Are you saying that all Chinese territory acquired after the Qin Dynasty(221-206 BC) is not a core?
Can China ever be fun?
- Thread starter Eh up me duck
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Are you saying that all Chinese territory acquired after the Qin Dynasty(221-206 BC) is not a core?
That would be a great thing to introduce actually.
Err you do realise that the Qing were invaders from the north east who discriminated heavily against Han Chinese right? The Ming are in charge at game start and had much as core.
I think he is, even better he is using barbarians to claim it isn't core.
Some of the non-Han areas on the periphery of the Ming dynasty were quite restive in this period. Given that cores are no longer handed out after a mere 50 years, it does make a good deal of sense that Ming would need to pacify them. The process of adding a core and then perhaps flipping the culture (both doable through monarch points) seem like reasonable means of making China, at least for a time, focus on administrative issues. This would be doubly true if China had more provinces as well.
It's like Ming's borders haven't changed too much in the last 150 years of its reign, so I guess that would be enough to make them as core.
Hopefully core costs have been modified in EU4 so it's not worth buying cores that are outside of your cultural sphere, this applies to the entire world.
First off, "core" is not a term in international law. It refers to a mechanic within the EU game system.
One test question for core is this:
If the region acquires local due to a rebellion independence, is it more likely to try to enforce change on the parent polity -- ie, install its own ruler as emperor -- or guard its local independence? Some provinces have multiple cores. Just like some parts of 15th century France could either serve as an independent kingdom of Languedoc or Burgundy or simultaneously be used as a base to take Paris, so could central coastal China either be used as a base to take the capital -- or even be the site of the capital -- while simultaneously become an independent kingdom of Wu or Min.
Fujian thus could perhaps have a Chinese core plus a local core. Yunnan or western Sichuan on the other hand, where separatist rebellions were still quite common and where indirect rule by native chiefs proved much easier than direct rule by the bureaucracy, should probably be non-core in the 15th century. Guangdong might be a patchwork of coastal urban trading centers that have cores and other areas that were not.
I realize that Guangdong was under Chinese control as earlier as the Han dynasty. But so was Vietnam.
As for the original question:
Now? No. The spread of core status is in history, as it is in the game, a continuous process. It lags behind territorial expansion -- and much more slowly, in my opinion, in history than it does in EU3, the 50-year-rule which is being changed for EUIV.
So -- yes, all territory conquered since the Qin dynasty was at some point non-core, and became core. For purposes of this, we're talking about a snapshot in 1440. I would argue that at this particular point in history a considerable proportion of the south was still non-core.
Nations -- particularly huge nations, like China -- are made. Laboriously. They are not there eternally. Turning the south, the west, and the north of today's PRC into "China" should be the challenge that makes playing the game interesting for a Chinese player.
EUIV's monarch points, being a limited and scarce commodity, are a good way to recreate this challenge in the game.
As for the "barbarians," regardless of the Qing's "barbarian" heritage and Manchu discrimination against the Han, the Qing treated themselves as a Chinese dynasty using the Chinese bureaucracy and Chinese theories of political legitimacy. So, it's entirely appropriate for "core" status to be extended while they controlled China.
It might seem counter-intuitive that the Qing spread the sense of belonging in a Chinese polity while simultaneously oppressing the Han who created the polity. But hey, politics is counter-intuitive.
Actually, if history were the game, China arguably did spend its points to make areas outside its "home" culture -- ie, where Mandarin is not spoken -- into core provinces. And even Mandarin was highly diverse in terms of dialect.
Last edited:
Another thing to consider is also culture. Much of China (even today) is not strictly speaking "chinese cultured" (IE speaks Mandarin). Even less would have been in 1444. China should also have to spending monarch points on making the empire "Chinese", as well as acquiring cores.
There should also be plenty of religious difficulties in China. China still suffered large scale revolts from radical cultists like the White Lotus. There also should be the threat of foreign religions like Christianity. If you allow such religions to spread throughout the empire, it should be possible for them to lead to cultists similar to the 19th century Taipings. In fact to keep such "foreign" influences out, it should be appealing to take an "isolationist" policy.
There should also be plenty of religious difficulties in China. China still suffered large scale revolts from radical cultists like the White Lotus. There also should be the threat of foreign religions like Christianity. If you allow such religions to spread throughout the empire, it should be possible for them to lead to cultists similar to the 19th century Taipings. In fact to keep such "foreign" influences out, it should be appealing to take an "isolationist" policy.
That "IE" doesn't stand though. It's like saying Low German speakers aren't "German cultured" because they don't speak standard German. Mandarin and other dialects are sub-groups of Chinese language.
The backbones of Ming during the uprising were indeed White Lotus forces, however after Zhu Yuanzhang crowned himself as the emperor, he ordered to curb the White Lotus cult.
It can stand if the designers think it should. There's no strict criteria for linguistic categorization. You can call Mandarin's dialects dialects, or you can call them separate languages. Wu and other regional non-Mandarin sub-varieties of "Chinese" are generally considered separate languages. But it's all arbitrary.
Chinese is rather unusual in that -- thanks to the character system -- two people who could not understand each other in conversation could still communicate in writing just fine. This may have produced more unity than, say, between Castillian and Catalan. But there's no fixed rule for translating a language map into an EU culture-zone map. It's a design decision, based on the effect you want.
My preference is to make China diverse because 1) homogeneity is boring 2) it makes for a more interesting and historical "effect," creating an empire that requires a lot of effort to administer.
Managing secret societies -- really, separate religions -- should definitely be part of the Chinese player's experience.
Applying Western concepts like that is stupid, Cantonese speakers are still Chinese. Southern China is far more Chinese than Southern France is French
Political science -- and history-based gaming -- is largely about finding concepts that explain political behavior globally.
If you say, southern China is Chinese and always has been and always will be, that is a metaphysical statement -- like romantic 19th century nationalism -- that doesn't have much meaning in a game.
Look at regions' behavior -- and again, we're talking about the 15th century, not now.
If it has a separate language like southern France, preserves a sense of a separate political identity like southern France, and rebels like southern France, then it can be modeled like southern France.
Or, if it talks like Languedoc and walks like Languedoc, then it's (the game equivalent of) Languedoc.
Generally speaking, most of the rebellions in China have originated in the south of the country (including the one that placed the Ming in power). Never an entirely stable region.
What you forget is that the dialects of China share a written form leading to a shared culture.
I live in Hong Kong, which is in Southern China, past British colony, where people speak Cantonese and really bad mandarin.. Before British reign, Hong Kong people consider ouselves Chinese. During British reign, we call ourselves Chinese under British reign. Nowadays, we call ourselves Chinese. Think about the 15th Century, would the people from Guangdong (southern China FYI) consider themselves not Chinese when modern people, being heavily influenced by Western culture, do so?
Historically, most major Chinese revolts and rebellions do not aim for political independence, but a replacement of the government which takes control of the precedor's lands. The others are either religious or aimless peasant rebellions.
I hadn't forgotten that -- but most medieval societies had a trans-state written language, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, etc., that did not necessarily subsume local identity. This is not a precise equivalency, but close enough.
National consciousness is everywhere in the world a very late development, usually in the time covered by EU and according to many theorists, not really until the 19th century.
You may be heavily influenced by Western culture but you're even more heavily influenced by pan-regional Chinese culture: the educational system, the media, etc.
I realize that Chinese society was much more sophisticated in its cultural engineering than Europe in the EU game period. In particualar, it had a standardized educational system. And to be honest, I don't know that much about Guangdong. I do know that large amounts of Yunnan and Sichuan needed to be governed indirectly through tribal chiefs. Also, it's my understanding that a fair amount of the south -- the inland valleys, in particular -- were populated by military colonists because the local hill peoples were simply uncontrollable. I'm not sure if that applies to Guangdong.
Likewise, I understand that Vietnam was a Chinese province occupied by Chinese armies, used Chinese as the written language of government, adopted Chinese deities, was administered by Chinese bureaucrats, and was -- in terms of how the Emperor in saw things -- an integral part of "China" through much of the 1500 years preceding the game. And yet Vietnam never lost its regional sense of identity. If Vietnam had been under Chinese political control for a few hundred more years, maybe it might have been.
I realize that Vietnamese is much, much further from Mandarin in terms of linguistic taxonomy than is Cantonese, although once two languages are mutually unintelligible, I'm not sure how much that difference makes.
Last edited:
From what I understand, some of the non-Han areas in southern China put up continual resistance to Ming authority. This was primarily because they didn't fully respect Ming's rule over them and there were revolts to maintain a degree of independence. That is the kind of motivation which would be tied with a non-core province. It makes sense that the player, just like Ming itself, would need to exert some effort to break down past allegiances to pacify the area and then, like in real life, send in settlers to promote Han culture and dominance. As a few others have said, this is fairly close to what really happened. Making all of Ming's provinces core and Chinese cultured is an incredibly bland and ultimately flawed way of portraying things.
I should add that the south encompasses both Han peoples that don't speak Mandarin (like Cantonese, Hakka and Wu speakers) and people who speak entirely different languages (like the Zhuang in Guangxi or the Kham in Sichuan). I think both should be differentiated in some way from the Mandarin heartland. But I'll admit that the case is stronger for the latter group than the former.
So what trade-off was there? Did they stagnate in other areas because of it?
In history, you can't always check for opportunity costs -- ie, what was given up by allocation of resources elsewhere. Also, in the game, monarch points are an abstraction, making it even harder to measure.
Howver, China did require vast administrative capacity, and the result of this was a semi-autonomous bureaucracy that was really too big to be controlled by a single authority and could easily passively-aggressively bury any imperial initiative that did not suit its own particular ethic.
A lot of Chinese history is a response to the dual dangers of too much military autonomy (warlords, like in the Tang dynasty) and too much control by bureacrats who really distrusted soldiers (the Song dynasty, such as the tragic story of Yue Fei).
Game-wise, I don't really know how I would handle this. Maybe make a Celestial Empire mechanic where you have to appease the bureaucracy to get monarch points.
I was doing a lot of Googling on the history of the south, as much as I can find that's in English. What I would suggest: Han-speaking areas should be given a China core. These areas were colonized by Han from further north. But they should also have their own core -- Yue, Min, Wu, etc -- to model that they could, in theory, become independent states, as they did most recently in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period about 500 years before the start of the game. I personally would treat Han non-Mandarin groups as their own culture group, but I don't know EU's standards for that.
Han colonization also started in the coast, and while the bulk of the Sinicization would have been complete by 1440 it would not have been the 99% that it is today (in Guangdong at least, much less in Guangxi and Yunnan). In Guangdong, for example, I can't find all that many cities with histories dating back before the 16th century outside the Pearl River Delta and the river valleys. The forested interior -- I'm guessing -- is still mostly non-Han, although it's probably a minority of the population.
Non-Han populations like the Zhuang, the Li, and others should probably not be given core status, any more than Vietnam should, as they had their own sense of history as a people despite having adopted a lot of Chinese cultural traits.
Last edited:
I too am from HK, my first languages are Cantonese and English. I learned Mandarin at the age of 15. Living in Beijing for a few years helped; otherwise my Mandarin would still be pretty rubbish like most HKers.
Don't understand the obsession by westerners to claim that Cantonese are somehow not Chinese and yearn for an "independent Cantonesia". It's amusing and annoying to see folks claim to understand my country and say everyone who ain't Mandarin speaking wants to declare independence.
Don't understand the obsession by westerners to claim that Cantonese are somehow not Chinese and yearn for an "independent Cantonesia". It's amusing and annoying to see folks claim to understand my country and say everyone who ain't Mandarin speaking wants to declare independence.