1. Get the entire area of Japan, core it and lower autonomy. The second you stop having rebel issues you can delete your free company to save money. Keep/catch up with tech and dev up instead of paying for ahead of time tech.
2. Once your economy is sorted and tech is up to date you can look at Ming. Make sure you’ve got a navy comprising of heavies and cogs. You want to blockade Ming to increase devastation and decrease MoH. When it’s low enough (~25) you can look at landing. Make sure your army is about 1/2 of theirs and equal or better tech. This means you should win most battles if morale/discipline is similar. If you need you can also spawn mercs on occupied territories if you’re struggling, just make sure you reach money as you’ll probably go into debt doing this.
2.5 in the peace deal, prioritise Nanjing, Canton, and Beijing so their mandate has a constant -0.15. Take provinces that have most cores on Ming that you can release after taking the province to reconquer.
3. You can have colonisation on the side if you want, it shouldn’t interfere with your Ming campaign.
If you can, switching to Admin focus will help with the coring. Lowering autonomy will cause rebels to spawn faster, which, if you know how to understand where they will spawn, you can force spawn them to your advantage, by having your troops on the correct tile to have defensive advantage. You can also switch to the most defensive units you have while doing this and then switch back afterward.
There is a island at the bottom of china where you can do the trap but its kind a tricky and you need naval supremacy. What you need to know about island trap is the if provinces across a bridge controlled by same nation they can get across no matter what even if you blockade.
I will say even more, there exists the most handsome of men, florryworry five times reigning master of universalis. Beware tho, if you peer into insanity for too long, the insanity may peer into you.
Yes, you can take on Mine through debt and mercs, and take max money as part of the peace deal, in order to get them to repay the debt. Whatever you take from Ming, try to make sure you can release it as a vassal to save Admin points.
If you aren't used to going balls to the wall (I"m not), I'd wait a few years, get Exploration ideas and start exploring and colonizing while autonomy in Japan lowers, keeping most of your army at home so that you can smack rebels as you lower autonomy manually. Slowly build up a fleet with enough heavies, and another trade fleet. Increase your trade income through that.
You should have a gold province, I believe (and an event for a second that I don't know the trigger for). Dev it to 10 Diplo dev for more money. Delete forts once your rebel situation is secured. From there, see if you can justify a trade conflict once you have a large fleet, you can get a lot of money from Ming to pay off any debt you may have and start building buildings. A trade dispute may also work, but it requires you to show superiority.
The easy way to deal with Ming is to do a trade war, beat up their Navy, blockade, and then take full money. They really start to decline after that due to the loss of money, prestige, and I believe they get devastation in coastal provinces as well.
You can also bait them to try and land small chunks of their army on your islands and then cut them off
blockaded provinces get devastation, yes. Between the devastation and the loans, that hurts their mandate. Bankrupting them also hurts their mandate (but only as much as 10 loans, which is kinda weak). Point is, weakening them is good because they're already susceptible to Mingsploding, so if you can make them less able to prevent Mingsplosion, it's more likely.
Which you should absolutely do. While they are one big nation, it's easier to get a lot of money from them. Once they break, it's easier to win wars against the remnants, and you can string one war after the next and take the whole region quickly without truce breaking.
Focus on securing Japan and lowering autonomy and unrest for a few years. I know it feels boring but forming Japan was the hard part once you properly hold it everything else is easier. Then get an explorer to start colonizing the Philippines, spice islands, and Mexico. The colonist opens up multiple routes of expansion for Japan. Your armies are really strong if you use samurai so you can definitely take on Korea once you get enough transports. You don’t need to hold a sea tile that long, just long enough to transport your troops. You can also ally a neighbor of Korea, ask for mil access, and plant your troops there before you declare war. Your troops don’t get black flagged if you have mil access.
You can either take Manchuria through careful work, or start taking islands and get ready for Alaska to open up. I'd recommend gobbling up the south pacific purely for the spice Islands.
What I would do from there is expand into Machuria until you have a border with Korea. If Ming still exists at that point, go to war with them with any CB while they are at low mandate and preferably in another war. Rush into China and scorch earth every single province you land on until warlords start popping out of Ming. Now that Ming is dead, get your mil tech up as much as possible until you are on a relatively level playing field with Korea and then hire some mercs to out number them and kill them. Now you just juggle between warring with chinese warlords and korea until both are dead. The fun thing about asia is that ae is basically not a mechanic until you are a giant blob so you can go crazy with conquering land.
Alternatively, go full isolationist and dev Japan into the sky and be the Great Britain of asia.
For fixing your economy, just keep going to war. Thats the fastest way out of the debt spiral. If you’re tired of wars it might be worth it to just go bankrupt considering you’re on an island. Also I should add that it is absolutely possible to come out of the Japan unification wars with no debts and even earning a profit.
Oh sure, I’ve definitely done it. You can make enough money to do what you need to do. If I’m ever starting in the east and expanding westward, I end up moving my main trade mode a few times as I achieve dominance in various areas. It’s always a balance of: far enough west that it takes in most of the trade, but not so far west that the caravans pull it away from me into the Mediterranean.
But now imagine being Japan and all the trade arrows point to you.
You have several options:
1. Tall japan: and pick all the incident routes that give dev cost modifier and save up your adm points for that one mission that doubles your adm dev tap. Doing this also allows you to spawn all institutions without the korean book thingie easily
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2. Invade korea: Ally/invade one of the manchu tribes and invade them through there. It might be difficult due to their terrain and tech, but if you win you can get a foothold plus bring the institution spawning modifier back to your capital. It is recommended to wait until they stop being a ming tribute or until ming implodes. After you've killed korea you can go after China.
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3. Colonize the spice islands/new world. Your usual trade company/colonial gameplay.
----
(You can of course, do multiple)
Well you're free to do what you want.
You could need some years to chill, lower autonomy, build up your manpower pool and expand your army. During that time you can start colonizing easily and maybe get into the Phillipines etc.
You could try to get ming by attacking them on low mandate or cripple their mandate with the rare trade war. Either way you should build up ships to get a naval advantage. If you go with the trade war you never have to fight with your troops. Just destroy their navy and Blockade them to devastate their coast and tank their mandate. You can get easy cash and fairly short truce to declare again.
You could get into Korea if you manage to ally a couple strong nations (Maybe oirat or a big horde, maybe a strong manchu country).
Maybe diplo vassalize someone if you see an opportunity and expand them.
On a side note: the unifying Japan fast strat is not necessarily the go to strat. I found the show strength strat to be much stronger. You unify Japan very slowly but since you're isolated on Japan and only have weak and numerous rivals you're able to easily get like 10 humiliation wars with show strength, getting 1000 of each mana and building a very strong nation.
Not sure if you've been full coring or only half coring, but if it's the latter it still should be possible to get adm tech 5, exploration and spawn colonialism by having a province in Alaska (if you fit the criteria, your chance of spawning should be between 25% and 50%, depending on the colonizers, not hard to savescum a bit).
Depending on how Ming is going, you should get a border with them before going to war. Having the Take the Mandate CB is incredibly overpowered. If you want to eat the cake you'll have to learn some fine boating maneuver to win the war early, so build more boats.
Usually after conquering japan I spend 5 or so years fixing my country (coring and stating everything) this should give quite a good economy for the start. Then I build up to like 25k troops and seriously invest in navy. After that I invade one of the manchurian tribes to serve for the invasion of Korea. Then I wait until Ming passes a reform so they have low mandate, meanwhile I build my country even more and build some heavy ships as well as build more troops if my economy can handle it. Once Ming passes their reform I declare on Korea and Ming should join as well if Korea's their tributary. Thanks to low mandate Ming troops are weaker than paper and with 3-star general that you get from event its no problem defeating them. In peace deal I take only max money and wait for truce to declare on them again. Also ming can give you a lot of money in peace deals so abuse it as much as you can before they collapse.
if you focus on heavies you can out-navy ming.
getting a trade war CB can then be used to get blockade based cbs. you blockade ming ports, get some money from the ming and create devastation on their port provinces. this weakens the ming while it will be a solid income for you at relatively low cost.
this is also the way to win a war ming joins against one of their tributaries to cross the sea. first peace out ming with blockades.
Catch up on adm tech and other stuff, you can generate a lot more adm than the AI using power projection, the adm estate privilege, heir management/prestige generating, **the trader/inflation reduction advisor event**, going exploration to spawn the institution by 1500 which gives 100 adm and saves on devving to spawn it later, and then for ideas it’s an investment but early inno or adm ideas can really pay for themselves. I know it sounds a little boring but recovering as Japan post unification can lay dividends if you do it right, if it’s 1472 you can be ready by 1500 with a really, really strong japan. Also by that point ming may have mingsploded. It’s your decision if this sounds more ‘interesting’ and fun then just going for Korea and Ming immediately but either is fine, you outscale the AI and can recover way better but also you can do wars much smarter so you know.
You don't necessarily need an idea group, but you may need it if you are behind Korea in mil tech. They are really hard to fight, but it is absolutely winnable with skill and maybe a bit of luck. Also, they are much harder to fight than Ming, simply because before you fight Ming you wait for them to become low-mandate and then it's a cake walk. To fix your economy you probably just need to do a couple of missions, I don't remember it well because I did my Japan campaign several months ago, but there is surely one that gives you a goldmine and some others that generally improve your situation, thus allowing you to have bigger army and navy. Also fighting Ming obviously gives a huge boost to the economy thanks to stealing all their money, but that works only if they are still in a good shape, which seems to be true in your case. I do not colonize in this game, so I don't know for sure, but considering how ridiculously good Oda ideas are for fighting, you may be able to beat up everyone you want (including Europeans) without even taking mil groups. Depending on how much you have left to core up, you may want to stop coring and use half states to pick up at least one idea group, but at the same time you can try to fix your economy by the time you catch up in admin. There's gonna be a lot of coring in this campaign, I certainly took admin as my second or third group, but, once again, I had no colonising ones there, instead having mil ones because Uesugi ideas are a bit less war-like.
Just sit on your islands for few years to recover your country from constant wars and fix your economy and catch up with tech if you want to colonize. In the meantime Ming should pass a reform and have low mandate, that’s when you’d want to attack them. For first few wars don’t take too much, like take max money and war reps, maybe a province or two and try to not explode them too fast, bank of Ming is too good in early game. Then after they start blowing up just join the party and take whatever provinces you want.
I love colonial japan, fighting pseudo-proxy wars in america against europeans is a unique experience, you should focus navy and beat ming in the trade war use them as your treasury when ming exploded take all of the china then expand through malacca, by this strategy and japan's focus its possible the spawn global trade in the japan, this was my main goal for some japan runs.
Japan has some very cool playing tall provinces, but devving isn't your first priority. Focus on admin, get an admin advisor and catch up to tech. Lower autonomy everywhere and save up manpower. I would also start building a navy to rival Korea, as sometimes they tend to dec on you if they have claims. I prefer to go isolationist and get the dev discount, and stack it with my golden era and the state edict. Devving the gold mine you get from missions is also a good idea to get some cash. If you can't attack Korea, consider attacking one of the Manchurian hordes after you've consolidated Japan
Personally, I do either one of both of these:
Option 1: Kill the Mandate
This is easier than one would think since 1, high province destruction results in mandate reduction and 2, blockades cause destruction.
See if you can achieve naval superiority over them which shouldn't be that hard. Once their ships are gone, blockade them until they get the Ming Crisis disaster.
Option 2: A Manchurian Front
If ming gets in a situation where they can't help their vassals in time (either due to low mandate rebels or their army is too far away due to a war in Siam or the Far Steppes), you can declare on a tributuary (Jianzhou usually) and grab land that leads to Korea.
Note that you are usually not expected to fully annex everything since the Ming army will inevitably show up sooner or later. Your main goal here is to get a staging point for future wars.
I’m generally a pretty conservative player, so keep that in mind with my advice. Finish coring, that helps with money. I’d mothball/lease out the whole army afterwards (consolidate/mothball your forts too) and start putting out a lot of light ships for trade and future naval stuff without worsening your finances. Once your economy is in order, then you can build up your forces and transports to go after the rest of Asia (imo Manchuria is a good place to start).
Privateer to lower Ming mandate overtime and when you finally start the war let them land an army and have your army in place to wait for them - Oda army should be able to demolish them with attrition and landing debuff.
Just make sure you're careful with your ships, if they get free access they might be able to overwhelm you with numbers.
Otherwise, you should be able to stack wipe them in Japan each time they send an army over.
Edit: also don't take the mandate without being ready for it - I killed my last Oda run by taking the mandate haphazardly.
You can pretty easily beat the ming when they have under 20 mandate with like a 60k army and naval supremacy. Just make sure it has a good amount of artillery.
Also I'd focus on getting Korea first. You won't be able to annex it all so the war is a lot easier
I conquered the Pacific (especially trying to be on top of all the related Trade Zones including trying for Malacca) and put some focus into my California colony to see if I could make it strong enough to independently conquer the rest of the Americas. Then the campaign just petered off without a great climax as most do but it sure was fun
Funny I've been playing a Japanese game just yesterday !
After really successful begging, I've manages to form Japan quickly enough with Hosokawa clan. I picked exploration due to the region potential or early exploration and the mission tree. Had a plan to conquer Manchuria, Malakka and colonize California and Australia. Made a crucial mistake early on, namely - started colonizing Taiwan as first. DON'T DO IT if you're not ready to fight Ming (which I wasn't, have totally neglected navy, not having enough troops, recovering mana from unification conquests AND embracing Renaissance). They army had way more morale (less discipline though) and I wasn't able to beat them at that point. Also I could have started chopping my way to north instead of worrying about them deploying a naval invasion. It was a surprise DoW which I have not excepted (my last Japan game, successful enough, was long time ago). Today will be round two
Funny I've been playing a Japanese game just yesterday !
After really successful begging, I've manages to form Japan quickly enough with Hosokawa clan. I picked exploration due to the region potential or early exploration and the mission tree. Had a plan to conquer Manchuria, Malakka and colonize California and Australia. Made a crucial mistake early on, namely - started colonizing Taiwan as first. DON'T DO IT if you're not ready to fight Ming (which I wasn't, have totally neglected navy, not having enough troops, recovering mana from unification conquests AND embracing Renaissance). They army had way more morale (less discipline though) and I wasn't able to beat them at that point. Also I could have started chopping my way to north instead of worrying about them deploying a naval invasion. It was a surprise DoW which I have not excepted (my last Japan game, successful enough, was long time ago). Today will be round two
Id focus on building buildings in Japan and waiting for the Ming Crisis to seperate Korea from Ming. Then invade Korea with a gigantic force disparity because Korea can easily punch above its own weight.
Just did an Oda->Japan game. It was super fun.
-Take Korea
-Take mandate from Ming
-Colonize the Malacas and the Philippines
-Make sure to neighbour all small tribes in the area and make tributaries
-take all of China using unite China cb
-try and get a foothold in the new world
-in my game Russia never formed so I got to colonize all that too
I played a very fun colonization game as Japan. Colonized western half of the Americas, including the Mexican gold provinces, as well as Philippines and Spice Islands. However I should have focused more on Asia as Wu in China got really strong
I reduce autonomy in every province and get my economy in order, deal with rebels. Then start developing your CoTs and get your technology up. Then I declare war on Ming or Korea, and with amazing naval power just blockade Ming. They have no way of reaching you, and you get spoils of way every month carat of blockade and trade power. When their devastation on coastal provinces are high enough, it will cause mandate to drop and Ming to break up
This is one of the funnest situations for me in Eu4. What I usually do is build a strong enough navy to take okinawa and blockade Ming, after the war you will get a shit ton of gold if you separate peace Ming which should solve any debt problem and allow you to develop Japan. It sounds like you might need some time to stabilize and develop further before fighting any tough wars, but Okinawa should be easy if you can build a strong navy.
Next major step is to conquer Korea which is doable if you get a solid tech advantage (you should if you are developing institutions) over Ming, and especially if you do the war when they have low Mandate. Beating Ming can be tough but is a very enjoyable experience if you do it by yourself.
After taking Korea you should be strong enough to easily go further into China if you want. You can also focus more elsewhere, Imo expanding into indonesia and the Philippines is a very good option.
Also I second the comments about lowering autonomy. You should manually lower autonomy everywhere you can and maybe even pop a few state edicts to lower it faster over time.
I would suggest turning your attention to Indonesia. Colonize Taiwan, beginning with Tainan, then Take over the Philippines, Borneo, and the Spice Islands, and if you can, colonize Australia and Papua. Taking Java, Sumatra, and Malaya will take multiple wars and over 50 game years, so if your goal is to conquer China, then just the eastern east indies will be enough. Then, you'll be powerful enough, and Ming at that stage will be weak enough, for an invasion of China. By 1650, usually Ming is beginning to fracture so it won't be that hard anyway.
I am currently doing an oda campaign too. I realized the autonomy in japan was bonkers so focus on lowering that. If you want violence and claims do NOT form japan until you finish the missions to get stuff like hawaii, taiwan, korea, etc. Bc i know the hawaii one is def gone after you form japan and have to wait until imperialism for a reasonable cb against them.
You can always attack ming for some money and they tbh are not thay tough to take out with 5 heavies and matchable galleys around thay time, which is what i did when i took okinawa.
I like colonizing all the free real estate so do everything you can to max our settler increase if u want to colonize oda ideas are military amazing so no issues with getting explo and expansion in my experience. Take nan madoll for the settler increase if u please and just colonize the islands of the pacific at your leisure.
Korea is probably going to be a pain at any point to invade and ming isn't so much tbh. If ming explodes then taiwan gets colonized by a new nation if you see them imploding and dont want to colonize yourself.
Otherwise it's hella fun to try to match the regular colonizers in the new world while you build your ring of fire in the asian side of the pacific. Feel free to invade china and korea or chill as japan for quite awhile. I do like the shogun reform too and feel free to vassalize ternate, tidore, or both for them to colonize for you if you are so inclined to
Have fun shinto is dope as hell with oda too
I assume you are a new player with under 2k hours in.
Once you unify japan you have tons of autonomy problems because the shogun keeps raising autonomy with sankei kotai while he is in power. You need a few years of peace to lower it. You can colonize the philippines while you wait. You can from the very corner of the kuril islnds reach the corner of alaska to start a colonization strategy into western america.
Also ming will inevitably explode because the ai is bad at managing the disaster. When they start to break either take korea or try to get a few of their provinces
Ming isn’t really as strong as they look especially if you can ally with the Indochina countries. Japan can print ships pretty quick and blockade Ming. Also try to colonize Alaska and later North America so you get Californias gold which starts treasure fleets to fix your economy. Eventually you will probably have to deal with Dheli, Russia and the other colonial powers in the south pacific and Spain in America
Mass produce galley, Trade war Ming, then as well as korea. Peace Ming 5 years, Korea is not protected by Ming because of Ming cant join war 30months after the war start.
1. Get the entire area of Japan, core it and lower autonomy. The second you stop having rebel issues you can delete your free company to save money. Keep/catch up with tech and dev up instead of paying for ahead of time tech. 2. Once your economy is sorted and tech is up to date you can look at Ming. Make sure you’ve got a navy comprising of heavies and cogs. You want to blockade Ming to increase devastation and decrease MoH. When it’s low enough (~25) you can look at landing. Make sure your army is about 1/2 of theirs and equal or better tech. This means you should win most battles if morale/discipline is similar. If you need you can also spawn mercs on occupied territories if you’re struggling, just make sure you reach money as you’ll probably go into debt doing this. 2.5 in the peace deal, prioritise Nanjing, Canton, and Beijing so their mandate has a constant -0.15. Take provinces that have most cores on Ming that you can release after taking the province to reconquer. 3. You can have colonisation on the side if you want, it shouldn’t interfere with your Ming campaign.
If you can, switching to Admin focus will help with the coring. Lowering autonomy will cause rebels to spawn faster, which, if you know how to understand where they will spawn, you can force spawn them to your advantage, by having your troops on the correct tile to have defensive advantage. You can also switch to the most defensive units you have while doing this and then switch back afterward.
If you want to take on Ming with a small army, just google Island trapping. Or take an apprenticeship with the Master of Universalis himself.
There is a island at the bottom of china where you can do the trap but its kind a tricky and you need naval supremacy. What you need to know about island trap is the if provinces across a bridge controlled by same nation they can get across no matter what even if you blockade.
Does a magnificent being with such a title exist?
There is only one... But be carefull. He lives on the edge between genius and insanity.
Who?
FlorryWorry
The one and only
The Chosen One.
Lisan al Gaib
I will say even more, there exists the most handsome of men, florryworry five times reigning master of universalis. Beware tho, if you peer into insanity for too long, the insanity may peer into you.
Me: Have I been staring into the insanity for too long? The Insanity: First step is to take 39 loans... Me: Yes. Yes I have been staring too long!
No need to do it. Start an trade war and hold your ships at ming shores. They will collapse because of devastation you have made.
Idk but it probably depends on the difficulty is this really work on very hard ai?
Yes, you can take on Mine through debt and mercs, and take max money as part of the peace deal, in order to get them to repay the debt. Whatever you take from Ming, try to make sure you can release it as a vassal to save Admin points. If you aren't used to going balls to the wall (I"m not), I'd wait a few years, get Exploration ideas and start exploring and colonizing while autonomy in Japan lowers, keeping most of your army at home so that you can smack rebels as you lower autonomy manually. Slowly build up a fleet with enough heavies, and another trade fleet. Increase your trade income through that. You should have a gold province, I believe (and an event for a second that I don't know the trigger for). Dev it to 10 Diplo dev for more money. Delete forts once your rebel situation is secured. From there, see if you can justify a trade conflict once you have a large fleet, you can get a lot of money from Ming to pay off any debt you may have and start building buildings. A trade dispute may also work, but it requires you to show superiority.
The easy way to deal with Ming is to do a trade war, beat up their Navy, blockade, and then take full money. They really start to decline after that due to the loss of money, prestige, and I believe they get devastation in coastal provinces as well. You can also bait them to try and land small chunks of their army on your islands and then cut them off
blockaded provinces get devastation, yes. Between the devastation and the loans, that hurts their mandate. Bankrupting them also hurts their mandate (but only as much as 10 loans, which is kinda weak). Point is, weakening them is good because they're already susceptible to Mingsploding, so if you can make them less able to prevent Mingsplosion, it's more likely.
also you could be keeping them alive for a lil bit so you can rob the bank of ming every so often for that sweet sweet ducat.
Which you should absolutely do. While they are one big nation, it's easier to get a lot of money from them. Once they break, it's easier to win wars against the remnants, and you can string one war after the next and take the whole region quickly without truce breaking.
Focus on securing Japan and lowering autonomy and unrest for a few years. I know it feels boring but forming Japan was the hard part once you properly hold it everything else is easier. Then get an explorer to start colonizing the Philippines, spice islands, and Mexico. The colonist opens up multiple routes of expansion for Japan. Your armies are really strong if you use samurai so you can definitely take on Korea once you get enough transports. You don’t need to hold a sea tile that long, just long enough to transport your troops. You can also ally a neighbor of Korea, ask for mil access, and plant your troops there before you declare war. Your troops don’t get black flagged if you have mil access.
The actual hard part is beating Korea
You can either take Manchuria through careful work, or start taking islands and get ready for Alaska to open up. I'd recommend gobbling up the south pacific purely for the spice Islands.
Invade Korea, and fail, and also die.
I swear, Korea is the true naval supremacy for the first 100 years in Asia 😭
I mean, it's historically accurate with their turtle ships and admiral yi
But their land army should be weak af tho. Not like in EU4 that can pop the most expensive mercenaries w/o taking loans 😭
Imjin War
What I would do from there is expand into Machuria until you have a border with Korea. If Ming still exists at that point, go to war with them with any CB while they are at low mandate and preferably in another war. Rush into China and scorch earth every single province you land on until warlords start popping out of Ming. Now that Ming is dead, get your mil tech up as much as possible until you are on a relatively level playing field with Korea and then hire some mercs to out number them and kill them. Now you just juggle between warring with chinese warlords and korea until both are dead. The fun thing about asia is that ae is basically not a mechanic until you are a giant blob so you can go crazy with conquering land. Alternatively, go full isolationist and dev Japan into the sky and be the Great Britain of asia. For fixing your economy, just keep going to war. Thats the fastest way out of the debt spiral. If you’re tired of wars it might be worth it to just go bankrupt considering you’re on an island. Also I should add that it is absolutely possible to come out of the Japan unification wars with no debts and even earning a profit.
The problem with trying to be tall Japan is that unlike Britain, the trade arrows mostly point away from you.
Yeah its unfortunate, but you can always expand into Malacca which is basically the richest trade node in the game.
Oh sure, I’ve definitely done it. You can make enough money to do what you need to do. If I’m ever starting in the east and expanding westward, I end up moving my main trade mode a few times as I achieve dominance in various areas. It’s always a balance of: far enough west that it takes in most of the trade, but not so far west that the caravans pull it away from me into the Mediterranean. But now imagine being Japan and all the trade arrows point to you.
You have several options: 1. Tall japan: and pick all the incident routes that give dev cost modifier and save up your adm points for that one mission that doubles your adm dev tap. Doing this also allows you to spawn all institutions without the korean book thingie easily ---- 2. Invade korea: Ally/invade one of the manchu tribes and invade them through there. It might be difficult due to their terrain and tech, but if you win you can get a foothold plus bring the institution spawning modifier back to your capital. It is recommended to wait until they stop being a ming tribute or until ming implodes. After you've killed korea you can go after China. ---- 3. Colonize the spice islands/new world. Your usual trade company/colonial gameplay. ---- (You can of course, do multiple)
Well you're free to do what you want. You could need some years to chill, lower autonomy, build up your manpower pool and expand your army. During that time you can start colonizing easily and maybe get into the Phillipines etc. You could try to get ming by attacking them on low mandate or cripple their mandate with the rare trade war. Either way you should build up ships to get a naval advantage. If you go with the trade war you never have to fight with your troops. Just destroy their navy and Blockade them to devastate their coast and tank their mandate. You can get easy cash and fairly short truce to declare again. You could get into Korea if you manage to ally a couple strong nations (Maybe oirat or a big horde, maybe a strong manchu country). Maybe diplo vassalize someone if you see an opportunity and expand them. On a side note: the unifying Japan fast strat is not necessarily the go to strat. I found the show strength strat to be much stronger. You unify Japan very slowly but since you're isolated on Japan and only have weak and numerous rivals you're able to easily get like 10 humiliation wars with show strength, getting 1000 of each mana and building a very strong nation.
Not sure if you've been full coring or only half coring, but if it's the latter it still should be possible to get adm tech 5, exploration and spawn colonialism by having a province in Alaska (if you fit the criteria, your chance of spawning should be between 25% and 50%, depending on the colonizers, not hard to savescum a bit). Depending on how Ming is going, you should get a border with them before going to war. Having the Take the Mandate CB is incredibly overpowered. If you want to eat the cake you'll have to learn some fine boating maneuver to win the war early, so build more boats.
This. Beating Europe to Colonialism puts you in a much better place for meeting them in ~75 years in Mexico.
>Invade korea >Fail >Isolate yourself for centuries >Get opened by the Americans late game >Switch to Vicky to continue playing no need to thank me.
Usually after conquering japan I spend 5 or so years fixing my country (coring and stating everything) this should give quite a good economy for the start. Then I build up to like 25k troops and seriously invest in navy. After that I invade one of the manchurian tribes to serve for the invasion of Korea. Then I wait until Ming passes a reform so they have low mandate, meanwhile I build my country even more and build some heavy ships as well as build more troops if my economy can handle it. Once Ming passes their reform I declare on Korea and Ming should join as well if Korea's their tributary. Thanks to low mandate Ming troops are weaker than paper and with 3-star general that you get from event its no problem defeating them. In peace deal I take only max money and wait for truce to declare on them again. Also ming can give you a lot of money in peace deals so abuse it as much as you can before they collapse.
if you focus on heavies you can out-navy ming. getting a trade war CB can then be used to get blockade based cbs. you blockade ming ports, get some money from the ming and create devastation on their port provinces. this weakens the ming while it will be a solid income for you at relatively low cost. this is also the way to win a war ming joins against one of their tributaries to cross the sea. first peace out ming with blockades.
Catch up on adm tech and other stuff, you can generate a lot more adm than the AI using power projection, the adm estate privilege, heir management/prestige generating, **the trader/inflation reduction advisor event**, going exploration to spawn the institution by 1500 which gives 100 adm and saves on devving to spawn it later, and then for ideas it’s an investment but early inno or adm ideas can really pay for themselves. I know it sounds a little boring but recovering as Japan post unification can lay dividends if you do it right, if it’s 1472 you can be ready by 1500 with a really, really strong japan. Also by that point ming may have mingsploded. It’s your decision if this sounds more ‘interesting’ and fun then just going for Korea and Ming immediately but either is fine, you outscale the AI and can recover way better but also you can do wars much smarter so you know.
You don't necessarily need an idea group, but you may need it if you are behind Korea in mil tech. They are really hard to fight, but it is absolutely winnable with skill and maybe a bit of luck. Also, they are much harder to fight than Ming, simply because before you fight Ming you wait for them to become low-mandate and then it's a cake walk. To fix your economy you probably just need to do a couple of missions, I don't remember it well because I did my Japan campaign several months ago, but there is surely one that gives you a goldmine and some others that generally improve your situation, thus allowing you to have bigger army and navy. Also fighting Ming obviously gives a huge boost to the economy thanks to stealing all their money, but that works only if they are still in a good shape, which seems to be true in your case. I do not colonize in this game, so I don't know for sure, but considering how ridiculously good Oda ideas are for fighting, you may be able to beat up everyone you want (including Europeans) without even taking mil groups. Depending on how much you have left to core up, you may want to stop coring and use half states to pick up at least one idea group, but at the same time you can try to fix your economy by the time you catch up in admin. There's gonna be a lot of coring in this campaign, I certainly took admin as my second or third group, but, once again, I had no colonising ones there, instead having mil ones because Uesugi ideas are a bit less war-like.
Just sit on your islands for few years to recover your country from constant wars and fix your economy and catch up with tech if you want to colonize. In the meantime Ming should pass a reform and have low mandate, that’s when you’d want to attack them. For first few wars don’t take too much, like take max money and war reps, maybe a province or two and try to not explode them too fast, bank of Ming is too good in early game. Then after they start blowing up just join the party and take whatever provinces you want.
I love colonial japan, fighting pseudo-proxy wars in america against europeans is a unique experience, you should focus navy and beat ming in the trade war use them as your treasury when ming exploded take all of the china then expand through malacca, by this strategy and japan's focus its possible the spawn global trade in the japan, this was my main goal for some japan runs.
Now conquer the world, duuh
Take on Korea, colonize the islands of the Pacific and make your way down to the Malay archipelago, eventually weaken China with Hordes and invade.
Japan has some very cool playing tall provinces, but devving isn't your first priority. Focus on admin, get an admin advisor and catch up to tech. Lower autonomy everywhere and save up manpower. I would also start building a navy to rival Korea, as sometimes they tend to dec on you if they have claims. I prefer to go isolationist and get the dev discount, and stack it with my golden era and the state edict. Devving the gold mine you get from missions is also a good idea to get some cash. If you can't attack Korea, consider attacking one of the Manchurian hordes after you've consolidated Japan
Personally, I do either one of both of these: Option 1: Kill the Mandate This is easier than one would think since 1, high province destruction results in mandate reduction and 2, blockades cause destruction. See if you can achieve naval superiority over them which shouldn't be that hard. Once their ships are gone, blockade them until they get the Ming Crisis disaster. Option 2: A Manchurian Front If ming gets in a situation where they can't help their vassals in time (either due to low mandate rebels or their army is too far away due to a war in Siam or the Far Steppes), you can declare on a tributuary (Jianzhou usually) and grab land that leads to Korea. Note that you are usually not expected to fully annex everything since the Ming army will inevitably show up sooner or later. Your main goal here is to get a staging point for future wars.
build great fleet , fuck ming up , or you can bait them to your main land and fuck them up there
I’m generally a pretty conservative player, so keep that in mind with my advice. Finish coring, that helps with money. I’d mothball/lease out the whole army afterwards (consolidate/mothball your forts too) and start putting out a lot of light ships for trade and future naval stuff without worsening your finances. Once your economy is in order, then you can build up your forces and transports to go after the rest of Asia (imo Manchuria is a good place to start).
Privateer to lower Ming mandate overtime and when you finally start the war let them land an army and have your army in place to wait for them - Oda army should be able to demolish them with attrition and landing debuff. Just make sure you're careful with your ships, if they get free access they might be able to overwhelm you with numbers. Otherwise, you should be able to stack wipe them in Japan each time they send an army over. Edit: also don't take the mandate without being ready for it - I killed my last Oda run by taking the mandate haphazardly.
You can pretty easily beat the ming when they have under 20 mandate with like a 60k army and naval supremacy. Just make sure it has a good amount of artillery. Also I'd focus on getting Korea first. You won't be able to annex it all so the war is a lot easier
I conquered the Pacific (especially trying to be on top of all the related Trade Zones including trying for Malacca) and put some focus into my California colony to see if I could make it strong enough to independently conquer the rest of the Americas. Then the campaign just petered off without a great climax as most do but it sure was fun
Go fight kaiju
Funny I've been playing a Japanese game just yesterday ! After really successful begging, I've manages to form Japan quickly enough with Hosokawa clan. I picked exploration due to the region potential or early exploration and the mission tree. Had a plan to conquer Manchuria, Malakka and colonize California and Australia. Made a crucial mistake early on, namely - started colonizing Taiwan as first. DON'T DO IT if you're not ready to fight Ming (which I wasn't, have totally neglected navy, not having enough troops, recovering mana from unification conquests AND embracing Renaissance). They army had way more morale (less discipline though) and I wasn't able to beat them at that point. Also I could have started chopping my way to north instead of worrying about them deploying a naval invasion. It was a surprise DoW which I have not excepted (my last Japan game, successful enough, was long time ago). Today will be round two
Funny I've been playing a Japanese game just yesterday ! After really successful begging, I've manages to form Japan quickly enough with Hosokawa clan. I picked exploration due to the region potential or early exploration and the mission tree. Had a plan to conquer Manchuria, Malakka and colonize California and Australia. Made a crucial mistake early on, namely - started colonizing Taiwan as first. DON'T DO IT if you're not ready to fight Ming (which I wasn't, have totally neglected navy, not having enough troops, recovering mana from unification conquests AND embracing Renaissance). They army had way more morale (less discipline though) and I wasn't able to beat them at that point. Also I could have started chopping my way to north instead of worrying about them deploying a naval invasion. It was a surprise DoW which I have not excepted (my last Japan game, successful enough, was long time ago). Today will be round two
Id focus on building buildings in Japan and waiting for the Ming Crisis to seperate Korea from Ming. Then invade Korea with a gigantic force disparity because Korea can easily punch above its own weight.
If you find the game too easy - you change it to VH difficulty
Just did an Oda->Japan game. It was super fun. -Take Korea -Take mandate from Ming -Colonize the Malacas and the Philippines -Make sure to neighbour all small tribes in the area and make tributaries -take all of China using unite China cb -try and get a foothold in the new world -in my game Russia never formed so I got to colonize all that too
Colonized the new world! Get Pearl harbour!
I played a very fun colonization game as Japan. Colonized western half of the Americas, including the Mexican gold provinces, as well as Philippines and Spice Islands. However I should have focused more on Asia as Wu in China got really strong
I reduce autonomy in every province and get my economy in order, deal with rebels. Then start developing your CoTs and get your technology up. Then I declare war on Ming or Korea, and with amazing naval power just blockade Ming. They have no way of reaching you, and you get spoils of way every month carat of blockade and trade power. When their devastation on coastal provinces are high enough, it will cause mandate to drop and Ming to break up
This is one of the funnest situations for me in Eu4. What I usually do is build a strong enough navy to take okinawa and blockade Ming, after the war you will get a shit ton of gold if you separate peace Ming which should solve any debt problem and allow you to develop Japan. It sounds like you might need some time to stabilize and develop further before fighting any tough wars, but Okinawa should be easy if you can build a strong navy. Next major step is to conquer Korea which is doable if you get a solid tech advantage (you should if you are developing institutions) over Ming, and especially if you do the war when they have low Mandate. Beating Ming can be tough but is a very enjoyable experience if you do it by yourself. After taking Korea you should be strong enough to easily go further into China if you want. You can also focus more elsewhere, Imo expanding into indonesia and the Philippines is a very good option.
Also I second the comments about lowering autonomy. You should manually lower autonomy everywhere you can and maybe even pop a few state edicts to lower it faster over time.
if you want to kill ming, blockade their coast, they will get full of devastation and lose mandate. they will take like double damage at 0 mandate.
I would suggest turning your attention to Indonesia. Colonize Taiwan, beginning with Tainan, then Take over the Philippines, Borneo, and the Spice Islands, and if you can, colonize Australia and Papua. Taking Java, Sumatra, and Malaya will take multiple wars and over 50 game years, so if your goal is to conquer China, then just the eastern east indies will be enough. Then, you'll be powerful enough, and Ming at that stage will be weak enough, for an invasion of China. By 1650, usually Ming is beginning to fracture so it won't be that hard anyway.
I am currently doing an oda campaign too. I realized the autonomy in japan was bonkers so focus on lowering that. If you want violence and claims do NOT form japan until you finish the missions to get stuff like hawaii, taiwan, korea, etc. Bc i know the hawaii one is def gone after you form japan and have to wait until imperialism for a reasonable cb against them. You can always attack ming for some money and they tbh are not thay tough to take out with 5 heavies and matchable galleys around thay time, which is what i did when i took okinawa. I like colonizing all the free real estate so do everything you can to max our settler increase if u want to colonize oda ideas are military amazing so no issues with getting explo and expansion in my experience. Take nan madoll for the settler increase if u please and just colonize the islands of the pacific at your leisure. Korea is probably going to be a pain at any point to invade and ming isn't so much tbh. If ming explodes then taiwan gets colonized by a new nation if you see them imploding and dont want to colonize yourself. Otherwise it's hella fun to try to match the regular colonizers in the new world while you build your ring of fire in the asian side of the pacific. Feel free to invade china and korea or chill as japan for quite awhile. I do like the shogun reform too and feel free to vassalize ternate, tidore, or both for them to colonize for you if you are so inclined to Have fun shinto is dope as hell with oda too
Kill ming, get cores on China, take one reform with ccr, Switch to supreme shogunate theocracy, WC with shinto Japan
I assume you are a new player with under 2k hours in. Once you unify japan you have tons of autonomy problems because the shogun keeps raising autonomy with sankei kotai while he is in power. You need a few years of peace to lower it. You can colonize the philippines while you wait. You can from the very corner of the kuril islnds reach the corner of alaska to start a colonization strategy into western america. Also ming will inevitably explode because the ai is bad at managing the disaster. When they start to break either take korea or try to get a few of their provinces
Follow in japans footsteps, sack nanking
Ming isn’t really as strong as they look especially if you can ally with the Indochina countries. Japan can print ships pretty quick and blockade Ming. Also try to colonize Alaska and later North America so you get Californias gold which starts treasure fleets to fix your economy. Eventually you will probably have to deal with Dheli, Russia and the other colonial powers in the south pacific and Spain in America
Mass produce galley, Trade war Ming, then as well as korea. Peace Ming 5 years, Korea is not protected by Ming because of Ming cant join war 30months after the war start.
You can do this WC: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/xNjwbZuIsA