The mandate of heaven for Ming is an ahistoric and poorly implemented mechanic. It should be changed. Sorry for the wall of text, but I feel quite passionate about this, as China should and has the potential to be a much more interesting experience. I promise it's worth the read.
First, tying the mandate to ruler legitimacy removes too much player agency. It makes the mandate largely luck dependent. You could be playing very carefully and intelligently, but if you end up with an heir with a weak claim, you're pretty much screwed for several decades. Or you could be overextended, fighting and losing multiple wars, and in serious debt, but as long as your ruler has a strong claim and you've sunk enough paper mana into stability, you're good to go.
Furthermore, if your playing against Ming, there's not much you can do to cause them to lose the mandate of heaven, since it's not tied to wars or anything like that.
The current implementation is also ahistorical. The Mandate did not grant the right to rule based on noble birth; the two tenets concerning the "right to rule" are that 1. The emperor's virtue determines the right to rule, and 2. No one dynasty has a permanent right to rule. The Mandate would often be passed to peasant rebel leaders, for example Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty. So it doesn't make sense for it to be tied to legitimacy at all.
To change this, first, rather than a binary "mandate of heaven" -5 unrest vs "mandate of heaven lost" +5 unrest, I propose a slider similar to Muslim piety or Orthodox patriarch authority, and then have certain actions move the slider left or right toward a strong mandate, which decreases unrest, vs a weak mandate, which increases unrest.
The following actions should increase or decrease the Mandate of Heaven:
Increase
First, crises. The mandate of heaven was often linked to natural disasters. Famine, flooding, etc would indicate Heaven's displeasure with the current ruler, and often lead to unrest and peasant revolts. This should be represented by random events, for which, the ruler can attempt to improve the situation for the peasants by spending monarch points and gold. However, going into debt lowers the mandate of heaven as well, so if the ruling dynasty has not stockpiled the necessary reserve to deal with the crisis, the mandate of heaven will inevitably fall. This will also mean that some of the "luck" aspect of history will be retained, since if you have an incapable ruler you might be more vulnerable to these disasters. Since the capability and justice of the ruler was a criteria for the mandate of heaven, this is a historically accurate implementation. However, careful management of funds to have good advisors and a gold stockpile will allow a good player to navigate such hardship.
The second mechanic should be faction corruption. The Chinese bureaucracy was plagued by inefficiency and corruption, and this would often lead to a loss of the mandate of heaven. I don't know how the estate system will impact this, but a logical way to make this work is as follows: The most powerful faction always slowly but steadily increases influence. If one faction stays in power for a certain period of time consecutively or reaches a certain threshold of influence, the country should be hit by the "corrupt faction" modifier. This should hurt tax and production inefficiency, manpower and monarch point generation, remove any buffs given by the faction being in power, and also put a drain on the mandate of heaven. Also, now that the faction has grown in power, the only way to remove the modifier should be to purge the faction entirely, which lowers stability by 1 and causes several major rebel stacks to rise up against the state. If the rebels are defeated, the faction system resets and the player is free to distribute faction influence however he chooses (appointing an entirely new court). If forced to accept demands, mandate takes a major hit and the corrupt faction modifier stays in place.
This means that the player has a difficult choice to make to deal with the factions. Either monarch points can be spent preemptively to constantly keep the balance of power in the court shifting, which would be expensive and might decrease the capability of dealing with crises, or the player can commit to purges, which don't cost as many direct monarch points but will cost money and manpower, and, as stated previously, if low on manpower or in debt, will drain the mandate.
The last mechanic is diplomatic insults. If insulted, the ruling dynasty must defend it's honor against foreigners, so the diplomatic insult CB must be pressed. If not, the mandate takes a hit. This not only adds a layer of difficulty for the player, but also gives nearby countries agency over the mechanic. If they notice that Ming is struggling, they can use the diplomatic insult to increase the pressure, and either force Ming into a difficult and protracted war, or further drain the mandate.
Ok, so what happens when the mandate of heaven is lost? First, the mandate should not be lost immediately when the slider goes below 50%. For certain levels below 50%, there should just be unrest gain without the "mandate lost" events occurring. But once the mandate reaches a certain level, it is lost, and the following should happen: First, a section of the country should defect entirely, to a pretender to the throne, similar to the way that lancaster can defect as an independent state during the war of the roses, or the Netherlands can defect from Austria. This state should have it's own mandate of heaven, but have the advantages of no 50% autonomy and no factions to deal with. There should also be peasant rebels spawning in other provinces. Also, neighboring non-western nations should get the "mandate of heaven" CB, which if pressed, introduces the mandate of heaven slider and mechanic to the neighboring nation, and declares war on all other nations that have pressed the mandate of heaven CB. Finally, while any nation is participating in a mandate war, the mandate should be tied to only battles and wars, and not to manpower or debt.
So now, we have multiple nations, as well as a pretender state, all with their own mandates of heaven. China has descended to a chaotic, full-blown civil war. Now, if any two bordering states at war have a large difference in their strength of mandates, border provinces with Chinese culture slowly defect and become cores automatically to the higher-mandate nation. This reflects the chaos of the transition periods, and also gives the player, if the defender, the opportunity to recover lost ground by winning battles and recovering some mandate of heaven. Momentum is now very important, and this is historically accurate. If the original defender manages to win the war against his original pretender, he should get a big bump in the mandate, boosting the chance of winning mandate wars against neighbors. If not, once the original defender has been reduced to a certain number of provinces, he can peace out with his remaining provinces. This will then remove the 50% autonomy cap and faction system for that nation, the nation now does not get hit by pretender state uprising from weak mandate, only revolt risk (effectively making it a pretender state not at war). Meanwhile, the war victor gets a boost to their mandate, making it easier to win the rest of the mandate wars.
Once a nation wins all the mandate wars, they get cores on all provinces with Chinese culture, and the faction system. Autonomy also starts to tick up gradually, coming up to 50%. That nation is now the new Ming. And the cycle starts again. Meanwhile, any neighboring nation that loses the mandate war should just lose the mandate of heaven modifier. They'll have to bide their time until the next civil war.
As a final note, I believe that if thus implemented, the mandate could replace the legitimacy mechanic for chinese culture states entirely. It basically represents the legitimacy of the ruler, which was not linked to birth in Chinese culture to begin with, and therefore has little historical accuracy.
That sums up my proposed changes. Thanks for readings. Thoughts?
First, tying the mandate to ruler legitimacy removes too much player agency. It makes the mandate largely luck dependent. You could be playing very carefully and intelligently, but if you end up with an heir with a weak claim, you're pretty much screwed for several decades. Or you could be overextended, fighting and losing multiple wars, and in serious debt, but as long as your ruler has a strong claim and you've sunk enough paper mana into stability, you're good to go.
Furthermore, if your playing against Ming, there's not much you can do to cause them to lose the mandate of heaven, since it's not tied to wars or anything like that.
The current implementation is also ahistorical. The Mandate did not grant the right to rule based on noble birth; the two tenets concerning the "right to rule" are that 1. The emperor's virtue determines the right to rule, and 2. No one dynasty has a permanent right to rule. The Mandate would often be passed to peasant rebel leaders, for example Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty. So it doesn't make sense for it to be tied to legitimacy at all.
To change this, first, rather than a binary "mandate of heaven" -5 unrest vs "mandate of heaven lost" +5 unrest, I propose a slider similar to Muslim piety or Orthodox patriarch authority, and then have certain actions move the slider left or right toward a strong mandate, which decreases unrest, vs a weak mandate, which increases unrest.
The following actions should increase or decrease the Mandate of Heaven:
Increase
- Winning battles and wars
- Defeating challengers to the mandate of heaven (more on that later)
- Dealing with crisis events (more on that later)
- Maintaining peace
- Responding to diplomatic insults
- Preventing faction corruption (more on that later)
- Losing battles and wars
- Overextension
- Failing to manage crisis events
- High war exhaustion
- Low manpower (lots of peasants are dead)
- Allowing diplomatic insults to expire without war
- Faction corruption
- Going into debt / taking out loans
First, crises. The mandate of heaven was often linked to natural disasters. Famine, flooding, etc would indicate Heaven's displeasure with the current ruler, and often lead to unrest and peasant revolts. This should be represented by random events, for which, the ruler can attempt to improve the situation for the peasants by spending monarch points and gold. However, going into debt lowers the mandate of heaven as well, so if the ruling dynasty has not stockpiled the necessary reserve to deal with the crisis, the mandate of heaven will inevitably fall. This will also mean that some of the "luck" aspect of history will be retained, since if you have an incapable ruler you might be more vulnerable to these disasters. Since the capability and justice of the ruler was a criteria for the mandate of heaven, this is a historically accurate implementation. However, careful management of funds to have good advisors and a gold stockpile will allow a good player to navigate such hardship.
The second mechanic should be faction corruption. The Chinese bureaucracy was plagued by inefficiency and corruption, and this would often lead to a loss of the mandate of heaven. I don't know how the estate system will impact this, but a logical way to make this work is as follows: The most powerful faction always slowly but steadily increases influence. If one faction stays in power for a certain period of time consecutively or reaches a certain threshold of influence, the country should be hit by the "corrupt faction" modifier. This should hurt tax and production inefficiency, manpower and monarch point generation, remove any buffs given by the faction being in power, and also put a drain on the mandate of heaven. Also, now that the faction has grown in power, the only way to remove the modifier should be to purge the faction entirely, which lowers stability by 1 and causes several major rebel stacks to rise up against the state. If the rebels are defeated, the faction system resets and the player is free to distribute faction influence however he chooses (appointing an entirely new court). If forced to accept demands, mandate takes a major hit and the corrupt faction modifier stays in place.
This means that the player has a difficult choice to make to deal with the factions. Either monarch points can be spent preemptively to constantly keep the balance of power in the court shifting, which would be expensive and might decrease the capability of dealing with crises, or the player can commit to purges, which don't cost as many direct monarch points but will cost money and manpower, and, as stated previously, if low on manpower or in debt, will drain the mandate.
The last mechanic is diplomatic insults. If insulted, the ruling dynasty must defend it's honor against foreigners, so the diplomatic insult CB must be pressed. If not, the mandate takes a hit. This not only adds a layer of difficulty for the player, but also gives nearby countries agency over the mechanic. If they notice that Ming is struggling, they can use the diplomatic insult to increase the pressure, and either force Ming into a difficult and protracted war, or further drain the mandate.
Ok, so what happens when the mandate of heaven is lost? First, the mandate should not be lost immediately when the slider goes below 50%. For certain levels below 50%, there should just be unrest gain without the "mandate lost" events occurring. But once the mandate reaches a certain level, it is lost, and the following should happen: First, a section of the country should defect entirely, to a pretender to the throne, similar to the way that lancaster can defect as an independent state during the war of the roses, or the Netherlands can defect from Austria. This state should have it's own mandate of heaven, but have the advantages of no 50% autonomy and no factions to deal with. There should also be peasant rebels spawning in other provinces. Also, neighboring non-western nations should get the "mandate of heaven" CB, which if pressed, introduces the mandate of heaven slider and mechanic to the neighboring nation, and declares war on all other nations that have pressed the mandate of heaven CB. Finally, while any nation is participating in a mandate war, the mandate should be tied to only battles and wars, and not to manpower or debt.
So now, we have multiple nations, as well as a pretender state, all with their own mandates of heaven. China has descended to a chaotic, full-blown civil war. Now, if any two bordering states at war have a large difference in their strength of mandates, border provinces with Chinese culture slowly defect and become cores automatically to the higher-mandate nation. This reflects the chaos of the transition periods, and also gives the player, if the defender, the opportunity to recover lost ground by winning battles and recovering some mandate of heaven. Momentum is now very important, and this is historically accurate. If the original defender manages to win the war against his original pretender, he should get a big bump in the mandate, boosting the chance of winning mandate wars against neighbors. If not, once the original defender has been reduced to a certain number of provinces, he can peace out with his remaining provinces. This will then remove the 50% autonomy cap and faction system for that nation, the nation now does not get hit by pretender state uprising from weak mandate, only revolt risk (effectively making it a pretender state not at war). Meanwhile, the war victor gets a boost to their mandate, making it easier to win the rest of the mandate wars.
Once a nation wins all the mandate wars, they get cores on all provinces with Chinese culture, and the faction system. Autonomy also starts to tick up gradually, coming up to 50%. That nation is now the new Ming. And the cycle starts again. Meanwhile, any neighboring nation that loses the mandate war should just lose the mandate of heaven modifier. They'll have to bide their time until the next civil war.
As a final note, I believe that if thus implemented, the mandate could replace the legitimacy mechanic for chinese culture states entirely. It basically represents the legitimacy of the ruler, which was not linked to birth in Chinese culture to begin with, and therefore has little historical accuracy.
That sums up my proposed changes. Thanks for readings. Thoughts?
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