More buildings, upgrades and key units planned for future releases. This is likely to be only release for some time though. In particular, if anyone knows of more fitting music (wav, mp3 or ogg format, must be appropriately licensed for reuse)
About Ming Dynasty
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The Ming Dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644 (1662 in the South of China). They replaced the Mongols (after Genghis Khan's descendants, known as Yuan Dynasty) and were replaced by the Manchurians (Qing Dynasty).
Their military might went up and down with the quality of their emperors. At their best, they had a massive professional army (up to 1 million men!!!) who were well organized and well trained. During the weaker emperors the military decayed.
The army was divided into Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery. The infantry was most numerous but cavalry were generally equally important (again varied over time). But Artillery was the characteristic strength of the Ming.
Infantry divisions, at least in the early Ming, were highly structured in composition, with 100 men (later 112 but same proportions):
40 spearmen with spears, tridents, "wolf spears" or halberds.
30 archers = with compound bows and sometimes crossbows.
20 swordsmen with either round rattan shields or oblong plank ones, and saber - the shield seems more tactically important than the sword.
10 men operating firearms
In later years this varied, but all categories remained. Often soldiers appear to have carried bows or fire-arrows in addition to other weapons, and most had a saber. Southern troops often carried large two-handed "horse cutting" swords (Chang-dao and Miao-dao).
Cavalry were divided between lancers, armed with spears or moon-shaped halberds (similar to Guan-dao), and cavalry archers. Some troops carried both.
There are reports of monks being used, particularly from Shaolin temple. I suspect that some of this is exaggerated by shaolin fans but overall they were involved in some battles, armed with spears or staffs.
The artillery was the specialty. The main weapon was the fire cart, basically an multiple-rocket-launcher on a wheel-barrow base. These things were used in their thousands, and employed both defensively and to charge the enemy. They also used lots of small cannon, notably the "crouching tiger cannon" and larger "grand General Cannon", but still relatively small. Later they imported cannon from Europe, which is ironic as cannon were a Chinese invention. But by late Ming dynasty European ones were superior, largely because of metallurgy. Trebuchets would have been used by early Ming but gunpowder ruled by then.
Firearms were already common by start of Ming, have originated as a banger on the end of a spear, hence "fire spear" being used to describe guns. By Ming the main gun type was iron and mounted on a long shaft, often with three barrels for quick firing. It doubled as a mace. As with cannon, the idea had been exported to Europe and by late Ming the Europeans were technologically ahead, so Ming imported European Arqebusers and muskets.
Other key weapons include the battle wagon, which was deployed as mobile forts (laager in modern military terms). These were particularly vital in fighting the mongols/nomads in the north. I'm not sure what the historic connections are, but equipment and tactics are very similar to the Hussites in Europe around this time. In Korea, fighting the Japanese, they seemed to have relied on cavalry, although there were lots of infantry and artillery also. Also in the late Ming, like in Europe, they trained Infantry in use of horses, making them Dragoons.
Game balancing with Japanese Faction
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The faction is designed to complement the excellent Japanese faction. We may add other historical sides also. The current beta is not complete or fully balanced.
In general the Ming have weaker infantry, equal cavalry and better artillery. Winning tactics ought to be maximizing artillery, protecting them with infantry and cavalry archers. Weakness would be against massed Japanese melee units, particularly swordsmen and samurai. at least, that's my hope.
Currently Japanese faction lacks cavalry units, so Ming Cavalry are slightly degraded to avoid being too strong.
