Rajputana can be formed by nations with Rajasthani as their primary culture. If you’re playing as one or have shifted your culture, you must also fulfill the following requirements:
- Has at least Admin Tech 10
- Owns these core provinces:
- Multan
- Marwar
- Girnar
- Chittor
- Dhundar
- Gird
- Patan
- Nagaur
- Gorwar
- Doaba
- Varanasi
- Ujjain
- Ranthambore
- Kannauj
- Kannauj must be part of a state
In the 1444 start date, there are 7 Rajasthani nations.
Most are small minor nations except for Mewar. Their mission tree also gives you claims on the other required provinces and more.
Aside from that, Mewar has the potential to be the strongest military power in India. Their national ideas are focused on army quality and combat ability modifiers.
These ideas reflect their culture’s martial reputation. War is in their blood and in their name… literally.
| Achievement | Requirement |
|---|---|
 Maharana Pratap | Start as Mewar and field an army of 20 Rajput regiments |
 Mewar Never Changes | Complete the Mewar mission tree |
General Strategy for Rajputana
As Mewar, there isn’t a specific strategy for forming Rajputana other than to follow your missions.
Your missions are well-crafted to guide you to where you need to go next. As such, the tips here will focus on min-maxing your experience as Mewar.
Estates
As a Hindu Indian nation, Mewar has access to the Dharmic estates.
They also start with 49% crown land, which gives you more flexibility on what privileges to grant.
The ones that you should hand out are the following:
- Brahmins
- Brahmin Governance
- Brahmin Council
- Religious Diplomats
- Rajputs
- Primacy of the Rajputs
- Iron Monopoly
- Livestock Monopoly
- Jains
- Jain Political Control
- Jain Clerical Class
- Grant Jains Liberties
- Vaishyas
- Support for Vaishya Enterprise
- Levy War Contributions
- Patronage of the Arts
- Dyes Monopoly
Personal Deity
As a Hindu, you can choose a personal deity for your ruler.
These come with modifiers related to a certain aspect of the game.
For your Mewar/Rajputana campaign, you’ll mostly want to alternate between Shiva and Shakti.
Shiva reduces the admin cost for coring provinces. They also mitigate your aggressive expansion gained from your conquests. Both modifiers are a great help in the early game. They allow you to expand faster in India.
For Shakti, they simply improve your army’s discipline and siege ability.
These aren’t as valuable as Shiva’s modifiers in the early game. Later on though, Shakti will have their time in the sun during the mid- to late-game.
You’ll also need them for the Mewari missions concerning your Rajputs estates. In particular, you’ll need Shakti to hit the 120–125% discipline requirement for the Army Reform missions.
Alliances and Rivals
You must be careful of who you set as your rivals at the start. India’s a tumultuous region where various Muslim and Hindu nations are vying for supremacy.
And you’re right at the center of it.
Malwa and Gujarat should always be your first two rivals. They’re the targets of your initial missions, and you can easily beat them early on.
Your third rival can be any other nation to your south.
The Bahmanis are a good choice as they’ll be busy warring with Vijayanagar.
A few large nations to your north may sometimes rival you at the start. But they’re also often rivaling each other.
Jaunpur and Delhi are two notable examples.
Either can be your ally of convenience for the early game. So don’t rival them yet – you can get them to help you beat up your other enemies.
Recommended Ideas
Mewar and Rajputana have national ideas that buff their military across the board. So for your idea groups, you’ll want those that further hone your martial specialty.
Focus on military ideas first, then alternate with other groups that unlock good military policies.
Later when you’ve formed Rajputana, you’ll benefit from their rare +1 military free policy national idea.
As such, the idea groups that you should pick are the following:
1. Quality
While it’s tempting to go Offensive first, Mewar actually benefits from picking Quality early.
Mewar’s national tradition has a +10% infantry combat ability; the first Quality idea is also a +10% infantry combat ability. You add them up, and you’ll get a massive early game advantage over your neighbors.
2. Trade
In the early and mid-game, you’ll be focused on uniting India.
While doing so, you won’t have a chance to create trade companies. That also means you’ll lack merchants.
India’s a rich region divided into six trade nodes. You need more than your two starting merchants. Which is why Trade’s a good pick for your second idea set. You’ll get two more merchants from it. The rest of its economic modifiers are nice too.
One other reason you want Trade is its policy with Offensive. Trade plus Offensive gives you +10% move speed.
It’s an underappreciated modifier. But it’s quite useful, especially considering the vastness of India (and Asia, in general).
3. Offensive
As mentioned, Offensive works well with Trade.
But if it weren’t for Quality, Offensive would’ve been the first pick.
They’re only in third place since you can’t have two military idea groups in a row.
Offensive is nearly identical to Quality. Its combat ability modifiers for all three unit types works well for Mewar and for Rajputana. Its most important idea is its +20% siege ability. Faster sieges mean faster wars, so that’s always a useful thing to have.
4. Innovative
Innovative is a decent pick for a non-European nation. It’ll make spawning and embracing institutions easier.
That’s something you’ll want to do to keep up with the technological arms race.
However, Innovative’s true value is in its synergy with other idea groups. For example, Quality plus Innovative unlocks the policy that gives you +15% infantry combat ability.
5. Aristocratic
When you form Rajputana, your national ideas will shift from infantry-centric to cavalry-focused. That’s where Aristocratic comes in.
It’s an idea set that gives you cavalry combat ability, cav-to-infantry ratio, and cav cost reduction. Then there’s also the +1 leader siege modifier, which further contributes to your sieges.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7p63Nnaamq6CkwW%2BvzqZmnq1kYrWww4ytpmaen6e6br7Ao6eurJGjrnA%3D