Chapter 1: Steppeland Voltron

**"I had a dream," the Khan announced proudly. "We ruled the entire world.""That's silly," the budget +1 theologian stated. "A Khanate could never conquer the world. Corruption forbids it.""Corruption? That wasn't in my dream.""Now take a look at Qara. He's a basket case, he has no money, and all his officials are decadent bribe-takers. All because he had too many Shia provinces. Also, the land you freshly conquer from your enemies also contains some corrupting aura. It's all really quite terrible..."**Goals for this chapter:* Unify the steppes.* Secure strong alliances.* Cripple Poland and Muscovy, preferably both.As almost all Kazan gambits are, Nogai is the first target after allying Uzbek and Timurids - they are the odd-man out of the horde diplomatic game, hated by nearly all its neighbors, and its few alliance possibilities snuffed out by really bad rival choices (remember, if they rival you, and you ally X country, it is highly unlikely that they can ally X as well early game). Call in Timurids - it is not strictly necessary, but we want to avoid costly wars for now.The Khan goes on campaign, and the news of a great battle outside the walls of Kazan arrives. Normally it would be extremely dishonorable that not a single one from the Kazani tribes showed up to defend their capital. But money must be conserved, and I don't feel like loaning quite yet. The Timurids are liable to explode at any time and I am keen to get the maximum value out of this alliance before it must be dropped.When tricking your allies with promise land, the magic number is 10. You can accumulate up to a 10 trust hit while still being allowed to promise land to call people into wars. It's not like I value the alliance with Timurids, but with a possible offensive war against Muscovy in mind in the next 30 years, I'd like to keep my options open. So three provinces are given to the Timurids. Everything I take is, of course, razed. That will be the standard way to deal with provinces. The only exceptions are gold mines.The Golden Horde army is ambushed while returning triumphantly from their vassalization of Ryazan and destroyed completely. Unsporting, but it will do.By targeting the Golden Horde army, the Ryazanians liberty desire, already high from vassalization, spikes to the point they are unwilling to help their nominal overlord for a great portion of the war. The rest of the war is whack-a-mole - sit on top of the horde provinces to prevent recruiting, and wipe out the few stacks that do form. Towards the end we are perilously close to taking a 2nd loan (!!) but this battle cleanly removes the need for that.Astrakhan is released as vassal, and we get a border with our next victim Crimea. Astrakhan will hold the majority of the Sunni provinces we conquer. Aren't we Sunni? Well...for now we are.A quick tip for winning horde v horde wars early game - take loans to match their front line and add an extra 4 cavalry. For extra gameyness, declare on the first day of the month. Since the AI loves to sit their armies at partial maintenance, you can attack a morale depleted stack which is generally sitting by their capital. Crimea has 13k troops, so we recruit up to 13k infantry and add 4k cavalry. Unsurprisingly, it is a wipe.Because I'm such a nice guy, I see Circassia dogpiling Crimea and use the opportunity to assault Theodoro's fort with their infantry. Thanks!Within the first decade, I've taken 100% or close to it off the 3 other European hordes. It's not a bad start, but not nearly enough to allow me to solo Poland or Muscovy without severe inconvenience.This is useful, had both Poland and Muscovy mutual rivaled me it could have been trouble.With a Polish alliance seeming unlikely, I seek out the Ottomans after dropping Timurids as an ally. However, they are unwilling to join in a war against Poland due to not wanting any of their land. So lets farm some favors. I declare on Qara and let the Ottomans do most of the work, though we can occasionally bulldoze pitiful Eastern tech soldiers with superior nomad units. The more war participation we get, the more Ottoman favors we can get by giving them most of the land.Muscovy DOWs us while Ottomans are busy sieging down Qara's forts. This is inconvenient, but promising - I take several loans to go way above force limit and buy a morale advisor, and am hemorrhaging money but I have to break the siege on Kazan. Level 3 forts are a pain to siege at such an early point in the game.This is ultimately a good thing, though - a defensive war gives an equivalent AE discount to an offensive tribal conquest war. While I do have to pay DIP for provinces I take, that's reduced by rival status, and the fact that I can freely call in allies more than makes up for it.With the main Muscovite army crippled, the stacks daring to invade my homelands grow ever smaller, and are easily disposed of.I peace out with QQ, establishing a border link with the Ottomans, allowing free transit of Ottoman troops to the Russian front. Being ever the generous fellow I give the Ottomans a bunch of wrong-religion / increased core cost Georgian land. You're welcome...This 6 shock general makes things interesting, but even he cannot compete with the power of shock bonus on steppes.Storm has been weathered. Uzbek and Ottomans come to relieve sieging pressure on manpower / war exhaustion - 100% on Muscovy is assured now. I turn my attention to cleanup on Nogai and Odoyev.Result: I release Yaroslav as my Orthodox vassal and feed them some provinces, as well as get border and CB on Novgorod.Polish off Golden Horde, and at least we've acquired something close to a "no existential threat" stability. Sure, there's some insignificant puny nation called "Poland-Lithuania" next door, but surely they cannot stand up to the horde's might, right? Right...