I'll just pause here to note that it is possible to form the Mughal Empire as the Oirats, although not as the Qing. It should therefore be theoretically possible to unite the Mongol hordes, conquer a northern Indian province, form the Mughal Empire and then immediately form Qing, thus gaining all the cores of both empires. I believe that such a feat would be quite practicable, given the Oirat's enormous military advantage at game start, but I wanted to devote this game to catching up in tech rather than to military conquest. I therefore leave the possibility of an Indo-Chinese Empire as an exercise for the interested reader.
Back to the matter at hand, my strategy for the past six and a half decades has been directed towards ensuring that I can form Qing as soon as my leader permits. And so, I first Unite the Mongol Hordes:
And then Form the Qing Empire:
The effects are immediate:
One side-effect of changing religions is that all of my home provinces are now even more worthless, since they are, of course, my former religion. I move my National Focus to the new capital for this reason. Later National Focus moves would generally be designed to accommodate new structures, such as post offices and canal projects.
(I never did convert my home provinces, which led to intermittent revolt problems down the road).
If you'll remember my earlier post on the subject, the Qing formation process doles out cores in six stages:
1. On two bordering provinces when the hordes are united;
2. On the Ming capital and surrounding provinces when the Qing Empire forms;
3. On most of the rest of northern China when the cores in #2 are conquered;
4. On the rest of northern China when the cores in #3 are conquered;
5. On southern China when the cores in #4 are conquered;
6. On any minor breakaway warlords when the cores in #5 are conquered.
I've already completed the prerequisites for #3, so here it is:
(We're actually only a Major Power at this point).