Conquest of China shouldn't be possible in 1600s!

[highsis]

I started playing as Saxe Lauenberg with hard AI, AI bonus, random lucky nations, and Ironman.

I culture-shifted to Pomenerian and turned into Prussia, then mostly focused on expanding in Europe without ever colonizing.

In 1677, naval tech 22 was unlocked(10 years ahead) that greatly reduced naval attrition. I took expansion idea to get CB on asian nations and bam! I conquered whole China in 1685. The exchange rate in battle was like 100 casualty on my side and 20~30k in theirs in every battle.

For the record, in China of 1685, this guy(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangxi_Emperor) was ruling Qing empire and the empire was at its prime. Many cultural/religious exchange between Europe/China took place during this period and there was even a class of studying China in Italian universities.

"Völker Europas, wahrt eure heiligsten Güter"

Yellow Peril was regarded as a serious threat at this time, though later it was discarded with Qing's devastating defeats in Opium wars 170 years later.



I really don't think any European colonial powers at this period was capable of winning a war in Chinese mainland let alone conquer the whole country.

The gap between European army and non-European army is unrealistically severe, as I pointed out in EU3 many times. The issue persists in EU4.

It took GB a great amount of schemes, local alliances, playing one against another, and efforts to subjugate Mughal empire in 1757~1857 when Mughal empire was on verge of collapse after huge defeats against Persia. Outright conquest of China in 1600s is simply sad.

It's true that American indigenous people were really primitives in terms of military technology, but it's not the same with other non-european countries. It's hilarious how Asian armies don't even have cannons in late 1600s when cannon was first invented in China centuries ago. Mongolian empire conquered Song empire's cities using cannons imported from China.... (to be fair, Europe utilized cannons long before the game's start date of 1454, but that's not the point of my argument.)



In future patches or DLCs I wish conquest of Asia before late 1700s were made much more difficult, and technological gap lessened between Europeans and non European countries. By this I don't mean restricting conquest by artificially imposing high warscore cost(as they did in EU3 with Japan); instead, it should be focussed on making non-europeans more competitive against Europe in army quality and strength.

I know this game is named Europa Universalis, but I'm sure no one of us wants to see something as ridiculous as an European power(even if player controlled) conquering whole China in 1600s.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I've been saying this almost since the beginning of my short time with this game. While it makes sense for Europe to have a significant advantage in Europa Universalis, the sheer extent of the advantage is patently absurd. The tech cost is enough; you don't need to give them better units for tech AND penalize everyone below Muslim in the game's hardest resource to come by. That way, a more advanced power could subjugate an Asian nation with good play, but you wouldn't see trashy nonsense like small European nations rolling up in India with 1/3 or fewer of the enemy's forces and owning them battle after battle with a marginal tech lead.

That said, Ming itself sucks in general in AI hands. I tore it apart easily (pathetically so as it turned out) in the 1500's with the Mongol Khanate, and there are a LOT of barriers for the Mongol Khanate just to survive. I was expecting their 70k forces to do something, but instead they split them into vassal lands (Tibet and Manchu) and I fought about 5-10 regiments in my borders, which took a long time to arrive, before checking the ledger and seeing that somehow they'd been knocked down to just over 20k forces. What? So after Manchu moved in my cavalry followed and went-a-hunting on a WE depleted, morale broken ming while only 8 infantry for me and a few vassal stacks spanked Ming to 99% war score at tech 5 X_X.

AI Ming sucks in general. A human can run away with them.

 

[tapewormlondon]

But see the problem is, IRL, Saxe Lauhenburg didn't culture shift to Pomeranian, didn't turn into Prussia and were not 10 years ahead of the naval race.

They also didn't ship thousands of men over in a full on invasion. So who knows, maybe they could have.

The above is obviously tongue in cheek, but my point is you have done loads of things in that game that were not possible. Were we to follow what was possible and not possible to the letter, my Netherlands wouldn't own all of France, half of Germany, disbanded the HRE and be fielding 170,000.

But as its a game I'm kinda glad we can.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But see the problem is, IRL, Saxe Lauhenburg didn't culture shift to Pomeranian, didn't turn into Prussia and were not 10 years ahead of the naval race.

They also didn't ship thousands of men over in a full on invasion. So who knows, maybe they could have.

The above is obviously tongue in cheek, but my point is you have done loads of things in that game that were not possible. Were we to follow what was possible and not possible to the letter, my Netherlands wouldn't own all of France, half of Germany, disbanded the HRE and be fielding 170,000.

But as its a game I'm kinda glad we can.

The logical conclusion of your argument is that it should therefore also be possible for Asian nations to become very powerful early in the game, since events that didn't happen in reality *did* occur in the game in player hands.

 

[tapewormlondon]

The logical conclusion of your argument is that it should therefore also be possible for Asian nations to become very powerful early in the game, since events that didn't happen in reality *did* occur in the game in player hands.

The same could be said for the statement of it wasn't possible. It wasnt possible for Aztecs to westernized and control all of the Americas, or for Brittany to become the greatest power in all Christendom. But in game we can. Because, well its fun.

I am not saying that the chinease should be rolled over in a single war. I'm just saying that it should be possible

 

[FearTheAmish]

The logical conclusion of your argument is that it should therefore also be possible for Asian nations to become very powerful early in the game, since events that didn't happen in reality *did* occur in the game in player hands.

The problem being Westernization of their military couldn't happen because of the lack of knowing how European armies operated. Could 30k men in Tercios decimate Qing china? Probably. Is it likely that Spain/any European power could ship 30k Tercios over to China during the 1500-1600's? not at all but naval attrition of troops isn't as strong as it should be. Or Attrition in any place for that matter isn't strong enough, west indies were called the Fever islands for a reason, and siberian colonization wasn't wide spread for a good reason also.

 

[grisamentum]

The problem being Westernization of their military couldn't happen because of the lack of knowing how European armies operated. Could 30k men in Tercios decimate Qing china? Probably.

In the 17th century? No way.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The problem being Westernization of their military couldn't happen because of the lack of knowing how European armies operated. Could 30k men in Tercios decimate Qing china? Probably.

Haha no. Man, the bias here is unbelievable. If China also has guns, and 100k troops + cannons (which as has been pointed out, the freaking Mongol empire grabbed from them BEFORE this game's timeframe), then no, 30k tercios are not going to run roughshod over enemy territory or make any serious inland gains, ever. Just keeping them alive and supplied with food on the shores via naval bombardment would be a serious undertaking if Qing opted to forcibly defend them.

And yes, when you have equal tech in the game, both sides have access to firearms and tactics (modeled by military technology). It's ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous the amount of bonuses that get handed to the Western group in this game. It's almost equally perplexing just how distorted the perception is when it comes to superiority in this timeframe. It's trash from both real history and gameplay:

Real history:

Most successful conquests relied not only on superior arms, but careful diplomacy and/or just massed diseases of the native populations (IE the Americas). Running into India guns blazing without playing nations off on each other would have been nigh-instant death even for large European forces trying to invade the area, but Europeans weren't that stupid. In EU IV even crappy players can conquer India and largely ignore diplo in the area while doing so if they're Western.

Gameplay:

It's better if more nations are relatively balanced/playable. While advantages should exist, there's no gameplay justification for making them greater than they were in history by a wide margin. If anything, that cuts into potential enjoyment of a large % of the nations in this game. The pathetic weakness of the Asian nations also runs absolutely counter to what the developers otherwise force on us; making it hard to blob indefinitely. Rather than having nations actually put up some resistance, we're instead stuck watching a % meter fill up to core, while ignoring diplo entirely. That isn't challenge, it's a rate-limiter.

Simply put, there's literally 0 gameplay reasons to justify making so many nations effectively incapable of fighting directly, and it doesn't model history either.

Actually, PUs run counter to all other developer changes to the game also, but that's for another thread.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

Well, while I agree with tapewormlondon in principle that a skilled player can beat the "history" and that's just part of the game, it's still valid to say that the gap between tech groups is simply, unrealistically large. I don't care about history, but even for gameplay it's just not challenging nor fun. Well, I guess it could be fun rolling over hapless Chinese soldiers and laugh at their stack melting before your awesome musketeers once or twice, but it gets really old and there's no sense of accomplishment once you conquer China this way.

Conquering France, on the other hand, is admittedly very satisfying because you're fighting a formidable enemy. You strategize, play heavily with diplomacy, overcome the difficulties and reach the point where you demand total annexation - or if you're like me, kick them off to Africa and smile for the rest of the campaign. Realistically speaking neither should be really possible, so that's beside the point. Conquering China just doesn't feel like an accomplishment since you don't need to bother finding local allies, you don't care what allies they bring, you just send a boatload of people and massacre everything in your way, carpet siege and just wait. Yeah. Fun.

And Westernization. I'm glad that they made it easier for the AIs, but at the same time it just brings too much benefits and kill the Asian campaign. Then you might ask: you don't have to Westernize, it's your option. True, if just praying to fairies that Russia doesn't DoW me next and surrendering everything they demand every time if they do falls within your definition of fun. (And just in case somebody brings it out: there's now no reason to bring arguments like 'oh but nobody westernized in the EU4 time frame historically' - now the Westernization popup clearly says you've modernized the military to the Western standards. That's it: you learn to make weapons that they have, you don't completely overhaul your nation and try to be European. That sort of "Westernization" never happened even to this day.)

 

[FearTheAmish]

i enjoy how you guys completely skipped the part were i stated they couldn't even get there... Also if i recall correctly Qing china relied on a small professional army and a large conscript army. Also they had trouble keeping their coastal provinces clear of Japanese Pirates much less a major military power. The big thing here isn't just Weapons but that tactics used with them, and the difference between a professional well drilled military force and a peasant conscript army.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, while I agree with tapewormlondon in principle that a skilled player can beat the "history" and that's just part of the game, it's still valid to say that the gap between tech groups is simply, unrealistically large. I don't care about history, but even for gameplay it's just not challenging nor fun.

Yeah, I didn't meant to come off wrongly. This is my position as well. I like being able to re-write history in the game, or do things that would have been extremely difficult (both as western and eastern, IE recreate Mongol Empire as Mongol Khanate and surpass their greatest point thereafter). However, the difference in power is grating.

I guess it does kind of turn Europe expanding into other areas as a "beginner's realm", but even that's a little off-kilter when it's otherwise the hardest place in the game to expand .

i enjoy how you guys completely skipped the part were i stated they couldn't even get there... Also if i recall correctly Qing china relied on a small professional army and a large conscript army. Also they had trouble keeping their coastal provinces clear of Japanese Pirates much less a major military power. The big thing here isn't just Weapons but that tactics used with them, and the difference between a professional well drilled military force and a peasant conscript army.

I skipped it because there was no point in addressing it; we both know that would have been logistically implausible for the cost. However, even theorycrafting and teleporting those soldiers there, it still doesn't work. It's not "probably", it's "no way in ****". We're talking about ~tech again, and at that point a professional army with good tactics + conscript support outnumbering the enemy 3:1 or more on home terrain can and almost always will flatten the ever loving crap out of their opposition, even if their guns shoot a little further and more accurately.

 

[grisamentum]

i enjoy how you guys completely skipped the part were i stated they couldn't even get there... Also if i recall correctly Qing china relied on a small professional army and a large conscript army. Also they had trouble keeping their coastal provinces clear of Japanese Pirates much less a major military power. The big thing here isn't just Weapons but that tactics used with them, and the difference between a professional well drilled military force and a peasant conscript army.

Oh please. Europe couldn't keep the Mediterranean clear of the Barbary corsairs even in the 18th century. Piracy is like fighting guerrilla warfare on the ocean. Has nothing to do with being able to conquer Qing with 30k tercios.

The gap in military technology, tactics, etc was just not that large in the 17th century. Even if they could have gotten there and had magic reinforcement like in-game there is just no way China could have been decimated by 30k Westerners.

 

[unmerged(804580)]

i enjoy how you guys completely skipped the part were i stated they couldn't even get there... Also if i recall correctly Qing china relied on a small professional army and a large conscript army. Also they had trouble keeping their coastal provinces clear of Japanese Pirates much less a major military power. The big thing here isn't just Weapons but that tactics used with them, and the difference between a professional well drilled military force and a peasant conscript army.

It's funny how you bring up the Wokou as an example of Qing ineptness.

Wokou raids were at their high between 14-16C, when the Ashikaga Shogunate was powerless over Japan. A lot of the pirates usually lumped together as "Wokou/Wakou" were actually Chinese, and their constant raids were more of a symptom of Ming losing control on itself rather than Japanese military strength. Korea led a successful expedition to Tsushima in 1419; Japan under Toyotomi got their internal problems sorted out and largely stopped the pirates; Qing fortified the targeted areas like Fujian and had little problem defending the coastline.


Now, let's get into a fun historical imagination. Could 30K Western military successfully defeat even Korea in 1650-1700? (Becauase that's the time frame of OP's discussion) For the sake of argument, I'm going to ignore the naval transportation problems because that's basically what we're given in the game. Korea in this time frame was fielding ~45000 standing army. Further, not only that the gunpower weapons were already being widely used for centuries, they also had the knowledge of Western military technology because they had Dutch advisors in weapons manufacturing and military training in the capital. I'll let your imagination run wild. I'd say probably, but not in a roflstomping way.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

I have to agree with several of these points. The non-western tech groups already receive huge tech penalties, and I feel this is mostly what is needed. Through most of the game the differences in unit strength should not be that great, when equal on tech, until perhaps the 1700s and 1800s when western units should become noticeably stronger. Also I really hate the -1 penalty to monarch power that certain tech groups receive, ontop of having a horrendous tech penalty -and- patently inferior units.

It is much too easy to sail into India/Indonesia/Indochina in the mid 1500s and 1600s and simply murder everyone without breaking much of a sweat. It should be much more difficult to do this so early, but managing to do so of course will reap the rewards.

 

[Jomini]

Haha no. Man, the bias here is unbelievable. If China also has guns, and 100k troops + cannons (which as has been pointed out, the freaking Mongol empire grabbed from them BEFORE this game's timeframe), then no, 30k tercios are not going to run roughshod over enemy territory or make any serious inland gains, ever. Just keeping them alive and supplied with food on the shores via naval bombardment would be a serious undertaking if Qing opted to forcibly defend them.

And yes, when you have equal tech in the game, both sides have access to firearms and tactics (modeled by military technology). It's ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous the amount of bonuses that get handed to the Western group in this game. It's almost equally perplexing just how distorted the perception is when it comes to superiority in this timeframe. It's trash from both real history and gameplay:

Real history:

Most successful conquests relied not only on superior arms, but careful diplomacy and/or just massed diseases of the native populations (IE the Americas). Running into India guns blazing without playing nations off on each other would have been nigh-instant death even for large European forces trying to invade the area, but Europeans weren't that stupid. In EU IV even crappy players can conquer India and largely ignore diplo in the area while doing so if they're Western.

Gameplay:

It's better if more nations are relatively balanced/playable. While advantages should exist, there's no gameplay justification for making them greater than they were in history by a wide margin. If anything, that cuts into potential enjoyment of a large % of the nations in this game. The pathetic weakness of the Asian nations also runs absolutely counter to what the developers otherwise force on us; making it hard to blob indefinitely. Rather than having nations actually put up some resistance, we're instead stuck watching a % meter fill up to core, while ignoring diplo entirely. That isn't challenge, it's a rate-limiter.

Simply put, there's literally 0 gameplay reasons to justify making so many nations effectively incapable of fighting directly, and it doesn't model history either.

Actually, PUs run counter to all other developer changes to the game also, but that's for another thread.

In real history, the Chinese state would be ruled by factions incapable of maintaining unitary action. The peasants would revolt, take multiple major cities, and fragment the country. The invaders would cut a deal with the remaining loyal imperial troops and have them attack the rebels in order to off both loyalist and rebel forces while then taking up power themselves.

I mean seriously, the Manchu took over the place with precious little effort and that was quite historical. China historically has always suffered from needing to extract a lot money from the populace, strong factionalism in the court, and a bajillion commitments its army needs to keep.

The big thing that stopped the European conquest of China was other Europeans. Is Spain going to take over China? No, they have their plates full with France, the OE, and England. Devoting the sea lift and manpower is a quick recipe for Spain to be invaded and for the home territory to be lost. Similarly England at its height couldn't move that much naval power away - the French or someone else might just land and overrun England itself. China historically was a fratricidal deathmatch waiting to happen. Now the game doesn't model (well) just how bad China was at having to burn manpower and gold on internal suppression, but a well timed blow by anyone could have taken China down. The Manchu weren't that special, they just happened to be closest and the first to advance.

Europeans may well have too many advantages, but the game really doesn't capture just how much idiotically better western states were at maintaining order with limited resource expenditures and managing uniform action among competing factions. Now I strongly doubt the west could keep China without investing a huge amount in governance and repression, but China really did go through some horrific times where the emperor barely ruled.

Now sure the fall of the Ming is not foreordained, but it is quite reasonable for China to go down in flames - it has a much worse factional problem than anyone in the west.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Now sure the fall of the Ming is not foreordained, but it is quite reasonable for China to go down in flames - it has a much worse factional problem than anyone in the west.

I think the game models that pretty well actually. If you play Manchu you can day 0 DoW and beat them handily, and that's before they get massive revolts all over the place at the first crack of losing mandate of heaven + low legitimacy. I've seen Ming be 1/3 occupied by rebels w/o foreign intervention.

The problem isn't that, but rather what the western powers can do militarily against larger numbers of equal tech opponents that aren't western or eastern/otto

 

[grisamentum]

In real history, the Chinese state would be ruled by factions incapable of maintaining unitary action. The peasants would revolt, take multiple major cities, and fragment the country. The invaders would cut a deal with the remaining loyal imperial troops and have them attack the rebels in order to off both loyalist and rebel forces while then taking up power themselves.

I mean seriously, the Manchu took over the place with precious little effort and that was quite historical. China historically has always suffered from needing to extract a lot money from the populace, strong factionalism in the court, and a bajillion commitments its army needs to keep.

The big thing that stopped the European conquest of China was other Europeans. Is Spain going to take over China? No, they have their plates full with France, the OE, and England. Devoting the sea lift and manpower is a quick recipe for Spain to be invaded and for the home territory to be lost. Similarly England at its height couldn't move that much naval power away - the French or someone else might just land and overrun England itself. China historically was a fratricidal deathmatch waiting to happen. Now the game doesn't model (well) just how bad China was at having to burn manpower and gold on internal suppression, but a well timed blow by anyone could have taken China down. The Manchu weren't that special, they just happened to be closest and the first to advance.

Europeans may well have too many advantages, but the game really doesn't capture just how much idiotically better western states were at maintaining order with limited resource expenditures and managing uniform action among competing factions. Now I strongly doubt the west could keep China without investing a huge amount in governance and repression, but China really did go through some horrific times where the emperor barely ruled.

Now sure the fall of the Ming is not foreordained, but it is quite reasonable for China to go down in flames - it has a much worse factional problem than anyone in the west.

Yes, clearly much worse than the Protestant Reformation. That was just such a period of European harmony and brotherhood.

 

[Colossal_Elk]

The problem is that:

1. Western units on any tech level are almost always better than other units of the same tech level.
2. Westerners are always ahead of everyone else.

One or the other would be far more acceptable. But both, at the same time? Western becomes a roflstomp of everyone else. That's why playing this game as a western power is so boring. No one can possibly defeat you at any time ever. Unless you intentionally adopt outdated units there's literally no possible way to lose.

 

[Novacat]

Devoting the sea lift and manpower is a quick recipe for Spain to be invaded and for the home territory to be lost. Similarly England at its height couldn't move that much naval power away - the French or someone else might just land and overrun England itself.

Great Britian's conquest of India and the later Opium wars destroy your assumptions.

In real history, the Chinese state would be ruled by factions incapable of maintaining unitary action. The peasants would revolt, take multiple major cities, and fragment the country. The invaders would cut a deal with the remaining loyal imperial troops and have them attack the rebels in order to off both loyalist and rebel forces while then taking up power themselves.

This might have been true for the Ming, but the Qing were at the height of their power during EU4's era, it was not until Opium was introduced en masse by the Europeans that Qing started to fall apart from the seams but this happened in the 1800s which is outside of EU4's time frame.

 

[gaius valerius]

What bugs me is the nivellation of all nations on subpar levels. Fact. 15th century China was vastly more powerful than any European state in terms of mobilising resources. Fact. The wealth of China was greater than that of individual European empires and this for the longest of time. Fact. Agrarian output in China remained higher than anywhere in the world (untill the late 18th century). Fact. China was not at all - as is so often wrongfully assumed - a scientifical black hole, science in China boomed before the arrival of the Europeans. Fact. Chinese science was very advanced BUT Vincean rather than Galilean in nature, this caused a serious discrepancy in terms of results: Chinese science discovered a lot but didn't translate this into practical applications most of the time. Fact. China fundamentally lacked a sense of private property, didn't have a clearcut legal framework, all things that were fully developing in Europe. Capitalism had at face value more chances of emerging in China then Europe if not for the above.

The China above is never the China we'll see in game. We'll never see the China that in the 16th century could muster hundreds of thousands of men to march against Hideyoshi in Korea (okay, ruining itself in the process but hey...). That western military advancements were superior isn't the point, the initial discrepancy is by far to great at the start of the game and for all intents and purposes, China was much more advanced 'tech-levelish' than the muslim world.