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Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!

Gobblecoque posted:

Why fix the stuff you've already put out when you can just release some more probably broken poo poo and charge people for it?

I love Paradox, and ultimately I think their dlc model has been great for the game, but I'm definitely getting to the point where I feel like EU5 is becoming an increasingly good idea because it will let them reassess all the systems piled on systems they have and refocus and refine in a way they can't do with dlc.

In future titles I think I'd like them to try to do something like "seasons", so like

Season 1 - 2 expansions
Season 2 - 2 expansions
Season 3 - 2 expansions (season one expansions become fully part of the base game, no longer available for separate purchase)
Season 4 - 2 expansions (season two fully folded into base game etc...)

So when a new user went in around season 4 they'd still only have a couple dlc to catch up instead of 8+. Also if something like development was introduced in season 1 they could totally gut or redesign the feature in season 3 or 4 without devaluing an old dlc or whatever.

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RabidWeasel
Aug 4, 2007

Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!
The ever expanding Ming stagnation zone is pretty boring, since it's functionally impossible to beat them in a war if you're not on world superpower level or are a sufficiently large horde with several other factors in your advantage. It encourages you to become a tributary temporarily just to declare a few wars before dropping it.

Ming should not be having a significant impact on what goes on in India.

oddium
Feb 21, 2006

end of the 4.5 tatami age

it would be cool if eu5 didn't have ages, and eu4 too actually

Dance Officer
May 4, 2017

It would be awesome if we could dance!

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

This is me as the Commonwealth with double Ming's development:


Which idea groups does Ming have? Offensive and quantity?

Redmark
Dec 11, 2012

This one's for you, Morph.
-Evo 2013

RabidWeasel posted:

The ever expanding Ming stagnation zone is pretty boring, since it's functionally impossible to beat them in a war if you're not on world superpower level or are a sufficiently large horde with several other factors in your advantage

Bit of an overexaggeration. https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/66hfqu/taungoo_empire_1469/

tbh while you're a tributary there's hardly any danger so you're free to just expand until you can win the war, there's not a lot of pressure like a Byz or Granada start. Depending on situation/skill level the amount of time it will take varies, of course. But then most people aren't playing Taungu.

Also ages are good :colbert: Absolutism is bad however.

MikeC
Jul 19, 2004
BITCH ASS NARC
Sorry its been forever since I have touched this game (3 DLCs ago). I remember some ideas were poo poo and some ideas were essential. Googling didn't really return anything concrete interms of a new ideas tier list. Is there any must haves and must avoids?

I am playing England as a hand holder to start so I would appreciate advise.

Also IIRC, its best practice to save monarch points for technology pretty much exclusively unless your stability is in the shitter or the ahead of time penalty is exhorbant?

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Dance Officer posted:

Which idea groups does Ming have? Offensive and quantity?
At the time of that screenshot they had neither. They also had half the development score of me in the Great Power Calculation, but only actually had maybe 50% less in direct development.

The problem is that I had been expanding like crazy and they had only what they started with.

Yami Fenrir
Jan 25, 2015

Is it I that is insane... or the rest of the world?

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

At the time of that screenshot they had neither. They also had half the development score of me in the Great Power Calculation, but only actually had maybe 50% less in direct development.

The problem is that I had been expanding like crazy and they had only what they started with.

Well, you do also have to consider that they are able to put their massive starting income into buildings, especially the force limit ones.

Since the start of the game, naturally, PLUS all the tribute.

The real problem is the huge distance the tributary networks can span, imo.

Redmark
Dec 11, 2012

This one's for you, Morph.
-Evo 2013
I think it's just that getting a lot of development doesn't go as far as it used to, since with the nerfs most of it will be unstated, wrong culture land.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Yami Fenrir posted:

Well, you do also have to consider that they are able to put their massive starting income into buildings, especially the force limit ones.

Since the start of the game, naturally, PLUS all the tribute.

The real problem is the huge distance the tributary networks can span, imo.
Yeah its kinda nuts that I cant take over the land surrounding the Caspian because one of the small countries owning land there is a Ming Tributary.

With +24% Discipline (80 Absolutism gave me that extra 4%), +40% Infantry Combat Ability, +53% Cavalry Combat Ability, +20% Artillery Combat Ability, and +50% Morale I couldnt advance against Ming because they just had too many soldiers.

Our battles were around the Urals.

Kurgarra Queen
Jun 11, 2008

GIVE ME MORE
SUPER BOWL
WINS

Yami Fenrir posted:

Well, you do also have to consider that they are able to put their massive starting income into buildings, especially the force limit ones.

Since the start of the game, naturally, PLUS all the tribute.

The real problem is the huge distance the tributary networks can span, imo.
Well, that's one problem. The other is that Ming is basically just going to do its thing straight through until 1820 90+% of the time unless the player beats them down a half-dozen times. Which usually involves becoming a tributary just so you can attack other tributaries without having to fight Ming too. It's kind of boring and tedious in terms of gameplay and not even historical.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Didn't EU3 screw up China with a DLC as well?

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Koramei posted:

How is it less fun? There's a mechanic now that lets you not have to worry about them killing you until you're strong enough to take them on, whereas before you literally couldn't do anything to stop it and it could happen at any moment. As someone who plays in East Asia in a huge chunk of my games, I think it's way more fun now than it ever used to be.

Not gonna disagree that there aren't a bunch of issues, but the "Mandate of Heaven is totally broken" attitude this thread has is complete bullshit imo.

I think that's partly true, some people are just sad that Mingsplosions no longer happen and that China remains a large threat through the endgame. But it's also true that the mandate of heaven mechanic is broken, in that it doesn't really accomplish its objectives; successfully taking the mandate doesn't actually accomplish much and is actually a huge problem if you're not already Ming-sized. Instead, I think that taking the mandate should have stronger short-term benefits for the recipient and stronger debuffs for the loser, facilitating the fall of the old dynasty and the rise of the new. Then over, say, 30 years those additional buffs/debuffs fade to the point where you are the new Ming. This would make the China region a persistent threat but would more accurately model some of the destabilizing periods that happened in real life, and it would also reduce the likelihood of weird poo poo like Persia becoming a Ming tributary

Beamed
Nov 26, 2010

Then you have a responsibility that no man has ever faced. You have your fear which could become reality, and you have Godzilla, which is reality.


SlothfulCobra posted:

Didn't EU3 screw up China with a DLC as well?

Divine Wind had a similar reception here on SA, and followed the trend of "Paradox doesn't know how to make Asia fun".

jpparker55
Jun 4, 2007
The obvious solution seems to keep Ming super strong, but just make it WAY more likely to explode in a variety of ways. Sometimes early, sometimes late and sometimes not at all, but currently it is way too stable imo.

Can anyone write me up a quick guide on playing in the HRE? So far I've entirely avoided it after I started a game as brandenburg, took a province from me neighbour then was told to give it back. However I think it's finally time to jump back in. I was thinking Austria but am open to playing anyone. Don't need a step by step guide to becoming a powerhouse, it would just be good to know the basics of what I should actually be aiming to do an HRE member.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.
My fix'd be to make it take 100% warscore to take the Emperor of China from Ming but that taking it totally and irreversibly cripples them. I like how strong they are, you all that are saying it's too hard are being whiny babies, having an end boss is good and it's entirely possible to beat them without owning half the world. What's stupid is that after that doom war Ming aren't really any worse for wear and you have to do it all over again like 5 times.

QuarkJets posted:

I think that's partly true, some people are just sad that Mingsplosions no longer happen and that China remains a large threat through the endgame. But it's also true that the mandate of heaven mechanic is broken, in that it doesn't really accomplish its objectives; successfully taking the mandate doesn't actually accomplish much and is actually a huge problem if you're not already Ming-sized. Instead, I think that taking the mandate should have stronger short-term benefits for the recipient and stronger debuffs for the loser, facilitating the fall of the old dynasty and the rise of the new. Then over, say, 30 years those additional buffs/debuffs fade to the point where you are the new Ming. This would make the China region a persistent threat but would more accurately model some of the destabilizing periods that happened in real life, and it would also reduce the likelihood of weird poo poo like Persia becoming a Ming tributary

Yeah, I agree the Mandate mechanic is completely non functional right now in terms of actually reining in the Ming. The tributaries ending up going all the way to Baluchistan and next to the Caspian is clearly broken too. But unless you're playing in India those aren't game-breaking issues, and the expansion livens things up in East Asia a whole lot.

The whole patch cycle these past couple of months does feel real weird though, we got nothing more than a hotfix or two before 1.21 came out right? And then that didn't deliver a whole lot of major changes either. I get the sense things are a bit hectic between Paradox con and them demoing this new type of DLC or whatever all in the span of a couple of months, normally they iron stuff out more than this. Hopefully we'll get some proper fixes soon.

alcaras
Oct 3, 2013

noli timere
What's 1.22 changing with Ming?

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

The Caspian is a good bit to the west of India, though? Like even just playing in Europe you can start to run into tributaries if you stumble as far east as Iran. That's okay if Ming is blobbing like crazy but seems insane and game-breaking otherwise.

Again, I don't think that people are complaining about tributaries so much as they're complaining about Ming being insanely stable unless you're a player who knows how to game the mechanics. The other issue isn't that Ming is hard for the player to deal with, it's that Ming is impossible for the AI to deal with.

Caustic Soda
Nov 1, 2010
@SlothfulCobra:

The 'solution' from Divine Wind, was a system where Ming got to engage with 1/3 of the game at a time AND were inherently terrible at managing their own provinces. This system was carried forward into EU4, and was complete poo poo. The tributary system is silly insofar as it extends past India for a Ming that doesn't expand, but I would otherwise consider it an improvement for Asia in general and the Ming in particular. Though that you need to confirm tribute every year is a bad implementation. That a tributary can't be a great power seems a(n inappropriate) vestige of the normal vassal mechanics.

Edit: personally I don't much care that the AI can't handle Ming, because in my experience that isn't really all that different from the Ottomans or Muscowy. Yes the latter two *could* enter a death spiral, but IME that is so rare without player involvement it might as well not exist. And unlike OE and Muscowy, Ming can be pacified by becoming their tributary. So I find being their neighbor much less of a pain than playing in eastern Europe.

Caustic Soda fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jun 4, 2017

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.
Fragility of empires seems like something Paradox isn't that keen on addressing, which is a bit of a shame in some ways but from a fun perspective I think I can understand why. In general their balance seems to be trending more towards making the AI blob as hard as the player so we get proper peers in the end game, rather than trying to make holding your blob together any more difficult.

and yeah, China was unified in the vast majority of this period. I really don't understand the appeal of it exploding all the time. Ideally we'd get to see that China be Qing for a chunk of it, but from a historical perspective there being a center of gravity under Ming makes more sense than there always being no China at all.

QuarkJets posted:

The Caspian is a good bit to the west of India, though? Like even just playing in Europe you can start to run into tributaries if you stumble as far east as Iran. That's okay if Ming is blobbing like crazy but seems insane and game-breaking otherwise.

The Caspian is right on China's periphery in Central Asia, honestly it's less weird than Baluchistan by a fair margin. Anyway the point was more that Mandate of Heaven is only really broken/annoying in some situations where you're not playing in East Asia. In East Asia its self you can work around that. Whereas most people in this thread have been saying it's worthless if you're playing games there which is a bunch of crap.

Koramei fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jun 4, 2017

Node
May 20, 2001

KICKED IN THE COOTER
:dings:
Taco Defender

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

This is me as the Commonwealth with double Ming's development:


Also, the funny thing about Ming's abysmal 3k manpower is that towards the endgame, when Ming is ungodly powerful, it puts almost its entire army into one stack. I saw Ming constantly running around with a stack with over 200,000 infantry, so the attrition drains them hard. But it doesn't matter, Mandate of Heaven is great! Onto the next release!

RabidWeasel
Aug 4, 2007

Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!

Redmark posted:

Bit of an overexaggeration. https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/66hfqu/taungoo_empire_1469/

tbh while you're a tributary there's hardly any danger so you're free to just expand until you can win the war, there's not a lot of pressure like a Byz or Granada start. Depending on situation/skill level the amount of time it will take varies, of course. But then most people aren't playing Taungu.

Also ages are good :colbert: Absolutism is bad however.

I was going to make an exception for "you managed to rush them at mil tech 6" (and in particular if you're playing for that achievement you're going to have hideous amounts of corruption and debt afterwards) but the point is that if you start anywhere near them you will end up having to become their tributary just in order to be able to play the game in a normal way. They frequently end up with tributaries as far away as Persia. Obviously I was being slightly hyperbolic but it's not very good for gameplay and in particular it interacts extremely poorly with AI powers as any one which becomes a Ming tributary will never get war dec'd. Also AI tributaries will virtually never break from what I've seen.

Ming are not too powerful in 1444 but to put it briefly, their power never seems to wane (tributaries keep them up to date on tech), they are incredibly internally stable (even in the immediate aftermath of a crippling war in which they lose the Mandate) and their sphere of influence via tributaries is far larger than it should be.

Even without changing the tributary system too much, if Ming only tended to tributary their neighbours, SEA and the Manchu hordes, and had occasional serious problems with rebels which could encourage tributaries to break free or turn on them, then I don't think people would complain so much. Having Ming as this huge superpower looming over you which you can take down if it stumbles is fun! It's just that this never happens and if you want to beat them the current number 1 strategy is to get to mil tech 6 ASAP because you will never have a tech advantage later on and their economy will grow massively as they unlock buildings which makes the merc spam even more intolerable.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

RabidWeasel posted:

if you start anywhere near them you will end up having to become their tributary just in order to be able to play the game in a normal way.

yes, well, welcome to East Asian history for most of the past 1000 years.

QuarkJets
Sep 8, 2008

Koramei posted:

The Caspian is right on China's periphery in Central Asia, honestly it's less weird than Baluchistan by a fair margin. Anyway the point was more that Mandate of Heaven is only really broken/annoying in some situations where you're not playing in East Asia. In East Asia its self you can work around that. Whereas most people in this thread have been saying it's worthless if you're playing games there which is a bunch of crap.

My point is that it's inaccurate to say that you only need to worry about Ming if you play as far west as India; the Caspian is pretty close to the western edge of Asia, meaning that a country in Eastern Europe has a decent chance of running into Ming tributaries without really being anywhere near India

On the flipside of people saying that Ming is too hard to play against, Ming is also too way easy to play as, further emphasizing the need for rebalancing. Not only was Celestial Empire buffed so that you no longer have the 50% autonomy floor, but Mega-Confucianism is also extremely drat good for both giving high religious unity and for the bonuses that harmonization with other religions provides. Remember where in the dev diaries they said that harmonization bonuses would only last 25 years? Well the devs must have decided that this wasn't good enough so the bonuses are actually permanent

Or in other words:

RabidWeasel posted:

Ming are not too powerful in 1444 but to put it briefly, their power never seems to wane (tributaries keep them up to date on tech), they are incredibly internally stable (even in the immediate aftermath of a crippling war in which they lose the Mandate) and their sphere of influence via tributaries is far larger than it should be.

RabidWeasel
Aug 4, 2007

Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!

Koramei posted:

yes, well, welcome to East Asian history for most of the past 1000 years.

It's a little excessive, unless I'm unaware of the Ming sending troops into India in the 15th century. I just don't think that the tributary system as implemented works very well other than for states in the immediate Ming periphery, so allowing it to extend further than that every single game is bad. Obviously there should be the possibility for Ming to do better than it did IRL but they currently almost always do much better.

The best fix would be for tributaries not getting free protection from their overlord, the tributary-overlord relationship should be more about soft power, warring with a Ming tributary and taking their provinces should be met with a diplomatic response rather than tributaries being just like different vassals. The best example from IRL I can think of why the current system is dumb is the Imjin War, the Ming didn't send their whole army into Korea to fight off the Japanese.

TorakFade
Oct 3, 2006

I strongly disapprove


RabidWeasel posted:

The best fix would be for tributaries not getting free protection from their overlord, the tributary-overlord relationship should be more about soft power, warring with a Ming tributary and taking their provinces should be met with a diplomatic response rather than tributaries being just like different vassals. The best example from IRL I can think of why the current system is dumb is the Imjin War, the Ming didn't send their whole army into Korea to fight off the Japanese.

It could be something like the return unlawful land option for the HRE, so if you conquer tributary land Ming might decide to ask you to give it back or else (if they care enough, if it's too close to their borders, or if they hate you)

feller
Jul 5, 2006


Koramei posted:

yes, well, welcome to East Asian history for most of the past 1000 years.

How often was Ming intervening in India and Japan in East Asian History

Detheros
Apr 11, 2010

I want to die.





Monastic Orders are the best. :v:

Redmark
Dec 11, 2012

This one's for you, Morph.
-Evo 2013

RabidWeasel posted:

Ming are not too powerful in 1444 but to put it briefly, their power never seems to wane (tributaries keep them up to date on tech), they are incredibly internally stable (even in the immediate aftermath of a crippling war in which they lose the Mandate) and their sphere of influence via tributaries is far larger than it should be.

To me it feels almost the opposite, since Ming has a huge quantitative advantage from the start date but won't hinder expansion. The player can grow unchallenged at their own pace until mandate starts dropping. I think the easiest strat would be to just conquer one's own culture as a tributary and then get a border with Ming, and then drop the relationship and blob in another direction.

It's true that the tributary system is very janky and should be fixed, but I agree that it's not so broken that it's impossible to play outside Europe. The tributary relationship is not that onerous.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

Koramei posted:

Fragility of empires seems like something Paradox isn't that keen on addressing, which is a bit of a shame in some ways but from a fun perspective I think I can understand why. In general their balance seems to be trending more towards making the AI blob as hard as the player so we get proper peers in the end game, rather than trying to make holding your blob together any more difficult.
I agree with you here.

Koramei posted:

and yeah, China was unified in the vast majority of this period. I really don't understand the appeal of it exploding all the time. Ideally we'd get to see that China be Qing for a chunk of it, but from a historical perspective there being a center of gravity under Ming makes more sense than there always being no China at all.
China was unified but had quite a bit of its own internal problems on a regular basis. In EU4 there are plenty of European nations that have some pretty nasty events that spawn tons of rebels, but China does not. China starts as a huge, stable, powerful behemoth unlike anyone else in Europe, and rightfully so, however, the AI tributaries of Ming, most notably the Manchu tribes, do not form into actual Manchu or get nearly powerful enough to challenge China.

Qing happened historically because China's leadership was weak, government fragmented and fractured with internal strife, and army ineffective. It is hard to model that because of your first statement, however, Ming is kinda a unique exception (in that there should be *something* happening to Ming, even as a player, to make them more Fragile). They could easily have a Janissary Decadence style event, but they do not.

Koramei posted:

The Caspian is right on China's periphery in Central Asia, honestly it's less weird than Baluchistan by a fair margin. Anyway the point was more that Mandate of Heaven is only really broken/annoying in some situations where you're not playing in East Asia. In East Asia its self you can work around that. Whereas most people in this thread have been saying it's worthless if you're playing games there which is a bunch of crap.
My problem with this is that Ming or Qing never consistently projected dedicated power past the Tarim Basin into the steppe between the Caspian and the Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges. Nor did they ever project any serious power in the Indian Subcontinent. Yes, in pre-EU4 timeperiods they sent massive trade fleets where they gifted things to local rulers in Indochina, India, and even as far as Arabia and east Africa, however that never amounted to any serious political outcome (such as the minor state that they trade with becoming a Tributary). These Chinese ventures often cost more than they brought back, and as stated did not result in some far-flung minor power becoming their tributary/Ming becoming even something akin to being their suzerain.
The way the Tributary system works in EU4, Ming will consistently, willingly, and in full force project their power to protect any tributary, even someone in the Persian Gulf, India, or Central Asia. The fact that Ming is willing and able to project power to these regions so readily is a problem in and of itself - the amount of power they will project (all of it) is also exceptional.

Ming is rich enough to have only mercs because they have zero manpower - no other country can really do that and it is really a-historical and kinda breaks the game. They suffer no penalties for having zero manpower (their stability is never low enough for a Peasants War or some other disaster). You cannot beat them in a war because their pool of mercs is endless and they are rich enough to throw stack after stack of 100k plus armies of mercs at you that even with the Space Marine Commonwealth soldiers I was fielding you just cant advance on them.

Their ability to not only keep up on, but stay ahead on, tech through the whole game is absurd (not fun unless you are Ming) and completely a-historical. They are so rich they have Universities in every province - they have spawned the Enlightenment in a sub-10 development Tropical Jungle province in four of my games.

tldr: Ming/China should be able to resist outside invaders - it was not really until outside of EU4's timeline that Europeans were making serious advances into China - but their ability to project power, earn stupendous amounts of money, and be incredibly stable are not fun and very not historical.

I like that they added a system to make the China / East Asia area more interesting, but the effect is less than desirable. I am not saying it is awful and it is broken and boo hoo why does Paradox suck, I'm just saying it still needs some work because historically China gradually became a backwards, poorly run, decadent empire that European powers could easily push around just past EU4's timeframe - that should not happen every game, because this is a game, but the fact it, in essence, is not possible now without a crazy amount of player involvement, is bad and dumb.

edit: essentially,

Senor Dog posted:

How often was Ming intervening in India and Japan in East Asian History

AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jun 4, 2017

Redmark
Dec 11, 2012

This one's for you, Morph.
-Evo 2013
As for the tech issue, one could argue that the institutions past Printing Press are too easy to get.

Colonialism seems ideal to me, in that it takes serious investment and effort for the rest of the world to attain, but isn't hard-coded to be impossible for tags outside Europe. If all the institutions were like that we could get rid of the dumb development mechanic, and most games would have a more realistic tech distribution. Unfortunately that ship has sailed.

Fuligin
Oct 27, 2010

wait what the fuck??

While I have no particular dog in this fight, I will note that the conception of Chinese history as an orderly succession of ultra prosperous and internally stable empires is both ahistorical and distinctly political, and the Ming dynasty in particular spent its lifespan lurching from crisis to crisis. If this were Victoria III that might still be the recipe for a fun nation, but EUIV is about painting the map, not internal management, so China is probably always going to be a bit of a problem child in terms of game mechanics. Fwiw I still think that Mandate of Heaven's mechanics are more fun than Mingsplosion every game.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
The fact that Ming will totally march 200k men to Turkmenistan if they feel like it is an unfortunate corollary of the game's realistically lazy, but generally fun modeling of logistics.

This is complete spitballing and probably dumb but what if instead of being called in to defend tributaries, you were obliged to provide them with condottieri or something.

e: also, someone else already said it but it is absolutely beyond ridiculous that if Ming loses the Mandate of Heaven, they become stronger because now they don't have to deal with the low mandate penalties, while if you take it from them, you probably become weaker because you don't have as many tributaries.

skasion fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 4, 2017

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

I really don't believe we'll ever see a paradox game that has a plausible "waning" phase for empires in addition to the usual "waxing"/conquering phase, unless and until that waning mechanic is a primary focus of the game. You'd need to have mechanics where a country can fall apart and the player not feel punished - the only way I can conceptualize this is if the player's assets are somewhat removed from a country's borders and/or strength.

so that's not happening in a hurry.

Pellisworth
Jun 20, 2005
You could probably fix Ming just by adding an Available Mercs penalty at low Mandate and after losing the Mandate. Revolts never happen because they just merc spam them, if their merc spam is curtailed then you'll actually get some breakaway nations.

AAAAA! Real Muenster
Jul 12, 2008

My QB is also named Bort

double nine posted:

I really don't believe we'll ever see a paradox game that has a plausible "waning" phase for empires in addition to the usual "waxing"/conquering phase, unless and until that waning mechanic is a primary focus of the game. You'd need to have mechanics where a country can fall apart and the player not feel punished - the only way I can conceptualize this is if the player's assets are somewhat removed from a country's borders and/or strength.

so that's not happening in a hurry.
I agree with ya. My hurf post above is not saying that Paradox should add a "waning" aspect to Ming or the game, however, Ming has NO major bad revolt / stability / disaster events, unlike most European nations that are much smaller.

Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

QuarkJets posted:

My point is that it's inaccurate to say that you only need to worry about Ming if you play as far west as India; the Caspian is pretty close to the western edge of Asia, meaning that a country in Eastern Europe has a decent chance of running into Ming tributaries without really being anywhere near India

That's only an issue for like 2 countries really though, and when the Russians expanded east historically, they did have to contend with China. It's the one instance of far-flung tributaries that actually makes at least some sense.

RabidWeasel posted:

It's a little excessive, unless I'm unaware of the Ming sending troops into India in the 15th century. I just don't think that the tributary system as implemented works very well other than for states in the immediate Ming periphery, so allowing it to extend further than that every single game is bad. Obviously there should be the possibility for Ming to do better than it did IRL but they currently almost always do much better.

The best fix would be for tributaries not getting free protection from their overlord, the tributary-overlord relationship should be more about soft power, warring with a Ming tributary and taking their provinces should be met with a diplomatic response rather than tributaries being just like different vassals. The best example from IRL I can think of why the current system is dumb is the Imjin War, the Ming didn't send their whole army into Korea to fight off the Japanese.

Oh the tributary range is clearly broken, I dunno why they haven't done a bandaid fix for that. My argument this whole time has been that Mandate of Heaven is cool & good if you're in East Asia, its interaction with India needs addressing for sure.

The AI overcommitting to conflicts is (like the decline of empires) a chronic issue in EU4 that goes way beyond tributaries- look at Europeans shipping over their entire armies for colonial conflicts in the Americas for something people have been complaining about for years. That definitely needs fixing and'd solve a whole bunch of issues if it got addressed. As for the Imjin War, it's an interesting example in another way, incidentally- Ming only actually intervened after it became clear that Hideyoshi's armies were a threat to China its self. Ming made no efforts to intervene when they thought it was only a threat to their tributary- and, after the Japanese had been driven to a stalemate, the Ming armies sat up in the north of the country doing pretty much nothing, content to negotiate as their tributary burned.

(also they did actually send troops into India in the 15th century, under Zheng He. but that's mostly a whole different thing)

AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:

I am not saying it is awful and it is broken and boo hoo why does Paradox suck

A lot of people itt have been saying basically exactly this. I do think they've bungled the past couple of patches, and Mandate of Heaven is clearly not working well in a bunch of ways, I just don't think it's a disaster and unplayable like a lot of people keep saying. China being eternally strong is obviously odd but still more interesting than the alternative, and there are systems in place that mean it isn't game breaking except for in a couple of instances.

Anyway I broadly agree with most of what you wrote. More internal disasters would be good for sure, there are all sorts of money sinks and so on they could add like corruption scandals, Yellow River floods, nepotism and all that they could and hopefully will add, along with fixing the checks they put in place already. Mercenaries are definitely an issue too, and one people have been complaining about wrt lots of countries ever since Mare Nostrum changed them, although Ming definitely highlights why they're so broken. I have no clue what 1.22 will bring but hopefully it'll be something good. Tributary interactions and China are actually pretty relevant for a Russia patch.

feller
Jul 5, 2006


I don't find quibbling over exactly how broken ming is that interesting.

They're definitely not working well and the fact paradox ignored that to do a weird, bad hungary patch that then broke diplo for some starts, with no further mention of ming (or that diplo problem) is the thing I have a problem with.

Dr. Video Games 0031
Jul 17, 2004

Senor Dog posted:

I don't find quibbling over exactly how broken ming is that interesting.

They're definitely not working well and the fact paradox ignored that to do a weird, bad hungary patch that then broke diplo for some starts, with no further mention of ming (or that diplo problem) is the thing I have a problem with.

They made a good number of changes to Ming in that patch, actually. It didn't help enough, but it's not like they did nothing.

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Koramei
Nov 11, 2011

I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

Senor Dog posted:

I don't find quibbling over exactly how broken ming is that interesting.

They're definitely not working well and the fact paradox ignored that to do a weird, bad hungary patch that then broke diplo for some starts, with no further mention of ming (or that diplo problem) is the thing I have a problem with.

Bit dumb to want everyone to stop discussing how broken something is while simultaneously declaring that it's broken enough to bitch about.

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