Shun does in fact have unique ideas. They are very very good, giving a bunch of army bonuses, some production efficiency, and relevent to this strat: a plus 1 diplo reputation. Gotta be my favorite chinese warlord
I did something similar to this one time. I found that taking diplomatic ideas and then trying to get reform progress as fast as possible to get the reform that lowers stab hits by 1 cancels out the stab hit and aggressive expansion of no cb wars. Essentially giving you imperialism early.
I wonder if instead of the Wu Coup, you could start as Jianzhou and become Shogun as Manchu. Probably not as busted of an exploit, but you would have a nice tag, map color and set of national ideas, at least.
Cant you use the chinese warlord mechanic with japanese shogun vassals so you take money tribute from them as well as mana points per year with passing reforms or that works only on tributary nations ?
Bit late to comment but what shogun vassal swarm do you think is best? Chinese warlord, Majapahit or Japanese? I tried Majapahit a while ago but I messed up and haven't tried again since. Might give one of these another go. Great video btw!
In order from most to least OP: Majapahit, Chinese, Japanese. Majapahit is tricky to execute, but once done is 0 effort world conquest. Literally the easiest WC possible, no need to even stack any modifiers. Chinese shogun is much easier to do, but you can't vassalize anyone in one war, you'll need to break them up unlike with Majapahit. And Japanese shogun is the weakest, yet the easiest to play. It's more difficult to snowball, but eventually you'll still get good vassal swarm
I went into more details about the exploit in this vid: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jNsD70Fr7oI.html. Basically: trigger nomad frontier disaster (accept mongol demands, sell provinces to oirat, wait), then you lower autonomy and provoke revolt in the provinces of chosen chinese region (South China for Wu), and you let them occupy 10 provinces. Doesn't matter what rebels they are. Soon after this the event will follow. More details here: eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Unguarded_Nomadic_Frontier
is espionage needed for expanding easier away from your permanent claims? After this ideas and diplomatic, which ideas would be useful for the strategy?
It was my bad, I forgot they removed ability to fabricate claims near vassals in Espionage. It was replaced with ability to claim neighboring claims, still useful, but not as much for this strat. Just either seize provinces from daimyos near future target, or take them in the peace deal and then feed back to daimyo again. After this I'd say ideas don't matter at all, maybe tolerance is good because Confucian nations get deus vult cb from it (though can't confirm it). You can AFK basically, no need to do anything at all, the game will play itself