About India adn the Mauryans

[Ezumiyr]

Usually I play in the west. I played "full" campaigns with Arles, some headhunter Berber tribes (kashina? Something like that, they are blue on the map with only on country. North Africa is a very interesting region.), bosphorian cimmerian ; and in fact I had never seriously played anything east the Huns (and I'm not really a good Hun, I've been crushed very early each time I tried to play as them).

So I wanted to try playing as the Maurya in India and I've some questions about them:

• They don't have bloodline traits, and not many Indians seem to have one. The history have been quite changed in India because of the Seleukid conquests and the remaining indo-hellenic rulers but I think that the Epanderoi at least could have a bloodline trait (I would love an Ashoka trait but the only reference to the Maurya in the timeline is:
  

  303 BCE: Seleukid Conquest of Sindhia. Chandragupta Maurya becomes a Seleukid vassal.

  so I guess he was not very important at all)
• The Mauryans start buddhist, which is fine, but also indifferent towards other religions. I think they should be tolerant, not only because they are indians, but also because they are the Maurya (= because of the ahimsa which is typically a Mauryan philosophy). Well that's not very important since you can change it yourself without any problem but it would make them more unique. But again, their history is very different in the mod so that's not a problem.
• Now the true problems: The Mauryans's only CB is "Glorious conquest of..." and I don't seem to be able to create new claims with my chancellor. I guess it's because they are buddhist.
• The Mauryan state is really weak compared to its neighbours. The Bengali state is the east is particularly strong and will very often attack the Mauryan quite early. That's not really a problem but combined with the previous problem it becomes really difficult to survive, as you can't really conquer new territories and begin with only two not particularly good counties (one of the weakest eastern Indian state I think).
• The lion on the Mauryan CoA looks a bit too much Persian. The Ashoka Stambha would be better I think (you can find many representations of it because it's the national emblem of India) or the Ashoka Chakra.

So currently I swore fealty to the Indo-hellenic Indian Empire, hoping I could later take their place... but the big problem is that I cannot plot to have a claim on the Indian Empire. Basically I'm stuck, because I can only conquer territories with the "glorious conquest" CB which is very costly, and it's a bit extravagant to use it on the other little vassals of the Epanderoi. There are also great chances for me to be conquered by the neighbours anyway because the Indian Empire is ruled by an idiot and it is not that strong.

What are your advises ?

 

[DarkReborn]

Many of those things sound like bugs to be honest, specially the CB stuff, so I'll check for them. Having them start with the tolerant law enacted is definitely possible though.

About the bloodlines... well. Adding bloodline traits is a difficult business, that's why no one east of Persia has them. It will be done in time though, just not right now.

 

[Numahr]

May there be a hardcode limitation put on Buddhist? If so we would "just" need to change the code for this religion wherever it is located in files.

 

[DarkReborn]

May there be a hardcode limitation put on Buddhist? If so we would "just" need to change the code for this religion wherever it is located in files.

No, we don't use vanilla's definition for Buddihsm anywhere ( Which is... "buddhist" ), IIRC the Mauryans and most Indian Buddhist realms are Sthaviravada, they don't have the normal county conquest CB. Instead they have a special Sacred Conquest one ( They're of Clerical Soul ) that can't be used against your same religion group... the problem here is that they're surrounded by Buddhist group realms. That right now is a problem until we have some families or vassals set up over there. Clerical Soul are usually big religions ( Catholicism, Sthaviravada... ) so they're meant to be played somewhat as vanilla Catholics, that means claims by the way of chancellor or marrying.