Thoughts and Opinions on 1.12 Ming

[Dakka]

So how does everyone like the new Ming?
Personally without Internal Perfection, they seem very OP to me. The faction system made a good balance with it, and helped keep it possible for the smaller nations to be a threat to Ming.

Now it seems like Ming just ROFLstomps everyone, and the chances of it splintering are next to non-existent. Plus with the loss of the mandate of heaven, it allowed for a warring states period, where the other local nations could gather lots of land, with Qing being a lot more probable. I would like to see Internal Perfection brought back.

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

[Karekiko]

I hate inward perfection, it's probably the stupidest thing in EU4

 

[Frungy78]

Well, regardless, Ming is now relatively stable. Even with loss of mandate, it has around 0 unrest. And its armies actually hurt now, before it was just silly how pathetic they were.

 

[TenshiN]

Ming shattered in the first 30 years of my CS game and i had nothing to do with it/ Maybe just dumb luck, but...

 

[neondt]

Maybe Ming could use a special disaster (like Janissary Decadence, War of the Roses, etc) to encourage it to collapse in the late 1500's.

 

[Parapluman]

It's 1700 and Ming is eating India in my game. I've never even seen it survive this long.

 

[kitemasaki]

Maybe Ming could use a special disaster (like Janissary Decadence, War of the Roses, etc) to encourage it to collapse in the late 1500's.

Nothing should encourage them to collapse outside of losing Mandate of Heaven or Li Zicheng's rebellion. It is supposed to be random luck if they fall or not. The issue with pre 1.12 Ming is that they would fall to invaders easily and could not defend themselves. No additional railroading should be done and thankfully that seems to be the revised design theory from P'dox.

Edit: I "do" think Ming should have more powerful rebellion events to make it more challenging. The scripted rebellions are underwhelming and there is nill to nothing of mention regarding the Little Ice Age.

 

[FloatingOrb]

Ming is still fairly unstable, but man do they make an interesting game. Massive forcelimit, tiny manpower pool, factions galore, and the ideas are pretty good too.

Dont they still have the lotus rebelion thing? that usually knocks out ming in my games.

 

[kitemasaki]

Ming is still fairly unstable, but man do they make an interesting game. Massive forcelimit, tiny manpower pool, factions galore, and the ideas are pretty good too.

Dont they still have the lotus rebelion thing? that usually knocks out ming in my games.

Yes, but it isnt scary at all. I am doing my Ironman Ming right now and just had it. By 1600 I still have the largest military by far, around 120 regiments. My forts are strategically placed and always manned (in case of rebellions). When the rebellion happened, about 80 regiments throughout the empire sprung up, but my forts protected my lands while my armies went around and obliterated the rebels. Not much of a challenge at all.

That was what I meant it should be much more challenging. MUCH more . To the point a Ming player goes "WHAT???" while slamming the keyboard. Hehehe.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I didn't see them conquer anything relevant, but they are a lot stronger and capable of taking on Japan and even european powers in Asia. I saw them win against Spain on Taiwan, which is non that unbelievable had Ming dinasty not neglected naval matters. They are often the most developed power in the world, also. I think the balance is correct, since the Chinese empire started crumbling some decades after the timeline.

 

[tobias.mb]

That was what I meant it should be much more challenging. MUCH more . To the point a Ming player goes "WHAT???" while slamming the keyboard. Hehehe.

Nah... if a player has a really hard time dealing with a situation it will be impossible for the AI. I'd rather not see Ming break up 100% of the time.
That said I'm doing a Ming ironman myself right now and by 1500 I have already Manchu (all 3), korchinn (horde between manchu & mongolia), Korea and a large chunk of SEA. They are brutally strong in player hands. Though I'm also severely lagging behind in tech. (lvl 2 diplo, lvl 4 adm. partly because I had crap emperors and didn't want to risk killing them in battle because of mandate of heaven)

I noticed that Ming really starts taking off once you can put down buildings. For everyone else a temple is an increase of tax income by 40% (100% efficiency -> 140%) for ming it is 80% (50% -> 90%) and on the "wrong culture" half of their empire it is even 150% (27% -> 67%). Same with armories and workshops. This is even better since China has quite a few rich provinces and the income to build several buildings a year.

But losing the mandate of heaven would still be dangerous. My provinces are around -5 RR with the mandate of heaven so without i would be sitting on 200 provinces with 5 revolt risk. I'm quite sure my manpower would dry out almost instanly!

Also let's be honest. Ming was buffed, but even in 1.11 no asian power could match ming if they weren't weakened by rebellions already.

 

[FrostPegasus]

Anyone who claims loudly that Ming is "OP" now hasn't played it properly. Yes, it has gotten a lot easier with the loss of Inward Perfection (which, let's face it, was stupid as all hell) but its starting position is surprisingly balanced. It earns a lot of money at the very start, but has almost no manpower. I believe its max manpower at the beginning of the game is around 37k.

You could, of course, use all that money to build barracks everywhere, which puts you up at around 70k manpower at the expense of several thousand ducats (I'm guessing somewhere around the 5k mark) or you could invest in your manpower thereby making your military tech lag behind.

Furthermore, your armies are absolutely terrible and will lose most 1 on 1 (or even 2 on 1) battles with the northern hordes for the first century or so of the game.

So is it hard to play Ming? No. But it's not a "roflstomp" either as some make it out to be. A lot of it boils down to the way you play.

But as far as the AI goes, I'm glad it's much more stable now. I'm happy to see Ming survive well into the 17th century.

 

[Hopit]

Ming blew up in my first game after I had bought the expansion.
So OP.

At this point of my campaign, China might have been like this for 100 years or so...

 

[toroltao]

Still collapsed in the 1500s and I mopped up.

 

[FrostPegasus]

This is me about halfway through modernizing (off of a Portuguese colony in Mexico) in my Ming ironman game. My max manpower is sitting at 71k with a barracks in every single province. What was Ming's manpower before CS if it had a barracks in every province (and the temple faction in charge)?

 

[Dakka]

Sorry, guess you guys have been having different luck than me. Of the three games I have tried, they super blob everytime. Guess I am just particularly unlucky

 

[FloatingOrb]

Well, Ming is the eastern france, so they are always going to be strong. Especialy int he hands of a player.

If your having issues with ming, the secret is thier small manpower pool. You can generaly starve them out with a little patience and some nice maneuvering.

If you are playing one of the northern hordes, you can actually go toe to toe with the ming once you form manchu. that defensive bonus is insane, as are your cavalry.

 

[Zelius]

Sorry, guess you guys have been having different luck than me. Of the three games I have tried, they super blob everytime. Guess I am just particularly unlucky

If you play as a nation that would've been lucky, the lucky nation status passes to Ming.

They used to be VERY easily crushed by hordes early on due to lower tech (+ bad ruler stats), unit pip disparity, as well as having goddamn no manpower despite having all of China proper. Oh, and that low manpower also provided crap -10% discipline troops.

Changes with 1.12 at least make Ming not as boring to play, and westernisation is not the only course of action worth taking.

 

[Demetrios]

Ming blew up in my first game after I had bought the expansion.
So OP.

At this point of my campaign, China might have been like this for 100 years or so...

Go Chagatai! Make your ancestor Genghis proud!

 

[MrParadux]

What makes them that more stable even when losing the Mandate of Heaven is the fact that Ming is now the union tag for the Chinese culture group. I really like that inward perfection is gone, but there should really be a way to remove a culture union per event. It is possible to add one, but sadly not to remove it. If Ming were to lose the cultural union along with the mandate it would probably be back to the implody-china we know.