The regency council, combined with the war exhaustion from the last war (even with three military ideas, you accumulate WE quickly when you have administrative efficiency problems), means that I am forced into inactivity for some time. The only thing worth reporting is that my erstwhile allies, the Mongol Khanate, who broke away from our PU when my ruler died, agree to exchange a Chinese province for a contiguous one. I readily agree – the province I lose is more valuable for the time being, since I earn nothing at all from Chinese provinces as yet, but one has to balance that against the fact that the Chinese province will be far more valuable once I form the Qing. 1468 finally brings a change in the situation:
Yes, you get a tribal succession crisis when a regency council “dies.” The next year brings a free Free Subjects move, vindicating my decision to ignore the sliders needed to modernize on the socioeconomic scale for the time being.
My next year has enough administrative skill for this to happen:
Our very first modernization, bringing us all the way from 275% to 175% tech costs. For those of you thinking about playing along at home, this first modernization, from Horse Nomads to Semi-Nomadic, requires only that the nomadic level of the capital be, if memory serves me correctly, 8 (that is, Highly Nomadic, but on the verge of dropping to Moderately Nomadic). There are also moderate slider requirements which are easy to obtain. Subsequent modernization will be harder to obtain.
Modernizing gets us this lovely modifier:
This modifier has several degrees of severity, which vary based on the ratio of nomadic to non-nomadic provinces that we control. The bonus to cavalry costs is nice, but, on balance, this is a severe handicap we want to lose as soon as possible.