I was planning on a step-by-step guide on how to world conquest playing Ming. Half way through my last Ming game I realized that Ming really doesn’t need a play by play rule book. Ming starts in isolation as THE biggest nation in the world, number one great power and you are going to remain there for rest of the game even if you don’t play super aggressive. Ottomans might be the best nation to do world conquest, but I think Ming is actually the easiest one for beginners.

You can play Ming very casually and still manage to own more than half of the world between you and your tributaries.

In my last play through, I was purposely playing very passive and I still manage to take all of Asia, Indonesia, East Europe, Arabia and Africa. The only nations that were not my tributary were France, Austria and Great Britain. So if you try a little hard and pay close attention, you can do a world conquest fairly easily.

OPENING MOVES

1. Get level 2 advisors from the start, you can afford it. Unrest guy for admin. Improve relations/diplo rep for diplo and Morale/discipline for mil.
2. Set Ashikaga as rival.
3. Start harmonizing Theravada.
4. Make your ruler as a general.
5. And get another general from estate.
6. Start establishing tributaries to whoever would accept. Exceptions are your neighbors to the north (Korchin, Haixi, Jiangzhou, Buryatia, Yeren, Oirat, Chagatai). That’s the way we are going to start our conquests.
7. Set naval doctrine to ship boarding.
8. Move your armies to the north border
9. Set your trade ships to protect trade
10. Get the decree for infant combat ability
11. Set all tributaries to give you admin. For the ones who can’t give you monarch points, get manpower for starting few years.
12. Next start fabricating on Haixi
13. And Declare on either Korchin or Haixi as soon as possible.

Basic Guidelines playing Ming

1. Always keep your diplomats busy. Either improve relations with prospective tributaries or current tributaries. Once I get the extra diplomat from Celestial reforms, I put one on automatic to improve relations with subjects.
2. Never use missionaries. Just forget this button exists.
3. Always keep harmonizing. You should almost always take +harmonizing progress from events. Don’t worry too much about low harmony. Yes it affects meritocracy but In about 100 years or so, your meritocracy will remain high enough.
4. When fighting rebels early game, remember you will be attacking in mountains most of the time. That means you will suffer a lot of losses. Make sure you bring enough units or just wait till the rebels starting sieging your fort.
5. Vassal shield technique. As Ming, if you border a non tributary nation, you lose mandate. Once you start getting close to the big nations such as Ottomans and Russia or Muscovy, you should plan ahead on what provinces you conquer so you can either release a vassal or vassalize an existing nation. Ideally, this vassal will have cores in the big nations so you don’t have to wait for claims and just use the reconquest cb. Late game, you can use client states to form vassal shield which is a bit more convenient.
6. Switch the tributary demand depending on which idea group you are working on. Keep it on admin for all other times.
7. You will have to use monarch points to develop institutions in your capital area.
8. Use mercenaries. You will be able to afford it from the start
9. Be careful about offering tributary status to nations in new world after 1650 as colonizers will attack them and you will get dragged in. You can decline the call to arms but it costs -10 mandate, -25 prestige, -1 diplo rep and +50 liberty desire with that tributary. We will discuss this a bit more later.
10. When declaring war on someone who is allied to your tributaries, your tributaries will have crosses indicating that they won’t join the war. However, if the reasons value is positive they will honor the alliance. So don’t get fooled by the crosses next to enemy allies.
11. And finally, check your mandate after every war or after you diploannex a nation. If you are losing too much mandate to non-tributaries, either get more tributaries or make a vassal shield.

IDEAS

Administrative- CCR. Merc cost.

Exploration- If you discover America before 1500, there’s a chance you can spawn Colonialism. Colonize Alaska, Taiwan, Australia in that order.

Humanist- Anything to get rid of those pesky rebels.

Influence- Diploannex cost and time reduction. AE reduction.

Quality- After this I go for military techs. By this time, you will start fighting the European powers and you will find that you might have numbers, but your army quality is lacking. I usually go quality, then offensive, then defensive.

Diplomatic- Faster diploannexing. Reduced province war cost modifier.

If you plan on playing more as a colonizer, you can substitute the first mil group with expansion.

CONQUEST

Siberian and Ural Expansion

• Take on the tribes to your north.
• Release a vassal here for faster conquest
• Turn west and take on Oirat and Chagatai
• Continue west and take on Uzbek, nogai, sibir, Kazakh
• Eventually get to Muscovy/Russia. Seal off the Russian Siberian frontier. Use vassal shields against Russia/Muscovy.
• Vassalize or release Circassia as subject. Their provinces have high coring cost and will form a good shield against ottomans.

Himalayan Expansion

• If Timurids exists, make a vassal shield just for a war or 2. They won’t be a problem for long.
• If Timurids don’t exist, keep rampaging down till you reach near the southern Caspian sea area.

Persian Expansion

• Vassalize or release Khorasan and make them a March. They have good military national ideas. And you can also use them as a vassal shield against Ottomans.

Indian expansion

• Make as many tributaries in the Indian subcontinent as you can
• When a nation becomes disloyal, break tributary and attack after truce expires

European expansion

• Get a vassal shield against larger nations
• If Commonwealth is alive, ally them as they will help you against Ottomans and the HRE. In which case, you can approach Europe from Scandinavia
• If Commonwealth isn’t a force, ally Austria or whoever is the biggest nation in that region.

Ottomans expansion

• Call in your European ally
• Will require a few wars to take cut them to size
• Keep a vassal shield for most of the wars with them

Arabian and African expansion

• Hop on to Hormuz area as soon as you can and make your way to Africa
• If you don’t want to play very aggressive, grant tributary status to all Arabian nations and wait till you have neutralized Ottomans and then go to Africa directly

Call to Arms for Tributaries

• AI likes to attack your tributaries when you are busy with another war.
• Don’t be afraid to decline. Only a temporary hit to mandate, prestige and diplo rep. But as long as you have mandate higher than 50 and climbing, you will be okay
• If you do decide to go into a war, make sure you can win it.

Indonesia and Japan

• Attack all non tributaries
• Take on Japan once you have naval supremacy in the pacific

Eating Tributaries

• Conquer tributaries if you are going for a 1 tag world conquest
• Revoke tributary status and wait for the truce to expire before attacking them
• Remember, tributaries don’t accrue aggressive expansion from your conquests

Absolutism

You should aim to get the max absolutism using court and country disaster when the age of absolutism starts. It will help you massively late game and make expansion easier. I’m won’t go into detail on how to fire the court and country disaster here as there are a lot of good guides on it.

• Use one of the nations in east Siberia for no CB war
• Be prepared for a LOT of 50 to 60k rebel stacks though

I think Ming makes for a really easy beginner nation. You have the army size, the economy and no real enemies till mid game. On top on that, you have your tributaries who will give you loads of monarch points, manpower or ducats. Not to mention the coring cost reduction you get from decree and celestial reforms. The only thing you have to watch out for is your mandate. As long as you can consistently keep it over 50, you will be unmatched and conquer the world.

I hope this guide helps new players who are trying their hand at Ming. Have fun!

Here is the video tutorial.