How would you balance China if East Asia has to be added to the game?

[ray243]

Assume China will be added no matter what, so now your only thing you can address is ensure the game as a whole remains somewhat balance even if China is added to the game.

How would you balance a new big empire in the east? What are the mechanics and limitations China should have that prevents them from rolling over the whole of Eurasia?

 

[Trunting]

At the start in 867, Tang is in decline.

 

[FortressofRain]

How would you balance a new big empire in the east? What are the mechanics and limitations China should have that prevents them from rolling over the whole of Eurasia?

I don't think any balancing is required. As long as I can't afford to upgrade my laptop I'm pretty sure my integrated graphics card and 8 gb of ram will prevent China from ever invading Eurasia.

In all seriousness though, a very limited character base or game rule to limit its government to NOT admin. First move of each new game = assassinate Emporer of China + children...watch empire break up and forget it exists...until I'm reminded there is a silk road when searching for my wanderer daughter to finally marry off who ended up in some backwater Chinese town or second son so far away from England that I wished Paradox would let me scroll left instead of right to reach it.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

They could form more easily and come apart more easily. I guess that would need to sit within the government mechanics...

 

[ray243]

They could form more easily and come apart more easily. I guess that would need to sit within the government mechanics...

I guess there's more opinion penalty if a ruler decides to keep expanding beyond the "classical" Chinese boundaries?

 

[Citizen Caen]

At a minimum you must have China as a struggle region that limits outward expansion similar to how works with Iberia. Make groups like Mongols or Liao “interlopers” who can engage with China without being limited in expansion but the Han and other groups need to be restrained so that outward expansion is limited. If you don’t do this, you will absolutely see China border gore its way across the known world in way that makes the Byzantines look historical.

Ck3 simply isn’t balanced enough to handle an empire the size of China. It’s has no mechanics that limit power projection as it worked historically. An unleashed China in current day CK3 could send hundreds of thousands of men to invade Eastern Europe at will.

 

[ray243]

At a minimum you must have China as a struggle region that limits outward expansion similar to how works with Iberia. Make groups like Mongols or Liao “interlopers” who can engage with China without being limited in expansion but the Han and other groups need to be restrained so that outward expansion is limited. If you don’t do this, you will absolutely see China border gore its way across the known world in way that makes the Byzantines look historical.

Ck3 simply isn’t balanced enough to handle an empire the size of China. It’s has no mechanics that limit power projection as it worked historically. An unleashed China in current day CK3 could send hundreds of thousands of men to invade Eastern Europe at will.

Perhaps a Confucian faction that will just revolt and pushback if the emperor adopts a too expansionist policy? Spending too much on the military campaign can really upset the Confucian literary class, and most emperors needed the literati to keep the administration running.

 

[ConstantineXII]

Could have something to do with corrupt eunuchs.

You could also have things like plagues or famines reduce the mandate of heaven and lead to civil wars.

 

[Jia Xu]

The same way they balanced Ming in EU4: by adding a tributary system. China should be less about conquering neighbours and more about extracting tribute from them.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

I did say managing the Yellow River should be a thing, but looking at previous replies, if these are the checks and balances that come to minds, not a wonder "China cannot expand much beyond Central Asia b/c it needs hands at home managing the Yellow River" is widely disagreed on.
OTOH, some other options beyond "mandate of heaven":

1. Make China unable to use CBs that take land on steppe regions. Sure, make them pay tribute, or make them permanent tributaries, but it's not like China could declare war on Eastern Europe so long as a nomad tributary buffer exists.
2. Brute-force it like the way the Roman Empire is forced to split. When China takes too much land not suited to grain farming (steppe/desert/rainforest etc.) it starts spamming peasant rebellions and plagues until you cut it away as a tributary.

Come to think of it my suggestions are also about brute-forcing the appearance of tributaries like the Mandate of Heaven from eu4. I guess I gave up on distance being important in holding a CK3 realm together.

 

[tribnia]

Just stop everyone from rushing into tribal area plz. It really surprised me when a strategoes managed to conquer Zaporizhia.

 

[Rubidium]

At the start in 867, Tang is in decline.

In theory, sure. In-game? It's a giant blob that will dominate its neighbors unless you create specific mechanics to model that decline.

Look at the 1066 Byzantines. Historically, they are about 15 years away from losing control of most of their Asian territories and needing the First Crusade to bail them out (and even then, they permanently lost control of much of what had once been their Anatolian heartland). In-game, they are the target of not one but two scripted invasions (including a Seljuk one that is ahistorically brought forward a few years to make it actually happen and a Sicilian one, both of which feature copious event troops to make them actually threats), and still generally manage to not only survive but expand (even before they added the OP administrative government that meant they are both stronger than their neighbors and incapable of losing land to independence/dissolution factions).

 

[Citizen Caen]

Perhaps a Confucian faction that will just revolt and pushback if the emperor adopts a too expansionist policy? Spending too much on the military campaign can really upset the Confucian literary class, and most emperors needed the literati to keep the administration running.

Unless this faction has a dissolution cb, not sure this would help. Sure a player might be dissuaded from being too aggressive, but the AI wouldn’t. You’d just get a cycle of conquering->revolt->conquering->revolt, just like the Byzantine Empire does now.
Unless the revolt frees the conquered territories you’ll still see significant blobbing. IMO the only way to prevent it, is to limit conquest cbs in general.

 

[Jaevelklein]

Tribal lands/steppe should be harder to hold for developed realms. Feudal/admin should specifically suffer from this. You can conquer them as feudal/admin, but one siege-down, i.e by a raider, and the land should be independent again. The only way to keep the land as part of the empire is to actually de-jure integrate them into the empire or to feudalize the land. This should also be true for Persians trying to conquer into the steppe, except clan penalty is slightly less than feudal/admin.

 

[ray243]

Tribal lands/steppe should be harder to hold for developed realms. Feudal/admin should specifically suffer from this. You can conquer them as feudal/admin, but one siege-down, i.e by a raider, and the land should be independent again. The only way to keep the land as part of the empire is to actually de-jure integrate them into the empire or to feudalize the land. This should also be true for Persians trying to conquer into the steppe, except clan penalty is slightly less than feudal/admin.

Holding land in the steppes is useless if the population can just move elsewhere. So this should be reflected somehow for nomadic groups.

 

[Videogames]

1. Powerful nomadic neighbors
2. Make it more difficult in general for settled governments to expand into the steppes
3. Implementation of a tributary system and limiting CBs outside of de jure China largely to enforce tributary status. (CBs within China can be very powerful to help an ascendant new dynasty consolidate rule.)

 

[ray243]

1. Powerful nomadic neighbors
2. Make it more difficult in general for settled governments to expand into the steppes
3. Implementation of a tributary system and limiting CBs outside of de jure China largely to enforce tributary status. (CBs within China can be very powerful to help an ascendant new dynasty consolidate rule.)

Also it should be very expensive to extract wealth directly over steppes provinces as settled governments. A settled government trying to rule over the steppes should be very expensive and be a huge money sink for the most part.

 

[Citizen Caen]

I just want to point out that limiting expansion in the steppe wouldn’t be enough. While it would certainly help, and I agree with others that it should be harder for every settled country to expand in tribal areas; specifically for China, everything to its south is not tribal, so if you only restricted cbs in the steppe you’d still see China blob southwards over the Himalayas and into India, and from there into Persia and the Middle East.

 

[ray243]

I just want to point out that limiting expansion in the steppe wouldn’t be enough. While it would certainly help, and I agree with others that it should be harder for every settled country to expand in tribal areas; specifically for China, everything to its south is not tribal, so if you only restricted cbs in the steppe you’d still see China blob southwards over the Himalayas and into India, and from there into Persia and the Middle East.

Some sort of distance from captial mechanic should be implemented. The further a province is from the capital and from the core Han culture, the harder it is to rule over those lands.

 

[Citizen Caen]

Some sort of distance from captial mechanic should be implemented. The further a province is from the capital and from the core Han culture, the harder it is to rule over those lands.

Yeah that’s why I was saying in the other thread that a significant reworking and balancing of game mechanics was needed before adding China. Because the current barebones systems can’t properly deal with it.
If you need to add a bunch of special rules to keep the simulation from breaking, then you should probably just go ahead and focus on revamping the core gameplay so that it works better for everyone.