First Toungoo Empire Puns

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Not as hard as I expected. Much easier than it used to be now that you don't have to fight Ming. Had an easier time doing this one versus Gold Rush and Rise of the White Sheep.

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Does anyone have any clue on how to do this? I tried just now, but the Tibetan states were tribunaries of the timurids, so no way I could have taken those. And then you have Ming, which you can't defeat at all, even with the madate penalty enabled. Another problem is the amount of aggresive expansion you take. I had two coalitions form and I was only able to defeat one of them. Taking this much land in such a small timespan seems impossible, especially when the land is partly held by the most powerfull countries in the game.

Achievement description: As Taungu own all provinces in the Burman culture group before 1500.

Not posting a picture here as you always need the same provinces for this achievement.

I did want to post some of my lessons learnt etc whilst spending a couple of days trying to get this achievement in case it helps someone else.

1. I did this one on version 1.20.1 by rolling the game back. I also disabled Mandate of Heaven DLC. With Mandate enabled Ming would often DOW Mong Yang with the tributary CB and then more or less annex them, which seemed to happen more than it didn't. I came pretty close to doing this on the latest update with Mandate enabled but I could never tank the mandate enough like a 300 dev horde can, and Ming would normally be ahead on tech due to the points they steal from tributaries.

2. Early game I had a few factors that had to play out to get off the ground.

• Build 1 cav + 1 inf to get to 7 force limit ASAP.
• Rival only Arakan, and ideally you need a mission to get Sandoway before Arakan can ally anyone. You should be able to DOW Arakan really early for an easy couple of provinces.
• RM + Ally Hsenwi, try to get either Lan Xang or Ayutthaya as allies well, but they aren't strictly necessary. Hsenwi was all I managed. I didn't have a good run if Hsenwi rivalled me.
• I made the awful monarch head of the army, you really need a decent monarch to get enough points to stay up with tech. This aspect is very RNG.
• Setting mil tech focus is an option, but actually your starting ruler is so bad in all categories that I didn't set a focus, you need a lot of ADM to core stuff.
• Save your institution monarch points for when you get more than one province so you can get at least 100 ADM/MIL points.
• Worth improving relations with Bengal, they are a big threat and they always want the same Ava provinces you want. I did eventually ally them and they helped out when Ming DOW'ed me.

3. Full annex Arakan, and in that war fabricate on both Pegu and Ava whilst improving relations with other nations with the 3rd diplomat. Potentially also fabricate on Lan Na if you have the time as it gives you options for DOW targets.

4. You should use spare monarch points to develop Renaissance in your capital. As you need a lot of ADM to core and MIL to get tech 4, spend mostly DIP points on this for now. You can afford to be behind on DIP tech, but you do want ADM 5 at some point for the first idea group. By the end of the game I was on something like 6/5/8 ADM/DIP/MIL techs. if you get spare cash get some advisers.

5. Pick the right moment

I wanna watch a nature documentary, that would be really interesting

Here I am again, just a woman, sitting in from of her PC, trying to catch up with her pile of unwritten reviews by writing a mini-review post. One day I might accept that catching up will never happen, but not today.

Cover photos of the books mentioned below

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

• Genre: Fantasy
• Age group: Adult
• Pub. date: October 13th 2020 by Saga Press
• Format: Print
• Pages: 454
• Goodreads link, storygraph link

>A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain. Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created an epic adventure exploring the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in the most original series debut of the decade.

Why I picked it up: Been meaning to read it for ages cause of the Pre-Colombian setting and it was part of our Hugo Readalong on r/fantasy

I was super excited for this and it lived up to expectations. I loved the world, it felt like epic fantasy, which I haven’t really been in love with lately. There are different cultures each with their own gods and religions and there’s omnious change about. There’s also the good old journey half across the world in a hurry, this time across a large body of water which was neat, some interesting challenges there.

The chapters jump back and forth a fair bit, in print i

1. The Russian Empire no longer recognises the People's Republic of China as a legitimate state, and now Recognised the ROC as the legitimate Chinese State
2. Anti-Tsarist Individuals and Parties will be cracked down on
3. The city of Volgograd is to have it's name changed to Tsaritsyn
4. No more elections will be held