So my reply was lost, gonna be briefer than I intended, sorry:
The historical Taiping had world-wide effects. Or are you seriously arguing that the deaths of over 20 million people, the destruction of the legitimacy of the Qing government, and the further incursion of British and French interests into China did not have any world wide effects?
The deaths, while obviously a major and terrible event in China, not not have any global effects. I doubt many outside China knew about them until historians documented them. Qing's legitimacy was already poor and European influence on the rise before, since that was a major reason for the rebellion.
By the very same arguments you use, the American civil war shouldn't be in the game. The Confederates lost, that civil war was similarly far removed from the real power centres of the world at the time, and it was by any measure a miniscule conflict compared to the Taiping rebellion.
If the scenario started after Gettysburg, perhaps.
The Opium wars, which relied on intimidating a decentralised, weak government and involved no serious land fighting, would be a very different matter if conducted against a revolutionary government with a strong, centrally-controlled military that was not in any mood to give up anything. The Chinese historically proved in Indochina that they actually were quite capable of turning out a respectable performance in a land war with a first-rate European power. "Just another Opium war" is making wildly optimistic assumptions. Of course, a Taiping government could be battered and weak and have to give in to the West - which would probably cause it to topple, plunging China into another civil war (this would also have pretty significant effects). However, a fairly robust and unified Taiping regime would be very unlikely to prove as easy prey as the Qing, for the very simple reason that they were more likely to call the bluff of a Western power and defeating China in a land war was a very different endeavour to sinking Chinese ships and grabbing some fortresses at the mouths of rivers.
Possibly, then again, it might have been possible to form Qing loyalist armies and provide officers and arms on a larger scale. I suspect a new Taiping regime would be pretty shakey and open to a counter-revolution due to their losses before the scenario starts and the radicalness of their position.
The game actually does model gender inequality, since you can enact female suffrage.
Well, true, but only if you have Universal suffrage already. Unless Taiping is going to be a democracy it doesn't really apply
It also models the opium problems introduced to China, and a Taiping government would outlaw opium sales, removing those effects and generating casus bellis for at least England and possibly a couple of other GPs. They would be unsphered, and a victorious Taiping regime also would unify China, which is a pretty significant alteration. It would also change China's state religion to Protestant, give them a malus to pop growth, and an increase in literacy gain. There's probably a few more things I can think of, but that's more alterations to China, using nothing but existing game mechanics, than nearly any other event in the game causes to any country.
True, that could be interesting, although having them unify China early brings back the unwanted "SoI CHI for massive economy boost" we wanted to be rid of.
