Celestial Empire means that a province can never be below 50% autonomy.WHAT?
- Thread starter darthfanta
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They get the treatment because Ming consistently invaded Bohemia in EU3. The devs have been very explicit in regards to this. Wiz once even said Ming was made intentionally stupid in regards to managing its factions. This has also been pointed out several times in the thread.
I'm merely pointing out that there's also historical reasons that make Ming's handicaps reasonable, because I like talking about Chinese history.
I'm merely trying to point out a better way of handling both issues than a ham-fisted railroaded penalty exclusive to Ming that will continue to hound it even if it gets broken into a tiny country.
"quickly obtain vast personal power in times of Imperial weaknes"
copying from previous post:
Chinese local 'autonomy' was non-existent in presence of stabilized government. Warlord problem comes from the way the central government allowed authority to regional military commanders in order to deal with external threat effectively. As long as the central government's grip didn't slip, these military commanders didn't have any say on local administration.
Song dynasty exercised strong grip to its military which resulted in one of the worst military in Chinese history, though it stopped most possible military coups. When local military commanders were allowed a greater freedom because the state is being threatened by external force, that's when regional governors(=military commanders) started breaking free.
Yeah there are definitely much better ways to better control Ming than make it a punching bag beyond historical plausibility. They could better represent the Chinese control of expansion with the belief that everything of value was in the Middle Kingdom by exponentially increasing coring costs of territory outside of the Chinese region. Any undertaking that the Qing or previous dynasties took to grow the empire were very costly (with staggering usage of resources that the Europeans could not even fathomor muster).
I'd rather not rail it that way either, but rather modify incentives.
People seem to really be missing the point with autonomy. It translates into power by the state towards empire building, i.e. military and "buildings". It's measuring the administration through this one very, very specific lens. When Spain put together it's Armada or France put together it's grand army those were about 1% of the populations of those nations in a single field army. And Spain and France had other major commitments at the time! For the late Ming to do the same would mean they would have mustered an army of 2 million to fight Shun and the Manchus. They didn't come close to doing that.
Ming needed to muster huge resources to hold the empire together. There were millions in the provincial forces and a huge administration. But they couldn't bring %100 of those resources to bear in a conflict, they had countless other local demands going on.
Ming needed to muster huge resources to hold the empire together. There were millions in the provincial forces and a huge administration. But they couldn't bring %100 of those resources to bear in a conflict, they had countless other local demands going on.
Ming did muster a huge number of troops, just that a substantial percentage of them defected to Manchu and Shun with their armies. The Collapse of Ming was more a civil war than an external invasion, the Manchus were just the right people (note that they were a tributary to China and they were well versed on Chinese politics) in the right place at the right time to make a successful powerplay on the throne.
Ming did have a gigantic army... It's just that as a percentage of the population it was vastly smaller. Ming might have been able to raise two million men, but Sweden, with a hundreth of the population, could raise 160,000, and France half a million.
This is an asinine analysis though, not worth anybody's time as a Ming-specific nerf. You increase the population in any of the cited countries to that degree and the proportionate army they could raise in the time period tanks enormously. That's not a China-exclusive reality, that would have been reality for anybody who got to the size/density Ming had.
In what way is "local autonomy" measured in EUIV?
As far as we can tell, essentially in the state's ability to draft and tax it's citizens.
Ming was significantly less efficient at this than contemporary european states. (certainly by the 1500's, and the intervening time period can easily modelled by simply having Ming start at say, 50% local autonomy and the europeans at 75%) this does not mean Ming could not raise larger armies or bring in larger amounts of wealth: It certianly could, but given it's wealth and size it could not extract as much resources from each individual citizen as the "New Monarchies" could in Europe.
My point is that there are plenty of periods in chinese history where central government breaks down and local authorities reasser themselves. This isn't something exceptional but a pattern.
Or until they switch to a different government type. Which seems fair enough.
Also, there were regional princely courts under Ming that operated with power over vast areas. Playing as the central Imperial Government you could say that the autonomy factor represents the important regional Ming princes that operated their own courts.
This is an excellent point. Note that when the British took over India, they fielded at max 1.7 million during WW1 and 2.5 million during WW2, which is roughly comparable to Ming's numbers. It seems like even European administration is not immune to inefficiency.
"Autonomy" doesn't have to be understood as only representing legal autonomy. It reduces tax and manpower, and can easily be interpreted as representing basic ability to extract revenue and men from a region.
Which is more or less the same as the administrative efficiency option that people are suggesting. Ideally, autonomy limits wouldn't be strictly tied to Ming's government, but would more have to do with total basetax/province count combined with tech level (the current Administrative Efficiency mechanic could be reworked to not just be a late-game conquest-enabler). But this is a good enough band-aid for Ming, representing, albeit crudely, the difficulties of managing an empire as huge as China, even with a relatively advanced bureaucracy.
Which is more or less the same as the administrative efficiency option that people are suggesting. Ideally, autonomy limits wouldn't be strictly tied to Ming's government, but would more have to do with total basetax/province count combined with tech level (the current Administrative Efficiency mechanic could be reworked to not just be a late-game conquest-enabler). But this is a good enough band-aid for Ming, representing, albeit crudely, the difficulties of managing an empire as huge as China, even with a relatively advanced bureaucracy.
And that would be represented (in Vicky or EUIV) by various problems with administration (overseas territories, different cultures, etc.)
The problem is that Ming is mainly one culture. (you could definitely spread it out, but it would still be massively monocultural) with land connections all over the place. So a different equation is needed. (and it should be noted that the french fielded 8 million men, and the germans 13 million, on significantly smaller populations)
Except that level of mobilization tends to break states. Remember that European hegemony was on shaky ground after the first world war and completely collapsed after the second one.
It seems like a good way to balance a China which now has about 3 times more province, but I also hope there are autonomy limits tied with other governmental forms so that changing from a regular feudal kingdom to an absolute or constitutional monarchy actually means something other than a 5% discipline bonus or whatever.
Seems like no one is offering a solution.
How to ensure that Ming is weak enough to not only collapse, but also be conquered by the Manchus at regular efficiencies.
And then, the Qing have to be strong enough to fight off any external invasion with ease.
The simplest solution is to give Ming exceptional provinces, at the cost of horrible modifiers.
Another reasonable solution proposed is to give major autonomy penalties to wrong-culture provinces in large empires, though it doesn't feel enough at all, since Ming can easily crush every nearby nation with just its chinese provinces except for Japan.
How to ensure that Ming is weak enough to not only collapse, but also be conquered by the Manchus at regular efficiencies.
And then, the Qing have to be strong enough to fight off any external invasion with ease.
The simplest solution is to give Ming exceptional provinces, at the cost of horrible modifiers.
Another reasonable solution proposed is to give major autonomy penalties to wrong-culture provinces in large empires, though it doesn't feel enough at all, since Ming can easily crush every nearby nation with just its chinese provinces except for Japan.