Yes, We Dec-can!

[klingonadmiral]

Yes, We Dec-can!
An EU4 1.34.5 Bahmanis AAR

Table of Contents

Historical Context and Starting Postion

Act 1 - The Indian Hegemon (1444-1550)
Chapter 1 - Free Vassals are the Best Vassals
Chapter 2 - The Fall of Vijayanagar
Chapter 3 - The Calm before the Storm

The Bahmani Sultanate - Historical Context​

During most of the Middle Ages, the Indian subcontinent was dominated by the Delhi Sultanate, a powerful persianate state emerging from the rapid dissolution of the Ghurid Empire in 1206. This state would be ruled by five dynasties (it being on the final years of its fourth in 1444) over the more than three centuries it existed, but in stark difference to the dynastic games of Europe these had no blood ties with one another and are simply lumped together by claiming the same title and employing the same, but of course over the centuries evolving, methods to legitimate their rulership. (please do not commence in discussions if the Mughals were in fact the sixth Delhian dynasty)

The Tughlaq dynasty was arguably the most powerful of these five ruling clans, for under them the empire reached its greatest territorial extent in the year 1330. However the ruler that achieved this zenith, Muhammad bin Tughluq, was not exactly the most cautious of rulers and would initiate the collapse of his dynasty through wild policy swings and borderline megalomaniacal territorial ambitions - he wanted to extend his reach to Baghdad in the west and convert China to Islam.

It was from this collapse that the Bahmani Sultanate emerged. Ala-ud-Din Hasan Bahman Shah, born as Zafar Khan, served as regional governor of the Deccan under the Tughlaqs as their empire started to fray, and by 1347 had become the independent ruler of this rising power in southern India.

While there was obviously a lot of different things going on over the decades, the two main drivers of the sultanate's history were its ceaseless conflicts with the Empire of Vijayanagar to its south, as well as a further persianization of the societal elite, even compared to the already heavily persianized societies of muslim India.

The Bahmani Sultanate would start to decline at the turn of the 16th century, losing power to five successor sultanates (Bijapur, Ahmednagar, Berar, Golconda, and Bidar) before its last holdouts were stamped out by Vijayanagar. However it would be an alliance of these five Deccan Sultanates that would topple the Vijayanagara Empire a few decades later, ushering in a period of squabbling (relatively) minor polities in southern India before Aurangzib of the Mughal Empire would come knocking.

Starting Position

On November 11, 1444; Bahmanis is one of the dominant powers in southern/central India, together with its eternal rival in Vijayanagar. It borders the aforementioned major Hindu power in the south and west, Gujarat in the north-west, Malwa in the north, and various minor tribal kingdoms in the east. It possesses no coastal province at gamestart, but has several cores to reclaim along India's western shoreline. Bahmanis, Vijayanagar, Jaunpur, and Bengal form what I consider the "Big Four" of India, and if the subcontinent is left in AI hands it's usually those four that divide it among them. If looking at intial development Bahmanis (201) seems to be beaten by Vijay (263) and Jaunpur (212), but the numbers somewhat lie here. Vijay starts with essentially half the country at high local autonomy and with unaccepted culture so it actually starts with a weaker economy than Bahmanis. And Bahmanis has a special trick that lets it beat Jaunpur as well:

Golconda

+4.00 Goods Produced from the "Diamonds of Golconda" modifier is equal to an extra 20 production development. And considering that this province produces Gems, which are an excellent trade good for the first century or so, this province has a decent case for being the best non-goldmine province in the game. But even aside from this supercharged province Bahmanis' economy is strong owed to the excellent tradegoods of India. Its home tradenode kind of stinks, but so do all Indian nodes in my opinion. Gotta push to Persia Constantinople Venice.

However, Bahmanis' most outstanding feature is its religion, for it starts as one of the only eight Shiite countries in 1444. This has a few minor downsides (harder to make allies with other Muslims), but a lot of significant upsides (Deus Vult against the world, DotF without being called to arms after the other Shiites die, ez cash and cheap tech through sitting at high Legalism due to wars).

Bahmanis' national idea set is rather mediocre all things considered, but it is also the only nation that can form Deccan without switching culture and/or religion. And while Deccan is a tech 20 formable, its idea set is absolutely excellent, probably the second best of all Indian tags after the Mughals.

With all these factors going in its favor, I personally consider Bahmanis to be the strongest of all countries starting in India.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Act 1 - The Indian Hegemon

Chapter 1 - Free Vassals are the Best Vassals​

Whenever I play Bahmanis, before I do anything else, I call for a diet and see if the estates give me the right mission to start off the campaign. If they do not, I simply restart. It's day 1 RNG after all. I want to be declare my first war on Dec 11, but neither Gujarat nor Vijay are in my opinion the optimal choice for the inaugural war.

We will strike against Malwa.

After six restarts or so the estates finally cooperate and provide the mission needed: Expand into Gondwana. Now we don't have to (slowly) fabricate claims, which would give Malwa plenty of time to secure strong alliances.

Next is estate stuff:

The Brahmins get Brahmin Legitimacy to Rule and Brahmin Council.
The Ulema get Clerical Advisory Council and Oversight by the Ulema.
The Marathas get nothing.
The Amirs get Supremacy over the Crown. Strong Duchies will come as soon as more vassals are obtained.
The Jains get Jain Clerical Class and Indebted to the Jains.

Several of those privileges were only granted because our mission trees demands certain estates to be of high loyalty and influence.

Moving on to diplomacy:

Mewar makes for an ideal initial ally. Not only are they of decent strength and will happily join our war against Malwa if promised land, allying them also deprives Vijay of their only strong ally - the AI generally doesn't put in the effort to ally the Muslim powers before it is way too late.

The second diplomat starts improving relations with Telingana. They will need to be annexed asap to starts parts of the Bahmani mission tree.

The third diplomat starts to build a spy network in Gujarat. I sadly forgot to take a picture here.

As an Indian Sultanate we have access to the Iqta taxation abilities. Lenient Taxation is the best intial option since it speeds up the integration of Telingana and helps with keeping our generally Hindu vassals in line. We won't do that much coring earlygame anway. We nonetheless focus on Admin points.

We also immediately start to convert the provinces of our country to Shia, starting with our capital of Bidar. We will dev-push for Renaissance there as well as gain various extra dev through our mission treee and events, so getting this province converted ASAP is a high priority.

As a final war preparation, we hire the Mamluks of Delhi mercenary company. This takes us over our forcelimit, but our economy is more than strong enough to support these extra troops.

With these preparation made, we go in against Malwa. They've only gotten the weak 2pm of Mewat as an ally (worst case they can ally Bengal), so this will be an easy war.

A few months after declaring against Malwa, the first Bahmanis-specific event fires. We pick getting a permanent modifier on our capital in exchange for 50 admin power and 43 ducats. There's actually quite a few of such events for Bahmanis that will fire throughout the earlygame.

With Mewar focussing on them, Mewat is quickly willing to sign a separate peace. We take war reps for both a longer truce and so that Mewar doesn't get anything.

Shortly thereafter Bundelkhans sues for peace. This is actually rather unfortunate, for this means that they are no longer a vassal of Malwa. There is an event between Jaunpur and Malwa that makes them release Bundelkhand. Sad.

There were no mayor battles before the final month of the war, with Malwa being too scared to engage either us or Mewar. However as their capital falls they try to liberate their subject in Kalpi, allowing us to fight them in neutral terrain with a massive numerical advantage. They get stackwiped. This allows us to dislodge the rest of the forces from a nearby hill province, leading to them being stackwiped in the neighbouring provinces.

And with that, the war in Malwa ends in January of 1448. Notice how we have transferred occupation of Mandsaur to Mewar. We will give them this relatively low-value province as compensation for their effort (we still lose 9 trust with them despite me sieging down the forst and picking up those late stackwipes) and to keep our AE low.

We show them no mercy in the peace deal. Malwa vanishes, being partitioned between us and Mewar. We also get a bit of cash out of the settlement.

With this we not only gain Malwa's provinces, we also get their two remaining subjects on top of that. Garha and Kalpi are not exactly prime real estate, but they can throw a couple of regiments around and more importantly give us access to the Ganghes Valley. Spoilers: We will try to get our hand on Central Doab by 1500 the latest.

Our new conquest will be reorganized however, as Garha has cores on two provinces in Gondwana that we will happily grant to them. Just remember to starts coring the provinces in the north before seizing land to Garha.

​

With this initial expansion, Bahmanis becomes the lowest of the great powers. Will we hold on to the title?

 

[MachopPower69]

Sweden has the Copper mine, Bahmanis has the Diamond mine

 

[HistoryDude]

I liked the overview of OTL history at the beginning.

As for the AAR itself... Malwa is defeated and the Bahmanis are expanding. Who will be their next target?

 

[MachopPower69]

I liked the overview of OTL history at the beginning.

As for the AAR itself... Malwa is defeated and the Bahmanis are expanding. Who will be their next target?

Maybe the Hindu Vijayanagar and Sri Lankan natives?

 

[klingonadmiral]

Chapter 2 - The Fall of Vijayanagar​

With Malwa destroyed, it is now time to rest for a bit. We will need manpower for the wars to come. My standard Bahmanis stretagy after the war against Malwa is to wait for the "Rein in the Velamas" mission to complete and then make war upon Andhra in order to vassalize them.

One preparation we need to take for the wars to come is to construct a castle in Satara. Our western flank lies prostate and would allow any Vijayanagari armies to strike into our heartlands and then to hide in the jungles. Putting a fort in this province will close this hole.

After eating Mysore, Vijay takes our GP spot from us. It's okay. We will get back at them soon.

As Orissa started friendly with us, we throw an alliance offer their way. We might be able to use Kapilendra in our wars (we don't, he died within a year after this alliance)) and it will keep the third major Hindu power unconcerned over us eating Vijay. We will backstab them rather quickly, however.

The expansion of Orissa into their hinterlands has left Chanda without any alliances. As they own part of our states, we quickly fabricate a claim and go in.

The war takes less than a year and ends, unsurprisingly, in their full annexation.

With us at peace, we can begin the process of annexing Telingana. Since we have a core on one of their provinces, it will take only a few months.

In March of 1451 our heir dies. While it happened through a hunting accident this is actually rather expected since Bahmanis' starting heir is in fact older than its starting ruler.

The heir we get about a month later is ... alright. We'll keep him.

The annexation of Telingana finishes on the fourth of June. We manually lower autonomy in Khamammet as well as turn on the state edict that lower local autonomy to complete our mission ASAP.

As we have continued to manage our estates in the background, we are able to take our first monarch points privilege. Religious State for more ADM is the optimal choice.

Shortly thereafter we receive the "Friday Prayers?" event. This is technically not a Bahmanis unique event, but can happen to any Shiite country that has at least 20 cities. All Shiite player countries will see this event, but at gamestart only Bahmanis and QQ fulfill the requirements. We have to chose between either:

* move 25 towards Mysticism
* for ten years gain: +1 ToTF, -0.1 monthly piety, -1 diplomatic reputation

or

* move 25 towards Legalism
* gain 1 Stability, or 50 ADM if at +3 Stability

We obviusly take the second option. We will fight plenty of wars against heathens and heretics so we will move continously towards Legalism anyway, have (for now) little true faith provinces, and really don't want to lose diplomatic reputation while going for vassal-heavy strategies.

We will now skip ahead for three years, which were mostly filled with recouping manpower as well as starting to dev-push Renaissance in our capital of Bidar.

In 1455 however, we catch someone with their pants down:

We obviously go in immediately. The war that follows was not hard - in fact it saw no battles at all - but still rather manpower expensive due to me not wanting to risk losing siege stacks because Vijay is running around with their event general. It was all about getting the right sieges while scaring Vijay off of their sieges. Actually a kind of interesting war to fight, but one that sadly does not translate particularily well into an AAR.

Instead, lets go over some of the other things going on within the sultanate while its armies are busy in the south. First off, there is the "Bidriware" event. Give a nice little bonus on our capital for a decade. The extra dev would usually be nice, but in our current situation it does make getting the Renaissance more expensive.

The local autonomy in Khamammet also falls below 30%, completing the "Rein in the Velamas" mission and giving us claims on the Andhra area.

We also receive the "Shiite Migration" event. More dev in the capital, more production, cheaper dev cost. Nice little event.

We also finally get the Renaissance spawned in Bidar. Now of course it would be nice to get the Faceting event on Golconda, but unfortunately it can not fire on provinces that already have a special production modifier.

We also enforce our religion on Kalpi, completing another Age of Reformation age objective.

On November 1st, 1457 we make peace with Vijay. We take back our cores, take Vijayanagar, and take their cash.

With this we can complete the "City of Victory" mission. Vijayanagar is burned to the ground, while its riches are sent to our capital of Bidar. We also gain 400 ducats + whatever loot was still in Vijayanagar province. Also always remember to take this mission before coring Vijayanagar, less dev means fewer admin points needed.

As the armies return north, the Sultan ponders over how to best spend his newfound riches, as well as how to keep the pressure on the obstinate Hindu states up. Vijayanagar, despite having lost their capital, remains at least on paper of strong contender for rulership over soutern India. They must be hit again, and quickly, to ensure they won't recover from this blow.

 

[MachopPower69]

Did Bahmanis historically beat Vijay or was it the other way round?

 

[HistoryDude]

The Renaissance is good.

Also, allying somebody with the intent to backstab them later - what a delightful piece of Realpolitik.

It looks like a great struggle between Vijay and the Bahmanis is approaching. Let's hope that the Sultanate is as ready as it thinks it is.

 

[klingonadmiral]

Chapter 3 - The Calm before the Storm​

With the first victory against Vijay in the bag, the Bahmani sultanate now stands upon the verge of greatness. Its access to the sea has been restored, allowing it to resume direct contact with the Persian world; while the great city of their arch enemy has been ransacked. However, the 14 years or so this chapter covers will be relatively quiet. While there will be war, the territorial concession will be relatively minor, though the conquests they will enable further down the line will be significant.

About half of the sultanate's newly gained wealth is immediately invested into embracing the Renaissance. We need techs, and techs need institutions.

Shortly thereafter we can also pick our first Government Reform. While Strengthen Noble Privileges is obviously the meta pick, I like having decently powerful local alternatives so Empower the Poligars it is. +10% ICA helps a bit with our rather lacking military quality, and 5% cheaper dev costs is whatever. Of course the super-optimal strat would be to not develop for Renaissance after getting this Government Reform. Once we fix our military quality however (speak: form Deccan), we will switch to Strengthen Noble Privileges.

We also complete the "Brahmin Administrators" mission. That cheap advisor and tech cost discount will help us greatly in catching back up after dumping all of our monarch points into pushing the Renaissance.

By late 1459, we are running a full set of level 2 advisors, helping our monarch point generation.

Another Bahmanis-unique event. Afanasy Nikitin was, as this event suggests, a Russian traveller and one of the first Europeans to visit India. OTL he did this voyage from 1466 until his death in 1472 (close to Smolensk and thus almost back home, not in the distant lands he visites), but in this timeline he arrived in Bidar in the year 1460 already. Also it would be cool if this event could give the Russians vision on India.

We are also able to unlock our first idea group. As we are the only Shiite nation in a sea of Hindus and Sunnis we obviously go for Religious. Deus Vult on basically the entire world is sweet.

As mentioned at the end of Chapter 2, it would be prudent to quickly get another hit in against Vijay. In late 1461, it is time to deliver that blow. While their alliance with Andhra broke down when we went in against Vijay, they happily threw a guarantee their way. However, I don't think they really have the means to make good on said guarantee.

This will not be difficult.

The Great Ming declare us their rival. Anyone who has ever played an Indian major knows that this will happen. I am completely unconcerned.

As we continue to march southward, our enemies bundle their forces together to make a desparate attempt to break the fort of Khamammet. Unfortunately for them, the entirety of their forces is equal to only one of our army stacks. However their general is pretty damn good, so theire is a risk.

In the end, the battle is ...

... a clear victory. It is however the only major battle of the war, Vijay and Andhra go sulking and there is no clash until Vijay is peaced out. Andhra's forces are uncermoniously stackwiped thereafter. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Another unique event. This one gives us three options:

Option 1: Gain +1 global unrest for the rest of the campaign (why would anyone ever pick this?!)

Option 2: Lose 1 stability, gain +5% army morale, +10% stab cost modifier for the rest of the campaign

Option 3: Lose 1 stability, gain -1 global unrest, +10% stab cost modifier for the rest of the campaign

My personal favourite is Option 3. While army morale is great and all, 5% is just a bit too minor compared to stacking unrest reductions.

In July of 1464 our sultan dies. Kind of a bummer, he wasn't even that old.

A few days after that, Vijay is willing to make peace. We take all their money plus a single province at the other side of their country.

More unique events. We either get +5% fort defense or ... do nothing. That small amount of fort defense isn't great, but it's better than nothing.

In late 1464 Andhra makes peace. We take their money and vassalize them.

The political situation in southern India following the war with Andhra. We have released the nation of Maduria in the eponymous province, making for a total of 4 vassals. But why did we vassalize Andhra instead of simply annexing them, and why that whole Madurai thing?

Well ...

Cores.

Lots and lots of cores. Vijay won't even know what hit them.

The war against Andhra and Vijay has drained our manpower pool however. The armies must rest for a few years, then we will strike again. Until then we concern ourselves with internal politics and diplomacy.

We can pick up our second monarch point privilege. All those subjects that we are getting will need to get integrated sooner or later, so DIP privilege it is.

We also begin integrating Kalpi. Once we have absorbed them we will have a direct border with the Lower Doab area, allowing us to fabricate claims on this excellent piece of land.

Finally, we vassalize Porbandar, a small Hindu state in Saurashtra. More vassals are always nice and better we get them than Mewar or Gujarat eat them.

Speaking of Gujarat, it is about time we put them in their place. While the advantage of our alliance is significant, this is certainly a step up in scale compared to the wars we fought so far.

But this is something the next chapter will cover.

 

[MachopPower69]

One thing India is known for is for its releasable nations with so many cores

 

[HistoryDude]

The Bahmanis intend to launch many Jihads...

Also, let's hope that the Ming collapse soon.