'China huh?' William thought with most of the important stuff in his land reform done William now has a lot of free time.
William stares in the map thinking deeply
'Alright that's it! I'm going to visit China' William thought, judging by the fact that he's currently in New Castile (Spain in the mod he had created) William wanted to confirm if he's really in the mod he has created.
If he were in the mod he had created then China would currently be in the 3 kingdoms period.
William is also curious about Japan as he had an planned to add in Sengoku period Japan but was never implemented as he's got isekaied before he could mod Japan in.
William had planned to mod in a lot of stuff but Judging by no other European island besides his and the fact that there's no Portuguese in Malacca William thinks that the outside world is around 2~3 century AD.
That means the Roman Empire was still around and Japan isn't even a thing yet.
Naturally William wanted to send an expedition to Europe but such an endeavour will be extremely risky and expensive.
Like even if he finds Rome what will he do? Or more like what can he do? With Rome being located half a world any expedition to Europe would far too costly and impractical.
And it's not like there's spice in Europe, William territory is already a plantation of spice and that was the main source of income.
Fortunately harvest just passed and William was able halt the farmers from planting more cash crops such as chilli peppers and coffee. He was able to direct them to plant food crops such as corns, potatoes, wheat, barely and tomatoes.
Anyways, Europe is too far beyond his little colony's reach.
The description given by Magellan is really vague so he isn't certain that he's actually in the mod he created, so William plans to personally go and confirm it himself.
Like the people working under him obviously knows next to nothing about Asia, so much so that they could hardly tell the difference between an Indian from the Americas and Indians from India.
It requires a certain modern knowledge to tell the difference between Qing China and Han China.
Like for a modern person the difference is easy to tell as Qing China has this ugly looking hairstyle.
Even if he gives a general description on what to look for William doesn't really trust his subordinates to be able to tell the difference, so he must personally go.
Besides that if this is indeed the mod world he created, William is also quite curious on what it would be like on real life.
When he was touring his territory William was surprised to find that while the lay out of the settlements does have a resemblance to the city models he had created but he was also surprised to find several places where it differ significantly.
Sometimes the settlements would be bigger and the lay out is different that what's in the mod witch isn't all that strange as William is a medieval city planner, so there's bound to be some changes for this armaturely designed settlements to work in real life.
The population count also William is no expert about history so he simply Google search and took the the number of the first search result. After all we all know that the all mighty Google is always right and to question Google is tantamount to being a conspiracy theorist.
So he found that there were 1.8 Million Spanish that left spain from late 15th century to around 18th century.
Since William is doing 16th Spanish colony he simply took half the 1.8 Million total, we have 900,000.
Factor in growth which William not being a population analytics expert, he rounded the total number to 1 million.
For comparison late Han China (the period before the 3 kingdoms civil war broke out) has about 52 million, the Jin dynasty (the period after the 3 kingdoms) lead by the Sima clan (spoilers for those that didn't know which of the 3 kingdoms Wu, Shu or Wei won in the end. The answer is non of them lol. Yes what a plot twist!) has a population of 16 million.
7 million died on the Yellow turban rebellion, the rest is famine, droughts, plagues, population migration, territorial loss and the 60 year long civil war really did a number on China.
For comparison the population of Sengoku Era Japan is around 8~12 million.
So statistically William is heavily out numbered but then again he does have the technical edge, not to mention Spanish soldiers are top quality troops as long as he use the carefully then he should be able to conquer an Empire with 6 million population, or in the case of Pizarro 150 men to an empire of 10 million.
This is of course assuming that you have competent commanders, none epitomises this fact then the French. Stat wise the French actually has a decent army but problem is that they tended to put idiots in charge. Like in the case of a certain century long war, all it takes for the French to win was to put a random village girl with zero experience in charge of the army, that's how bad the French commanders are. Put a competent commander and suddenly France becomes an Empire that nearly conquered all of Europe.
The fundamental difference European warfare. Rather then focuses on quantity, Europe focuses on quality.
It is this focuses on quality that made European armies seem indomitable to the rest of the world.
Naturally knowing this fact William gave European troops better stats, armour, melee damage and he made European units taller (statics shows that Asians are generally shorter than Europeans)
And the horses William gave European bigger horses and European cavalry does a lot more damage.
Did you know that the mongols rode tiny horses when they invaded Europe, it's one of the reasons why the mongols never conquered Europe.
They have tiny horses in Asia, large horse breeds took Europe a long time to breed and not to mention they're also picky eaters (as compared to their smaller undomesticated counterparts). while wild horses can eat grass and shrubbery, larger horses need a more nutrient rich diet consisting of barley, oats, hay, and various type of fruits and vegetables.
Anyways speaking of the military William decided to make some changes to his military.
Making large scale changes to the military would undoubtedly make a bunch of career officers (for a regime to stay in power one of the first rule is always to have the military backing you up)
As far as the troops are concerned he's just some noble that hasn't lead a single troop his entire life and now he wants to waltz into the military and make large scale sweeping changes!? That obviously would go well with the "old guard" (for those that didn't know Old Guard means long-standing members of a group or party, especially ones who are unwilling to accept change or new ideas)
Like if he was someone that has been through battles and won, then his words might be more persuasive but as it stands he is just some pen pushing bureaucrat.
It's like how American ground forces always hate those Washington bureaucrats, like the time when troops were ordered to stand down and not shoot at the enemy cuz it might cause environmental pollution.
William doesn't want to sound like that guy, especially since he knows next to nothing about leading actual troops, he might be great at playing total war games but he is smart enough to know the difference between game ad real life. So his chances of messing things up would be much higher.
So William formed his own personal guard forces that he can experiment however he wants with.
William has been to the Vatican once and he was amazed by the Swiss guards stationed there.
So William his personal guards would dressed in a similar fashion, that also includes the cutting their hair short and shaving their beards.
Suffice to say these two requirements alone wouldn't go well with most of the troops as hair length pretty much went unregulated at this point in time.
Faced with such dissatisfaction of his personal troops William explains his reasoning, that being to reduce the fleas living in their hair, William also added that the great ancient Romans also had their hair cut short and beard shaved.
There would also be a lot more march training as the marches (regular, ordered and synchronized walking of military formations.) isn't as refined as they are in modern times.
A lot of personal grooming, Funfact a lot of the attrition suffered by medieval armies are preventable if they had better grooming habits. So William would have to drill better grooming habits into his men.
William had watched military parade from England and by god they look super cool, now that he's an actual monarch William also wants to have something similar.
Besides marches he also increased the training intensity as he wants his troops personal troops to not only look good but to also be good.
Of course with such intense training William would naturally pay them serval times the regular wages and their meals are more nutritious to encourage muscle growth. Not to mention feed his men finer meals increases their loyalty.
Naturally this all didn't come cheap as William soon found the finance minister knocking on his door to complain about expenses.
He goes on to complain that resource he is spending on his "personal guard" is way to excessive.
To which William hand waves the minister away saying that he great plans in motion (he doesn't) that would solve the monetary problem.
So after the minister left William hurriedly summoned servants to bring him a ledger of the dealings that while he was an invalid in an attempt to find some incriminating evidence against some rich corrupt noble so that he can righteously confiscated their property on corruption charges.
A week later day
Suffice to say that William was not an accountant so despite all his efforts he wasn't able to find anything solid enough for him to righteously confiscate people's property without any backlash.
William leans back on his chair dead tired.
"Master William lady Felice requests an audience with you" a servant told
'What now' William sighs as the last time he had a meeting with her it resulted in him getting a bad deal and the trouble with the minor nobles that came after words.
"Alright bring her here" William said seemingly to tired to even stand up.
A few moments later
A beautiful young lady steps through the door
"Greeting lady Felice what brings you here?" William asked
"I heard that you're short of funds" She said as she smiles.
William stares stares at kind smiling face, but William knows that deep behind that graceful appearance lays a hungry predator.
William swallows hard thinking 'what do I have to give up now'
The door closes behind her sealing his fate.