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Alright hello everyone, my name is Denizen Dan, and welcome to this quick tutorial video
on how to unify Japan in EU4: The Cossacks. We will be playing as the shogunate, Japan
itself, and not as one of the daimyo's, but this video might still be useful if you're
playing with a daimyo instead. Right, let me just quickly state that this is not the
only way to achieve unification of Japan, but rather a summation of how I usually do
it, and what I learned in my own personal let's play with Japan in The Cossacks. I'll
put a link to that let's play in the description. Right so this is Japan's starting position
in 1444. Our goal will be to reach the National Decision 'Japan is United', rather than 'Unite
Japan', because this will offer us a bigger bonus. As you can see, there's quite some
monarch points involved there. This means that the country will be formed once all provinces
here are ours, rather than us forming the country when we have 15 cities. So, we will
have to be a bit more patient, but will receive bigger benefits because of it. Now, as you
can see there are a lot of daimyo's. This is us here, Japan. These daimyo's are our
vassals, but most importantly, they can actually go to war with each other. OK, so I like to
use three main ways to annex these daimyo's and their provinces. There's diplomatic annexation,
enforce peace, and baiting independence war. OK, so first off, there is diplomatic annexation,
or diplo-annexing. Now, the way this works is that you have to be the leader in a vassal
relationship for at least 10 years and have a relationship of 190, or higher,
as you can see, this is now at 75. Lastly, their liberty desire, of the daimyo, should
actually be lower than 50, as you can see here. For now, liberty desire is quite low
for all of our daimyo's. So we would ideally be able to annex them all. If these conditions
are met, you can start the annexation process, which will take some time. And then that country
will actually become part of your country. Now, what I like to do here is to pick one
of the larger daimyo's, as they might be quite powerful, that also has a low liberty desire,
and then start improving relations with them and royal marriage them as well. For example,
we've got Hosokawa which sometimes works well, although it starts off with a high liberty
desire here. Imagawa and Date would also work well, we've got Date here for example, and
Imagawa is here I believe - yes. Secondly, and this is probably even more important,
there is the option to Enforce Peace. This means that we can jump in a war between two
daimyo's, being the shogunate, to Enfore the Peace. In this example, Date - no Sheba has
actually declared war on Date. So, let's see. We can enforce the peace here, by actually
going to Sheba and then Enforce Peace under Influence Actions. We can offer to enforce
the peace, which won't be accepted by Sheba, because they have just started the war - they
don't like to end the war. Desire for peace is at -61. So, they won't accept. We will
send this, and as a result we will jump in the war, on the side of Date. Let's take a
look at how that looks. There we go. 'We bring serious news to your court, Sheba rejected
our Enfore Peace proposal'. Also, we are now in control of the war, because of our power.
As you can see, all our daimyo's jumped in on our side, because they are our vassals
after all. And Sheba is now all alone. Now sometimes there will also be allies on the
side of that particular daimyo, but for now Sheba is on its own. If we win this war, we
can then just easily annex Sheba's territories. For example, they've got some territories
here, so that is quite impressive. And another quick note on enforce peace, you can also
separate peace out any allies that might be in the war. So, say that Date would have some
allies here, you can just separate peace them out for even more provinces, or other benefits.
Lastly, there is the baiting an independence war. This is where you make a daimyo so unsatisfied
with life, that they will actually declare war on you, allowing you to annex them in
a peace deal. This is almost sure to happen when their liberty desire is at 100 percent.
Baiting a war is particularly handy when you can't get to them using the other two ways,
and you don't want to break vassalization yourself because of the penalties involved.
Right, so the way you do this, is as follows: You go to your Subjects overview, right here.
And then click on interactions for that particular daimyo, for example Uesugi has a high liberty
desire right now. And then you can just do whatever you want to see if you can increase
their liberty desire. For example, you will place your own dynasty on their throne, changing
liberty desire by 25%. And there you go, they are now at 100%. And if you are somewhat lucky,
then they will declare an independence war against you, and you can actually annex them.
Right, and here are some other small tips as well: you want to set your monarch focus
to administrative points here, using this button. You will need these for all the coring
that you will be doing. Also, save up points for making cores as well and don't spend them
too much on other stuff like technology or stability. Also, you will want to do some
research into aggressive expansion and especially overextension. As you will be doing a lot
of conquering, your overextension will rise quickly, which can lead to, for example, a
civil war firing. Which you can find here - there's some disasters that might be looming
here. You can also break vassalization with a daimyo, in order to be able to fabricate
claims on them and then declare war. The way you do this is you go to diplomacy and then
Break Vassalization. However, remember that there is a truce period of 15 years before
you can actually attack them, and after you have broken the vassalization, you will also
gain a penalty of 25 prestige. You will also want to pay attention to timing your diplo-annexations.
Liberty desire of other daimyo's will rise when you annex a daimyo. Even if you already
started annexation, the process will pause when liberty desire goes over 50. Probably,
it's a good idea to first annex the daimyo that is closest to liberty desire 50. OK,
and one final tip here, if you're waiting on truces to expire or relationships to increase
before you can start annexation, you can always focus your attention towards these Ryukyu
Islands or the Ainu up north. Those are not daimyo's so you can just declare war upon
them by fabricating a claim and so on. That will keep you busy for a while. Right, that's
about it! I hope this video was helpful to you. If you liked the video and would like
to see this process in action, then please check out my EU4: The Cossacks let's play,
where I'm playing with Japan and start off by unifying the country. If you have any comments
or questions, or if something is incorrect in this video, then feel free to comment down
below. I'll be sure to amend it with an annotation. So, thank you guys for watching and see you
in the next video. Thank you, bye bye.