How to harmonize

[otaats]

Okay, so i'm not too experienced in playing Ming or other Confucian tags, but Confucian is... Confucing. So, if you harmonize a religion, no matter what, it will bring your harmony meter to 0 (would bring it to a significant - if it was possible). And it moves by 1 per year. I am looking for ET to harmonize a religion, and it's mostly 30 to 40 years.. Which is quite a lot.. and then another 50 doing nothing, to bring harmony back to normal. If it takes 3 harmony per year and it estimates that it would take 30 years.. That's 90 harmony lost, at least. So how do you actually harmonize 7 religions to get the achievement? Is there any kind of modifier that takes development of that religion into account or it universally lasts for 30-40 years?

 

[SolSys]

Disclaimer: I am on 1.21 [on-going campaign] so the info may not be accurate for 1.22.

The time to harmonize a religion is ~34 years. If you don't care about the negative effects of 0 harmony it should take you 234 years in total [finish by 1682].
You can mitigate this by increasing harmony gain and only start harmonizing after the first 100 harmony [shorter timeframe for negative effects].

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Religions_and_denominations#Harmony

 

[mayaknife]

I just let the harmony meter stay at zero until I've got all the religious groups I want. There are a decent number of harmony events. If you accept all of the positive ones and refuse all of the negatives ones my (extremely) rough guess is that you could shave four or five years off of each religious group.

 

[Eviota]

Hello,

Currently doing a Ming>Shan>Great Yuan>WC run. At first, don't harmonize, because it will hurt your meritocracy. Let it tick up to 100 to have the +1 ToTF bonus, and then, once you have x3 +3 Advisors, start harmonizing BY PRIORITY ! If you start in India, then go for Hindu, if you go for the hordes then west, go Sunni. It's up to you.

Also, three friendly reminders :
1. You can't conquer provinces AND make tributary, but you can return cores ; at least with the Force Tributary CB.
2. Bordering allies do not count as tributary and will hurt your mandate, so kill everything that is not Tributary.
3. Harmonizing make Religious ideas useless and Humanist ideas less relevant, except maybe for Separatism and Unrest. Also, since Harmonized religion are not your main religion, you cannot change the culture of the provinces anymore... Nice mechanics

Bonus : New Ming is not funny at all to play, I got Kow Tow on 1.18 when Ming was a ticking bomb and it was way funnier and challenging

 

[otaats]

Bonus : New Ming is not funny at all to play, I got Kow Tow on 1.18 when Ming was a ticking bomb and it was way funnier and challenging

Yeah, i got the same feeling in 20 years playing them. I am usually the one who doesn't go really for WC's and like to keep things somewhat historical most of the time, which means i like to build a lot of buildings and keep things nice, clean and tidy. Well, well, i'm not having so much fun surprisingly. I just don't know where to start or whether i should even conquer. Colonial Ming seems fun, but it would likely be my death sentence 150 years from now (when Europeans start building colonies..) How do you even get the Harmony achievement (without applying WC strategy)? You actually need christian provinces, and the closest ones are Ethiopian, which will likely border the Ottomans, so RIP Mandate... It seems that the current state of affairs with Ming is - conquer the whole world from day 1 or don't conquer anything at all. I somewhat like the Mandate mechanics, but they are very limiting..

 

[Eviota]

Yeah, i got the same feeling in 20 years playing them. I am usually the one who doesn't go really for WC's and like to keep things somewhat historical most of the time, which means i like to build a lot of buildings and keep things nice, clean and tidy. Well, well, i'm not having so much fun surprisingly. I just don't know where to start or whether i should even conquer. Colonial Ming seems fun, but it would likely be my death sentence 150 years from now (when Europeans start building colonies..) How do you even get the Harmony achievement (without applying WC strategy)? You actually need christian provinces, and the closest ones are Ethiopian, which will likely border the Ottomans, so RIP Mandate... It seems that the current state of affairs with Ming is - conquer the whole world from day 1 or don't conquer anything at all. I somewhat like the Mandate mechanics, but they are very limiting..

I'm not into sitting in my corner, so you can guess what I chose to do

 

[ElGranCapitan]

I'd try to harmonize everything that you are going to mass conquer and those that will help you otherwise

Hindu, Islam and Christian are those that you'll conquer a lot of in the absolutism era so have those harmonized by 1600, Mahayana saves MP and Shinto boosts troops, Pagan starts harmonized iirc. The rest of the buddhists aren't really needed as you should control most of that land already by 1600 (so no separatism on top of intolerance) and they only provide monetary benefits

 

[f.l.]

I somewhat like the Mandate mechanics, but they are very limiting..

I guess 'limiting' is exactly how it should be to stay realistic. The mechanic is extremely powerful by itself (-20% coring cost, -2.5 unrest at 100 mandate, etc.). If it was not difficult to handle, these bonuses + the tributary CB would allow you to conquer eurasia by 1550.

 

[Vulkandrache]

I guess 'limiting' is exactly how it should be to stay realistic. The mechanic is extremely powerful by itself (-20% coring cost, -2.5 unrest at 100 mandate, etc.). If it was not difficult to handle, these bonuses + the tributary CB would allow you to conquer eurasia by 1550.

Mandate itself gives 10% RCC.

And you need the bonuses from the Reforms, because naked Celestial Empire is one of the worst Government forms in the game.
And Tribute CB still costs Dip for provinces.

Ming only looks scary with all those things because they do nothing all game and let Mandate accumulate.
If you actually want to play Ming or if you take EoC as another nation your Mandate will take a dive pretty much constantly.
As single isolated province of yours touching someone is enough to take the full penatly.

Meticusly building a wall of Vassals and getting some petty Mandate from prosperity is not fun, especially if years of accumulation will go down the drain in the time it takes for
that one colony to grow while its touching some foreign CN.

 

[Eviota]

Mandate itself gives 10% RCC.
Ming only looks scary with all those things because they do nothing all game and let Mandate accumulate.
If you actually want to play Ming or if you take EoC as another nation your Mandate will take a dive pretty much constantly.
As single isolated province of yours touching someone is enough to take the full penatly.

Well, the loss of mandate is proportional to the development of the country you border : if you have a decent reserve of Tributaries (like +0.8/+1), you can border a lategame +2K Dev nation, like the Ottomans, and once the war started the penalty is lowered, and lowered again when you just grab all his juicy provinces. Rinse, wash, repeat, and you should never be under 90 Mandate.

 

[Vulkandrache]

loss of mandate is proportional to the development of the country you borde

Of course it is. Its just stupid that the tiniest isolated border counts against the full thing.
Itused to be different, but as always some 5 people "exploiting" it warrants a change for everyone.
Now the whole Mandate thing is even worse than it was before.
I did form Yuan from Uzbek, but i would have been better of just forming the Mughals and leaving the whole EoC thing aside.
Would have been much stronger.

For a mechanic that big its really boring, really tedious and with a disappointing payoff.

you can border a lategame +2K Dev nation, like the Ottomans, and once the war started the penalty is lowered, and lowered again when you just grab all his juicy provinces

If you start as Ming it might work that way, but who wants to do that.

Rinse, wash, repeat, and you should never be under 90 Mandate.

I took EoC around 1580 and it took me until after 1760 for the last Reform.
That was with most of Europe, including everything small in the HRE diplotributized.

Making a single Colony in America easily costs like 0,10 Mandate a month for several years until your CN finally takes it.
Oh, and, devastation will tank your Mandate aswell. Not the one in your land, oh no.
The land you just took, that got devasted in the war you just fought for 3 years, because the AI refuses to peace out. That one.


If anything country on truce shouldnt counts against Mandate.
Or isolated exclaves count based on their development compared to your Capital area development.
Something.

Just being Eastern Religion or Horde insteadof EoC, just so you can Diplotributize is much stronger than being EoC
because Tributaries are unbelieably broken.
I have never had such an easy time conquering the HRE.