Taking on Ming: Good idea or no?

I suggest having high land tech before declaring war. While they do have tons of troops, Latin tech nations have much better units. Fighting shouldn't be too difficult.

I was able to defeat (sometimes totally destroy) Ming armies of 10,000 to 20,000 troops in each with just 4,000 to 8,000 troops in each army as Lithuania. But I was at land tech 45 when I first fought them.

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Ah, see, it's still only about 1600, and I'm at LandTech 20. Still using Maurician infantry... it's better than most of the guys I'm fighting (I steamrollered all of Central America with about 8,000 troops) but I'm willing to bet it won't last against six hundred million screaming Chinamen.

try for india thats historic

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It's on my agenda , but first things first. I either want to solidify my East Asian Empire, or smack the Spanish around and become sole overlord of the Americas (as well as Gibraltar and Ibiza). Plus, they're the only guys I have Just Cause on right now (whom I want to attack, at any rate) so curry and Bollywood will have to wait for at least another century.

Spain could be problematic, too... my idea is to crush Spanbec (I think they've got a grand total of 1,000 troops on the entire continent) and possibly free the Protestants of Aragon from their evil Catholic oppressors. THAT was a doozy... Castille and Aragon joined together through marriage (who'd have guessed?) and the Castilleans promptly set up the kingdom of Spain. Unfortunately, Castille is the most Catholic nation on Earth (soon to be the ONLY Catholic nation on Earth, as soon as France and Portugal realize that 75% of their land is now Calvinist) whereas Aragon was the most Protestant nation on Earth. Some Aragonese rebels took over Sardinia and promptly allied with Merry Old England, but it looks like they're not going to try and reclaim what is theirs from the hated Papists, so that duty is going to fall on me.

But there's a catch: Spain happens to be allied with Lithuania, who's currently Eastern Europe's not-so-gentle giant. I'm hoping maybe I could shore them up in the Baltic, but if they wanted to they could probably march on British Swedewegia. It's one thing to attack a nation that's a million miles from your main power bases, it's another entirely to attack someone who'll land 30,000 troops in your oldest and dearest national territories.

ARGH! This game is difficult.

Oh, bloody hell, now I've done it. I decided to play it "safe" and attack Spain instead.. well, half of Europe decided they didn't want to be my friend anymore, and to make matters worse, Aragon attacked me. QUE? They were just at war with Spain, they couldn't possibly have allied that quickly, not after the Spanish stole their entire empire. Now I'm left with no allies except my tiny vassal states and a war with three kingdoms on par with my own Tech. I should have gone to war with China.

But at least now I have an excuse to invade Portugal and finally kick them off of my continent. America's only big enough for ONE evil Eurocentric colonial oppressor- so speak English or get out! Looks like China is on the back burner for another decade or two... so seeing as I've got some time now (assuming I live through this war) what's the Land tech I should shoot for before I invade? Will mid-20s level Western infantry be enough to trounce early-20s level China?

Sovereign said:

Dunno, but keep us informed.

By the way, are you playing NA?

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No, vanilla. This game is addicting though, so I'll probably shell out the extra and grab NA as soon as I've "finished" my first game.

Uhhh, so, informed? Well, I've come to the conclusion that China can burn in hell. It's gone from nice little colonial war to brutal bloodbath that'd make the Japanese Imperial Army flinch... which is ironic, since I've levied about 40,000 troops out of Japan to throw into that meatgrinder.

First off, the war against Spain ended up being THREE wars against Spain, each bigger and bloodier than the last. Barely more than a years truce in between fights, too- first it was Spain, then it was Portugal attacking and dragging Spain into the fight, then Aragon decided to attack and dragged both Spain and Portugal into the fight... urgh. Anyways, that lasted for about a decade or so, and saw action on both sides of the Atlantic, and by the time I was done I owned all of North America, all the major Carribean islands, Granada, Tangiers, and all the islands of the Western Mediterranean. Old Aragon got wiped out, and was replaced with New Aragon, which consisted of about half of continental Spain. But it didn't "end" there... literally two days after my American Legions had taken over North Africa and ended the war, I got called by some of my allies to go beat up Venice and Tuscany, who were the two biggest Italian powers. So I had to pull all of my departing forces BACK and go fight in Italy. Then two days after that horrible, horrible quagmire was finished, what should happen but ANOTHER ally needs help. Bohemia gets invaded by Poland, so I've got to do a rapid about face and start fighting in the Baltic. Of course Poland manages to run clear across Bohemia, so even though I'm betaing them in the north, the war score is dead even and that doesn't end for about two years. Which gives us over a decade of fighting and war exhaustion, and manpower reserves going from 80k to 20k.

But I wait a few years, and I attack China anyway. My first impression? They SLAUGHTER me. They've got GUNS. And not just guns, big guns that rival mine. Their cavalry is actually better than mine (and I'm using the top Euro cavs of the day), and their infantry can hold their own. QUE? I thought they were going to be stuck in the Middle Ages like Japan was, but nope, both them and Manchu are armed to the teeth with the latest and greatest European accessories of death. But thanks to some clever naval landings and good old English spunk, we beat them back, and I manage to weasel my primary objectives: Macau, Henan, and Whatchamaface, that province between Henan and Macau.

So now I'm thinking: "Well, that's not too bad. They're stronger than I thought, but they give up pretty quick." So I build up a massive invasion force in Japan and set abou to do what you guys suggest: take them apart piece by piece. Only trouble is, now they're not playing the "cede provinces" game. At present, Britain vs China 2 stands at a score of 99-0, Britain occupies about a third of Ming China and has almost all the coast, save for the very northernmost provinces and a small sliver of land which a 20,000+ strong Ming army is currently sitting in. And they won't give up. They've had a -3 stab for the past year and a half, I've offered them 90,80,70, even 60 point deals, and they reject everything. Once in a blue moon they'll come to me and tell me they'll cede A province (in Thailand) and renounce claims on the Southern provinces I own... which would be horrible, since I don't have a core there yet and the Chinese cavalry I'm pumping from Hong Kong is much better than my own. Now I've got ANOTHER load of troops, almost thrice what I thought I'd need, coming in from Japan, and it looks like I may have to chase them all the way back to Mongolia before they let me have even two or three provinces.



Summary for those who're thinking tl;dr: Ming won't give up, "Not a single step back!", no matter how hard I beat them, and it looks like I may have a hundred years war on my hands.

So what's this "turbo-annexing" I keep hearing about? You capture all their provinces except one, then wait for some rebels to come along or something? Then you get every province you occupy without having to force a peace settlement?


(P.S. And you know who wussed out of the invasion of China? Bohemia. They begged me to re-ally and save them from Poland a third time, and I laughed as I sent Poland military access and war funds.)

Novea said:

When you are turbo annexing , its best to occupy everysingle province except for your opponents capital . Then , by whatever means necessary ( incite Revolt , etc) , attempt to initiate a revolt in the capital . Once it falls to the nation , that nation is broken , and you gain all lands you've occupied . Ofcourse , the whole world will declare war on you too. :rofl:

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At this point, I don't care. If all else fails, I'll abandon Europe and rebuild the British nation on the ashes of China, Japan, and North America. As Winston Churchill, the one star government reformer whom I fired after one year and who eventually ended up working for Mali, once said:

"even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old."

Also, oooooooh. So that's what the "Japan is Broken" messages meant. See, I had left the Emperor of Japan intact in Kyoto... a sort of puppet prince imprisoned by my soldiers in order to give my reign a sense of legitimacy. Unfortunately, the Japanese royal family must have ticked someone off, because for about six years straight there was one revolt after another- two or three units would rise up, seize Kyoto, then try attacking my lands. Each time they did that, I got that "Japan is Broken!" message, and I had no idea what it meant. But after the seven or eighth time Japan "broke" I finally got so fed up with the civil disorder that I devassalized them and invaded Yamashiro Province, killing the 6,000 rebels attacking the city and storming the 25 man garrison. That also explains why I suddenly annexed 95% of the growing Munsternian Empire in the first few decades of the game.

Mrdie said:

If it helps, Ming starts with three possible revolter states in EU3:NA.

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Oh, they've got revolter states already. Fortunately for me, some Mongol peasants have been conducting a guerilla war in North-eastern China for years now... they're not strong enough to capture any provinces (yet), but they do keep a few Chinese provinces locked down.



Overhead view of the war as it stands. My manpower reserves are starting to dwindle, but thankfully so are the Chinese. They've got three main pockets of resistance (most notably a massive army led by a 4-stat general counterattacking through the north central front) but two of them are about to be cut off completely from their friends, and I hope to finish my sieges and gain control of everything south of the Yangtsze within two months. My gallant British SNLF are almost completely shot, and the Thai Royal Army only exists on paper now, but boatloads of hastily conscripted British, Japanese and Korean soldiers are pouring into Shanghai harbor every couple months so I hope the war is now secure. Ming had their chance for a Stalingrad at Fujian, but they lost the fight and blew their chance at an easy truce.

Seeing as they've already got two rebelling provinces, what would happen if I took everything but those two? Do you have to leave their capital for last, or can you break them if the final rebel province is some podunk backwater berg? I ask mainly because I'm running out of spies (slider settings) and because with their main power bases in the South out of commission (Nanking, Changsha) the strongest economic and military base they've got is at Beijing. I'd rather push them out of there ASAP then run around it, gobbling up empty rice paddies and miserable Mongol peasants.

kfijatass said:

Edit: see, wasn't that easy?

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No, it wasn't. :wacko: They're still fighting me, and it's been something like three years now. I'm used to beating up Africans and Native Maericans in, like, two months. Maybe a tiny German republican now and then who decides to pick a fight with a vassal of mine. An unlucky roll even killed my king early on, and I got PUed by France. Needless to say, I reloaded that year.

And about the turboannexing - its all about making the enemy have more rebelling provinces than owned provinces, so basically capture all but the revolting province(be quick, so it wont defect) and there you go the most best turboannexation is when the revolt starts in the capital so in the end it is only left with the capital, but since its that far away, just make it revolt and capture the capital. in the end they'll just have the capital + the provinces that rebelled successfully.

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Cool, shouldn't be "much" longer, then. I've got almost everyone locked down, and it's really just a matter of finishing the sieges, pulling my Southern armies up to the Northern front, then crushing the tattered remnants of Imperial Ming.

Ever since i play against ming they reach Lithuania and Qara Khoyunlu/Ottomans.

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Well, seeing as Lithuania is a friggin' goliath, that's not too far off the mark.

I use hyperbole, of course. Lithuania is huge, but the Timmys and Kazan are even bigger. The Timmys are going to be almost at China soon, so I hope France doesn't declare war on me... I want to snag India before the Tims do.

And here's the war as she stands now:



Ming's Manchurian horde got obliterated (finally), and that objective only took me two setbacks to complete. Their central offensive got stalled... I managed to cut them off by taking out their primary base of operations in Hunan, but their god-general held off one or two of my attacks before his encircled army finally collapsed. And the Southern Army very nearly broke out... they capped North Vietnam and I had to resort to a dozen Thai mercenaries to contain them, and even with the Chinese suffering loses three or four times as heavy as the Britano-Thai, they still managed to break the sodding sellswords a couple times. I eventually killed their Southern god-general and cut the Ming down to the last man, but it took much longer than I expected, and it's now August. The only Ming army left south of the Yellow River is the 11th, which is still pretty large and is commanded by their King, but has no morale left and is getting chased down by my 1st SNLF and Imperial Japanese Whiteguard forces.

*phhhhwwwwwoooooooaaaaaaahhhh*

So once they're dead (another week or so, plus a month or two of chasing 200+ stragglers down with my Hong Kong banner cavalry) it's "move everyone north and spank the tiny pocket of resistance around Beijing". Hopefully my beseiging forces won't take too long, but seeing as the seige of Guangzhou took me almost one and a half years, I won't get too cocky just yet.

Oh, and my friggin' vassals all dropped out of the fight. The only one who bothered to send ships was Holland, and that was probably only because they stole my ex-ally Sweden's Thai colonies. Not one of them so much as fought a single Ming transport vessel, yet they've all snagged 80+ ducats from Ming... freeloading grubbers, I've got half a mind to devassalize every last one of them and conquer their measely states. Ming not-fighting harbor rats... y'all can go join Bohemia in Hell!

Edit- And speaking of the Timmys, see that big green splotch up there? Yeah, that splotch goes from Outer Mongolia to the blue shores of the Black Sea. Hopefully their tech is horrible, because last time I sent some explorers their way, they had 50k troops milling around Kazakhistan alone.

Right, well, I think at this point I've moved the topic from "general discussion on Mingian hardcoreitude" to full fledged AAR. So another update, because now I'm getting a bit miffed:



Remember how I said I wasn't going to get cocky? I lied: I was and I did. I figured I had things in the can. WRONG. You know that puny army I said I was going to chase down? Well, they managed to outrun my troops somehow, got a brand new uber-general somehow, and boosted their numbers from a half dozen to twenty bajillion... somehow. They wind up smashing into old Guanxi, and they whup about six armies headed their way. And it's not that I lost tactically, mind you... my armies were dealing 5 to 1 kill ratings even when the die roll came up 9-0 in the AI's favor (which happens a lot in this game, I've noticed). No, they were killing 2,000 Chinese troops a day and STILL running away- and then the Ming force would just reinforce it's catastrophic losses. I swear to God, Ming's got a 0% army tradition and negative cash right now- I even checked the save file to be sure. But they're still getting new military geniuses and troops every couple months. The AI cheats.

Oh, and while that was going on, who should decide to revolt but Mexico. And Yamashiro... seems I've inherited Japan's rebel problem, and with every man in Japan between the ages of 18 and 47 killing Chinese soldiers in the name of King George III, they actually seized Kyoto. So I had to deal with two mini-wars right out of the blue.

But I finally killed the Chinese 11th Army, thanks to the timely actions of my 2nd SNLF. We took no prisoners... every man captured was executed by means of cannon as an example of civilized British justice and supreme Badboyitude. So NOW there's nothing left of Southern Ming, save a few fortresses on the brink of collapse, and the only areas not under seige or under occupation are Beijing, it's suburbs, and the rebel provinces in the Northeast (which still haven't actually been conquered by the rebs). See all that red? That's not the political map, that's a physical depiction of the rivers of blood currently coursing across the Chinese landscape.

Oh, and bonus: one of Ming's latest "peace offers". I own 85% of the country, and the Emperor of China offers me a couple provinces in Thailand. HA! I think NOT! I responded by sending him an offer of: cede every province I control, release every nation you can, be my vassal, give up cores on all my land, pay me as many ducats as you can manage. Grand total of about 700 points, and "he refuses my generous offer".

Well, when France finally calls Britain into the international courts and demands we give an account of our depraved and unbridled empire-mongering, we can at least say we tried to reason with Imperial China. It's not our fault the Emperor was a madman who couldn't agree to a reasonable peace settlement. This could have been done with four years ago had he just ceded the three or four provinces I'd captured during the original invasion!

-edit- Anyone want to bet on what will happen next? Every time I think I'm going to win by Christmas, the war drags on another year. Current odds are:

1.25-1 Rebels fail to do anything, country never breaks
2-1 China gets 30,000 more men in some remote corner of their nation, beat my armies despite losing 5,000 men per day and having a national morale rating of 2.
5-1 Half my colonial provinces revolt due to war fatigue.
7-1 Timurids invade through the north.
10-1 France attacks me.
30-1 France, Spain, Lithuania, Timurids, Bihar, and the Ottomans attack me.
50-1 King George III has heart attack, enters into personal union with the tiny island nation of Corfu, who decide enough is enough and settle for a white peace with China
1000-1 Martians invade, Tech Level 8,000 Insectobot Deathships annihilate everyone, except for Corfu, who inherits the Martian throne and rules the universe for all time.
1000000-1 I actually win this bloody war.