Brief Guide to Early Game Manchu

[bly08]

This is a walkthrough for how to take 100 war score from Ming before 1460

Restart if Korchin rivals you (not often)

Day 1 checklist:

- Set rivals
- Mil point focus
- Take the Improve Prestige mission
- Collect in Girin
- Delete the fort
- Hire a morale and unrest advisor, take as many loans as needed to fire advisors.
- Use estate interactions, get manpower and raise host.
- Roll a general with siege pips.
- Become Ming's tributary

1444-1448

Build spy networks in Haixi/Yeren/Buryatia, declare on Haixi on the first possible day, set Girin as war goal. Stackwipe and leave 4 units to siege Girin. Boost stability to 1 for the "Encourage Divination" decision, use a stab advisor if possible.

DoW Yeren, set Deren as war goal. Either bait their stack into mountains or chase them onto Sakhalin and blockade. Don't loot. Peace out when both Yeren and Haixi are at 100 WS. Raze Girin (cheaper coring) and whatever is needed to get below 100 OE. Buy down war exhaustion. Core only Girin and Hinggan.

DoW Buryatia when the Tribal Feud CB triggers. Stackwipe and siege. Peace out when Girin and Hinggan are finished coring. Raze everything excluding Barguzin. Don't raise autonomy. Start debasing instead of loaning. Form Manchu, enact national decisions. The date should be around 1448-49. Core the provinces you now have permanent claims on. If Yeren rebels get to 90% before the provinces are done coring, use harsh treatment.

1448-1452

DoW Korchin, set their capital as the war goal. They can be full annexed if Ming made them tributary, otherwise leave the 3 development provinces and take the rest. Don't tech up military until after razing.

DoW Korea, check if their border fort is mothballed. Wipe, loot, siege down two forts and peace out, don't need to siege down their capital for 100 WS. Refuse tributary demands two years before the war finishes. Take Korea's forts, keep one for Ming. Raise autonomy in every Korean province. State Yeren/Korchin/Buryatia provinces before raising autonomy. Lower autonomy in Barguzin. Sell ships. Raise banners to force limit.

Ming

Ming should be on mil tech 3 in 1452. It's possible for you to be on tech 5 before declaring if no points were wasted, but note that teching up to 5 allows Ming to tech up to 4 sooner via neighbor bonus. Mil tech 4v3 gives a greater advantage than 5v4.

As soon as Ming breaks tributary, declare war with the Mandate CB. Fight as many battles as possible before Ming techs up. Spam shift-consolidate. Reinforce with merc infantry. Retreat from losing battles. Don't debase until after mil tech 5. Siege down Shenyang after Beijing falls. Stay above 25 WS to triggger the Nomad Frontier disaster. After getting 40 warscore from battles, avoid unnecessary engagements and siege down two more flatland forts. Ming should be getting rebels at this point. Avoid them and carpet siege until Ming will peace out for max war score. With any luck the war should be wrapped up before 1460 at the cost of some corruption and manpower.

General Tips:

- Debase currency becomes cheaper than loans at around 50% effective vs. total autonomy. Before forming Manchu loans are cheaper, afterwards debasing will be cheaper for the rest of the game. The trade-off of power cost for unrest benefits early game hordes.

- With the -10% development cost edict, developing Renaissance in a 9 dev Girin costs around 1700 mp with 300 total development, same for a 15 dev Girin. Developing in Barguzin costs ~2200 mp and would boost its production to 16 which is 8 ducats/month of gold income. Barguzin is the better choice.

- Ming breaks tributary at below 30 trust, refusing demands takes away 15 trust.

- Assign as many provinces as needed to make tribes loyal. The "Return to the Old Ways" event requires 50 influence. Manpower and unrest are more important than income.

- The longer you wait, the harder it is to fight Ming. Tech 4v3 ensures the most stackwipes. It takes a while for Mandate to drop even with an ongoing disaster, thus the higher it is, the longer it takes to finish the war. Ming gets richer and more powerful as the game goes on.

- Always shift-consolidate before every battle. Buy down war exhaustion whenever it goes above 2. Consolidate or manually reinforce stacks to make sure your standing army is always close to the force limit.

- Don't worry about money. Any debt or corruption incurred at this point of the game is easily paid off from Ming and future conquests.


I recorded a playthrough up to the screenshot below. Don't leave your 11k sieging stack to defend vs. two 20k Ming stacks and hope for the best like I did. There is a lot of room for error vs. Ming as long as rebels are kept in check. They should almost always be on tech 3 in 1452 but was on tech 4 when I declared. Everything was done with consideration for the future.

 

[FrogCrusher]

@bly08 I just watched the beginning of your video and I have a question. How are you doing this fast army manipulation at 3 minutes ? I always do this manually, and knowing that will permit me to have much less micro

 

[bly08]

There are two ways, you can either drag select/split (s key)/drag/split, or drag select and hold down the d key to separate stacks big enough to siege the province they're in. The second way only works if you're not on a fort province, otherwise it would detach a larger stack than necessary. The second way is usually safer since sometimes 1k stacks will turn into 0.9k when they arrive at their destination due to attrition. The d key splits off a little more than 1k each time.

There are a few things I could've done better in the second video, mainly used consolidate instead of shift-consolidate. Instead of consolidating I would split off zero or low strength regiments and send them to an own province so they can reinforce faster, and then consolidate after a month or two to get full or near full strength regiments. A few stacks were picked off that way so it would've been better if I just consolidated and built new units on a few occasions. 0 stacks still take up force limit.

The reason for reinforcing 0 strength normal regiments instead of recruiting new ones is that it's cheaper. But with mercs it's a lot closer if not the same price to reinforce at 0 strength vs. building anew. The other consideration is recruitment time.

Lastly, sometimes it's better to wait to consolidate instead of doing it immediately after a battle. For example, if you have a 5k stack in occupied enemy territory with 400 regiments each, or 2k troops total, shift-consolidating would turn them into two 1k/full strength regiment and three 0 strength regiments. This means that only the three 0 strength regiments can reinforce. On the other hand if you do not shift-consolidate, all five regiments in the 5k stack would reinforce until they're full. This can make a difference with bigger armies. In either case make sure to shift-consolidate before every battle.

 

[FrogCrusher]

There are two ways, you can either drag select/split (s key)/drag/split, or drag select and hold down the d key to separate stacks big enough to siege the province they're in. The second way only works if you're not on a fort province, otherwise it would detach a larger stack than necessary. The second way is usually safer since sometimes 1k stacks will turn into 0.9k when they arrive at their destination due to attrition. The d key splits off a little more than 1k each time.

Thank you for that. But I have an additional question After splitting the army, how can you send exactly 2 of them directly in different provinces ?

 

[bly08]

After you've split up your army into small stacks, drag select, right click a province, press v to deselect the bottom stack, right click another province, press v again, etc.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Thank you so much, you made my day