I love the concept! But could you do a version that is a lot 'softer' of a change? Basically I'd like to keep the majority of the vanilla aspects of the institutions (dev pushing, etc) but just remove the eurocentric aspect of them (both in restrictions on spawning and in the names). So Colombian Exchange still being 1500, still having a 1450 institution (maybe call it restored silk road? Materials engineering or Refined engineering to reflect the introduction of new building methods and cannons becoming mainstream in their use?

So I have been working on a bunch more age objectives. In the first place to make the age mechanic more interesting outside of Europe. But furthermore also in an attempt to create more regional narratives. I have always felt that EU4's interstate anarchy works best when it is tempered with some form of structure. The most successful ones in my opinion being the HRE and the MoH+tributaries.

UPDATED to 1.37, also started making changes to the Age mechanic

UPDATE

Changes to China, Korea, tech and religions.

Big UPDATE

If you are playing this mod and are already beyond the year 1600 please please read the Change Notes.

Haha, thanks.

@antoni.wisneiwski.1990
@Joeri Dobbelaar
Great conversation by the way, randomly stumbling upon a nuanced, civil and intelligent argument between two steam users, and learning some new things from it was not something I expected to happen today.

Neat ideia!

Yeah, you correct on that. I recall reading somewhere the term arose later when the concept of state was brought from Europe, but can not find that source now. Guess I was thinking of blue almonds.

We agree on the main point though.

I mean the Northern Chinese in the 12th century would probably still see any invading Jürchen as a violent other.

You are referring to the modern usage of 'guojia' (國家). Going back to the Zhou dynasty 'guo' (國) refers to the lands ruled by a 'Zhuhou' (諸侯). 'Jia' (家) refers to lands ruled by a 'Daifu' (大夫). The 'guo' being bigger estates or states and 'jia', being the smaller ones. 'Jia' also means family but not in this context.

Mencius has: "tianxia guojia" (天下國家) or in translation "the small and big states under heaven". So 'guojia' just means countries or country. The etymology of "Family Kingdom" is incorrect.

I was using the institutions to explain a very basic overview of the Broadberry model. In no way was I implying that your mod should portray it this way as eu4 is fundamentally incompatible with the Broadberry model of the Great Divergance. I was just trying to explain that the China decline theory from 1127-19something is in fact accepted by at least some serious Chinese historians.

I was referring to the cultural shift in China when I said "protectionism", please excuse my wording. It is not exactly "conservative", but that is the term often used to describe the culture of late imperial China.

While maybe not genetically speaking, there is a large difference in culture and identity between northern Chinese and the Jurchens at the time; they did not have a shared identity or language and resisted the Jurchen invaders very hard. They viewed the south, despite not actually sharing their langue, as part of their China "family"; the word for country literally means "family kingdom".

If the Broadberry model implies most institutions should already be present in China at start, than it is useless to me. Because it removes the institution gameplay aspect. This is not a China mod; I don't want all the institutions in China only.

One of the goals this mod is to salvage the institution mechanic. In vanilla the only road open to the player outside of Europe, is to choose a province and develop the hell out.. Which is lame and in my mind non-gameplay.
My model has institutions starting in different regions and spreading out. With ideally starting regions altering every institution.

So Tributary System spreads first in the Indo-Pacific.
Columbian Exchange (probably) starts in Iberia and spreads eastwards, and spreads some more with Portuguese colonies in India and strait of Malacca.
Farang Guns start in the Western and Eastern extremities of Eurasia, squeezing the middle.
India just having been squeezed is mostly likely to get the next institution Manufactories first.

Could you clarify what you mean by protectionism? Normally it refers to economic protectionism, I assume you don't associate foot binding with economic protectionism?

I personally don't care for the Chinese government's reading of history. It is very common in Chinese historiography (not just CCP) to present dynasties as a dichotomy between either native-Han or foreign invader. This is obviously less salient to a world history reading. During the Song there was indeed already as sense of (proto-)national identification of Chineseness. But the people of North China are just as much descendants of the Jürchens as they are Han. Whatever these identifiers may mean.

The Zhungar genocide is indeed insane. For my BA thesis I actually read an 1777 ethnography of Xinjiang. It has a history of the campaigns against the Zhungars which mentions the genocide super casually. Before reading it I wasn't aware of this genocide. I was like: Qianlong did what?!?!

The Pomeranz vs Broadberry argument is EXTREMELY important. The narrative of this time and the entire great divergence changes depending on whom is cited.
If Broadberry, China was more than half a millennia ahead economically and by far the richest state for its time in human history just before 1127 and slowly and intermittently stepped backward. India, the Muslims and Africa stagnated. Everyone was on the same footing in about 1600 and then Europe and Japan to pull ahead where China became among the poorest places on earth by 1800(less than 1/3 its own peak). Europe and Japan were among the poorest regions of the old world in 1200 and by 1800, the richest. By this model, most institutions would already exist in China.
If Pomeranz, the world was on the same footing per capita until the industrial revolution when Europe surged ahead, with a lot of luck, but ultimately due to the large amounts of resources and market in their colonies. By this model, institutions would be luck based.

Also, the Jin, Yuan and Qing may have not been the worst (An Lushan, Dong Zhou), but in general, invader dynasties did kill more than the native ones during their conquests and ruled more brutally. The Qing conquest of China had an extremely high death toll of 25 million+, especially for the fairly short time it took place. Sichuan was depopulated, although this is admittedly at least in part because of the short lived Xi dynasty. Qing also committed the first modern competently intentional genocide in world history, the Dzungaria Genocide. While the Spanish were very brutal, they did not intentionally try to kill ALL Native Americans. Also, 10s of millions of people were missing from the Jin/Song census following the 1127 incident (one again, in part due to the less functional Jin government and the chaos in the southern Song). The census data showed China losing 10s of millions more from Southern Song to Yuan. The Tang-Song, Qin-Han and even the 1900s warlord period comparably tame.

I was stating foot binding to be a symbol of China's obsessive protectionism during the Southern Song Dynasty and the Ming and Qing dynasties, but I can fully see how that is hairy because these is no concrete evidence of what exactly this means and it is not much more than educated guesswork. However, entirely ignoring this point I would think is incorrect, because this is largely accepted to be the case in modern China, with the Chinese government even blaming the 1127 incident for the eroding of women's rights in later imperial China, which in modern China views as a symbol of cultural regression.

Everyone knows that showing other cultures being competent is the most antiwhite thing one could consider.

I think it is reasonable to assume that the Ming in the 15th century wear ahead of Europe and the rest of the world in many, but not all, aspects of governance. Tying it to the Zheng He voyages allows me to have the institution spread easily to rest of the world and show the connections across the Indian Ocean. It allows me to tie together East-Asia, SE-Asia, India, Arab Peninsula and East Africa.
World History often stresses interconnectedness and lest not forget this is a World History mod, not a Chinese history mod (although my own training is in Sinology, which probably shows and biases me).
This is not simply an intellectual exercise, but also a mod meant to be played, especially to be played in Asia and Africa. If it overstates the capacities of their states a bit for gameplay reasons that is okay.

@antoni.wisneiwski Thanks for the good faith discussion. I had to remove some comments that seem to think I am being anti-white, lol.

I thinks it's dangerous to make a cultural pathology like foot binding emblematic of a Chinese decline or stagnation. Also a dynasty with foreign origins is not necessarily more cruel than a native Han dynasty. This is especially true for the Qing dynasty, who apart from the humiliation to force everyone to wear the Manchu queue was in no way more cruel or oppressive than the Ming. All empires use violence to establish and maintain themselves. Also I really don't see the connection between foot binding and the general economic political situation.

Concerning the Song. Yes they probably were the most awesome dynasty. (Although my personal soft spot is for the Qing). But the Song is outside of the scope of this mod. Whether Pomeranz, Bloomberry or someone else is wright is important, but does not really concern me here.

bro just finished his ap world history test

Regardless, it does make sense to have China be ahead of most of the world in the 15th century.

I love the discussion in here, Chinese historiography is a blind spot of mine and getting some people to read is great.

Oh, wait, you are citing Pomeranz. According to Wikipedia, there are two theories about the great divergence, Pomeranz, who believes in uniformal growth until the industrial revolution when Europe surged ahead. He says GDP per capita was basically uniform with small variations(like dutch golden age)

The other is Broadberry, who believes that China surged really far ahead to almost industrializing during the Song dynasty and then was derailed by the 1127 incident and slowly declined until the century of humiliation when it fell apart. According to his theory, most of the world aside from Japan and Western Europe stagnated due to the Mongols and their successor states. However, China was just so far ahead it took centuries of years for Europe to catch up whereas India and the Arab world were only a little ahead.

Broadberry is more recent(and collaborated with more Chinese historians), so I assumed his to be more accepted, but appears no one is more accepted according to Wikipedia.

I am not implying China can not grow or that it stagnated or declined entirely. I am well aware that the Japanese Invasion of Korea failed because of China and Korea's superior technology and tactics compared to the Japanese ones that were largely imported from Europe. China was super far ahead of the rest of the world in every measure until at least 1700, which shows how far behind the rest of the world was behind China. China's innovative golden age was nearly as great as the European one and happened nearly 1000 years earlier, it was just cut short by the 1127 incident. Nor am I implying EU4's current system is accurate or even passable. I agree completely that portray Europe's domination as inevitable is revisionism and euro-exceptionalism.

The scholarly source I cited, made by a serious China specialist, argues that economically, at least, China walked backward during this time, especially during the invader Yuan and Qing dynasties. The Song Dynasty figures are actually more accurate than the Ming ones because the Song bureaucracy was much larger and more organised than the Ming one, which leads to my final point.

The Song dynasty had removed every inheritable post except the emperor himself, who only was a figurehead. Every other post was acquired by meritocratic exams or appointed by meritocratically chosen officials. During the Ming dynasty, these posts were replaced by inherited positions and their ability to function was hindered greatly.

Footbinding symbolizes the cultural changed caused by the cruel foreign domination. When the Mongols and Jurchins invaded China, they humiliated millions of women. Footbinding rose in popularity in part to protect women by keeping them inside. Admittedly, there is no hard numbers on this and we can not see into the minds of those who popularized the system, but I think it is no coincidence this went from a fringe practice to mainstream during this time.

Anyway, the Ming were definitely a dynamic power in economic, military and technological terms. Actually in 1600, near the end of the dynasty, still over half of written text in the entire world was in Chinese.

The Ming kept innovating in military tech (depicted in the mod). They continuously fought a lot on their northern frontier and thanks in part to their superior use of cannons kicked the Japanese out of Korea.

In economic terms the Ming became the first fully monetized economy in the world thanks to the inflow of Spanish American silver. This did lead to problems later in the dynasty when silver inflows diminished and thus deflation set in.
In the 17th century China started mass producing porcelain for the European market.(Manufactories)

The idea that China walked backwards is one that no serious China specialist would take seriously. It is actually the kind of typical euro-exceptionalism (Europe evolves, Asia is stagnant/degenerates) that this mod aims to counter.

I don't agree there is strong case to be made. I am not very familiar with the comparative economic literature, but economic statistic of the Song dynasty, a thousand years ago are indeed very hairy. The Song was very dynamic indeed.

Concerning the Ming dynasty. I am not sure what you refer to by fear culture. Foot binding seems unrelated to me. To say that China returns to feudalism would be an overstatement. From the 21st perspective the Haijin does seem like a disastrous policy, but it should be pointed out that in the later half of the Ming dynasty the policy was much more lax than in the first half.

The falling gdp and urbanisation is more difficult to parse, but what I remember from reading Pomeranz is that the economic situation of the countryside becomes more like the city, not the other way around. The falling of the gdp per capita has to do with how crop yields keep increasing and the population just keep growing. Most of this is during the early Qing though.

I must point out, that across EU4's timeline, there is a strong case that China actually peaked very early in EU4's timeline and actually walked backward.

Most modern economic history books show China peaking during the Song dynasty and steadily falling in GDP per capita and Urbanisation, which would imply an economic decline during that time.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210109144034/https://eh.net/eha/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Broadberry.pdf

Worth noting, the declines in the late Song dynasty are based upon an early stage transition from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing one whereas those later are not.

While talking about social decline is very hairy and subjective, there is an argument to be made about the fear culture of the Ming Dynasty with policies like the Haijin and the practice of footbinding as well as the resurgence of hereditary feudalism-like institutions in China after it was nearly eradicated during the Song Dynasty.