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Paradox Unveils New Europa Universalis IV Mini Expansion to the Public

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TheMeInTeam said:
Significantly less, though it does depend on the era (in EU IV era, Europe truly was top butcher + bully, far less so in say the 1200's when trying to fight the Mongols would get them their pants pulled down).

They had a unique advantage in the new world though, and that was disease. The interesting thing is the uneven nature by which that's represented; disease killing huge % of the Americas lets Europe roll them easily...but this representation of "tech group" doesn't show in sub-Saharan Africa at all. There, we have Portugal regularly attacking Mali and winning pre-1500 or just after. There wasn't a snowball's chance in **** of that in reality. Terrible firearms still, hostile conditions for European standard armor, disease going the other direction, native populations plenty willing to fight back...Iberians should not be seeing material success there.

But Sub-Saharan in general gets unrealistically screwed every bit as much as Ming and Inca in this game. At 1444 Mali/Songhai were not centuries behind other areas of the world in technology. There is no way these nations shouldn't be able to see Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Tripoli, all the way to Mecca. Their populace actually traveled to Mecca before the era FFS.

It's very odd that the tech group is so gimped considering that European conquest of it is outside the EU IV timeline.
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Your description of european supermancy in mesoamerica is not accurate at all.

Europeans (Spaniards) already got established strong colony in Cuba and disease have already spread and wiped significant part of mesoamericans. However, even then, europeans could win only by manipulating sides against each other. Or rather... many local powers have tried to manipulate Spaniards to help them defeat their enemies. And they succeeded. But as happened many times in history, this enemy was much larger piece to bite (how exactly is this idiom in english?) than those powers could and then weakened and divided have succumbed to another and another spaniards filling New World in their greed for gold.
 
This is true. Most people aren't aware that the Spaniards had the support of many local powers in their conquests because those powers hated their current overlords. They just didn't realize how much power the Spaniards would later bring to bear in the New World.
 
Sun_Wu said:
Your post is less accurate than claiming that Europeans only emerged on top because they were the best butchers of humanity.
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Cumberland, Bratwurste, Saucisson, the burgers - oh the burgers and steak.. mmm... yum!
 
Colombo said:
Your description of european supermancy in mesoamerica is not accurate at all.

Europeans (Spaniards) already got established strong colony in Cuba and disease have already spread and wiped significant part of mesoamericans. However, even then, europeans could win only by manipulating sides against each other. Or rather... many local powers have tried to manipulate Spaniards to help them defeat their enemies. And they succeeded. But as happened many times in history, this enemy was much larger piece to bite (how exactly is this idiom in english?) than those powers could and then weakened and divided have succumbed to another and another spaniards filling New World in their greed for gold.
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The same tactic was used in India and elsewhere, also.

However, other areas were not so depopulated at a bad time and had different outcomes. Were it not for the impact of disease, it's hard to find justification as to why Mesoamerica is three times less effective at advancing than India, even when provided both incentive and examples.
 
AltarofScience said:
This is true. Most people aren't aware that the Spaniards had the support of many local powers in their conquests because those powers hated their current overlords. They just didn't realize how much power the Spaniards would later bring to bear in the New World.
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That describes the fall of the Inca Empire pretty well.
 
I'm hoping that they allow the new mechanics to apply to different government types, i.e. the Dutch Republic, so for example M&T can mod in Venice's/italian minor's unique governments to use the same trade post mechanics... I can't play Venice as a vanilla merchant republic, the Doge was elected for life!
 
TheMeInTeam said:
The same tactic was used in India and elsewhere, also.

However, other areas were not so depopulated at a bad time and had different outcomes. Were it not for the impact of disease, it's hard to find justification as to why Mesoamerica is three times less effective at advancing than India, even when provided both incentive and examples.
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I think that looking only at depopulation caused by disease doesn't bring enough information and strongly skew viewpoint. To find out true reason behind differences, one would have to gather all those examples and study all interaction between local powers and Europeans. As for depopulation, Mesoamerica before disease had very high population density due to extensive agriculture and number of investment in irrigation, on level of ancient times rather than middle ages. Even after first wave of depopulation, there was still plenty of natives as described by Cortéz himself (as written in Conquest of Mexico).
 
Reading 1491 right now, I highly recommend it- basically Charles Mann makes the case that we significantly underestimate both the size and complexity of Native civilizations- Mexico alone probably had nearly twice the population of Iberia, for instance- and deprive them of any agency. A dramatic case in point is the New Englanders, including Tisquantum (? "Squanto") who after being kidnapped by Europeans and hauled across the atlantic, eventually escaped and returned to find 95% of his confederacy dead from smallpox. His group eventually offered to ally with the Pilgrims because 1. the Pilgrims were few in number and woefully incompetent at surviving so they thought they could control them, 2. they had steel and guns (though this advantage is overstated- guns back then, especially the stuff colonists were carrying, weren't overwhelmingly superior to natives' bows, especially once you take into account numbers and home field advantage), and 3. their rivals were not nearly so hit so they were worried about being conquered.

The short of it is that in all cases, dumb luck, disease,and "local" factionalism created openings for Europeans to divide and conquer, which still took a very long time. The Inca came off of a smallpox epidemic and civil war and still resisted the Conquistadors post Pizarro, and there are strong remnants of Incan culture even today. The Maya likewise were weak/divided enough to dodge some of the disease and remained mostly independent into the 1800s IIRC.

It wasn't until the mid-late 1800s (Scramble for Africa was 1880s-1900s, and lasted till post WWII, so Africa shouldn't really be colonized/colonize able in-game; China wasn't ever colonized sans trade ports like Hong Kong and Macau and strong economic dominance- think more a perpetual transfer-trade-power- this too in the mid late 19th century, as in beyond the time period) and ensuing developments e.g. the Maxim Gun that you had "small bands of Europeans plunging into the wilderness" and tearing through the natives. In the EU4 period Europe's preeminence was not foreordained.
 
If you don't like it, don't buy it. They won't steal your money. But I agree they should fix some multiplayer issues asap.
 
I stopped playing EU4 earlier this year now I came back and bought WoN and patched
I thought WoN was the only new thing now I see this and another Expansion ArtOfWar upcoming.

Is there a thread somewhere which summarizes the most important changes in gameplay after the first expansion?

What does Res Publica change for a non republic player?
 
TheMeInTeam said:
The same tactic was used in India and elsewhere, also.

However, other areas were not so depopulated at a bad time and had different outcomes. Were it not for the impact of disease, it's hard to find justification as to why Mesoamerica is three times less effective at advancing than India, even when provided both incentive and examples.
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Mesoamerica was at a significant disadvantage compared to India, in that pretty much everything it had was developed internally. India had beena part of the Eurasian "tech sphere" for milennia, so most things europeans knew indians at least had a basic idea of, and vice-versa. The mesoamericans lacked entire realms of thought and technology that indians, africans, asians and europeans all shared. (iron working being the most obvious one, but there are others)
 
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