I don't think Ming's mandate works as intended.

[maxirage]

My impression was that mandate was meant to represent the faith of the people in the mandate of heaven, or who is meant to be the rightful ruler of China. So if the Chinese emperor starts losing and appears weak, he will be penalized so the incoming conqueror will have an easier time. So on that note:

I have soundly defeated Ming in several wars, took some of their most valuable core territory, and released several vassals from its former land. Surely, this should be enough to make them lose the mandate of heaven, as it would in reality?

Nope. Despite experiencing severe losses and certain doom in the future, they are on their way to regaining their mandate. The only reason then even lost it was due to passing a reform. By the time they will lose their mandate, I will have already made them irrelevant and trivial to defeat. In its current form, the mandate mechanic only serves to buff AI Ming while damaging any player dumb enough to claim the emperorship for himself. I'm not sure what kind of purpose this is meant to serve.

 

[Vetgirig]

Its there to mimic the real China of this time who was not interested in areas outside their lands - except as tribunataries.

It stops Ming from going on conquests and blobb out like Ottoman does. Thus making sure their path can follow what happend in real life.

 

[peleliu]

You can't expect the empire to weaken unless you burn, pillage, and crack some skulls. Devastation will turn the people against the Emperor.

 

[maxirage]

You can't expect the empire to weaken unless you burn, pillage, and crack some skulls. Devastation will turn the people against the Emperor.

But that doesn't make a difference. You can devastate a good chunck of their best land, but they fully recover in a few years. Nothing short of fully occupying China will make a noticeable dent. And if you can fully occupy Ming, you're already far beyond needing to weaken them. The entire concept of trying to lower Ming's mandate in order to make them easier to defeat simply doesn't work, which is my original point. If you have the capability to forcefully make Ming lose their mandate, you also have the capability to simply destroy them outright without even bothering.

 

[Vince75]

The thing I hate is even if there is a little it of Mingplosion, they just become tributaries... Chinese countries should not be able to become tributaries

 

[Rocketskates]

it feels like you know what you did wrong and but you did it anyway, if you could defeat it entirely why not let it die and explode by the rebels instead of releasing this or that, kill it, it wont lose the mandate ever btw, it will sit on 0 mandate until some unfortunate AI thinks its a good idea to take it

 

[Bibor]

Well, judging from the screenshot, Ming is quite stable & prosperous even without the lands you took.