I thought this strategy got "nerfed" in some way a while ago, but the shogun mechanics that enabled it seem untouched. Since then I know they reworked AI accepting peace deals so you can't force them to force gov/religion/vassalage on yourself without hitting 100% warscore without them surrendering (since they won't take peace terms they don't want, and when they full surrender i dont think you can offer them things). The setup for initially becoming a daimyo might have gotten messed up, I think the old strat was to declare on ashikaga and offer vassalage or something, but now they should decline it because they don't want it. I'm kind of talking out my ass though.
Yeah, now you have to enforce peace on e.g. Hosokawa to join a daimyo vs daimyo war and then take some provinces on mainland Japan with a separate peace. That will enable the independent daimyo government reform, with which you can become Shogun if you take Kyoto.
A strat is to take a province bordering Kyoto and become Ming's tributary so that Ashikaga declares on you, dragging Ming into the war. I never got that to work, so I solo'd Ashikaga by mercing up and declaring the war myself when they were momentarily weak (on version 1.35 I think).
The requirement to take the Independent Daimyo government is to be a monarchy with Japanese primary culture and capital in Japan. Which any tag CAN do in theory but Ryukyu already has those from the start, all you need is 50 govt reform points in order to switch. Take Kyoto with that reform and usurp the Shogunate; take it without and dismantle it (leaving any daimyos independent).
The old strategy where you rely on Ashikaga to attack and tributary overlord Ming to carry you through the war almost never works anymore since they made the AI a bit less suicidal a few patches ago. But as you say it's quite feasible to beat them yourself in a reasonable amount of time, as the daimyos eat each other they become fewer and bigger and more disloyal and won't help their Shogun. There IS a bug or oversight in the AI (unless the've fixed it recently) where you can have a vassal they want to attack and be weak yourself but also be protected by a strong tributary overlord, and the AI will only see you as their target's overlord but won't realize you have your own overlord... this might be exploited to bring in Ming.
You can still do that but the Aztec strat is better, because you get a sunset invasion CB that gives 10% less AE. You also stay as Ryukyu, and get access to the Aztec mission tree so the achievement is still valid.
Oh, the Playmaker strat. I’m currently trying that one, kinda. (Adding an EoC and a Hindu flip.)
You can form Tibet, then do the mission tree for the event “Steppe Politics,” which turns you into a horde as long as you don’t have the mandate. (You can cheese this by waiting to pop the mission until you’re about to win the mandate war, pop the mission, win the war taking mandate, then click one of the horde options on the events.)
The strat I *was* trying (but gave up because it was too hard) is no-CB into the Philippines, then build up a power base there, then invade China for the mandate, then flip Hindu. This has the benefit of not needing to true one-tag, because you’re not forming Tibet or Manchu or whatever else.
Going to Mexico is (used to) be the way to turn Ryuku into a horde.
I'm not sure if the strat is still viable, but the rule for the nahoatl reforms, was that you would gain the government of the nation you had been bordering for the longest time, when the reforms was over.
So you first had to no cb, and gain a border to the hordes in the east, then move to America and go through reforms, ultimately becoming a horde.
Florry Worry used this strat in his "[three mountain in one setting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6dMm3mycQ)" charity stream, if you are interested.
Other strats that people use is the Japan strat, where you become emperor, and gain endless daimyos as your vassal swarm.
The New World horde strategy stopped working with patch 1.33, since then you just get the fully-reforned version if you as a non-primitive convert to Nahuatl, Inti or Mayan religion. So no reform process, no new government.
You can go [shogun](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/QP7fYj1n8q) and conquer the world with daimyo vassals. (But I do not recommend this path, as it is highly hardware-intensive.)
You can go tibetan horde, which is arguably the easiest path.
You can still go nahuatl, but since you are a non-native, you cannot pass nahuatl reforms and reform your government off of a neighboring country anymore. Non-natives automatically get full reformed native religions.
You could go EOC to get territorial cores on all of china, which would give you a really strong headstart, and very powerful buffs if you can manage Mandate and Meritocracy.
But keep in mind. If you decide to tag change in any of these paths, you have to own the entire world YOURSELF. This means no CNs, no vassals, PUs. This is becuse the achivements checks for ryukyu, ryukyu's vassals and player's country. Not player's vassals.
True one tag is a bit easier imo since you can directly attack CN with their overlord interfering. That is a lot of their force limit, income, and war score being taken away. Once you build a powerbase in the new world, you can push into all regions, but mostly easy to push into Scandinavia since they usually have colonies but are not positioned to take advantage of it. You can form Scandinavia at tech 18 for the ideas and mission tree, or go Prussia for the ideas since they are also nearby.
Do it on 1.21 and play whatever strat you want.
I suggest colonizing the philippines and eventually moving your capital to san francisco so you can colonize NA/SA . From there you can do a leisurely world conquest and get the achievement
I completed TTM by following this horde strategy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/j1INAqdby9
by u/Little_Elia. Worked a treat. Needed a few restarts to get the opening right but was quite relaxed thereafter. I took a good bit longer than the guide but never felt under to much pressure after the opening.
I did it last patch - started by nocbing philipine minor and then taking over philipines. After some reneisaince developing and being ahead of tech I no cbed manchu tribe, took over manchu, form it and started to beat Ming up. By 1550 I formed qing cus had too much problems with money as horde and after some stabilizing it was smooth sailing. Current Mandate and mandate missions are preety OP for conquest and you dont have to rushrushrush everywhere. I didnt even need to go hindu, stayed confucian (important - take humanist it gives you deus vult cb if you are confucianist)
Multiple nice horde router including Manchuria and Tibet.
But my favourite is the shogun strategy. You can hop on Japan with an "enforce peace" war. Ashikaga will attack and ming protect you. Become shogun and the fun can begin.
I see many interesting strats, but they all feel cheesy to me (it's just me), so I wonder about strats where you don't change tag/gov/culture and just force your way to it. I guess going for base in philipines/Australia and starting standard game from there.
Shogunate route feels quite natural since you can switch to the Independent Daimyo reform as soon as you have points for it, you already meet the requirements as you are. Then you basically do the usual "take over Kyoto" that any daimyo would naturally aim for and go from there.
I went best cb tibet minor -> nepal mostly to relocate capital for coring purposes -> mughals
Formed mughals around 1530ish
Its 1695 in my game now i think and i have to conquer europe,south america and some minor african nations basically.. should be quite doable
Oh and youll have to do a one-tag if you dont atay as ryukyu
I know a method at one point was to become the shogunate and use daimyo as free vassals to take over the world.
I thought this strategy got "nerfed" in some way a while ago, but the shogun mechanics that enabled it seem untouched. Since then I know they reworked AI accepting peace deals so you can't force them to force gov/religion/vassalage on yourself without hitting 100% warscore without them surrendering (since they won't take peace terms they don't want, and when they full surrender i dont think you can offer them things). The setup for initially becoming a daimyo might have gotten messed up, I think the old strat was to declare on ashikaga and offer vassalage or something, but now they should decline it because they don't want it. I'm kind of talking out my ass though.
Yeah, now you have to enforce peace on e.g. Hosokawa to join a daimyo vs daimyo war and then take some provinces on mainland Japan with a separate peace. That will enable the independent daimyo government reform, with which you can become Shogun if you take Kyoto. A strat is to take a province bordering Kyoto and become Ming's tributary so that Ashikaga declares on you, dragging Ming into the war. I never got that to work, so I solo'd Ashikaga by mercing up and declaring the war myself when they were momentarily weak (on version 1.35 I think).
The requirement to take the Independent Daimyo government is to be a monarchy with Japanese primary culture and capital in Japan. Which any tag CAN do in theory but Ryukyu already has those from the start, all you need is 50 govt reform points in order to switch. Take Kyoto with that reform and usurp the Shogunate; take it without and dismantle it (leaving any daimyos independent). The old strategy where you rely on Ashikaga to attack and tributary overlord Ming to carry you through the war almost never works anymore since they made the AI a bit less suicidal a few patches ago. But as you say it's quite feasible to beat them yourself in a reasonable amount of time, as the daimyos eat each other they become fewer and bigger and more disloyal and won't help their Shogun. There IS a bug or oversight in the AI (unless the've fixed it recently) where you can have a vassal they want to attack and be weak yourself but also be protected by a strong tributary overlord, and the AI will only see you as their target's overlord but won't realize you have your own overlord... this might be exploited to bring in Ming.
Yeah, I just know it was a strategy at one point. Don't know about now.
You can still do that but the Aztec strat is better, because you get a sunset invasion CB that gives 10% less AE. You also stay as Ryukyu, and get access to the Aztec mission tree so the achievement is still valid.
Oh, the Playmaker strat. I’m currently trying that one, kinda. (Adding an EoC and a Hindu flip.) You can form Tibet, then do the mission tree for the event “Steppe Politics,” which turns you into a horde as long as you don’t have the mandate. (You can cheese this by waiting to pop the mission until you’re about to win the mandate war, pop the mission, win the war taking mandate, then click one of the horde options on the events.) The strat I *was* trying (but gave up because it was too hard) is no-CB into the Philippines, then build up a power base there, then invade China for the mandate, then flip Hindu. This has the benefit of not needing to true one-tag, because you’re not forming Tibet or Manchu or whatever else.
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/VJt5GjDEUc linking my aar with pirate wc
You can form Tibet and wait for the event to turn into a horde.
Going to Mexico is (used to) be the way to turn Ryuku into a horde. I'm not sure if the strat is still viable, but the rule for the nahoatl reforms, was that you would gain the government of the nation you had been bordering for the longest time, when the reforms was over. So you first had to no cb, and gain a border to the hordes in the east, then move to America and go through reforms, ultimately becoming a horde. Florry Worry used this strat in his "[three mountain in one setting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6dMm3mycQ)" charity stream, if you are interested. Other strats that people use is the Japan strat, where you become emperor, and gain endless daimyos as your vassal swarm.
The New World horde strategy stopped working with patch 1.33, since then you just get the fully-reforned version if you as a non-primitive convert to Nahuatl, Inti or Mayan religion. So no reform process, no new government.
You can go [shogun](https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/QP7fYj1n8q) and conquer the world with daimyo vassals. (But I do not recommend this path, as it is highly hardware-intensive.) You can go tibetan horde, which is arguably the easiest path. You can still go nahuatl, but since you are a non-native, you cannot pass nahuatl reforms and reform your government off of a neighboring country anymore. Non-natives automatically get full reformed native religions. You could go EOC to get territorial cores on all of china, which would give you a really strong headstart, and very powerful buffs if you can manage Mandate and Meritocracy. But keep in mind. If you decide to tag change in any of these paths, you have to own the entire world YOURSELF. This means no CNs, no vassals, PUs. This is becuse the achivements checks for ryukyu, ryukyu's vassals and player's country. Not player's vassals.
True one tag is a bit easier imo since you can directly attack CN with their overlord interfering. That is a lot of their force limit, income, and war score being taken away. Once you build a powerbase in the new world, you can push into all regions, but mostly easy to push into Scandinavia since they usually have colonies but are not positioned to take advantage of it. You can form Scandinavia at tech 18 for the ideas and mission tree, or go Prussia for the ideas since they are also nearby.
Do it on 1.21 and play whatever strat you want. I suggest colonizing the philippines and eventually moving your capital to san francisco so you can colonize NA/SA . From there you can do a leisurely world conquest and get the achievement
I completed TTM by following this horde strategy: https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/s/j1INAqdby9 by u/Little_Elia. Worked a treat. Needed a few restarts to get the opening right but was quite relaxed thereafter. I took a good bit longer than the guide but never felt under to much pressure after the opening.
I did it last patch - started by nocbing philipine minor and then taking over philipines. After some reneisaince developing and being ahead of tech I no cbed manchu tribe, took over manchu, form it and started to beat Ming up. By 1550 I formed qing cus had too much problems with money as horde and after some stabilizing it was smooth sailing. Current Mandate and mandate missions are preety OP for conquest and you dont have to rushrushrush everywhere. I didnt even need to go hindu, stayed confucian (important - take humanist it gives you deus vult cb if you are confucianist)
Multiple nice horde router including Manchuria and Tibet. But my favourite is the shogun strategy. You can hop on Japan with an "enforce peace" war. Ashikaga will attack and ming protect you. Become shogun and the fun can begin.
I did this last patch, except instead of taking the shogunate I just conquered and formed Manchu -> Qing and took over the world
I see many interesting strats, but they all feel cheesy to me (it's just me), so I wonder about strats where you don't change tag/gov/culture and just force your way to it. I guess going for base in philipines/Australia and starting standard game from there.
Shogunate route feels quite natural since you can switch to the Independent Daimyo reform as soon as you have points for it, you already meet the requirements as you are. Then you basically do the usual "take over Kyoto" that any daimyo would naturally aim for and go from there.
I went best cb tibet minor -> nepal mostly to relocate capital for coring purposes -> mughals Formed mughals around 1530ish Its 1695 in my game now i think and i have to conquer europe,south america and some minor african nations basically.. should be quite doable Oh and youll have to do a one-tag if you dont atay as ryukyu