What does it take to bring down Ming?

AgentPaper said:

I'm currently playing a campaign as Ayutthaya, and I'm at a crossroads. With my immediate neighborhood subjugated (all of SEA and Indonesia is either vassalized or conquered), I'm currently looking to expand once again, either westwards into India, or north into Ming. I know the basic plan: Punch out 1 province to release Zhou, then go at them again to return cores, then repeat with Xi and Shun. I also know that Ming is weaker than it first appears, and I don't need to be as large as they are to take them on.

What I don't know, however, is how much weaker they are than they look. Do I only need half the troops that they do? Three quarters? One quarter? Should I sit back and let them come to me so I can defend, or should I be aggressive and strike early before they can switch factions and muster up more and better troops?

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It depends on how comfortable you are fighting the AI. I had a game where I was an independent Mongol Khanate. When Manchu declared on me the 2nd time (first was while vassal), I beat them back and took enough provinces to vassal them next war. Then, they + Korea joined coalition and Ming warned me . I declared on Oirate Horde anyway, and Ming honored the call, so I had to fight them + Oirate by myself with a chunk of overextension. A good 4 years into that war, Manchu declared on me with Korea(reconquest CB, not coalition, but somehow they still blocked separate peace).

So. I just had to fight everyone at once. Still, hordes get 2x looting money and Ming has a lot to loot, so I played very defensively with homefield shock + scorched earth here and there and was able to take two provinces off of Ming + war goal off Oirate horde (yay even more overextension) and turn on Korea to vassal Manchu. This is with a nation that had 11 tax of cored provinces and probably 10+ more in overextended provinces. It wasn't easy, in fact a bit stressful since it was in a MP game where my friend was trying to do the Byzantine strat at the same time, but it turned out VERY well (this is the same game I wound up completely removing Muscovy while still a horde).

CAN you beat Ming with all of SEA? Without question. If you fight well you can probably do it even if they're temple faction. If they're not and you don't bleed yourself with attrition or screw up, you can do it easily. I would recommend it too, since their vassals are very powerful and once you annex you have great income (+3 advisor time). You will probably want religious ideas before annexing Shun/Xi/Zhou though, because the +1% you get from monastic education and 1 missionary isn't going to get you far, and it'll be a while before you can pick up the other 1% (anti-Christian edict). However, with religious ideas you can chew through the conversions at an OK pace, just don't finish religious ideas (avoid taking the final idea, sadly also missing the BROT) because +2 heretic tolerance will cause your provinces to event flip very often.

As a nomad I was affraid too; when I finally DOWed them, I found out I was stack wipping them at 30k VS 30k. Worse is that AI actually isn't aware that it's so much weaker and send waves of 30k. It was ridiculously easy grinding. They happen to be broken by rebels too; I don't know how reliable it is, but in the 1st war I launched, I did not fight ANY single Ming army. Just rebels. Everywhere. Fighting one another to know wether Zhou, Xi, Shun or peasants were the stronger. By the time of 2nd war, there were still ongoing rebelions...

The AI can't manage factions; Ming is terrible at teching up properly. I had tech 7 as Japan when I went on my first war with them, they had tech 4. The only reason you don't wanna conquer them immediately is that the three huge vassals you will get conquering them can be rebellious if you are weak. Ming itself you can always defeat easily.

What do you need to bring down Ming?

A stiff breeze.

Hakairyu said:

The AI can't manage factions; Ming is terrible at teching up properly. I had tech 7 as Japan when I went on my first war with them, they had tech 4. The only reason you don't wanna conquer them immediately is that the three huge vassals you will get conquering them can be rebellious if you are weak. Ming itself you can always defeat easily.

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Those vassals can be used to help you grow elsewhere though.

The only reason I had trouble in MK game was the Manchu/Korea DoW mid-war. I was already relying on looting to upkeep a merc army to trash Ming when it entered my borders and otherwise deal with Oirate, so them coming for me with an extra 30k while I was still so small was problematic even though it turned out well in the end. Ming itself is awful. You can win with day 0 declaration as Manchu for example.

Perhaps they had the faction that removes the discipline malus. I don't know how to check which one they have.

AgentPaper said:

Not sure if Ming has changed since you guys dealt with it, or if they're just especially resilient in my game, but they haven't been nearly as weak as it seemed like they should be, going from what you've been saying. I did manage to beat them, but only by matching them man-for-man (I did have a slight advantage over them it seemed), and even after the war which wiped out their entire army and most of their manpower (I went down to 0 manpower as well, though I kept a sizable standing army), they are till at +1 stability (down from 2) and have no revolt risk in their provinces, so it looks like I'll need to work them over again fairly soon to grow my vassals.

I was originally planning to completely carpet siege them and spawn rebels that way (which would remain after the war ended), but even in my controlled provinces revolt risk was fairly low, and call for peace started before I was even halfway done, unfortunately. I did manage to grab a snaky little stretch of land that allowed me to release all 3 vassals from the start, though, so hopefully the next war I can give them all a bunch of land and cause enough problems that most of the rest will flip from rebels.

On the positive side, Ming has 2.72 tolerance for heretics, and it looks like quite a few provinces have already flipped to Buddhist, so I might not even have to worry about converting too much stuff when I eventually annex all that land.

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I've seen them getting less speed bumped in more recent patches so you may be right about that.

AgentPaper said:

Certainly seems like it, anyways. I've got them down to a single province, now, and they have still yet to get any serious rebels. There were some peasants that took a few provinces after I got them down to a dozen or so provinces, but no patriots or nationalists at all. Even now they're still at +1 stability, despite having only a single, wrong-religion province, -80 prestige, and a regency council.

Didn't really change anything in the long run, though, at least for someone with the power to consistently knock them down like I had. I'm now applying the same technique to Japan, knocking out Ouchi and Uesugi and feeding them back their cores, which luckily enough covers all but 6 of Japan's provinces.

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I did it in 1.5. In my actual game, it is again filled with black stripes (around 1500). Too bad I'm not bordering them and have no CB right now. I'm not sure why you are expecting them to go below 1 stab btw. Sure it would have helped to make them loose their mandate of heaven, but how could you control it?