EUIV - Ming is Over Powered - and Institutions Should be Improved

[Casko]

Just a question for people more smarter than me in the game, seeing as that you are more often than not forced to simply be Ming's lapdog, the fact that they are usually able to completely pass all of their Imperial reforms in exceedingly short time. I've seen them personally pass every single one of them by 1550ies give or take.

Should Ming be given back their 50% autonomy floor to reduce the sheer strength of income and numbers they currently have? Also should the reformations take longer to complete and each time you pass one giving you far larger hit in stability and other bad things to happen to your country in similar way to Inti religious reforms? as historically most of Ming reforms ended up failing one way or the other.

A long long time ago. I suggested a minor tweak to how MoH monthly tick works.

My idea starts with reduce how much monthly mandate you can get from stability, prosperity in provinces, and everything else that is positive. HOWEVER keep tributaries mandate gain overall the same.

Maybe add a negative mandate consequence for seizing land in conquest wars instead of you know actually enforcing tributaries. I am not sure this should be counted in EU4. Trying to encourage more "tall" vs "wide" if nothing else.

Make devastation mandate lose way way stronger mostly because it always seem to stay in the low amount during AI vs AI war. Low as -.3 at the most in a 2500 development Russia vs 2000 Ming 1800 kind of war and Ming is just at 100% merc spamming, without going into debt, which result in a white peace which is stupid.

Of course this suggestions didn't get implemented like at all. I was hoping to see a reworked MoH to emphasize more tributaries less blobby playstyle by AI by now.

Funny you spoke of devastation. As few months back I was playing a game of Colonial Japan before ending up claiming Manchuria from BlobKorea, as Korea seems to always eat all of the Manchu tribes nowdays. and just as a pure test at the time, I decided to see if I could reduce their Mandate at all by causing most of their provinces be devastated, however the devastation modifier in Mandate simply is not worth anything, as even with around 70% of the china turned red like it was WW2 their Mandate tick was around -0.5.

 

[YellowGelni]

Ming was actually in pretty hard decline for most of the EU period (until it got overthrown). The Yongle Emperor (the last particularly expansionist emperor) had died in 1424, and his successors saw the loss of Dai Viet and the general decay of the military.

The Ming were never able to project significant power over the steppes; their expeditions consistently ended in disaster, with the Tumu Crisis in 1449 even resulting in the Emperor himself being captured by the Oirats. Even their less disastrous expeditions more or less tended to see an army march around a bit, run out of food and have to retreat without accomplishing anything. Their most notable military victory during the EU4 period was the long and bloody Imjin War (1592-8), which saw a Chinese-Korean alliance repel a Japanese invasion of Korea at enormous cost in blood and treasure, and left them a weakened shell of themselves.

Meanwhile, the Ming government was extremely inefficient (the traditional governing bureaucracy was essentially scrapped by the early Ming, and the various attempts to replace it never really gelled). The dynasty founder had essentially banned foreign trade, which meant that smuggling was rampant and thus largely untaxed, while many of the smugglers also dabbled in piracy, further weakening the economy. Corruption and hyperinflation further meant the economy was in poor shape even in the 15th century (before the arrival of Peruvian silver really kicked inflation into high gear).

Ming was still powerful, but nothing like the behemoth that the Qing would become.

Furthermore, the tributary system misrepresents the direction of flow of profits. Remember how foreign trade was banned for most of Ming (the ban was finally lifted in 1567)? "Tribute" missions were allowed to conduct trade during their visits. Add in the reciprocal gifts that the emperor would generally give his "tributaries" whenever they arrived to give tribute, and these "tributary" missions tended to be extremely profitable for the tributaries, and expensive for the emperor. There's a reason that the various emperors found themselves having to place limits on the frequency and size of "tribute" missions from their tributaries.

Honestly, how tributaries should work is more or less the opposite of how they do: each tributary should have a significant upkeep cost in ducats, but give a bonus of Monarch Points. That way Ming could only afford a limited number of tributaries, and also have difficult paying for a significant army.

Well there is no way to deny that Ming was performing way under it´s theoretical capability and it wasn´t my intention to deny it. If my post seemed like I did I failed miserably at this, so I hope it didn´t. What I wanted to argue is the region having great potential which historicaly wasn´t used most of the time, atleast by the Ming.

Right now at start Ming is already blessed by a poor access to its resources. About 50% of its states (13 out of 28) are considered overseas territory only giving 25% of their value since I am to lazzy to calc the percentage of the effected development i´d say it is rather evenly distributed bringing it to a +30% autonomy floor. Meaning they get about 70% of their ressources of which just about 1/5th exist. Resulting in them getting about 14% of what almost every other country else is capable of squezing out of their land. Since I have no reliable numbers about a normal tax rate and the tax rate by the Ming I can´t say if these 14% are still way to much or quite fine. I just can say 14% of what every one else gets is a rather small amount.

Comparing manpower Ming also is at the short end of the stick. France alone has about 100 mil development and 126 after reclaiming the englisch territory. After the +35% modifier France has Ming has shy off 1.5 times the manpower France has. Which again seems rather small to me especialy since this didn´t take the oversea penality Ming gets in to account but again maybe in reality Mings army were this small or Frances this big. Also this does not consider ming having a 1:2 ratio of mil development to admin and diplo development while France just has about 1:1.25 making it easyer for Ming to merc up but on the other hand side credits are quite cheap and the punishment of bankrupcy is rather mild.

Where I have to agree is escaping the downwards spiral Ming was in and in eu4 also starts is way to easy. Initialy losing mandate is no problem since way to many countrys peacfully accept your overlordship and rerolling your bad heir is also just 2 wars away which can be won in auto pilot. If you now are also able to not let a +300 dev horde form at your northern border and let it go independend you are good to go. Most likely no on will interfear you doing your Ming things. On the other hand the previous mechanics were also realy bad. At first it was a random chance you would get the "your heir just has medium legitimacy, ... ops to bad you lost" which then was replaced by "your heir just has medium legitimacy ... ops to bad you lost 400 mil points" by the introduction of the "strengthen government" button. Which was either frustrating or realy unengaging. Now with MoH the penalitys can no longer come from your government otherwise no one would claim the mandate so the having the mandate it self should be something desireable. And since most of Mings problems were rather administrative ones, atleast as far as i can tell, it is rather arbitrarry to require western help to get the idea of managing your army your self, demand taxes or your states economy consisting of more things than agriculture.

On the other hand side it is as easy to get rid off the janissaris infesting your whole state and military administration as squashing 100k rebels who tell you where they are going to spawn so you can get the defender bonus. And the HRE is atleast until the reformation starts heading towards a centralized state quite quickly (heck as a player you can prevent the liege wars with out breaking to much in to a sweat and with some luck even revoke the privilegia before having to deal with the protestants) while historicaly it should do about nothing or even go after some minus reforms. Looking at other mechanics I see no reason why recovering from or preventing the Ming decline should be so much more punishing and harder than it is for other nations to deal with their problems.

What seems fine is the idea of payment options appart from money costing money seems fine. Since Ming/Quing usualy has enough money, converting money in pp and the other way around is already well established in the game and the tribute was more of an exchange of gifts. Is this mod able?

 

[Tavior]

Funny you spoke of devastation. As few months back I was playing a game of Colonial Japan before ending up claiming Manchuria from BlobKorea, as Korea seems to always eat all of the Manchu tribes nowdays. and just as a pure test at the time, I decided to see if I could reduce their Mandate at all by causing most of their provinces be devastated, however the devastation modifier in Mandate simply is not worth anything, as even with around 70% of the china turned red like it was WW2 their Mandate tick was around -0.5.

Yeah that war I spoke of earlier? I was a blobbing dithmarchsen and doing achievement. I am allied to Russia. I am Great power number 1 because I have Austria as my subject (didn't planned that bit heh).

Because I have allied view of any war Russia and Ming wage. I can see that even with 3-4 level 8 fort sieged down. MoH is barely affected by devastation. It was FAR more severely impacted by Russia sharing the border with Ming.

Ming, at 25% MoH, even declared a war against Spain (same game but earlier and Spain has lot of CN subject) who also was very busy with a Europe-centric war with England. They lost badly but it didn't even slow them down. Russia declared at least 3 wars that involved Ming and none of them hurt Ming that much. Sure Russia fully annexed one of their tributaries. But they manage to hire ~150 individual mercs to swap forts during those wars against Russia.

Which is insane considering how real history 1800 China couldn't remotely do the same thing. By thing I meant staying on equal footing with Europe great powers and kicking their ass to some degree.

Sure I am fine with Ming occasionally raising to power like this but EVERY single games? Heck no!

 

[CrazyZombie]

The Ming were never able to project significant power over the steppes; their expeditions consistently ended in disaster, with the Tumu Crisis in 1449 even resulting in the Emperor himself being captured by the Oirats. Even their less disastrous expeditions more or less tended to see an army march around a bit, run out of food and have to retreat without accomplishing anything.

The first thing that could fix a bit problem of Ming - army logistics. And not only Ming in fact.
EU4 presents the time, where it was kind of "normal" to lose half of army from hunger, disease or similar shit without a single battle. You don't have field hospitals, trucks or trains to get you more men, food and etc.

And right now current attrition debuffs and casualties are not even close to what they really should have been. Look at Great Northern war. Charles XII marches through Russia to Ukraine (funny distance from the ingame perspective) and loses half of his army due to attrition. Simply cut off from supply.

Just imagine, what would have happened IRL to Ming doomstacks of 40-60k in Siberia. Ok, they even could try to do something on the borders (still, IRL Russian-Chinese war of already 17 century was an epic fight between 3k cossacks and 10k chinese for the Russian fort, which clearly shows possible numbers for operating in this region), but deeper they go, the worse their supply would have become.

So, if Ming (and other states of similar tech group) would have significantly less supply abilities on the enemy territory (shorter distance, worse attrition and etc.) that could help their northern horde neighbors to defend their independence (supply ability combined with ability to cut off enemy is the strongest part of nomadic irregulars).

And about problem in general - it feels like old good westernisation system could help. Because when it existed - at least Ming wasn't more advanced than European powers in the tech. And wasn't somehow adopting institutions, which were not tied to region, faster than Europeans.

 

[YellowGelni]

The first thing that could fix a bit problem of Ming - army logistics. And not only Ming in fact.
EU4 presents the time, where it was kind of "normal" to lose half of army from hunger, disease or similar shit without a single battle. You don't have field hospitals, trucks or trains to get you more men, food and etc.

And right now current attrition debuffs and casualties are not even close to what they really should have been. Look at Great Northern war. Charles XII marches through Russia to Ukraine (funny distance from the ingame perspective) and loses half of his army due to attrition. Simply cut off from supply.

Just imagine, what would have happened IRL to Ming doomstacks of 40-60k in Siberia. Ok, they even could try to do something on the borders (still, IRL Russian-Chinese war of already 17 century was an epic fight between 3k cossacks and 10k chinese for the Russian fort, which clearly shows possible numbers for operating in this region), but deeper they go, the worse their supply would have become.

I´d argue the numbers are quite fine in game. Right now the max. attrition is at 5% for land provinces and this is what the swedes in your example would have to eat, every month. Making them lose about half their army with reinforcements in 10 and with out in about 13 Months. Sure this is below the historical numbers where the march towars Poltava took way less than a year but to comensate for this the battle loses are way higher in eu4 since in some what equal battles you lose about 1/3 to 2/3 of your army and there are way more battles in eu4 than historical. In the great northern war which was a 20 year long conflict were about 12? battles while in eu4 you would have this many battles in about the first 2 years of the conflict.

Also sitting at max attrition is since relase more or less the state of art when it comes to the AIs warfare capablitys. And unless they are some OPM they already lose about 2/3 of their overall manpower to attrition in the first 2 - 3 years of the war unless you are kind enough to shatter their armys on a regular basis which negates attrition during the retreat and creates the need to regroup for further attrition.

Also increasing the numbers wouldn´t stop the AI from running in this attrition regions. It would just merc up earlyer and win by throwing even more money at the problem. Eu4 just lacks the ability to model these low supply regions you can´t conquer since they lack objectivs you can take, hold and are important for the enemy.

So, if Ming (and other states of similar tech group) would have significantly less supply abilities on the enemy territory (shorter distance, worse attrition and etc.) that could help their northern horde neighbors to defend their independence (supply ability combined with ability to cut off enemy is the strongest part of nomadic irregulars).

And about problem in general - it feels like old good westernisation system could help. Because when it existed - at least Ming wasn't more advanced than European powers in the tech. And wasn't somehow adopting institutions, which were not tied to region, faster than Europeans.

I don´t see any reasons why asian armys should perform worse in logistics than western ones. The argument should rather be for an increased enemy attrition for hordes / steppe regions which again would be countered by Ming just throwing money like a mad man. What might be more helpfull for the hordes would be the ability to maintain a some what stable horde unity and to form a defensive pact against China. Together they can fight with about 60 units against the Ming 80 and since the hordes have more op cavalary and a 5 disciplin bonus for manchu banners and beeing a horde with unity and more manpower. This fight they should win early game and lose mid and late game when Ming has states for all their provinces and out techs the hordes.

What would make the hordes more of a nusiance for the Ming would be decreasing their desire to become a tributary. Right now you just have to ask them if they would be so kind to give up their independence and they will agree. This way Ming would atleast need to spend ressources to secure their northern border.

Right now with institutions their tech cost is atleast for the early half of the game on average higher than with the fixed 60% aditional cost and them adopting institutions earlyer than europeans come from the problem Ming having nothing else to spend their money on so buying them for 5 times the price is not an issue. Atleast once they reach them.

 

[Canute VII]

Honestly, how tributaries should work is more or less the opposite of how they do: each tributary should have a significant upkeep cost in ducats, but give a bonus of Monarch Points. That way Ming could only afford a limited number of tributaries, and also have difficult paying for a significant army.

+1
(...and then base the upkeep cost on distance from capital - kind of like states work).

 

[CrazyZombie]

Also increasing the numbers wouldn´t stop the AI from running in this attrition regions. It would just merc up earlyer and win by throwing even more money at the problem. Eu4 just lacks the ability to model these low supply regions you can´t conquer since they lack objectivs you can take, hold and are important for the enemy.

I don´t see any reasons why asian armys should perform worse in logistics than western ones. The argument should rather be for an increased enemy attrition for hordes / steppe regions which again would be countered by Ming just throwing money like a mad man.

Thing is that IRL it didn't work in this way. To resupply, give rest to your soldiers, recover from casualties and etc. you had to sit in one place for pretty long time. Optimally it should have been captured town, not far from border, so that you won't be cut off from home supplies.

After the game, where I had pleasure to watch Ottoman 40k stack, enjoying a vacation in Western Siberia without much problems, I'd say, current game could need some more combat mechanics:

1) replenishment of losses only on your own territory, or captured territory but with distance restrictions (affected by war tech, national ideas and temporary effects), and army should be stationed for that, not running as mad in carpet siege race;

2) "quality" of soldiers - that is not time of world wars, when you had tens of thousands of reservists, taught more or less, from what end rifle shoots. So if you lost half of regiment in battles or from attrition, even if you have returned to border to restore numbers, newcoming soldiers will be worse than "veterans", weakening the regiment. To "rebuild" it as combat force, you need to waste more time sitting on one place.

 

[BaronNoir]

EU IV is in the odd situation that the Ming Empire is indeed in 1445, by a gigantic margin, the most powerful realm on Earth. The issue is that the Ming IRL (and in game) are supposed to be like a Fallen Empire in Stellaris : anything but expansionist. (The idea that the Ming react to a Japanese attack on Korea-okay. The idea that the Ming react to a suicidal DOW on my Dai Viet Empire by the Ottomans over Brunei-complicated-by completely trashing the Ottomans up to the Bosphorus is ludicruous)