Episode 5: Longwi looks westward
The first thing that we do is look to the west, as promised.
Ah, a big Bihar, not something you see every game. Although, in Divine Wind the Hindu states are much more prone to expand. Between Lan Na and Khmer you can see the expansion of Manchu.
In 1480 the Bourgeoisie requests priveleges. I think hard and long and eventually choose to move +1 towards Plutocracy because I want to weaken the Bureaucracts. For now.
Not that it helps much, though. The Bureaucrats are so powerful that they can even change the laws of arithmetic.
Also, the nobles aren't that pleased by my decision.
In the eighties of the fifteenth century nothing much happens. In 1482
Examinations take place again and provide us with some well needed magistrates. The Mongols invade us twice and are easily defeated. Nonetheless, the world is impressed enough by our victories that we always gain 5% Prestige for each time we capture enough yurts.
This uneventful decade closes with a bang, however.
In 1489 I can finally select a second National Idea. I choose Quest for the New World and I recruit an explorer. Funny enough, you don't need the exploratory Eunuchs in power to be able to explore, a fact I will happily abuse. I give the explorer a ship and send him to India.
During the great discoveries made in the West, Longwi finally ascends to the throne. To bad we are still four slider moves away from being able to Westernise, as Longwi would be the perfect reformer.
In 1490 we get another juicy slider move. This time I decide to move towards Centralisation, getting a -1 stability hit as confirmation. I have reasons why I don't continue moving towards Free Subjects, which I will explain in a later post. For now it is enough to know that I will attempt an early Westernization, mainly because of the overabundance of
Architectural Developments.
While our daring explorer sails ever more westward, in June 1491 we get our second university via a
prospering times event. It's for this reason that I tend to keep an artist around.
The year 1492 will go into the history books as the year when China discovered Europe after only three years of exploration. A less momentous event in this year is the birth of heir Wanli:
His weak stats prevent a Westernization during his life, so we have a bit of a problem here. The apple can fall far from the tree.
Now for something fun: a map of semi-discovered Europe:
Why did I take the effort of going to Europe? Well, one reason is that I found it a funny idea to reverse history and let Europe itself be discovered. The other reason is that for Westernisation we need to border a country from a higher tech group and Europe has the best tech group.
This list shows nation's tech levels sorted on trade tech. The last requirement for Westernisation is that we are at least 25 combined tech levels behind the advanced neighbour. In 1493 Ming is 5th worlwide in trade technology. Not shabby for a country with -60% research speed penalty. As you can see, most European countries have a combined tech level of about 55, while Ming has a combined tech level of 38. The Europeans need to get a bigger tech lead!
But only in the west are discoveries made, the east also sees some exploratory action.
From this point on it will be difficult to explore further east without having a colony. With my manoeuvre 6 explorer, his ship returns with about 30% health with the last discovered sea provinces. In earlier version of EU3 if an explorer's ship sank, you would still retain the explorer. That's no longer the case in the more recent versions, so I try to be careful and not lose the explorer's ship.
Of course, I only thought about this after losing my first explorer in the Atlantic.
In 1503 I move the slider towards Centralisation, only to be greated by another half-hearted -1 stability hit.
In 1505 Longwi dies, leaving a regency and a nice pretender for Wanli.
Longwi's great contribution to Ming, besides the stunning discoveries of faraway lands, was the expansion of Ming's informal empire:
And here's the reason why we would want an informal empire:
Expanding the SoI will be difficult, as adding more countries to it requires at least 20 prestige because I already have so many within my SoI. Also, we are running out of possible targets.
Stats
I have taken the stats for the regency and actual reign together. Note that the economy has doubled without significant trade or land acquisition.
Code:
The regency (1477-1489) and reign (1489-1505) of Longwi Ming (total 1477-1505)
Current value Change during reign Change since 1399
Provinces 56 0 +2 (+3.7%)
Yearly income 1746 ducats +228 ducats (+15%) +908 ducats (+108.4%)
Yearly income/province 31.2 ducats +4.1 ducats (+15.1%) +15.7 ducats (+101.3%)
Inflation 0% 0% 0%
Maximum manpower 118K +17K (+16.8%) +33K (+38.8%)
Army (inf/cav/art) 44 regiments (35/9/0) +5 (+12.8%) +5 (+12.8%)
Navy (B/S/g/t) 52 ships (39/0/0/13) -1 (-1.9%) +3 (+6.1%)
Next episode: the even longer reign of Wanli