How to survive Crisis of Ming Dynasty?

[Jack152009]

So how do you guys propose to survive this insane event? It crushed my thic Ming. No matter what I did I could not destroy the rebels, popping up everywhere all the time, while at the same time trying to get back stability and money...

[RCMidas]

The typical solution is never to let it happen in the first place. However, since the peasant rebellions only appear in provinces that are part of a state, you can cheese their locations by simply de-stating everywhere that is not heavily defended. It'll cost you less to re-state and bring those territories back up to speed than trying to reclaim them from constant rebels.

With the peasant rebellions therefore only appearing right next to your armies, you can sweep in and take them within a couple of months, eliminating the biggest issues with the disaster entirely. You can then just hold out until your corruption drops and the Mandate ticks up to end the disaster.

Oh, and I suggest rushing Exploration or Expansion so that you can colonise Taiwan, preventing the Tungning Rebellion and further loss of Mandate. An alternative, nasty option for ending the disaster is to let the north rebel and form Shun, who will immediately declare war on you to claim the Mandate themselves - if you lose the Mandate, the disaster ends.

20 years later, after some truly awful penalties, you may have the opportunity to reclaim the Mandate, but still never have to deal with the disaster again.

[grotaclas]

are you playing with or without the Mandate of Heaven DLC?

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

In all honesty, best way to survive it is to just make sure it never happens. Keep your Mandate as high as possible, don't pass any reform until you build all the way back up to 100 to minimize the time period where your mandate is low, at least until you're past the window of time where the disaster can occur. The event is specifically designed to tear the country apart, technically speaking you're not supposed to survive it.

That said, when I rode through it in my only Ming game a couple months ago, I didn't find it that challenging. Ming starts off as by far the largest, richest, and most powerful nation in the game, and in a player's hands it should only become more so as time goes on. Money and monarch points shouldn't be an issue for you, Ming being the only country that can easily afford a full complement of level 3 advisors in 1444. If that's still not enough, remember you can customize what each of your tributaries gives to you yearly through subject interactions - in your case you would want admin points from a couple large tributaries and money from the rest. Every nation that borders you that you aren't immediately attacking should always be set as your tributary, whether diplomatically or by force.

At 0 Mandate your troops will be made of paper, with a +50% modifier to fire and shock damage received, but you should be able to field enough of them to deal with each rebellion as it spawns. The really bad events that automatically force rebel nations to pop out of you will only occur if large portions of your country are sieged down, so you need to deal with each rebel stack as it spawns. If the rebels don't spawn until after you click the event pop-up, just leave it there for a couple months until you can get troops into position. Since this is just about the only situation in the game where you really need to worry about losing to rebels, make sure you pay attention to terrain - aim to defend on hills, highlands, or mountains whenever possible, and only attack on flat terrain.

[grotaclas]

As an info for the people who reply here with older experiences. The disaster got the following modifiers in 1.32:
−50% goods produced modifier
−50% national tax modifier
+0.08 global monthly devastation
+15 national unrest (previous versions had +5 unrest)

Edit: and it still has the +20% tech cost and -15% morale from previous versions

[Admod, the Equivocal]

Just do what they did in real life.

[Jack152009]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

The typical solution is never to let it happen in the first place. However, since the peasant rebellions only appear in provinces that are part of a state, you can cheese their locations by simply de-stating everywhere that is not heavily defended. It'll cost you less to re-state and bring those territories back up to speed than trying to reclaim them from constant rebels.

With the peasant rebellions therefore only appearing right next to your armies, you can sweep in and take them within a couple of months, eliminating the biggest issues with the disaster entirely. You can then just hold out until your corruption drops and the Mandate ticks up to end the disaster.

Oh, and I suggest rushing Exploration or Expansion so that you can colonise Taiwan, preventing the Tungning Rebellion and further loss of Mandate. An alternative, nasty option for ending the disaster is to let the north rebel and form Shun, who will immediately declare war on you to claim the Mandate themselves - if you lose the Mandate, the disaster ends.

20 years later, after some truly awful penalties, you may have the opportunity to reclaim the Mandate, but still never have to deal with the disaster again.

Yeah I think this might be my only chance of doing it... The problem is that it's so expensive to have my armies at full payment (I'm like 120 in the minus per month during the event if I have 100% taxes of armies). So eliminating the needs of travelling all the time, and just having to focus on fewer rebellion at a smaller area might do the trick. That might just give me time to get my stability up and money to get off my loans (you easily get them thanks to the -50% taxes).

But for a future save, how do you guys propose to never get the crisis? I thought my nation was doing good, but how do I know if my mandate gets too low? And how do I keep it high?

PS: I do not own the Mandate of Heaven DLC.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Jack152009:

But for a future save, how do you guys propose to never get the crisis? I thought my nation was doing good, but how do I know if my mandate gets too low? And how do I keep it high?

PS: I do not own the Mandate of Heaven DLC.

If you play without the Mandate of Heaven DLC, there is no mandate, so these things don't apply to you.
Without the DLC, the disaster can happen if you get the triggered modifier The Mandate of Heaven Lost[eu4.paradoxwikis.com]. To prevent that, you can make sure that never fall below 0 stability and keep your legitimacy up. With the Rights of Man DLC, you can use mil points to strengthen government to get more legitimacy. And if you have the Leviathan DLC, your heirs will gain claim strength over time so that they don't start with a low legitimacy. But without these DLCs it is much more random.
But even if you get The Mandate of Heaven Lost modifier, the disaster can only tick up if you have at least 5 loans, 5 corruption or are bankrupt. So you should prevent these. Then you have time to grow your legitimacy to get rid of the triggered modifier.