Finally finished my Aladdin run. The map looked so goddamn goofy by the end. My little finger of Xiyu extending into Persia (earlier post) pretty much stopped there while I
1) swore fealty to the Abassids. Saw no reason to keep doing stand-up fights for individual counties/duchies when I can leapfrog right through them by:
2) fabricate a claim on Mecca, press claim, then plot-fabricate a claim on the whole duchy
3) eliminate the Hashimids within the Abbasids - Sunni caliphate becomes vacant
4) switch to Sunni and re-create the caliphate.
5) declare independence from Abbasids during a moment of their weakness (easy given the many wars with ERE, pretenders, civil wars, etc)
6) subjugate my way across north africa using caliphal subjugation cb
I ended up bouncing between shia and sunni a handful of times along the way, most notably because paradox has STILL not fixed the decision to expel the bektashi order, so if they have a barony in north africa, that'll stop you from getting the Aladdin achievement until you're not Sunni and can fight them. My time as Shia + Sunni Abbasids overlord also meant that the Abbasid emperor kept asking to educate my family members as Sunni - which was fine, but then I'd have a random inheritance where some half-brother would inherit and be Sunni before I could get around to sending him to China sans balls.
I also had to switch religions to grant vassal independences. Some time after the invasion of Egypt, I started generating tons and tons of threat. So I ended up dumping a bunch of my Asian vassal kings just to shed threat. Their levies were stupidly far away anyway, and I had plenty of Military Organization tech so plenty of retinues. Since I used the "create a new empire" decision to create my own bizarre Egypt+Mongolia+Xiyu empire, they were all de jure kings. So I had to switch to whatever religion they weren't in order to grant independence. (Also ended up giving independence to Kashmir and Guge because it turns out my vassals conquered most of Nepal while I wasn't looking. Amazing what vassals can do when you don't keep jacking their levies and they have overpowered holy war CBs).
Random observations:
1. I didn't really go that fast. Played from 867 to 1082.
2. Could have gone much faster if I had planned to use China's Invasion boon to shatter the Abbasids instead of having to faff about inside of them.
3. Suomenusko managed to reform. Good job, AI. And then they promptly called a Great Holy War for... U-Tsang. Yes, in Nepal. I surrendered it to them just because I felt bad for them.
4. Umayyads conquered all the way into Aquitaine and random parts of France/Germany. But then lost a crusade for Aquitaine, so they weren't hard to kick out of Mauritania for the achievement.
5. Italy went republic. I have no idea how. Based on the capital I think somehow Genoa inherited Italy or something.
6. Immortality chain fired in the 1070s, but as usual the mystic was a fraud. Got some good stat boosts out of it.
7. China is absurd. Even leaving aside the "please go destroy this massive empire for me" (and that one is legit inconvenient to get because you need luck with the timing), the ability to basically delete an unwanted brother/second son/etc every few decades is really, really good. The income from the Silk Road is out of control. The free artifacts were really nice, basically giving me +3 Martial, +Stewardship, +5 vassal opinion etc, for most of them game. The Chinese brides were ok but mostly inconvenient to use with Islam (can't get an imperial marriage unless the character is not married or betrothed at all). The siege engineers were really, really nice. 3 top tier generals at the push of a button. Strategist was ok and probably more effective overall, but less instant reward.
8. There was the most ridiculous Bon secret religion cult that just wouldn't die. Like there were no Bon rulers left anywhere but half of my heirs were secretly practicing the Bon religion and I kept getting the events about finding Bon holy books conveniently placed for me to read.
9. The decision to Enact Chinese Imperialism is too annoying to ever use.
10. Han retinue is trash. Archers are still garbage. Wars were much easier when I just switched to pure Defense retinues like before.
final maps below (trigger warning: the bordergore is real) -
independents:
religion: