Anyone try playing as "The Heavenly Kingdom"?

As PDM only. It was one of my favorite games, if only because I get to the little theocratic-despotism that could.

Its actaully quite easy, as you have infantry and they have irregulars

The non-existence of any tech/reform ruins the 1836 scenario for both CHI and Heavenly Kingdom.

Played as them untill westernized in about 1890. After that quit because I coudn't get my industrialisation going (I'm in american sphere, maybe that's the problem). Also, their national value is broken, it's called "tradition" in the game files, and we all know that there is no such thing in victoria world But you can always change it to order or equality or whatever you like. Oh, one more bug - though you'll get millions of rebels and thousands of brigades ready to join uprising, no one will ever revolt, making the process of westernisation too easy, especially if you get into someones sphere. And one more thing - all the chinese substates will become independent if you win, and you won't get any cores apart from those you already have at the start of the game.

Traidition is an unciv national value in PDM, which is where the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was for a long time before it was in vanilla AHD. Sounds like Paradox literally copy/pasted Taiping's existence from PDM over. Which would also explain why it uses the same exact color as it does in PDM. Do the cores spread dynamically like in PDM or is it always static with the same land when it rebels?

The cores don't spread, that's the problem. Well, they do, as someone here on the forum said, only if you are a GP and have nationalism and imperialism invented.

No, I have not tried it yet. Still working as Russia.