I had 44k troops to their 46k. They also had 22k with their disloyal vassals.
A much bitter problems were endless swarms of rebels I'd rather not run into, more than both our armies put together.
Unfortunately I couldn't avoid the rebels, and Ming was so far from being a great power Chagatai attacked their horde Kara Del, completely ignoring Ming's protection.
Ming's army was almost inconsequential, and its vassals did nothing except accidentally bumped their ships into my navy. Rebels on the other hand, those were really annoying.
Rebels ignore fort zones of controls as much as AI. Here Qi rebel march through Beijing's fort like it's not there.
Ming got completely obliterated. They lost Nanjing and their whole coastline. Even Chagatai took some provinces. By event Ming fleet established itself on part of Taiwan I didn't control - I made them my tributaries as well.
Unfortunately I got regency and 89k pretender rebels.
In a few years situation stabilized a bit.
Yue, Wu, Kham, and Ryukyu signed an alliance with presumed intention of gaining independence from Ming, but they didn't have balls to trigger it yet. No matter, they'd surely do next time I beat up Ming.
Anyway, that's it for this campaign. From this point on, it would just be waiting for mana and truces, and trivial wars with Ming, Japan, and various Chinese minors.
I don't have Colonialism yet, but my 5th colony in New World is due to finish soon, so that won't be much of a problem.
Rebels probably won't trigger normal defections, but they'll trigger Mingsplosion by special events.
Ming fell to 3rd place as great power, but by income, manpower, and realistic army strength it's really like 20th or so country, like Qara Qoyunlu or Jaunpur, not like the first league. And its collapse is not even halfway done.
Overall, it was a fun little campaign. It turned out to be a lot easier than I expected. I initially thought by 1518 I'd be just about finishing unification of Manchuria and maybe doing some fighting in Indonesia and New World because Japan and Ming would both be too strong for me - and I'd only go after them once I have Malacca money.
Confucianism and Rebels
Big surprise was just how terrible Confucian is while I'm harmonizing. Permanent 0 legitimacy and -3 tolerance of true faith adds up to +9 extra unrest:
- -3 tolerance from harmony
- -1 tolerance from zero legitimacy
- -2 unrest reduction from zero legitimacy
- lack of +2 unrest reduction from full legitimacy
- lack of +1 tolerance from full legitimacy
It also causes -2 diplo rep, so I couldn't annex Yeren in 45 years!
I generally thought that unrest in EU4 is too trivial. I guess I never played Confucians before. Knowing what I do, I'd probably have been better off converting to Shinto by rebels. Maybe even Vajrayana or Tengri (is converting to Tengri by rebels possible?).
Now it's not quite as bad, as -1 yearly legitimacy can be overcome or at least alleviated and RNG resets legitimacy on succession, so penalty would be somewhat smaller, but even at half legitimacy it's still +6 extra unrest. It's really tedious.
Korean Mission Tree review
Korean mission tree feels poorly designed. I liked two disasters (first one finished, second one I only got first event from) in it, with missions that remove them. The rest is bad.
For example the "Expand Homeland" mission for 30 Korean provinces. But Confucian blocks culture conversion due to religious differences, and trade company regions block conversion by colonization. So Korea is the worst country in the world to expand its culture.
The whole Japan subtree is gated by mission to have 30 galleys and 5 heavies. I crushed Japanese and Ming fleets and conquered most of Japan without building a single war ship - just starting ones and captured ones were enough (I built transports and later some lights for trade).
Manchuria mission chain is gated by taking and coring Liaoning state from Ming. Which I even did, but my vassal holds part of it, so I can't finish Manchuria chain even though I held it for half the game.
Korean missions seem OK in isolation, they just fit play pattern very poorly, even if I do what missions ask me to (conquer Manchuria, Japan, and North-West China coast).
If Korea wants to colonize instead, which is probably the second most obvious strategy, missions get totally nothing.
Mingsplosion is back
EU4 rebels are a nuisance, and Ming needed a lot of scripting to be able to fall over and die. It's huge improvement over eternally stable Ming from previous patches.
It still feels like fighting for throne of China is not worth it. You need three cities (Beijing, Nanjing, Canton) to not constantly lose legitimacy. If you have them, you probably have whole Chinese coastline at least, plus whatever was your home territory. That means you're probably #1 great power at this point - and nobody in East Asia can possibly oppose you, as your nearest potential threat is Ottomans or maybe by late game Russia.
It's still great news if you're playing a random minor, and want to grab some land in the resulting chaos.
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