Manchu/Qing Idea Advice!

[cholliman]

Up until this past weekend, I've primarily played European nations in EU4. After reading a thread in the forums, I decided to try out Manchu. The campaign to conquer Ming and form Qing was really fun, but I think I made some suboptimal choices - hence my appeal to you experts out there!

For early ideas, I chose:
1. defensive - since I felt like I'd have very limited number of ideas in total, this felt like a nice package deal
2. innovative - overall I think this was a mistake for my second choice. I thought the tech bonus + tech bonus events would help more than they did. I also love the +1 free leader and advisor bonuses.
3. expansion - grab siberian territory in Beijing trade node and more territories. Problems related to this though discussed in a sec.

Westernization:
The problem I had here was that the Europeans really took their time to get to Asia. I finally got a territory next to them when Castille conquered part of Bangladesh circa 1690. I saw that there was some action going on in the Phillipines, but it was still terra incognita for me. I'm wondering if exploration might be a better option even though I'm not interested in the full exploration package. I could then hop around africa and get a territory next to them sooner. Also, the fact that I chose expansion third instead of second made me too slow to colonize the entirety of the Beijing node before Russia made it there.

Other Idea Options:
Money has been no issue whatsoever as I've been able to afford all +3 advisors for a large part of the campaign. I'm wondering if religion might have been a better option as the stab discount is nice. There are a few non-convertable territories in my empire (a few Sunni provinces in the west and several very large tax base Buddhist provinces in the east), but overall religion has not been a problem. Any suggestions on what might be strong from the Admin/Diplo tech trees?

 

[SuperSFX]

Your number 1 idea has to be expansion/exploration or Muscovy is going to claim all of siberia. The more of Siberia you can cut off from them, the better as they are going to be your late game rival. From there, its a matter of forming a huge western border to stop muscovian expansion east through conquest. As for other ideas, military ideas are always nice, but if you take religious ideas, you will pretty much always have a CB as you are one of the only people with your religion after you conquer Ming. Defensive/Offensive are both great military ideas but if possible, it is best to save your military points for tech and westernization.

As for westernization, your best bet is to go through Alaska into NA and meet the Europeans in America.

 

[frolix42]

The way the game works as a non-European is that you need to get a border with a western country ASAP. Expansion Ideas are no good as Ming or Manchu since Russia is Eastern and very likely won't Westernize to be helpful to you. Therefore Exploration should be your first idea, and for me there is no question and no debate. Find a European colony in Africa and colonize next to it.

 

[Darkath]

As manchu you don't care much about westernisation until later in the game.

I went for Expansion first then one administrative then exploration.

The goal for manchu is to push westwards as fast as possible to block Russian colonization to the Ourals. Then you eat china, then you westernise.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Expansion, religious, then whatever.

Expansion lets you block Muscovy and get more land yourself. Religious lets you convert oirate lands and whatever in ming isn't already. You can tag switch via forming qing to reform and such delay reform adm ideas. A colonial will be in India mid 1600s to let you westernize...or just go vassal annex someone in Africa. Chinese can vassal anyone there.

Going western only matters once you need to conquer other ones, Muscovy, or Ottomans. You can d vs any of them in sp..