I tried a Japan game...and failed.

[Pope Innocent the 69th]

The first half of the playthrough went really well. I started with Exploration->Religious->Offence. I united Japan around 1500, then conquered Korea, colonised Taiwan, the northern half of the philippines and a portion of Manchuria. I also converted the culture of my island colonies to Saigoku to avoid having to worry about Island revolts which suck absolute ass.

But then I started to get corruption issues because my diplo and admin tech was falling behind thanks to call the core-creating+culture converting, peace deals etc. So I had something like admin 7 diplo 8 millitary 13. Rooting out this corruption, plus my colonies and my missionaries ate ducats like crazy.

So I decided to stop expanding, hopefully to catch my admin and diplo tech up with military. I colonised Hawaii and the Midway Islands and used them to jump to California and start colonising Mexico. Everything was going well until I met up with Portugese Mexico.

My plan all along has been to modernise. I was able to adopt colonialism and global trade, but not the Renneisance or the Printing press. When my colonies finally linked up with a European one I thought I made it, I'm gonna get 'westernised' (can you even do that anymore?). Then of course the portugese decided they would rather attack my colony than the still independent Aztecs, go figure.

So I kinda had this tableflipping moment. 'I invested all this time, money and effort into this colonising tactic, hoping I can get their institutions along with a competitive edge and roflstomp everyone in Asia and it all went out through the window in a second'. The funny thing was that I wasn't even invited into the colonial war, and even though the portugese colony was half the size of my colony, it had units while mine didin't?

My poiont here is: HOW THE F*** do you get Printing Press and Renneisance as Japan? 100% Tech penalty kinda sucks, especially when you want to make an East-Asian super empire. Because of this huge tech penalty I had trouble keeping my tech barely unbalanced, which meant 'no expansions'.

I picked Japan because 10% discipline is sexy af.

[equinox1911]

The simple answer is development. I just did a First Come, First Serve (have all of NA and SA as a custom "western" nation) and i can confirm that getting instetution spread was a pain especially for renaissance and printing press. For the first i just bit the dust and spent the mp to go from 0 to 100. I never was behind more than ~50 for the whole game following the rule of building the buildings that spread the institution before it spawns, then building more than saving up to embrache early (i think i paid 7k for enlightenment at 10.1% presence) .timing embracing to before new spawn then do tech for 10 - 20 years then going back to using mana to expand.

[Pope Innocent the 69th]

How is 675 development in 1670? As Japan ofc.

[Lord Touch Me]

Just finished one Japanese run and here is my insight. Colony aren't usefull for technology anymore. If you have Common Sense, you can make your way and keep it up with the Western power by development. Each point that you buy in a province will add a little progression to the last institution. It cost a lot of Monarch Point, but at least their aren't lost since it will power up your province. That tactic makes it better to go with the Daimyo strategy: grab the first institution in you capital before unifying Japan, that way you will get the -20% devlopment cost on the 2 first institution.

[equinox1911]

Well since the whole of Japan is ~270 dev, it is clear that you didn't do anything big like force Mingplosion or eat SEA biggies but it's fair i suppose for a colonization game whith low tech (and thus low states).

[Snizzlet]

I just did a Ming (some points should be generalizable to Japan) game to see how the new tech system would work in the worst possible conditions (not Europe, not Protestant, huge number of provinces, etc). And the answer is: it's atrocious. If you don't have Common Sense to outright buy institutions via development, you're absolutely f-cked.
I had to buy Renaissance in one province for some enormous amount of mana points and then still had to wait (got all the way to +50% tech) before it got to about 60% of dev, and embraced it for something ridiculous like 4k gold.
I tried to rush for Colonialism but failed, Portugal got it. I managed to get it pretty quick anyway though via Alaska. Plenty of coastline so it spread ok, but still had the huge gold cost.
Printing Press is also literally impossible to get just like Renaissance was, had to get it via dev.
Managed to get Global Trade first and it spreads pretty well. I had expanded quite a lot so the cost to embrace are getting like 7k gold at this point. I was at +70-90% tech cost the entire game waiting for institution spread.

Conclusions are the new tech system is neat for small well-developed European nations but holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it blows for large nations

[Pope Innocent the 69th]

Ming did get divided and I got as far as Beijing, but that's where I had to stop because corruption and tech became too much of a problem. I could have kept conquering, I just didn't have the monarch points.

Can you explain what this means: . If you have Common Sense, you can make your way and keep it up with the Western power by development. Each point that you buy in a province will add a little progression to the last institution. It cost a lot of Monarch Point, but at least their aren't lost since it will power up your province. That tactic makes it better to go with the Daimyo strategy: grab the first institution in you capital before unifying Japan, that way you will get the -20% devlopment cost on the 2 first institution.

I totally don't get it. I didn't play EU4 for a while now, and this sounds very confusing.

[Snizzlet]

Do you have Common Sense? Do you understand the development (the player action, not just fixed numbers)?
If no and no, don't worry about it, there's nothing you can do anway.

If yes, it means that every time you develop a province it will get a little progress on the old institution it doesn't have yet. A fixed, finite amount of progress, not an increase to the ticking increase (spread). So you can't develop once to get the tick going, you have to get developing again and again.

[wakey wakey]

Asian Nations and especially japan is atm the worst to pick.(except hords) The spread is so slow that you most likely will end up with global trade/feudalism and colonialism(and this only if YOU used it) in the mid 17xx. Even african tribes outtech you by miles the further the game gets.

It's just a bad time to play this nations atm. If you go for wc it's not so much of an issue, but if you just play "casual" or for fun it really sucks.

You need to build your way to the west perfectly atm to stay up to date and I don't think you can even bother about colonize the new world now. It's just way more important to reach and break all the horde/rivals which blocks the spread and go west as soon as possible or you're doomed.

Deep east asian nations atm kinda feel like a wc even if you play them for fun.

[Lord Touch Me]

Originally posted by wakey wakey:

Asian Nations and especially japan is atm the worst to pick.(except hords) The spread is so slow that you most likely will end up with global trade/feudalism and colonialism(and this only if YOU used it) in the mid 17xx. Even african tribes outtech you by miles the further the game gets.

It's just a bad time to play this nations atm. If you go for wc it's not so much of an issue, but if you just play "casual" or for fun it really sucks.

You need to build your way to the west perfectly atm to stay up to date and I don't think you can even bother about colonize the new world now. It's just way more important to reach and break all the horde/rivals which blocks the spread and go west as soon as possible or you're doomed.

Deep east asian nations atm kinda feel like a wc even if you play them for fun.

Well, it's not that hard. By using Common Sense mechanics, you can keep it up in technology without any problem. Well, at least if you aren't to big: with a barealy bigger Japan, I was able to get the newer institution before the 20% tech cost. The main problem with Japan is if you want to stay Shinto. I converted to Catholic and, by doing so, was able to ignore the "Contact with the Occident" modifier (well, partly. I needed religious Idea to ignore the -5% to missionaries strengh). But if you stay Shinto, you have to go with the Sakoku and you will be hit by the -15% Institution modifier.

[Pope Innocent the 69th]

Originally posted by Snizzlet:

Do you have Common Sense? Do you understand the development (the player action, not just fixed numbers)?
If no and no, don't worry about it, there's nothing you can do anway.

If yes, it means that every time you develop a province it will get a little progress on the old institution it doesn't have yet. A fixed, finite amount of progress, not an increase to the ticking increase (spread). So you can't develop once to get the tick going, you have to get developing again and again.

Is it something to do with the newest DLC (rights of man?). I don't have that one yet.

Edit: Okay, so I found this 'Common Sense' dlc you were talking about, and it's weird because some of the stuff the dlc does seem to be part of my game already even though I don't have it? Like claims only giving a 10% reduction in coring, or not all provinces having forts.