Why the 1.24 Ming nerf is a right idea but done wrongly。

[nagatoism]

Hi guys,

I have been a manchu player since 1.22 and enjoyed fighting the giant Ming. The fastest Qing I formed was 1475, probably not the best.
The 1.23 update made Jianzhou manchu harder because Yeren tribe tend to ally some Siberia tribe and you cannot reach his ally due to Terra Incognita. For those who succeeded to form Manchu then Qing, beating ming is merely a time race.

OK Here come the 1.24 update and Ming being Emperor of China is trash now. So beating ming is like breeze now.
However, the nerf does not feels right to me.
The main fault the Devs made is targeting the wrong one to nerf. The one who really need to be nerfed is MING, not the Emperor of China.

For gameplay reasons, it made EOC a totally joke except you want to play tall as Ming, and it feels weird to use the CB “ take the mandate of heaven" because you will never take it. It is laughingly now a semi-legit open for Ming player to just give the mandate to some tiny neighbour then conquer the world. Except you are Ming preserving the Mandate is so hard because your will have AE issue with your neighbour that you hardly can find anyone to become your tributary and Why is MoH is relying on the the number of tributaries solely is very questionable to me as a Chinese.
I even have this ill-minded idea that the DEV must hate players so much that they are tricking you to buy the MoH DLC and becomes the Emperor of China.



OK, let's talk about historically reasons. I did a little research on How Qing replaced Ming and it turn out be very complicated and very coincidental. However Qing in the time frame of EU4 is a remains a great power until the end of the 17th century and the ultimate decline of Qing is better shown in Victoria 2.
You see, historically there is nothing wrong to be the EoC in the EU4 time frame. However, the DEVs decide you are doomed if you are the EOC.


In my view, here are a few possible modifications. Principally, nerf Ming and buff the EoC to the power level where a player would want to take it in the first war.

1 Holder of EoC have all Chinese culture group as accepted culture.
2 Reform mandate hit backs ot 50
3 All tributaries will automatically cancel the tributary relation when mandates hit zero.
3 Give Ming more disasters.
4 Ticking autonomy threshold that grows with time. So in the end of 16th century, Ming will have
50% minimum autonomy.
5 The above autonomy modifier will be removed after finishing all the EoC reforms.
6 When counting the non-tributary states development, ignore the developments comes from Chinese culture group provinces.


7 Some tentative suggestions that the reforms can have mutually exclusive options for isolitional play-style and expanding play style. Like you can pick 10%CCR or 20 trade power for tributary states.
+1 adm or +1 mit for the ruler.
If HRE can have the revoke priviligia option, the EoC also deserve a Reforme the Celestial Empire finisher that change the Government type to Reformed Celestial Empire. This government is despotic monarchy with all bonuses from the reforms kept. Moreover, you get doubled tributes for evolutional side and similar revoke priviliga （only less than 100 dev dev will becomes subjest.) for expanding side.
This is just for remove the annoying -30 max absolutism debuff. ( Historically, China is a absolute Monarchy since 221 BC)
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In short Ming should be heavily nerf by a lot of disaters and special modifiers like old Timurid.
The real Ming economy is like 7k dev and it cost three consecutive very bad rulers to throw this away to the Manchurian.
Also Nurhaci the founder of Manchu was a very competent leader with miraculous luck. So why Jianzhou is not a luck nation. In my view the luck nations belongs to those small countries survived from strong neighbours and did well as Netherland, Sweden and Jianzhou. Does France and Ottoman really need this to rise? I doubt.
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Here is my old suggestion on reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/7bjkjm/a_few_suggestion_for_ming_in_moh_as_a_chinese/

I acknowledge l the Dev's great effort to make the Eastern side of the world as much fun as the Western side. The mechanics are not bad, but probably need more polishing. Ever thinking hire some poor History PhD as consultants?

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Since a non-native speaker, pls feel free to point out any errors.

 

[Bibor]

It would be unfair to give Ming more disasters just because it's big and threathening. It took a long time to set up.

If anything should be made a pressure point, it should be its rigidness. In my opinion, Ming should not be able to adopt any institutions until it reforms its govermnent. And reforming the goverment should blow it up as Timmy is now, literally into several states (representing powerful warlords), with Ming having a core on each of them and temporarily losing the mandate of heaven until its whole again.

In my opinion, Ming should have a replacement for Legitimacy which would be called somewhere along the lines of "Administrative Efficiency", which would provide a tech penalty reduction (perhaps 100% at 100).

And yes, I agree Ming should lose all tributaries when it reaches 0 mandate of heaven. This alone should be enough to make life normal again for the rest of Asia.

 

[iquabakaner]

I think the 70 mandate hit for reforms is better than 50 though. AI Ming still got every reform by 1600 now.

I would rather have more reforms (One reason why revoking priviligia was difficult was because of the number of reforms you need to pass beforehand), and have special events associate with each of them that can cause huge unrest or rebellions (merchants, peasants, etc.). The Ming downfall should really be simulated by huge rebellions (which happened historically). The rise of Qing was merely because of the Manchus picking the right time to strike since Ming was too busy dealing with rebels.

Unique disasters for Ming/EOC/anyone holding Chinese lands can also play a role, since peasant revolts had always been much more influential in China than in Europe.

 

[makaramus]

It would be unfair to give Ming more disasters just because it's big and threathening. It took a long time to set up.

If anything should be made a pressure point, it should be its rigidness. In my opinion, Ming should not be able to adopt any institutions until it reforms its govermnent. And reforming the goverment should blow it up as Timmy is now, literally into several states (representing powerful warlords), with Ming having a core on each of them and temporarily losing the mandate of heaven until its whole again.

In my opinion, Ming should have a replacement for Legitimacy which would be called somewhere along the lines of "Administrative Efficiency", which would provide a tech penalty reduction (perhaps 100% at 100).

And yes, I agree Ming should lose all tributaries when it reaches 0 mandate of heaven. This alone should be enough to make life normal again for the rest of Asia.

reform what goverment? they no longer got that decision anymore And qing can have that goverment by becoming emperor of china wich means its also nerfing qing too again

 

[creativitypersonified]

This is probably better fit to the suggestions sub forum.

That beeing said I do agree with the general idea of this thread. You'd have to be stupid to take the mandate ( unless you roleplay)

 

[Amadeu of Savoy]

Not taking the mandate should give a huge unrest penalty to chinese culture group provinces.

 

[Bibor]

reform what goverment? they no longer got that decision anymore And qing can have that goverment by becoming emperor of china wich means its also nerfing qing too again

Yet there should be an option to reform Ming (or Qing, for that matter) - into China. A nation that ditches the mandate / tributary concept and becomes what is simiar to "Ming without MOH expansion".
The way I see Ming is like opposite of HRE: a ginormous and rigid political entity that either needs to reform or suffer a slow but sure decline and/or breakup.

It would be really hard to explain the Mandate of Heaven if there are ships from all across the globe dropping anchor at mulitple Chinese ports and Chinese diplomats reside in Washington and Paris. If you catch my meaning.

 

[Tom D.]

IMO Ming became OP when Paradox removed the 50% autonomy penalty from their government with MoH. I still don't understand why they did this in the first place, and I'm convinced if they put the 50% autonomy back Ming would be a lot more balanced, just like they were before MoH.

 

[MrParadux]

Agreed that being emperor of China should be a boon, not a hindrance. It should be desireable, not to be avoided.

 

[HRErceg]

There should also be floods and earthquakes that happedned historicaly and no one could influence them, but they still shook the mandate of heaven from Ming.

Historicaly empires would rise due to a superior way of fighting or running a country, then certain people would benefit from that kind of way of fighting or running a country (janissaries, Roman senators, praetorians,...) and would oppose changing things (i.e. to accept new institutions) and that's why institutions weren't a pure good for all countries.
For the asians these foreign barbarians (a.k.a. Europeans) are destabilizing their order and should be kept away from their people. You could either fight your own people in massive rebellions or you could fight highly advanced foreigners. Thats why Ming and Qing fell but Japan rose

 

[caedussl]

The problem I see is balancing the EoC with Ming. Ming ought to be insanely powerful at the start of the game, and buffing the EoC may make Ming return to pre-1.23/1.24 Ming who literally never collapsed without player intervention. I like the suggestion above about giving large unrest to non-Chinese cultures holding Chinese culture land, but it can't be that simple and that doesn't really solve the problem. It disincentives not taking the mandate, but it doesn't make having the mandate itself any more attractive.

I think part of the problem is rooted in the HRE influence-style system that was grafted unto the Mandate system. It makes Ming vulnerable not because of historical factors which hastened its demise, but because of the number of tributaries. I think tributaries have far too much impact on the mandate than they ought to, while factors like economy, war enthusiasm, and nation strength are less important. It's hard to tank Ming's mandate if you're not a horde without completely devastating the country. Ming should have a disaster that can start after 1550 that triggers if they are in war/have high war exhaustion, have low meritocracy, taken loans, low stability, etc. Sort of like how lots of European countries have their own unique disasters. Something that can organically simulate Ming's historical decline without railroading them into collapse because they passed a reform and the RNG god wasn't good to them.

 

[Regaccio]

Ming ought to be insanely powerful at the start of the game

IMO Ming ought to be insanely powerful at the start of the game, but in no position to expand. They already have a massive empire which is difficult to fully control even in the modern day. But this not so much as Ming problem as it is an EU4 problem.

The real fundamental problem here is that internal politics in Eu4 are very basic, and a world-spanning empire is inherently just as stable as an OPM. The States and Territories system helped this a little bit but it still isn't enough. There needs to be some kind of internal game where the player is forced to keep control of their country instead of exclusively playing against other countries in a game of blobbing. Otherwise, not only is a country like Ming unnaturally stable, but very boring to play. People will be very angry about it because it will make the game more difficult and require more care before expanding, but I think it will be better for the game in the long run.

I think Estates were meant to be something like this but they are way too basic and can't really punish you much. Hopefully they're rolled into the base game (which has been hinted at before) and a later DLC really fleshes out internal politics and rebellions.


Oh, and another thing: The most recent patch has seriously buffed a lot of trade goods and made money pretty much limitless for some countries, which obviously helps Ming who was already incredibly rich in the previous patch.

 

[DàbiànLājīdàrén]

Claiming Mandate should give you 100 Mandate for 10 years so that it doesn't tank you immediately and gives you a nice buff for a while.

 

[Canute VII]

The main fault the Devs made is targeting the wrong one to nerf. The one who really need to be nerfed is MING, not the Emperor of China.

Even that is short-sighted. Who needs to be nerfed is all big empires, not a specific one. The "fix" has not only been heavy-fisted, but also it has been narrow-minded. Pdx needs to turn its attention away from "make playing every country feel unique" towards those things that they have in common. It's nice to have a different government form in different geographic regions, in the near east, in england or japan. But there also are commonalities between all small countries and all big countries, and things that differentiate the small from the big (other than force limit). This should get the attention of the game designers if they want to maintain a "plausible world".

 

[addvaluejack]

Yes, I think Pdx should nerf Ming instead of EoC, too.

I really enjoy taking EoC of China from Ming as Japan or Manchu at 1.23.

 

[al.gb]

I dunno about unique disasters, but bring back Peasant War for Celestial empire is necessity.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

I think the game should make it more harmful to have a large country. Maybe introduce a modifier that increases minimum autonomy or lowers profit in cities further from your capital?

 

[caedussl]

I think the game should make it more harmful to have a large country. Maybe introduce a modifier that increases minimum autonomy or lowers profit in cities further from your capital?

I like the idea but from a gameplay perspective it’s dififcult. If EU4 had game rules it would make things like this easier to stomach. I don’t like playing on very hard because it artificially makes the game harder but something like this would make the game more difficult in a neat way.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

I like the idea but from a gameplay perspective it’s dififcult. If EU4 had game rules it would make things like this easier to stomach. I don’t like playing on very hard because it artificially makes the game harder but something like this would make the game more difficult in a neat way.

I don't think it would be that hard to implement. Distance is already a thing, just calculate the distance and balance it out

 

[caedussl]

I don't think it would be that hard to implement. Distance is already a thing, just calculate the distance and balance it out

Not that, I mean in adding features that punish players that do well. I’m OK with them, but we’ve seen backlash about stuff like this before. Game rules are a solution but Johan hates them and I don’t know Jake’s thoughts on them (especially because he doesn’t play CK2).