so what's wrong with Ming?

[Thrake]

So, it is good and righteous and desirable for China, called Ming rather than China, to collapse, and an abomination if they do not. Meanwhile, if Valois, for some reason named France instead, do not simultaneously collapse and get replaced by the Bourbon nation, also called France instead, this is fine. If this last paragraph makes no sense, good, neither does Ming and its nerfs.

Ming -> Qing isn't like Valois -> Bourbon, but more like Navarra -> France as far as I understand.

 

[alpaca]

Well, it's now just pure dumb luck whether Ming will collapse or not. If they lose mandate for a significant stretch due to low legitimacy, they implode. Probably even a competent player would now have some problems with this. If they don't, they are insanely stable and impossible to break due to their loan size and only rebels being particularists and peasants. That's great gameplay! Definitely makes it super fun to be Ming, or to fight against them.

 

[Dutchman251]

So, it is good and righteous and desirable for China, called Ming rather than China, to collapse, and an abomination if they do not. Meanwhile, if Valois, for some reason named France instead, do not simultaneously collapse and get replaced by the Bourbon nation, also called France instead, this is fine. If this last paragraph makes no sense, good, neither does Ming and its nerfs.

The change from Valois to Bourbon dynasty is entirely different from Ming to Qing. It was just that the king of Navarra got a PU over France, as the rightful heir to the crown of Henri III.
The Ming to Qing change is simply that the united Jurchen tribes conquered the collapsing realm of Ming, and crowned themselves emperor after having conquered the most important parts of it. This game is actually centered around Europe, and therefore one should not be surprised that it cannot portray at the same level of coorrectness completely different worlds, and prefering to portray Europe the best.

 

[yerm]

Ming -> Qing isn't like Valois -> Bourbon, but more like Navarra -> France as far as I understand.

The change from Valois to Bourbon dynasty is entirely different from Ming to Qing. It was just that the king of Navarra got a PU over France, as the rightful heir to the crown of Henri III.
The Ming to Qing change is simply that the united Jurchen tribes conquered the collapsing realm of Ming, and crowned themselves emperor after having conquered the most important parts of it. This game is actually centered around Europe, and therefore one should not be surprised that it cannot portray at the same level of coorrectness completely different worlds, and prefering to portray Europe the best.

Why not just apply this logic to the east?

The problem here is only half the inability of the Qing to form, and the other half is that if Ming is not absurdly nerfed with completely absurd penalties that make absolutely no sense whatsoever... it is a complete monster who dominates the region.

That's the real issue here. Qing defeating and absorbing the Ming? EASILY handled with an event or decision, that would allow this conglomeration after uniting the tribal area and controlling Beijing or whatever criteria. It could follow a similar route to the Burgundian inheritance but would be Ming inheritance, or it could follow a more Polish route and allow the Ming player to pull the Manchu in but retain "ownership" of this new PLC-like Qing even though it's technically the Manchu leader, much like Poland grab's Lith's leader but is PU major. It could be something else. This only resolves half the problem.

If they did this, while fixing the whole Qing formation, we are left with the game's truly glaring problem, which has always been a problem, and that is that the game does not make any modicum of an effort to balance oversize empires, overextension other than "coring" system, etc. Throw Ming/China in at 1444 with the same routine government and Chinese tech of any neighbor, and suddenly you have an unstoppable and uncontainable power in the east that cannot fail, because there's no containing force like France etc have nearby.

So, at the end of it all, it's really not about Qing so much as its about a complete lack of balance of power or diminishing returns on size, so Ming are just TOO GOOD for the 1444 game.

 

[YuriiH]

Ming exploded in 2 of 3 my 1.13 playthroughs. In the other one, it had indeed agressive leaders who conquered Oirat, Machzhuria, Tibet, Indochina.

 

[Megabear]

On the day of patch I was able to continue playing my old game since I had downloaded the beta 2 days before the patch day. However by the time I got to Ming, BIG Ming was was bordering Commonwealth in my game. It's as if a player controlled Ming. HUGE blob. I was able to defeat it with Ottoman, but it weakened me so much that Commonwealth DOC'd me, then the rest of world dog piled on me. Welp, new patch meant new game!

 

[wingzero890]

So, at the end of it all, it's really not about Qing so much as its about a complete lack of balance of power or diminishing returns on size, so Ming are just TOO GOOD for the 1444 game.

Well said. I'd add to this that there really are no meaningful internal mechanics in this game, so all there really is to do once you've blobbed is keep blobbing (unless you are roleplaying and purposefully not expanding).

So a tag the size of Ming, with no artificial shackles (on top of EU4s lack of internal politics/gameplay), has basically already 'won' EU4 because there is nothing that can stop them.

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Meanwhile, while the Ming are hitting their historical decline and collapse, Europe is absolutely demolishing itself in the 30 years war, Spain is losing the low countries, Portugal is suffering heavily under a union and will end up ceding power outside Brazil around the same time the Qing form, Poland and Russia are being pulverized by Vikings with cannons with Poland in particularly being truly devastated by the deluge, and England is torn by civil war.

Firstly, I want to say that this is the best description of the 17th century that I have ever read.

So, it is good and righteous and desirable for China, called Ming rather than China, to collapse, and an abomination if they do not. Meanwhile, if Valois, for some reason named France instead, do not simultaneously collapse and get replaced by the Bourbon nation, also called France instead, this is fine. If this last paragraph makes no sense, good, neither does Ming and its nerfs.

Secondly, the name "China" is anachronistic.

The Chinese refer to their state as Zhongguo. However, for the majority of Chinese history, this term referred to the Chinese cultural sphere and not the state itself. It wasn't until the Victorian Era that the Qing Dynasty referred to the state as Zhongguo.

The Ming and the Qing referred to their states as the Empire of the Great Ming and the Empire of the Great Qing, respectively.

If we want a balance between what we called them and what they called themselves, their dynasty name would be most appropriate. They didn't (and still don't) use the name China whereas both Europeans and Chinese have used the dynasty name to refer to the country.

Other than that, I pretty much agree with you.

 

[Cragspyder]

I just finishef a game as Uzbek/Bukhara, Lucky Nations off. Ming lost Mandate of Heaven three times that i noticed but never lost a province. If it happens at the beginning of the game it might be different, this gane was started in 1.13 beta after and i just finished the last 150 years in 1.13.

Ming was always falling apart before 1.12, after 1.12 it never fell apart. Hopefully this is a new middle ground.

And as far as scripted decline of empires is concerned, i have one word for you: Timurids. Never seen them survive a game, not once.

 

[sigeena]

Sometimes Ming falls apart. Sometimes it doesn't. It's alot easier to form Qing and eventually eat up the entire China if Ming falls apart. But even if Ming doesn't lose the Mandate, a human playing Jurchen> Manchu> Qing can still complete it pretty aggressively. Qing ideas are pretty OP.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Well said. I'd add to this that there really are no meaningful internal mechanics in this game, so all there really is to do once you've blobbed is keep blobbing (unless you are roleplaying and purposefully not expanding).

So a tag the size of Ming, with no artificial shackles (on top of EU4s lack of internal politics/gameplay), has basically already 'won' EU4 because there is nothing that can stop them.

This. In M&T I and my comrades have put serious work into a dynastic cycle mechanic which seems to be working well as it is tied in with meaningful internal mechanics in game.