Is Ming (more) boring now?

[Fenrir]

So this might just be my own take on the matter, but it feels like the new missions and etc for Ming are really boring. Before the DLC Ming was basically just bopping infinite rebelions, bullying tributaries, maybe colonize for a while, and fill out your mandate of China stuff. A generally mediocre campaign of bullying people too pathetic to challenge you and also so many tedious rebels.

Now Ming is that but like 5 times worse. The sheer scale of events and mechanics working against you with very little in the way of serious reward or flavour has turned Ming, in my experience, into an increasingly endless cycle of bopping even MORE rebels, spamming stability because everything takes stability now, and also reigning in your runaway estates. It's all just bopping and bullying tiny neighbors but on steroids and you get nothing interesting out of it. There's nothing to do except conquer stuff I guess.

Thoughts?

[PlatinumSun]

Nah I like it. Ming used to be super boring. Its unique now. You actually need to think just a wee bit, and treat Ming differently than any other country in the game as far as estate management and diplomacy go. I still like blobbing into the tatary early as possible. Something you can do, is you can kill the ♥♥♥♥ emperor early on by just attrition then do you wars, without needing to worry about losing battles (Not that you should, you have the force limit and a little sorch earth here and there stops those mongols from horsing around hehe.) Just wish you didn't need to border countries to make them tributaries, its silly and ahistorical especially since you start with plenty of tributaries you do not border.

[uvizachan]

Originally posted by Ром и ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°):

Nah I like it. Ming used to be super boring. Its unique now. You actually need to think just a wee bit, and treat Ming differently than any other country in the game as far as estate management and diplomacy go. I still like blobbing into the tatary early as possible. Something you can do, is you can kill the ♥♥♥♥ emperor early on by just attrition then do you wars, without needing to worry about losing battles (Not that you should, you have the force limit and a little sorch earth here and there stops those mongols from horsing around hehe.) Just wish you didn't need to border countries to make them tributaries, its silly and ahistorical especially since you start with plenty of tributaries you do not border.

It's a heckin' wholesome mingerino, amirite? Now, let's crack open a hoppy Soylent or three and start gaming! for Chungus Keanu 100%.

[Cylphie]

Ming has become one of my favorites now. The missions change rewards depending on your playstyle, so you can replay with them and get a whole different experience. The rebels and stability issues are needed for balance, or Ming would be way too powerful. Just finished a WC with them anyway. In midgame, after u unlocked most Mandate edicts and with all those monuments, you become pretty OP. I am glad that Ming is actually a good choice now for the Mandate of Heaven, while in the past, you would only crush them with a Horde and take over from there.

[Mentat]

Ming has even more nasty events now, especially those damned floods, is reduce developments in all provinces along the entire river, plus minus -2 stability and -10 mandate. And you have no way of preventing it. The mission single whip law cause huge inflation. +0.1 inflation with every province producing gold. Ming's mission is still trash when compared with QIng, and many of the rewards really doesn't worth the efforts. Playing Ming is even more annoying now, this sucks.

[Cylphie]

Originally posted by Mentat:

Ming has even more nasty events now, especially those damned floods, is reduce developments in all provinces along the entire river, plus minus -2 stability and -10 mandate. And you have no way of preventing it. The mission single whip law cause huge inflation. +0.1 inflation with every province producing gold. Ming's mission is still trash when compared with QIng, and many of the rewards really doesn't worth the efforts. Playing Ming is even more annoying now, this sucks.

The missions help you with the floods and the inflation is in return for 4 gold mines. You make crazy money and can have all advisors on rank 5 very early on. With inward perfection you can get the developement back at very low cost. It is not unbalanced. Without those events you would just steamroll everything. Now you got to keep an eye on rebels, stability, decide on when to use wich estate, plan when to go to war and when to increase Mandate, etc.

[Mentat]

Yellow river flood can be reduced, but not Yangtze river. I am not a masochist who enjoys seeing my developed province suffered from the stupid flood and enjoying spending points to redevelopment them, that is not a pleasant work even with a -90 development cost reduction, Those wasted points should go somewhere else. ET plague and famine events are also annoying, but it could be countered after medieval medicine, but the flood created by paradox cannot. I would rather have some great project along the river to help me end such stupidity once and for all.
As for that single whip law, you know even with 4 province producing gold, that is a +0.4 inflation from the modifiers alone. When building a colonial empire with Ming, thanks to oversea gold mines, I have suffered from heavy inflation about 2.0 per month from the modifier alone. That means about -60 admin power per month. It breaks the game. level five admin advisor generates extra points per month, plus power projection, estates, reform, my admin power generation can never reach 60 per month. Enjoyable? Interesting to play?

[Fenrir]

Just got home from work. I'm honestly not convinced by those pro-Ming arguments. For example: A big new gold income is theoretically a good reward but really it means nothing when Ming is already making Jeff Bezos cash by that point. Teutonic Order got an absolutely mind blowing new set of missions that completely changed the way we expect mission trees to be implemented (specifically the concept of multiple paths, alternative requirement conditions, etc). Ming missions are just varying shades of "more money more problems". Even with the scarce few ways to go down different paths it's simply just not an interesting campaign at all unless you very seriously love blobbing/world conquest and nothing else.

Even the mandate of China is super lame. It's constantly stealing your merit and mandate points, so you spend half the campaign micro managing those two things for such incredibly tiny pay offs until eventually it gives you the hyper blob button (the one that lets you vassalize your tributaries. I forget the name). By the time I get that far I could have simply annexed the entirety of Asia by myself the old fashion way, thus making the entire "eastern HRE" concept irrelevant.

There's honestly just no point in being Ming because the one and only thing that they have going for them (blobbing) is done infinitely better by Qing.

[Mentat]

Yeah, Qing is way better than Ming. Even on the way to blobbing, playing as Ming is by no means a great experience, the mission tree lacks claims and Ming lack coring ideas. While Qing having both. I have to say that Paradox really loves the Qing, from this brilliant mission tree in EU4, to the broken Great Qing in Victoria 3, capable of beating Great Britain in the first opium war with ease. It is so broken that the game should be renamed to Yehe Nara 3 (family name of the empress Dowager Tzu Hsi of late QIng, a contemporary of Queen Victoria).

[Fenrir]

The river flood events are so insanely poorly designed that what should be among the most heavily populated chunks of land in the entire game will rapidly be depopulated to a soggy wasteland. That's how bad the Ming update is.

[Mentat]

Just how boring can playing Ming be? My latest play go as follows, 1450 yellow river flood, 10 years later Yangtze river flood, then earth quake in Shanxi, explosion in Beijing. In year 1470 I passed the first mandate reform, I trigger the Mofan event, +10 unrest. in the following 20 years, mandate never reach above 50 thanks to all kind of nasty events. During this time, tax barge sank two times, reward tributary fired once, bank note inflation fired once, Smuggler fired once. Mean while the entire coast was raided by that damn So pirate. People always say that Ming makes a lot of money, but all this nasty events cost even more money. And in almost every emperor's rule, there will be flood in either Yellow river or Yangtze river. Then after building a huge colonial empire and passed down single whip law, I got about 2.0 inflation per month thanks to all the gold.

[Dome]

Did a qing playthrough and felt so overpowered I ended up not finishing the game because I felt way too strong.

[Cylphie]

Originally posted by Mentat:

Just how boring can playing Ming be? My latest play go as follows, 1450 yellow river flood, 10 years later Yangtze river flood, then earth quake in Shanxi, explosion in Beijing. In year 1470 I passed the first mandate reform, I trigger the Mofan event, +10 unrest. in the following 20 years, mandate never reach above 50 thanks to all kind of nasty events. During this time, tax barge sank two times, reward tributary fired once, bank note inflation fired once, Smuggler fired once. Mean while the entire coast was raided by that damn So pirate. People always say that Ming makes a lot of money, but all this nasty events cost even more money. And in almost every emperor's rule, there will be flood in either Yellow river or Yangtze river. Then after building a huge colonial empire and passed down single whip law, I got about 2.0 inflation per month thanks to all the gold.

ok, i understand now why you are unhappy with the changes. those events didn´t fire nearly as often for me as they did for you. i can see how it stops you right in the tracks if too many fire early on. sorry to hear that mate.

[Mentat]

Originally posted by Cylphie:

ok, i understand now why you are unhappy with the changes. those events didn´t fire nearly as often for me as they did for you. i can see how it stops you right in the tracks if too many fire early on. sorry to hear that mate.

While, I really like playing as great Ming, but I not a very lucky man when it comes to the event of Paradox games, especially when playing a country like Ming, it has way too many nasty events, and the new update makes the situation even worse for me, especially with those damned floods.

[Octopuses]

Ming is overpowered now. It was such an effortless game. My advice is to not take the 2 stability hit in eunuch event, and to rush the yellow river mission before the first flood. Earthquakes can be annoying later but you gain so much mandate that it doesn't matter.

Also, don't start harmonizing a religion until you are at like 99 harmony. Keeping harmony high is important. Never use missionaries.

I had almost the whole new world and snaked my way to british islands and conquered them for achievement before age of absolutism, and this was a chill run. I could have conquered so much more. Passed 8 reforms then had to stop because I didn't want dynasty disaster to trigger (it got to 97%).

You have infinite money and infinite monarch power as Ming.

[Cylphie]

Originally posted by Octopuses:

Ming is overpowered now. It was such an effortless game. My advice is to not take the 2 stability hit in eunuch event, and to rush the yellow river mission before the first flood. Earthquakes can be annoying later but you gain so much mandate that it doesn't matter.

Also, don't start harmonizing a religion until you are at like 99 harmony. Keeping harmony high is important. Never use missionaries.

I had almost the whole new world and snaked my way to british islands and conquered them for achievement before age of absolutism, and this was a chill run. I could have conquered so much more. Passed 8 reforms then had to stop because I didn't want dynasty disaster to trigger (it got to 97%).

You have infinite money and infinite monarch power as Ming.

that was the same experience i had. but it seems to all come down to RNG sadly. Maybe if there was some flag that prevents floods and earthquakes for a while after one had been triggered would help those with bad luck.

The Eunich estate is broken btw. They have some missions you can not fullfill. I saw a "HAS_NOT_EMBRACED_INSTITUTION" requirement. Like, how am i able to fullfill that? I embraced all institutions that were available at that point. There were similar things. Anyway, i avoided Enich missions unless they were about developing.