Current Oriat Strategy

[Jomini]

So I have not played all that much of late, but I finally have time for a decent campaign. It has been several expansions since I last played a Horde and I figured I might try Oriat with the new mechanics. What are the current favored strategies.

I am hoping to hear something slightly more useful than "invade Chagatai when Ming hits them", trigger a disaster for Ming, or move your capital to Europe and grab trade company land.

Specific questions:
Aside from maybe becoming a Chinese tributary, who makes the best early game ally? A few starts tends to uniformly result in rivals with Uzbek and Chagatai while everyone else is far away.

When/how is the best option for a westward push? I'm assuming going through Uzbek is the best option for getting access to rich enemies near steppes who are not hordes. When/how are the best ways to go through them? I assume going through all the Timurid states is a much slower and worse slog.

Who are good long term allies? My thought would be the Ottomans until I sort out the Steppes and Persia, possibly Denmark or Austria while eating Poland and Russia.

Religion-wise, it seems I either go Humanist or opt for Christian/Sunni. How hard is it to stay Tengri? Early on are there any odd strong points for one Syncretic religion over another?

I tried looking for a guide before posting, but none was easily available. Thanks in advance.

 

[damnt512]

DoW Ming Asap, preferably after you get Mongol in line. When it is still tech 3 or 4, horde units are superior to Chinese units. First priority of course is to fight Ming army led by their emperor to trigger the Tumu crisis event. Don't go straight to Beijing yet, stackwipe 2 or 3 Ming army first, look for isolated armies, and your superior horde units will make it so easy to do this. After that just stick in Beijing until it fell. The objective of stackwiping some of Ming's army before going into Beijing is to prevent your army besieging Beijing being attacked, or too much of yours and Mongol territory occupied by Ming, it could negatively affect the war score if too much of your territory are occupied by Ming. Also don't peace out unless the situation is dire for you. If you seize Northern China with the event, Ming will have their mandate drop to 0. Peace out only when a lot of rebels have popped out in Ming if you can. That way you can collapse Ming in just one war. Hunt down Ming's army after northern China fell, so they can't fight all of the rebel in their country. It will have a snowball effect, In my game, Ming were dead by 1470 (still alive technically, just very weak and have lost the mandate to one of their rebellious kingdom). What I do in my game is to take only a few province and all of their money, Beijing being one of those province, because if they don't control Beijing they will lose mandate. You can also try to force them to release one of the chinese kingdoms, so they will also lose Nanjing and/or Canton. this will ensure Ming's mandate will never recover. But taking Beijing alone is enough honestly if their mandate is at 0.

Oirat is the easiest nation to collapse Ming now because of the Tumu crisis event, you don't even need to trigger the unguarded nomadic frontier disaster. But you gotta do it fast though, before Ming gets into tech 5. You don't need to bow down to Ming as Oirat, you can crush them in one war now, and just feast on their corpse later. Sarig Yogir and Kara Del would be inclined to become your vassal if you became strong enough, alliance with Korchin is optional, you will be fine even without them, but they can help you siege Ming if you ally with them, but you will have to vassalize or annex them anyway later to progress down the mission tree. You also need one province from Chagatai to progress down the mission tree, make that a priority when you fight them (which you should do only after you fight a decisive war against Ming), no need to take too much territory from Chagatai yet.

From then on you can form Yuan or stay as a horde as long as you like, but be careful though, the mandate, if lost without any nation taking it from the mandate holder, will be forever lost. This can cause you to never be able to form Yuan, since you need to hold the mandate if you want to form Yuan. So think well of what you want to do in your Oirat game. You don't need the mandate if you want to form Mongol Empire, but you still want to destroy Ming even if you don't want to form Yuan. The bank of Ming is very useful to you. And you don't have to pay those annoying tributes to them too. And also it opened up your expansion into China early in the game

If you intend to conquer a lot of different religious province, then go for humanist.

 

[Albino_M3xican]

Damnt512 pretty much summed it up but there are somethings that have been talked about in other post or on Reddit. You should take Beijing and moneys since that'll cause more Mandate loss but you should also take a province that Shun has a core on preferably one with a fort, and release Shun as a vassal, I believe Shun received events in the new patch and if they liberate themselves they control the entire north china area.

Secondly, you can form yuan without have to take the mandate, at which point you have to do pros and cons or likes and dislikes. The mandates easier to hold now and being emperor gives you some nice bonuses. Or staying horde gives you the best CB in the game and lets you keep the horde govt. I honestly havent decided which i like more. I hadn't learned about the change over forming yuan you can just become an empire by taking the dev needed. And took the mandate I like the decrees but dont like having to deal with it decreasing at least with horde unity you can just war a poor nation to keep it form going down.

I think i provided all the info i could over Oirat.

 

[tuska]

What should be the first idea group to take? I'm torn between admin, humanist and aristocratic

 

[damnt512]

What should be the first idea group to take? I'm torn between admin, humanist and aristocratic

Since I wanted to expand as fast as possible, I took admin, that -25% core creation cost from admin is amazing. Yuan have -25% core creation cost in it idea, so it's incredibly cheap to core anything as Yuan if you took admin.

 

[Albino_M3xican]

What should be the first idea group to take? I'm torn between admin, humanist and aristocratic

Damnt512 has a point about admin, its awesome, with the -50% ccr, it's just that the rest of the bonuses aren't as great as lets say aristocratic or humanist. I took humanist on my first Oirat run, and once i completed the whole group, I could take 100% OE and only have one rebel group rebel while i cored.

 

[damnt512]

Damnt512 has a point about admin, its awesome, with the -50% ccr, it's just that the rest of the bonuses aren't as great as lets say aristocratic or humanist. I took humanist on my first Oirat run, and once i completed the whole group, I could take 100% OE and only have one rebel group rebel while i cored.

Not to mention all other bonuses to core creation cost such as having a claim and administrative efficiency. It was ridiculously cheap for me to core anything.

 

[Albino_M3xican]

@damnt512 @tuska

In the end its what fits your play style I haven't tried the admin first, since I don't like micro managing rebel supression, and fightning rebels in asia. I decided to go Humanist, but Admin would save you some adm points to do Humanist 2nd.