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India, Part 2: Beating up people for their lunch money.
Welcome back.
In this episode, we?re going to play the actual game. Exciting, isn?t it?
We start off by getting married. As my wife was a courtier and unrelated to any great houses (at least, none that were worth a lot of prestige) we take a significant prestige hit. To offset this I take the option that gives me prestige. The other option would give me money, but at the beginning of the game I want prestige. Later on, however, we?ll have so much prestige we won?t know what to do with it.
Before you ask, I forgot to get the ?Get Married? ambition, having instead selected the ?Improve Stewardship? ambition. I tried to cancel it and get the ?Get Married? ambition, but it was too late. Oh well, it was only 10 piety.
I also get the notification that I have been granted the two concubines I asked for. Concubines are pretty easy to get, but bear in mind you won?t be granted them if they are a close relative of their liege or if they have a claim on their liege?s land.
It should be noted that the woman herself is not asked, so this can be a good way to get a good tutor into your court if she refuses your invitation. This sounds harsh, but I like to imagine that the Palas take good care of their concubines. And for some reason I keep reading her name as ?Obama?.
On a side note, do you see that seal? That seal always has the symbol of the dynasty that wrote the letter. It?s the little things that make a game great instead of good.
This guy here, the Raja of Kalinga Ganga, is our next target. He?s got some of our de jure land and we?re going to take it back. He?s going to hate our guts. If you look at the screen, you?ll see I?ve made an arrow pointing to a button with a crown on it. This is the Realm button and it is very important to look at it before declaring war.
This is why. By clicking on the button and mousing over where the arrow is pointing, you can see how many troops your opponent can call up.
This is us. As you can see, we kinda outnumber him. Bear in mind that when outnumbered like this, the AI will call up holy orders and/or mercenaries if they afford it. But looking at the Raja?s cash, he doesn?t have enough money to purchase mercenaries.
Since this is the Alexiad start, Byzantium has lost pretty much all of its holdings in Asia Minor. This means that the Christian kingdoms are going to start up a Crusade soon. Honestly, this won?t concern us one bit, but I feel I should show all the pop ups.
The Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John are created to aid the Christians in reclaiming their territory. We Buddhists have our own holy order, the Chosen of Ashoka.
Presumably, they are named for the great Buddhist Emperor, Samrat Chakravartin Ashoka, the man whose conquests we are attempting to emulate.
We are not going to be using these guys much, as their piety cost competes with our subjugation wars. Besides, Buddhists can only holy war for counties, not duchies. If we are attacked by infidels and we are desperate, we?ll probably hire these guys.
The Pope launches a Crusade for Greece and the game rightly notes that it?s really no concern of ours. Rum, however, is going to get rocked like a hurricane.
Our troops prepare for war and march to the Kalinga Raj to take what is ours. This war is barely worth noting and I won?t be showing much of it.
At this point, you might be thinking, ?Gee, this start is pretty easy.? You?d be right, mostly, except for this guy, the Raja of Gahadevid. He is a megaduke ? a duke with two or more duchies ? and he hates us. He will nearly always fire off an independence war, so keep some money in reserve to buy mercenaries.
Fortunately, I catch him plotting against me and throw him in prison. At this point he is a non-entity. He can?t join or start factions, join or start plots, I don?t need his approval to update the Crown and Succession laws, and he can?t arrange marriages or betrothals. However, since he didn?t actually rebel, I can?t strip him of his titles for free.
He also can?t have sex with his wife or his concubine, so no children can be born. This is a shame, since if he had another son his duchies would be divided up between them. Fortunately, his son is Content, which gives him a +50 approval bonus to me.
Meanwhile, I gather my army in full (about 4000 guys) and march off to crush the Kalinga Ganga Raj. I?m at Minimal Crown Authority, so I can?t replace commanders in my army. I am personally leading the center flank, which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it?s a chance to gain prestige, good traits, learn new command traits, and otherwise become a better ruler. On the other hand, I could be captured, killed, or have other unpleasant things happen to me.
I engage his army at Rayagada. Let?s decipher this image, shall we? (Note: I am not the world?s expert on battles in CKII, I may not give every single detail, but I will tell what I know.)
First off, I?ve engaged my enemy from the wrong province. The black arrow shows that I?ve crossed a river to fight him, which means my troops will be getting a penalty in combat.
The yellow arrow shows that he is defending from the mountains, which gives his troops a boost in combat.
The armies are divided into three flanks: Left, Center, and Right. Each flank will engage their opposite flank until one of them breaks. At this point, the remaining flank will join another flank in engaging the enemy and gets a boost while it does so.
The green arrow shows the morale bar. If the bar is completely green, the troops are full morale. As they lose their morale, however, the bar will fill up with red. At a certain level of red, the flank will break and flee. After five days, the flank will leave the battle.
While the flank is fleeing, the opposite flank will either join the flank in fighting the enemy if it can or if all enemies are fleeing, it will chase down and kill as many soldiers as it can.
There are three stages to combat: Skirmish, Melee, and Pursuit.
The first is Skirmish and that is when the archers are firing at each other. Infantry and cavalry can?t do much but they do take the hits here. The blue arrow shows the Skirmish phase.
The second is Melee, where the red arrow is pointing. This is where your infantry shine and usually where morale starts dropping fast.
The final is Pursuit, which is not shown in this picture. At this the victorious side is cutting the fleeing enemy and a fair portion of the casualties take place here. Cavalry excel in this phase. The enemy army may not be completely annihilated at this point, but usually after a few more battles it will be.
If you look by the portraits, you can see little numbers. These are the commanders? Martial scores and it affects how well they do in combat and the effects of their traits.
We'll get into more detail once we have better examples of battles, but for now we?ll continue with the LP.
I outnumber him 2 to 1 and win. A few more battles and his army will be too weak to do anything.
While I engage the enemy at Kalinga Ganga Raj, the Maharaja of Bhauma Pala sees his chance and declares de jure war over Srihatta. I only have 300 more men than he does, so I decide to hire some help.
I decide to hire the Bengal Band. They?re cheap and I don?t need that much muscle. Mercenaries are a good way to bolster your forces, but they can VERY expensive. Hire wisely.
Now the odds are looking a little better. I?ve got 5000 to his 3000. I?m still fighting with the Kalingas and I really don?t want to have the Bengal Band around longer than it should. I?m just going to beat up his army and make a White Peace. He won?t give me any money for it, but we?ll have a truce for 10 years. He?ll probably spend the rest of the game hoping I won?t notice him.
I?ve added a red arrow pointing to a picture of a river. If you mouse over this, a tooltip will show what river crossing are between this one and others. Since the placement of river crossings can be very counterintuitive, it?s important to look at this icon.
I?m not going to waste a subjugation war on him. I?ll probably form the Bengal Empire first, than force someone?s claim on his throne. I?ll explain how claims work in a later post.
The war ends in a White Peace. Now to finish off the Kalinga Raj.
This might seem a little strange, but I believe there were Greek communities in India for a long time. Not sure if they were still around at this point.
The Kalinga Raj surrenders quickly and I get the province. We?ll be back for another round.
In other news, my courtier Obayamma has a daughter. 
She will be the first of many children.
She didn?t inherit Quick, which is a shame. You?ve probably seen the red arrow pointing to a baby inside a green circle. This indicates that this child is the child of a concubine. She inherits normally, but she gets -1 diplomacy. As both Obayamma and I are both Kshatriyas, she inherits our caste. Were Obayamma a Vaishya ? belonging to the merchant caste ? Asima would also be a Vaishya. When parents of different castes have children, the lower caste is the one that is passed down.
The reason she has four learning is because she is a Buddhist and Buddhists if you remember have an automatic +4 learning.
I decide to switch religious schools. This costs me some prestige but gives me some piety. I decide to become a Vajrayana Buddhist. This will give me an extra point of health, but I will lose the general +5 opinion boost that Mahayana Buddhists get. But I don?t have a lot of heirs and I want this guy to live a long time.
The other option, becoming a Theravada Buddhist, would give me an additional point of learning.
Speaking of religion, I suppose I should talk about the Muslims we?re likely to run into.
The guys I?ve highlighted are the Shia Qarmatia. They are bordered by the Sunni Ghaznavids to the north and a bunch of Hindus to the east. They are completely boned.
The Shia Soomras are more likely to survive until we show up and holy war them out of India.
The Ghaznavids are a different beast and will probably form the biggest outside threat. They will lose most of their Indian provinces to religious revolts, but we should watch out for them.
However, for whatever reason, they can only call up about half their troops. Oh well.
Here is our tech tree. Right now, our tech rate is pretty slow, but it will speed up by the end game.
There?s a lot to go over here, but I?ll just mention the important stuff for now. Expect a more detailed post later.
Military Organization: This increases the size of our retinue (we?ll go over that in a later post) and increases our morale and supply capacity for armies. In addition, at MO 4 we?ll lose the attrition penalty in unreformed pagan lands.
Majesty: This increases the rate at which our piety and prestige go up. Very important for subjugating.
Legalism: This increases the size of our demense depending on our rank. It also shortens the amount of years the opinion malus ?short reign? lasts.
Our troublesome raj dies in prison. What a shame.
One of my provinces converts to Bengali culture. Yay!
Another of my concubines gets pregnant.
Since I?m at peace, I decide to hold a few events.
First up is the tiger hunt! It?s less exciting than it sounds! (Also Jains can?t hold them) (And forgive the ?map saved? on the screen)
One of my rajas decides he has better things to do than kill tigers. This really just means he doesn?t like me. Well too bad for him.
Oh Ramapala, you have no idea. Seriously, I have never gotten anything worthwhile from a tiger hunt.
We found a tiger. Since Ramapala is a boss, he?ll kill the thing himself. As far as I can tell, there?s no real benefit to the first one, except that you tried to kill a tiger singlehandedly. Haven?t tried the second one yet.
Ramapala! 
The tiger hunt failed, Ramapala turns his attention to other forms of violence. Like more war.
Next Time: Meeting our unfortunate victims future vassals.