Finished Cangji Game And Thoughts
Had some fun on this campaign. I liked the way that it heavily incentivizes conjuration early and makes you rely on the feral animals. This is a start that probably wouldn't be possible without the new magic system because of how nasty the face stealers are and how GOD AWFUL the land to the north is. There might literally be no other place in the game with worse terrain. The relics don't even come close to making up for it. Hardest part early game is the Azkajuma will definitely decc on you. Just rely on merc armies and feral animals if possible to beat them on the fort you take in your initial war. Go into debt and use them to fund the rest of your game in the peace deal. Got lucky with a Command collapse. Got unlucky with a subcontinent size Baihon (Hon Sai) and the usual big fat stupidly stable Raj. I should have taken coastal land and just beelined for their capital to collapse them. Also "fun" random Eborthil war because they colonized one province. I truce broke the fed 3 times to finish eating them, then declared on my vassal to eat them as well. I could clean up the borders but I would probably prefer to crush my own balls then do a 10th war against the remnants of the Raj. Not pictured is a united EoA and a giga Lorent.
Overall mission tree is pretty fun and thematic. The buffs are nice and I could go to around 200-300% overextension and have no rebels. I liked playing around putting down forts on the Levaajan provinces for cheap useful forts. It was cool how they thematically kept the facestealers from spreading through organic gameplay. The tech cost buffs you get are disintegrated by the missions to dev dog shit desert provinces for dog shit rewards. Can't remember if I had to do any of the right side missions (dev) to expand the tree. First time having the mage estate influence disaster (extraplanar contact made them suspicious and increased their influence too high) and it sucked but was doable. Kind of sucks that it doesn't stop like the other estate disasters when you have over 60% loyalty with them (I was sitting at 100%), but I can understand if it's to provide a balancing act for mage influence. Should have dipped into illusion to spam bread and circuses since I did not get lucky with an illusion ruler. Raj should be hit with cohesion drops and liberty desire increases every time they lose a war to show lack of faith in their leadership or something. Currently they are way too stable. I've played more than a couple of games since the new patch and haven't seen them fail once.
Could have fielded another 1M plus men at the end but I did not feel like it. It would be cool if someone could figure out how to make templates with special units and integrate that into the mod. Probably is another mod that already does and is compatible now that I think about it.
Pretty much no larger annoying mission tree lockouts. Relatively stable mission tree that makes sense. Not many bugs other than the fact that the automatic suppression doesn't remove province unrest modifiers in Yanshen until after the rending is done. Maybe there was a separate modifier I missed, but I don't think I did. They were also suppressed too early (before the first rumors happened to my nation, but probably as soon as the flag was set). I was essentially warned a year or two before the first rumors appeared. I thought it would stop the spirit swarms since they were automatically suppressed, but was hit with a nasty surprise instead.
Overall 8 - 8.5/10 nation, which is pretty good in my book. Interesting start. Not disgustingly difficult once it gets rolling. Real mission tree buffs. Thematic. Requires some diplomacy and juggling truces to get the land you need in East and South, so there are some interesting diplo gameplay moves to get what you need in a reasonable time. I enjoyed the learned tolerance of the nation. Some minor bugs and there was some general annoyance with how the Raj will always join a coalition if you take provinces in the east because they are High Philosophy so you often have to start deathwarring them before they spread too far east and/or contribute to annoying coalitions that never break because of their bloated size. Only reasons it's not a 9/10 or 10/10 are due to some minor issues/bugs and personal preferences.
Posted Jun 3, 2026, 1:40 AM UTC