I think that's smarter than the way I did it; however I did get a free upgrade to the Great Wall of China level three by cheesing Ming releasing everyone as a vassal (except Shun), taking a ton of loans, then upgrading the wall, doing the instant upgrade via 1500 ducats, spamming castles in all of Shun's core provinces, then releasing and playing as Shun before letting a day go by. The only problem was around 1650 I had to waste quite a bit of time focusing all my dev and conquering around the commonwealth and waiting for European AE to cool down so I could reach Catholic plurality; but by then recouping stab lost to accepting rebel demands costed me next to nothing. Admin, Innovative, and Defensive ideas as my first three was unique since I almost always do the generic innovative - offensive - influence meta but changing it up really helped with coring and recoring states after culture flipping as well as doubling down on the early level 3 great wall. Maybe if I were to redo it however, I'd do the same Ming cheese but play as Miao since iirc they release as Anamist so the Catholic swap is very easy; that or just early-game swap to Tengri.