade company there as it's same "subcontinent", and I can't convert them as Confucian penalties for conversion are huge, so I'll be tanking -7% religious unity from just that small area.
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