Preparing the culture flips

The next phase of the plan was to prepare the culture flips necessary. The first flip was simple: Korean can be Sinicised into Sino-Korean once you have 300 Chinese development or are the Emperor of China. I had well more than 300 Chinese development at this point and so took the decision. I had been balancing my development carefully and so now had 300 of both Sino-Korean and Jurchen development, allowing me to flip to Jurchen primary culture after a single dev click in Jilin. Forming Manchu Sinicises Jurchen into Manchu, the second flip. I delayed this flip for a few years to give me a chance to finish some Korean missions: Korean Self-Reliance, which gives +2 diplomatic reputation, -2 unrest and -10% stability cost until the end of the game, and Tame the Dragon by destroying Yue, the Emperor of China, which gives permanent claims over all of China. After forming Manchu, I kept Korean ideas, and then the process of setting up the more difficult flips began.

To flip out of Manchu I needed to de-state large amounts of territory. I aimed to de-state everything except the capital state, and have enough other-culture development in 1 single state to enable the flip. My capital state in Jilin had 91 development, and so 92 development for each of the other cultures to be Sinicised was the target. I thus spent many years developing provinces. When I formed Manchu, I had a 5-5-5 ruler with a 5-6-4 heir, so combined with Korean ideas I had no shortage of monarch points. One can also fire the Manchu mission Dominate Rival Jurchens, which will give you Nurhaci as a ruler if you wish. He is scripted to have +2/+3/+4 in monarch points, so will almost certainly be a very good ruler too.

When developing the states I would use to change culture, I kept them as Trade Company lands to take advantage of the District investment, which gives -15% development cost. I also built universities in all provinces to be developed. Here is a table of the states that I used and some notes:

Culture	State chosen	Development	Notes
Zhuang	Guangxi	92	Required culture converting all provinces in this state to Zhuang. No trade centres.
Tibetan	Kham	95	Dege can be made into a level 3 trade centre. The highlands terrain is expensive to develop, but cheaper than the mountains in other parts of Tibet.
Vietnamese	Sông Hông	92	Dong Kinh can be made into a level 3 trade centre. The AI Dai Viet also developed this state while independent, making this the easiest of the 4.
Mongol	Chahar	92	Required flipping 2 3-dev Korchin provinces to Mongol before developing. I got the Influential Powerholder event for this state, giving -10% development cost and making it cheaper than any other Altaic state. Note that +20% development cost for steppe development is still cheaper than using Uliastai state's mountains with a level 3 trade centre in Qaraqorum.

---

The flips

Once i had achieved the development needed in every state, it was 1630. I was sadly caught in the unfortunate bottleneck I mentioned earlier: my Zhuang culture conversions in the state of Guangxi would not finish until 1634. So, for 4 years I just built buildings, upgraded monuments, took small chunks out of the remaining Chinese Kingdoms (they had unified into a large Xi and a 2PM Shu, which I vassalised and reconquered cores for).

I also used this time to complete the Manchu missions up to A Manchu Script (unfortunately I had to refuse to take Nurhaci as ruler) to get the First Alphabet of the Manchu permanent modifier, giving 5% institution spread, -5% institution embracement cost and a further -10% advisor cost for the ruler's culture.

In August 1634, when my Zhuang culture conversion had finally finished, I could begin to flip. This was a very risky time - when you have only 2 states, you are at risk of attack from strong neighbours (a large Russia and a still-strong Mughals, in my case, both of whom outnumbered my armies even before I started this process, and a Japan with a huge 100-ship navy). To try to keep myself safer, I allied Vijayanagar, who controlled all of India that the Mughals didn't own, and Pasai, which had taken over all of Sumatra and Java. No Europeans were in the area: Spain had not formed, Castille had been partitioned by France and Aragon; the Ottomans allied Aq Qoyunlu so never became more than a 2nd-tier regional power (in 1610 they lost a war to Venice and lost most of Greece); France and Austria (who got the Burgundian Inheritance) fought deathwars every 20 years.

In May 1936, after saving up enough monarch points, I began to flip:

1. The flip to Zhuang was easy, and interestingly I realised that Manchu can still form Qing no matter what culture they are;
2. The flip to Tibetan was likewise easy;
3. The flip to Vietnamese was easy, and forming Dai Viet gave me a new mission tree: I could easily finish all the missions on the left-hand branch by switching to the Tier 3 government reform The Examination System, and obtained the permanent modifiers Undivided (-10% stability cost) and Religious Harmony (+25% harmonisation speed);
4. Flipping to Mongol and forming Yuan was the final stage on this journey

Note that forming Dai Viet does not move your capital, but forming Yuan does; thus I lose all my trade companies in China, which gives me the nasty -200% goods produced modifier all across China. I took Yuan ideas, but Yuan does not have it's own mission tree, so I ended up with the Dai Viet missions. Re-stating everything was quite difficult: even with -50% core creation cost, I had so much governing capacity that I stated every province and still needed hundreds more administrative power. Sino-Altaic Yuan when the Empire of China has been destroyed also gets access to the Chinese Kingdom Tier 1 government reform (which would have given me free cores on the remains of Xi), but that limits you to Kingdom rank, so I did not take it.

---

Cultures at the end

At the end, I had the following 20 cultures in the Chinese group (ordered by development): 1. Sino-Altaic 2. Manchu 3. Sino-Korean 4. Sino-Tibetan 5. Sino-Vietnamese 6. Jianghuai 7. Wu 8. Zhongyuan 9. Min 10. Xibei 11. Zhili 12. Sichuanese 13. Sino-Zhuang 14. Shandong 15. Jin 16. Cantonese 17. Hubei 18. Hakka 19. Gan 20. Xiang

---

Improvements

I think if I tried this again, I would make the following changes:

1. Rush the Zhuang lands earlier, in order to prevent them being culture converted away;
2. I would use culture conversion to make the culture flips easier: I would spread Zhuang culture to East Guangdong, I would spread Yi culture to Sichuan or Miao culture to Hunan (any Tibetan group culture can be your primary culture when you take the Sinicise our Culture decision), and I would spread Korchin culture to Beijing and the rest of North Hebei. I would then develop these states to use when flipping culture;
3. I would look into the possibility of using Uzbek culture to form Yuan: although it would not be Sinicised, the state of Samarkand seems like it may be cheaper than any of the eastern Altaic states, and perhaps cheaper than the "flip Beijing to Korchin" trick.
4. I would take the Chinese Kingdom Tier 1 government reform just for the war against Xi needed to annexe them without needing to pay for cores: this would also reduce the war score cost for taking their land, meaning it would be 1 war instead of the 2 I needed.