Yin, Yang and the ugly: a Divine Wind Ming AAR

Aliasing said:

Convert this to Victoria 2

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To be honest, I've played a campain or two in Victoria 2 and I just can't get into that game. I want to, but I'm just not having that much fun with it. Maybe AHD will change that...

Arrianus said:

I just came here from the double domination AAR, and I have to congratulate you, knul, for this wonderfull AAR - It has everything such a thing needs!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlKcMJwcgq4

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Thank you very much, Arrianus.

Jack LEagle said:

I've just finished reading the entire thread in one sitting. Truly excellent game and write up!

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Thanks, Jack LEagle. It's very encouraging to hear that.

Merrick Chance' said:

Best gameplay AAR I've read since that WC with Tibet on the Vicky boards.

And I don't even like gameplay AARs usually!

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Thank you Merrick Chance'. It's a honour to have a 'non-believer' like the AAR as well!

DLern said:

I got EU3Chronicles about the time you posted this epilogue. I saw this AAR yesterday and its absolutely great gameplay tutorial to someone like me. I've never played EU3 before . I just have a question. I haven't played a lot so my question would most probably be silly! :ninja:

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Good to hear you learned from my AAR. I'm a bit surprised, though, as I focussed on how to deal with the factions and basically assumed the readers would know how to run a normal EU3 country.

As for your question, it's far from silly!

DLern said:

Halfway through - when you had finished North America maybe you could have torn through India. Its inferior technology and high-scale production; I have come to believe that India is easy money for any nation even at Oriental tech level. The Hindu nations don't even westernize to the Muslim tech levels. Taking Europe is something harder to do, but with extra money earned easily and with higher supply limits in each Indian province... you could have cleaned Europe faster and better maybe. As you had already "confuciated" half of India, it would have been only easier My question is - Did you have any particular obstruction or did you just pass up the idea for the European take down.

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You're completely right, India is for most nations a ripe and juicy fruit to be plucked. In fact, one of the better early options for an European country is to get to India as quickly as possible, get Divine Supremacy or Defender of the Faith and tear into India with Holy Wars.

For China, India would be even better, as overseas provinces do not provide a lot of manpower or force limits. India, being on the same continent as China, would not count as overseas provinces and thus would be very usefull. So why didn't I take India?

Basically, I didn't need to. With all of the NA colonies, money was hardly a problem anymore (10000 ducats a year is quite a lot). Manpower was at that point practically infinite. The extra force limits would be nice, but would be reduced by the need to station troops in India.

If you pay close attention to the AAR from 1680 onward, you'll see that Infamy was really the only limitation on my conquests. Getting India wouldn't have sped up my European conquest. On the contrary, the infamy from conquering India would have slowed down expansion in Europe quite a lot.

It would be better IMO if instead going for the Americas I would have gone for India and Japan. Infamy and Casus Belli would be problematic, though. Also, I wanted to show that with Ming it's possible to conquer and colonize on a large scale. The idea behind balancing the factions is that ideally you can do whatever a non-faction country can.

But I have to commend you, DLern. Very well spotted for a beginning player to see the value of India and high-value production provinces in general. Took me much longer.

DLern said:

Also Chinese and Indian provinces provide more production income than Western counterparts, did you use Production advisers ever? I believe you wanted to take all trade in the world, but in the particular Ming situation of factions, pushing production tech would have been more money. I play at Normal difficulty and I find that on conquering India I get a standing balance of 10000 ducats without going for any inflation causing minting or even appointing a master of mint at full centralization. African minor mutapa and madagascar generally have gold provinces more than american. I just wanted to learn from a master

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In the late game (after 1700 or so), Chinese trade was indeed declining and I made more from production and tariffs. However, only in the early game, before getting monopolies, did I get significantly more income from production than trade.

However, I almost never use the production or trade increasing advisors. In my opinion, the best advisors are diplomats (-infamy) and Masters of the Mint. High Judges (-revolt risk) and Grand Marshals (+legitimacy) are very important in some situations. Artists are good to have if you have Patron of the Arts, as they provide nice events with that NI chosen.

The tech advisors (stateman, etc) are very good for small nations. Theologians are good if you convert a lot. Most of the other advisors I use little or in very specialised situations (for example the navigator).

Why I think that the alderman (+% production efficiency) or collector (+% trade efficiency) aren't that hot is that in general they increase your yearly income by about 3-5%. I think the bonusses granted by other advisors are far more beneficial than that. This is all IMO of course. As you learn the game you will develop your own preferences.