I am confused at two things here. First is that I know nothing about far eastern history of this period and was wondering what the hell happened and how we can translate that into civ.

We have lots of free slots open, if two china civs would work (for ming and qing china) or minor civs for Chinese rebels et al.

Also people keep saying that japan should spawn with Tokugawa, but what was japan like before he spawned?

This really is the bit I know the least about, so I thought provoking some discussion might help.

All I know of is that Tibet was there, which would be a great minor civ, even a major civ, and Korea could be included. My knowledge is just as limited as yours at this point. I'm having trouble finding a map of Asia in the 1700's, but I found one of it in 1800, showing Korea, Tibet, China, India, Japan, Mongolia and many countries in South-East Asia. According to Wikipedia, there was no single country ruling South-East Asia after the Khmer Empire, rather just smaller ones like Siam and Cambodia, thus would be best represented by independent cities or minor civs. However, for ease of colonization, you may want to leave it empty. Mongolia should be represented too, but not as a major civ, as a minor one at most.

Hope that helps, at least a little! :)

We'll have to alter the map and the system to represent the nations. All minor civs were vassals of China from Ming to Qing, including Tibet and Korea and those around Silk Road.

Manchurian(Qing) took Beijing around 1644 and "merged" into Chinese. Qing vassalized Mongols as well. China constantly had rebellions inside and out.

In mainland China there shall be 3 major civ: (Han) Chinese, Manchurian, Mongols. In 1500 Ming Dynasty was on its verge, also suffers from bad economy, gigantic unit and civic upkeep and bandits. Like Byzantines in RFCE but worse. They have techs but no free hands for colonialization. They'll have to face rebellions inland, pirates around coast, barbs on N and NW, and Manchurian. Besides, climate change in early 1600s causes global starvation (like all tiles -1 food or no extra food from farms and pastures for 10 turns) and global instability.

Manchurian rises soon, flip over Shenyang as capital. They rise to Qing dynasty after conquering Beijing. They'll have to face the resisting Hans, befriend to Mongols and finally vassalize them, and maintain stability in China, which will be difficult. Any foreign contact and new tech adds instability for Qing.

Mongols at last, is a major civ but vassalized to China in real history. They had a strong leader Galdan (1644-1697) who rose a large army against Qing, and failed. If Galdan won, Qing would possibly collapse and fall back to Manchuria, their core area. Player have chance to re-conquer China with huge difficulty, otherwise they can expand northward or westward. Mongols have to interaction with Russia as well.

These 3 nations could form an interesting game.

Minor civs: Korea, Tibet, Siam, Vietnam...... all vassal of China, and likely to fall to Europeans after 19th century.

There were Independent cities in "West Region", around Silk Road as well. China conquered and named the region as Xinjiang. Russia and Turkey had their hands into the region too.

For Japanese, in 1500 they are in civil war. The first UHV of Tokugawa should certainly be unite Japan. After that, they invade Korea and China in 1590s. Ming sent an army and pushed them back. The big brother always have these troubles.

If you want more details you have to check books, or have some guys good in history. I am from Taipei and I major in modern China history, I can help.

Awesome! Thanks for all the info.

In terms of putting it into the game your saying Ming and Qing should both be separate playable civs? Sounds good to me.

Yes. The playable civs in east Asia should be: Han(Chinese), Manchurian, Mongolian, Japanese and maybe Siam, who was the only that kept inpendence from colonial powers.

And one tech important: (modern) Nationalism. Before 1911 revolution, the revolutionist roared for restoring Han sovergnity, excluding minorities -- mainly Manchurian. But after revolution, we soon turned to unite all peoples against Imperialism, and formed the concept of Chinese Nation (Zhong-Hua ming zhu). In terms of civ, that means the Han, the Manchurian and Mongolian inside cultural border all merge into "Chinese" civilization. This can be completed via a project, and can be sabotaged by foreign powers as well.

Manchurian chose to merge into Han culture by themselves, soon after they built Qing, all for stability.

I was under the impression that the Ming dynasty was still going strong until the late 1500's early 1600's. Their economy was certainly increasing at this time.

Certainly. But the economy growth increased corruption as well. Spanish and other Europeans brought silver from America, China absorbed all of those silver, and there was inflation. This economy growth could not help famine caused by climate change (Little Ice Age). The famine caused peasant's revolt, Manchurian had to rise up and pillage for life as well. In some views, 1500 was the start of globalization.

In Chinese Marxism views, China in the late 1500's and early 1600's were a period of "Capitalism sprouting", but the sprout was slained by war and retroactive Qing rulers. Second but, even if Ming continued to prosper, wealth would still flow to ever-corrupting bureaucracy. In mainstream Confucianism idea, which was twisted, merchant is bad to moral and should be limited. But people still always love gold and silver, so there was problem. Men(officals included) ignored prohibition of foreign trade, then economy freakly boosted, until the downfall of whole dynasty.

There is a nice book about this issue: "ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age" by Andre Gunder Frank. Although I only read the first and second chapter, Chinese version.

http://www.amazon.com/ReORIENT-Global-Economy-Asian-Age/dp/0520214749

There are many books about Spanish, America silver and Ming economy too. Sorry that I don't know much English works.

Also people keep saying that japan should spawn with Tokugawa, but what was japan like before he spawned?
For most of the 1500s (and off and on since 1185), Japan was a conglomeration of essentially independent states, much like the HRE. Oda Nobunaga started its unification but was assassinated in 1582 with only 1/3 done. Toyotomi Hideyoshi managed to finish, but died with an infant heir in 1598, and Tokugawa took over from there (in 1600).
Before Tokugawa took over, Hideyoshi was very expansionist - he tried (and failed) to invade Korea, and demanded submission from the Spanish governor of the Philippines. Tokugawa was a complete reversal, although the complete closure didn't start until the 1620s.

There should definitely be two Chinas.

I dont think we can have a playable Mongolia and Siam, its too many civs. We should though be able to get Ming and Qing...

While I am happy about the Far East being treated more significantly than four unfriendly civs wasting space, my concern is that it might be very hard to code dynamic aspects of the Far East.

In "vanilla" RFC, AIs can only occasionally occupy other civs' lands. For example, when it's not used by a human player, Rome often doesn't conquer any Greek or Carthagian city, while it starts with extremely strong military. Similarly, I don't think it's easy to code so that the Qing defeats Ming. It will be even tougher if we treat Qing as "the Juchen people," since the Juchens should be around at the start (1450) as a rather weak civ and somehow become stronger than all the others in China. Furthermore, it's also very hard to move all the vassals of Ming to Qing.

Also, to be historically accurate it's not Ieyasu (Tokugawa) who united Japan first and invaded China + Korea. Hideyoshi did those, and Tokugawa later betrayed and defeated Hideyoshi's son. But, it would be presumably difficult to code (civil war -> unification -> international war -> civil war -> unification) if we are to represent civil wars in Japan. Furthermore, because the AI is so bad at naval invasions, Japan probably won't invade China or Korea effetively, while the history of Ming (http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E6%98%8E%E5%8F%B2/%E5%8D%B7320) states that Ming and its vassal (i.e., Korea) had no chance of winning the war but the death of Hideyoshi ended it.

Other than that, the Far East is problematic in tech. To be historically accurate, China should start with Printing Press and Gunpowder. This means that they can very quickly go for Rifling. However, to be historically accurate, the Chinese did not discover such technology. They must somehow become weaker in relation to other civs. In Japan, too, Tokugawa refused to trade with most foreign coutries with very few exceptional countries which did not try to spread Christianity in Japan (e.g., Dutch and Portugueses), and severely slowed down technological advancement. It is also hard to code if one cares about historical accuracy, since both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu were very willing to trade with most European civs before they united Japan (then, after the unification, they started to hate Chiristians whom they saw too fanatic).

Maybe we need to decide how much accuracy we need.

Then, rework the tech tree like RFCE. Add more advanced levels of gunpowder, PR...... and agriculture as well.

How to move vassals from Ming to Qing? Put a world wonder in Beijing, Forbidden Palace, the symbol of celestial power, which strengthen minor AI to vassalize to FP's owner.

I do not believe it is right to weaken China as historically they were probably the strongest nation in 1450 C.E. There must be a way to script tech paths for the AI, or to have them want to research some techs over others.

Edition: Just realized I was not being smart :). China should start out as the most technologically advanced and most powerful nation, but I think it is perfectly acceptable for them to be hindered for future success. Historically China demolished its enormous fleet and stopped many future scientific endeavors. In part due to Neo- Confucianism. How about every city in China which has Confucianism adds a decrease in the tech rate?

I think the best way to limit chinas growth is through a 'Chinese Rebel' minor civ, which occasionally causes small regions to break away and is set at permanent war with china.

Also, I do plan on modding the tech tree, so china will start with early gunpowder, but the rest of the gunpowder line will be quite expensive to research.

Will the Europeans still posses their increased tech rate? If all the Renaissance technologies are extra expensive only the Europeans, under AI control, could research them competitively. That would represent the stagnation of research for China and keep possible vassal states weak. The colonies I think should either be able to research as quickly as Europe, or be "gifted" technologies to show they are extensions of the Empire.

If possible the ex-colonies would start with the same techs as their owners. Otherwise, yes they should be fairly tech competent.

China should have high potential, but should suffer insurections due to low stability. Under the human player (or a lucky AI) it should have the potential to overcome these difficulties one of two ways.
a) Control a large area, cottage spam, reach Democracy and Liberalism, set up a democratic government and get a high stability due to a good economy.
b) Become a totalitarian state.

Both of these will allow China to become stable in the modern era, and once stable it should be very capable.

Also, on another note, if the Chinese rebel minor civ is included, stealing half of the country every so often, then it would provide the perfect opportunity for Europeans to steal the occasional city (like Hong Kong and Shanghai).

At what point were you planning on having the rebel civ stop re spawning?

When their stability is high enough. I thought it could be a side effect of low stability.

So basically this could be created by simply making China more prone to collapse?

I would make it prone enough to collapse that about 50% of the time the AI China collapses. The Rebels should be in Southern China, controlling/continuously retaking Shanghai and Hong Kong, for ease of European invaders. Also, the English, Dutch, French and Portuguese should be more prone to take such cities when available, and attack China/India/Japan/SE Asia more frequently. This would allow for Asia to finally be colonized, as well as make China really hard to play, but also, really fun.

Sounds like the rebel civ could make use of the 'X cities have declared their independence from foreign domination!' mechanic - if your stability gets too low, a consequence is a rebel state that's both distinct from Independents and automatically at war with you (and wanting to take you over).

What happens if the rebels win their war and take China? If they could somehow revert to being Chinese, that'd be cool; but IDK if that's possible - I guess if they have all of China you could just give them a different name (like the Shun dynasty or something).

EDIT: I agree with Jiim. It should probably be divided so that say part of the time the Ming survive, part of the time the Manchu take over, part of the time the rebels take over and part of the time it's just a constant war between some or all of those.

If the rebels win I would think that China would be independent cities until the Qing spawn.

I don't know - I think that sets them back too much, and assumes that the rebels wouldn't have been able to start their own dynasty. They tried - the Shun Dynasty came between the Ming and Qing - but the coincidence that the Manchu were also trying to take over China prohibited it from lasting very long.

I am not saying it assumes anything, it just that there are a limited number of civilizations that can exist in a game and every different dynasty or rule of one civilization decreases the number left.

True, but unless I am missing something we already have a slot for the Chinese Rebels civ.
I could, of course, be completely misunderstanding.

And if Chinese rebel become strong enough (i.e. take Beijing), they become Chinese, and old dynasty become rebel.

Chinese has to be a worldpower, #1, they can handle rebels or Manchurians or Mongols or pirates or climate disaster, but not all of them at the same time, like real history.

Ming had some good gunpowder tech and units, but they didn't continue to develop.

Just an idea

Chinese rebels = Communist party of China in late game ?

Changes in civics are internal matters within a civ, however if changing civics damages their stability too much then the Chinese rebels will return...