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Does anyone else hope the barbary corsairs are able to strangle the 17th century Mediterranian Sea as happened historically instead of being about as hard to conquer in 1469 as putting on a hat? The 17th century (where they never exist any longer in game) was the golden age of the barbary corsairs. Their favorite slave raids were southern italy, spanish islands, italian islands, and even spain itself. One raid even got to Iceland.

The Knights as it stand now have no purpose; but historically you could ask the numberless men and women enslaved or killed or the ransomed noblemen enslaved like Cervantes why the knights were still relevant.

My suggestion is that the Barary States be powerful naval forces and provide a genuine threat to southern europe via slave raiding and if the knights aren't funded well by other powers and if you fail to stop the raids on your provinces or to appease the barbary states you will find your income dwindle down and that you are king of an impoverished Sardinia or whatever coastal nation you rule.
 
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It is incredibly easy for a sufficiently powerful European country (England/France/Castille) with Holy Wars and Western troops to wipe out North African and Ottoman troops and to annex all their lands. Of course as we know, this never happened. Spain held no more than two cities on the African coast and France didn't colonize Algieria, Morocco, and much of the Western Sahara until the mid-1800s.

Terrain should play a more crucial part in the game. Yes, European troops can suffer as much as 10-20% attrition in the North African desert, but with the tens of thousands of troops that can be put on the field and that Western men can defeat African armies twice their size, the attrition doesn't make much difference.
 
really i think generals should matter alot more than tech in terms of army performance. An outteched army can still beat a modern army if its led properly and uses terrain to its advantage. See russian invasion of afghanistan, battle of adowa(if i remember right most of the ethiopian army wasnt decked out), mapuche v. spanish
 
AndreasPhokas said:
really i think generals should matter alot more than tech in terms of army performance. An outteched army can still beat a modern army if its led properly and uses terrain to its advantage. See russian invasion of afghanistan, battle of adowa(if i remember right most of the ethiopian army wasnt decked out), mapuche v. spanish
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Heyreddin Barbarossa was not out teched; he was a great Admiral but Andrea Dorea wasn't by any means incompetent.

There were also very serious defeated expeditions against the barbary powers, for example the Holy League of 1538, and we have attacks on places like Gozo, and finally we have the Mostaganem and that isn't even their golden age of attack yet.

The game confuses the 15th-18th centuries for 19th
 
The North African states were only 'out-teched' on land, in that they didn't have gunpowder-equipped armies. This wasn't a matter of knowledge, however, but of their military forces being tribal in nature and thus not finding handheld firearms to be prestigious enough to use.
 
Chamboozer said:
The North African states were only 'out-teched' on land, in that they didn't have gunpowder-equipped armies. This wasn't a matter of knowledge, however, but of their military forces being tribal in nature and thus not finding handheld firearms to be prestigious enough to use.
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No problem because their marine forces were still able to inflict decisive defeats on the Spanish. I'm not saying they should be able to go about and conquer Spain, but the idea of Spain conquering them is absurd.

Ah yeah, those well known 15th century wars :p
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How about the North African Corsairs enslaved the entire population of Lipari in the 16th century?
 
Both, the corsairs defeated the defenders and took the population as slaves; and if that sounds like just a one sided battle try the Battle of Preveza where the Pirates destroyed a much larger Spanish fleet, or the rescue of the French Invasion of Corsica; or for that matter defeat of the Spanish at Tripoli.

The Spanish were losing in the sea closest to them.
 
cacra said:
Ah yeah, those well known 15th century wars :p
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im sure there were instances in the 15th century <.< i just used the first things i could think off the top of my head >.> i was tired at the time
 
AndreasPhokas said:
im sure there were instances in the 15th century <.< i just used the first things i could think off the top of my head >.> i was tired at the time
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There wasn't a similar level of tech gap in the 15th century except against native americans, and even there it wasn't that important because the Spanish only won against empires by taking advantage of civil wars (and it still took decades for the Inca) or with native allies helping (every successful campaign in Mexico especially Cortez and the Aztecs). Ironically the pirates actually became obsolete when the Europeans started paying them off on account of other wars being more important, even then however there were still plenty of slave raids against Italian states like Sardinia. North Africa was only colonized late in the 19th century because anachronistic leaders didn't figure out the game of power was over and continued blackmail slave raids and piracy would result in provoking imperialists who that time had a better army and navy.
But in the 15th 16th and 17th centuries the Barbary States were powerful, inflicted decisive and humiliating defeats on Italians and Spaniards, and raided europe as they pleased, and intervened on behalf of France multiple times with varying degrees of success depending on if they arrived on time or came too late. Poland was also a great power in the 17th century that declined into nothing in the 18th but I don't think any non-nationlist or non-slavophobe would argue for deterministic mechanics to make the partition of Poland happen the historical year of Grunwald and the crowning of King Jagiello.
 
I am all for Northern Africa not getting conquered by Castille and France in 1450. But while I do believe the weakness of the North African states is rather ahistorical, I don't think that is the whole problem. Much of the problem lies with the way the AI acts. To illustrate my point, let me give you a scenario from what happened one of my games were North Africa didn't get conquered early on:
What happened was that Castille got smashed by Portugal and Aragon at the very start of the game, which ended up with Granada taking all of Andalusia, Algiers grabbing provinces in Iberia and Morocco conquering both the Scottish Highlands and Georgia... To make things even more ridiculous, Castille was eventually turned into a sultanate. This had all happened by around 1450. And yes, this was a completely unmodded game, and no, I wasn't involved.
So I believe the problem is not only that the AI can conquer a bunch of land, but also that they even want to do it. And it's not only about Castille or Morocco. Portugal in Finland and England in Anatolia are equally retarded. I think that what the game really needs is more serious consequences for holding foreign enclaves and an AI that is slightly less opportunistic and a bit more sensible in its conquests. In EU3 the AI took land because it could, regardless of whether it actually made sense. I feel this was the main cause behind unrealistic blobbing and the completely ludicrous borders you got after a while. So hopefully something will be done about that, which wouldn't only help fixing this issue, but a lot of other similar issues too.
Once that is done, yes, the overdone weakness of those states should be looked over as well, but only making them stronger won't necessarily make things any better, like in the example above.
 
Ananasen said:
I am all for Northern Africa not getting conquered by Castille and France in 1450. But while I do believe the weakness of the North African states is rather ahistorical, I don't think that is the whole problem. Much of the problem lies with the way the AI acts. To illustrate my point, let me give you a scenario from what happened one of my games were North Africa didn't get conquered early on:
What happened was that Castille got smashed by Portugal and Aragon at the very start of the game, which ended up with Granada taking all of Andalusia, Algiers grabbing provinces in Iberia and Morocco conquering both the Scottish Highlands and Georgia... To make things even more ridiculous, Castille was eventually turned into a sultanate. This had all happened by around 1450. And yes, this was a completely unmodded game, and no, I wasn't involved.
So I believe the problem is not only that the AI can conquer a bunch of land, but also that they even want to do it. And it's not only about Castille or Morocco. Portugal in Finland and England in Anatolia are equally retarded. I think that what the game really needs is more serious consequences for holding foreign enclaves and an AI that is slightly less opportunistic and a bit more sensible in its conquests. In EU3 the AI took land because it could, regardless of whether it actually made sense. I feel this was the main cause behind unrealistic blobbing and the completely ludicrous borders you got after a while. So hopefully something will be done about that, which wouldn't only help fixing this issue, but a lot of other similar issues too.
Once that is done, yes, the overdone weakness of those states should be looked over as well, but only making them stronger won't necessarily make things any better, like in the example above.
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Interesting despite how unlikely it sounds; but yes the ai does need help.
 
Ananasen said:
I think that what the game really needs is more serious consequences for holding foreign enclaves.
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This. This is all we need. And do tell the AI too, unlike how the Ming AI wasn't told about the faction system in DW 5.0 and 5.1, giving me "Ming has gone bankrupt" messages from around 1500 exactly every three months in every single game (but one).
 
Hydro Globus said:
This. This is all we need. And do tell the AI too, unlike how the Ming AI wasn't told about the faction system in DW 5.0 and 5.1, giving me "Ming has gone bankrupt" messages from around 1500 exactly every three months in every single game (but one).
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What do you mean "Ming AI wasn't told about the faction system"?
 
I mean, it was (acting as if) oblivious about why it couldn't start wars, send merchants, build buildings, create colonies, and the like; why its forcelimits were from time to time cut by 40%; and most importantly, what it could do to fix these limitations. Just like how no AI country could do anything about Japan and the daimyos' (or was it only Shogun? I don't remember) colonies.
 
There should be a financial penalty regarding the holding of foreign territory. Holding a territory should be possible, but the costs should by far exceed the benefits. Only provinces with the same cultural, or those linked to your country by claims should give you a benefit. And ofcourse all colonies.

All other provinces should come at a cost. And the further the culture is away from yours the greater the costs. This would mean that Spain had to pay big sums of money to keep up their presence in North Africa. As the population would be hard to control. To counter this you have to either pay or keep up a great army.

So unless Spain had the money to keep the population happy and controlled, and the military to keep the Spanish flags in each and every city, road, mountain, hideout etc, it should have no business in North Africa.
 
Nassau said:
There should be a financial penalty regarding the holding of foreign territory. Holding a territory should be possible, but the costs should by far exceed the benefits. Only provinces with the same cultural, or those linked to your country by claims should give you a benefit. And ofcourse all colonies.

All other provinces should come at a cost. And the further the culture is away from yours the greater the costs. This would mean that Spain had to pay big sums of money to keep up their presence in North Africa. As the population would be hard to control. To counter this you have to either pay or keep up a great army.

So unless Spain had the money to keep the population happy and controlled, and the military to keep the Spanish flags in each and every city, road, mountain, hideout etc, it should have no business in North Africa.
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Copy or use the colonisation mechanics, expense and time to gain control (fully colonise) modified by revolt risk etc... ?
 
evilon said:
Copy or use the colonisation mechanics, expense and time to gain control (fully colonise) modified by revolt risk etc... ?
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Part of the underlying problem isn't the Spanish holding North Africa, the problem is the simulation doesn't give those nations the strength they historically had at the start. If it did the holding successfully would be irrelevant because the Spanish would be forced to defend from naval onslaughts.
 
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