Hm, good points. I should probably stop waiting till the last minute to do orders...
I misunderstood the intentions regarding the Ascendants. They're vehemently anti-European, which is bad if anyone ever wants to maintain a stable colony there, so I assumed everyone was just going to kill all the northern Chinese leaders off and then put Guangzhou in power.
I was going to have another colony and some more ships this turn, but like I said, my orders got messed up. I'll definetly be expanding this turn so I can realistically do more than bombard China's coast with 10 steam ships.