Starting the game¶

The mod's start date is 1337–38, not 1337 to the day. This page covers what the map looks like at start, who the major contenders are, and what to do in the opening years.

One honest anachronism¶

The base game's start is in April 1337. The mod represents the world as the dust had settled — late 1337 through 1338 — rather than the literal April snapshot. The Chobanids already hold their territory. The Sarbadars already hold Sabzavar. Ḥasan-i Buzurg is already in Baghdad. Ḥasan-i Kūchak is already in Tabrīz. Ṭoghā Temür is already in the east with his puppet khan, and the various lesser amīrate states are in roughly the positions they would consolidate by the end of the decade.

The alternative was scripting the same railroad of events into the first eighteen months of every campaign — the Chobanid seizure of Tabrīz, the Jalayir withdrawal to Baghdad, the Sabzavar uprising — and pretending the player's decisions had anything to do with them. Every Paradox start date is a composite. This one admits it.

The contenders¶

The major tags in the post-Ilkhanid space at start:

Jalayirids (JAL) — Shaykh Ḥasan-i Buzurg's amīrate, based in Baghdad and Tabrīz, propping up a Borjigin puppet. The strongest of the regency states at start.
Chobanids (CHO) — Shaykh Ḥasan-i Kūchak's amīrate, in Azerbaijan, also running a puppet. The Jalayir's chief rival.
Muẓaffarids (MUZ) — an emergent Persian amīrate family based in Yazd and Kirman, with claims on Fārs.
Sarbadars (SBD) — the dervish-revolutionary government in Sabzavar. Egalitarian rhetoric, Sufi base, a real military threat to its neighbors. The wild card.
Kartids (KRT) — Sunni Ḥanafī rulers of Harāt, holding eastern Khurāsān, the most stable of the inheritor states.
Injuids (INJ) — the amīrate of Fārs and Iṣfahān, soon to be eaten by the Muẓaffarids in the actual fourteenth century; not destined to last but a real player at start.
Ṭoghā Temür's khanate (MZF / MZNDRN region) — the eastern claimant with a genuine Chinggisid puppet, ruling from Māzandarān. Significant for legitimacy reasons; militarily weaker than its claim suggests.
Safavid order (Ardabil) — a small Sufi lodge in 1337. Not a great power. Not yet a state. Included in the contender roster anyway, because the simulation does not get to know what happens in 1501.

Around the edges: the Beylik patchwork in Anatolia, the Golden Horde to the north, the Mamlūks in Egypt and Syria, the Chaghatai ulus to the east, the Delhi Sultanate further east, and a number of smaller tribal amīrates and city-state polities through the Caucasus and across the southern Caspian.

The Tabrīz problem¶

There is exactly one Dīwān al-Mamālik in the realm at start: the capital-only kingdom-rank grand chancery, the realm's central administrative apparatus, the institution that ties the inherited Ilkhanid bureaucracy together. It is in Tabrīz.

Whoever holds Tabrīz at the moment the realm's politics stabilize — meaning, in practice, whoever holds it five to ten years in — inherits the central chancery of the Ilkhanate. That is a significant administrative head-start.

The first wars in the post-Ilkhanid space are partly about who that is. The Jalayirids and the Chobanids fought over Tabrīz for two decades historically. The mod gives you the institutional reason their war mattered.

Opening priorities¶

There is no single right opener, but the following considerations apply almost everywhere:

The Age 1 reform is the most important decision in your first thirty years. See government reforms. Do not click through it. Read the three branches and decide which doctrine of legitimacy your state can actually carry.
Pick a side on the Türk–Tāzīk axis early, or commit to staying balanced. Drift produces estates that trust you less than either pole would.
Either grant an iqṭāʿ privilege or do not pretend you have an army. A Persianate state without iqṭāʿ access has shockingly little manpower, by base-game standards. See the military system.
Identify your nearest rival in the Erānzamīn situation. The situation does not resolve by sitting still. Someone has to win it, and "someone" can be you, but only if you are looking at the same horizon they are.
Treat Tabrīz as a strategic objective even if you do not start near it. Possessing the Dīwān al-Mamālik is worth wars.

The current weather¶

The men of the pen are writing. The men of the sword are mustering. The dervishes of Sabzavar are preaching that the order of kings is ending, and every ruler in Iran agrees the experiment is an abomination, which is the surest sign it threatens them.

Whose name is read on Friday?