please don't do Australia dirty again

[Big_birdy]

in the image we were given in the second Tinto Talk (or is it Tinto Talks #2) containing (most of) the map with only the impassable and passable regions on the map being shown I noticed that Australia had no pathways through the outback and as an Australian I would like to see a more accurate depiction of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders. I have no suggestions (as we know very little about eu5 Project Caesar) but I would like to provide some resources that I've made as I hope the map will be changed with pathways through the outback being added. and the political map being changed to be more accurate (if it needs changing as we haven't seen Australia's yet) if natives are similar to how they are portrayed in eu4.

Spoiler: Aboriginal trade routes

the red is major trade routes and the blue is minor trade routes,

Aboriginal trade with the Indonesians is only confirmed by 1751 though it could have been earlier (even as early as the 1500's with Sulawesi historians suggesting contact in the 1640's ) with anglers from Indonesia traveling to the coast to catch fish from the 1500's.

There are reports that the southern Javanese would sail to Tasmania

Torres Strait Islanders and the aboriginals of the Cape York Peninsula had contact with Papuans consistently for thousands of years trading with each other

the Tasmanians had lost contact with the rest of Australia after the land bridge was severed causing the depopulation of the Bass Strait islands

Spoiler: Australia's Population

the population of Australia before European contact was between 300,000 to 1.25 million I've created this map to show the size of Aboriginal population.

No exact numbers for the map but generally the darker areas have a higher population with the only areas being uninhabited being the islands in the Bass Strait, western Tasmania excluding the coast, and Kangaroo Island(you can see these more clearly in the map of Aboriginal nations and tribes)

its not 100% accurate as I made it in a few days (as with the map of Aboriginal Nations and tribes)

I used Radcliffe-Brown's map of aboriginal population distribution

Spoiler: Aboriginal nations and tribes

above is a map of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations (a group of tribes who (usually) speak a common language) with around 250 nations existing (5 or 4 of them being Torres Strait Islander) the colour's represent a nation and the borders represent tribes. (the map is not 100% accurate as I made it in a few days but I hope it will suffice) the areas that are black were uninhabited

I mainly used Tindale's 1974 map of aboriginal tribes and the AIATSIS map of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations.

also there is a large variety of Aboriginal beliefs with the peoples living in the eastern half of New South Wales believing in Baiame as a creator deity while the people of central Victoria believe in Bunjil (also spelt as Bundjil) as a creator deity. with nations usually having their own mythology (sometimes its a pan-nation mythology as with eastern New South Wales)

there's also the Bunya festival which, occurred every two to seven years, when people would set aside their differences and discuss important issues relating to the environment, social relationships, politics and the dreaming lore. many conflicts would be settled at the event. Invitations would be sent out for hundred's of kilometres with representatives of different groups arriving from New South Wales and Queensland traveling long distances just to be at the event.

 

[Durka]

I was in the Bunya mountains this summer and it is a fascinating area with a very interesting history. I doubt that Australian natives will have much detail at game launch, but I hope that they'll make them an interesting option eventually.

 

[William the Merry]

Australia should be uncolonised at game start and unplayable, making it playable was one of eu4's biggest mistakes

 

[Durka]

Australia should be uncolonised at game start and unplayable, making it playable was one of eu4's biggest mistakes

Why?

 

[qweyt]

I think Australia can be left to DLC. For release the developers should focus on getting the core gameplay and the main playable area of Eurasia and Northern Africa to be as detailed, accurate and flavorful as possible. Australia, especially if it was to be done in detail and not just as an afterthought would unnecessarily divert developer attention away from areas where I feel it would be needed more.

 

[Sapa Inca]

At release game will certainly have some things going for Australia, but more detailed contnet like it will probably be dlc content.

 

[William the Merry]

Why?

Because even with the stateless society gov reform, you could still unify all of australia, which would be impossible pre colonialism

 

[Durka]

Because even with the stateless society gov reform, you could still unify all of australia, which would be impossible pre colonialism

So, the implementation was wrong rather than the inclusion of Australian tags?

 

[Sapa Inca]

Because even with the stateless society gov reform, you could still unify all of australia, which would be impossible pre colonialism

It is an alt-history game, if an omniscient entity (the player) wants to play with a native Australia civilization and want to create a unified government the player should be empowered to do it.

What I hope is for the gameplay of a tribal society to be different enough from the gameplay of a feudal society and I hope for a real challenge trying to do it.

 

[Shadow_Phoenix_]

The biggest gripe I had with Australia in eu4 is how inconsistent it was. In the past it was all uncolonised, so all even. Then they added some nations as playable, but only "some". The first nations of Australia didn't really have that large of a difference with each other in terms of technology/admin level, so having only some elevated to a "proper" nation was weird. It should be all or nothing. I guess that's part of a larger problem eu4 had with how to actually have tribes/natives on the map, and still allow the AI to colonise.

 

[William the Merry]

So, the implementation was wrong rather than the inclusion of Australian tags?

As the guy below says, if any parts of australia were a tag, all shouldve been tags, but additionally anywhere in the world with humans should be a tag if Australian natives were tags

The biggest gripe I had with Australia in eu4 is how inconsistent it was. In the past it was all uncolonised, so all even. Then they added some nations as playable, but only "some". The first nations of Australia didn't really have that large of a difference with each other in terms of technology/admin level, so having only some elevated to a "proper" nation was weird. It should be all or nothing. I guess that's part of a larger problem eu4 had with how to actually have tribes/natives on the map, and still allow the AI to colonise.

It is an alt-history game, if an omniscient entity (the player) wants to play with a native Australia civilization and want to create a unified government the player should be empowered to do it.

And an alt history game should be within the bounds of reason, especially one set 700 years ago and so that much closer to our present than ck

What I hope is for the gameplay of a tribal society to be different enough from the gameplay of a feudal society and I hope for a real challenge trying to do it.

But what gameplay is possible that would be fun

 

[Sapa Inca]

The biggest gripe I had with Australia in eu4 is how inconsistent it was. In the past it was all uncolonised, so all even. Then they added some nations as playable, but only "some". The first nations of Australia didn't really have that large of a difference with each other in terms of technology/admin level, so having only some elevated to a "proper" nation was weird. It should be all or nothing. I guess that's part of a larger problem eu4 had with how to actually have tribes/natives on the map, and still allow the AI to colonise.

The problem is that EU4 have 33 techs, but europeans and asians started with tech 3.
The window of 2 techs is too narrow to adequately represent the historical difference between different regions of the world at game start.
The baseline for tech in EU5 should be stone age technology and feudal societies in Europe and Asia should start with high tech compared with stone age civilizations.

 

[Durka]

The biggest gripe I had with Australia in eu4 is how inconsistent it was. In the past it was all uncolonised, so all even. Then they added some nations as playable, but only "some". The first nations of Australia didn't really have that large of a difference with each other in terms of technology/admin level, so having only some elevated to a "proper" nation was weird. It should be all or nothing. I guess that's part of a larger problem eu4 had with how to actually have tribes/natives on the map, and still allow the AI to colonise.

In EU4 only empty tiles can be colonised, but in reality there was no Terra Nullius. I'd like to see different ways in setting up a colony. Historically, Europeans would often make treaties with natives to gain the rights to pieces of land, for trade stations or actual settler colonies. Maybe the player can negotiate for the right of a particular piece of land, choose to occupy it regardless, or another choice. Depending on the choice, the natives can react. If the player occupied the piece of land without agreement for example, neighbouring native tags may get a CB or raid your land.

 

[Sapa Inca]

And an alt history game should be within the bounds of reason, especially one set 700 years ago and so that much closer to our present than ck

A omnisicent entity (the player) with inifity access to backtrack time (save ad load) want to create a centralized government in Australia, what is outside the bounds of reasons here?

 

[Dongerino]

No, please. No one plays them in EU4. No one will play them in EU5 either, even if they add 200 more tags there. Same with the tribal Native American tribes.

 

[FormerlyUN1]

In EU4 only empty tiles can be colonised, but in reality there was no Terra Nullius. I'd like to see different ways in setting up a colony. Historically, Europeans would often make treaties with natives to gain the rights to pieces of land, for trade stations or actual settler colonies. Maybe the player can negotiate for the right of a particular piece of land, choose to occupy it regardless, or another choice. Depending on the choice, the natives can react. If the player occupied the piece of land without agreement for example, neighbouring native tags may get a CB or raid your land.

I think that the issue of adding tags to colonizeable regions in EU4 was how it changed the colonization game in a weird way if tags were present compared to if they were not. Australia has few provinces in EU4, so adding just a few tags to the continent changes how people have to play significantly (that, and I think the lack of provinces negatively affects the native gamplay down there, with less places to migrate to, claim as tribal land, etc).

In EU4 you can only colonize unowned provinces or tribal land. That means if a tag is taking up provinces in colonial regions, colonizers can't get a foothold. It also means that there can be no slow, creeping expansion of colonies further and further into native land: there can only be colonizing of unowned (but occupied, because a number of generic 'natives' still lived there) land, or a regular war of conquest. This caused problems in 1.31(I think?) when most of the new world ended up colonized or owned by native nations already. The colonizer gameplay changed from slowly expanding your borders through colony growth to a totalenkrieg of conquering every native province possible as quickly as you can in all out war until your CN's have been force fed enough to not get declared on themselves.

Tribal land was a step in the right direction I think, since it still allows for colonization without ignoring native peoples / claims in overseas regions. Still not a perfect solution, and given we are going to have pop mechanics in Caesar, I expect it wouldn't work properly if transferred one-to-one.

I am not very knowledgeable about matters of historical colonial practice other than a surface level understanding (so I won't speak much on that), but maybe something similar to the Vic3 'Decentralized nations' concept could be applicable here, where 'ownership' of the land is still recognized and population can be properly accounted for, but sovereignty is still at risk of being eroded.

 

[alexkowal123]

As the guy below says, if any parts of australia were a tag, all shouldve been tags, but additionally anywhere in the world with humans should be a tag if Australian natives were tags



And an alt history game should be within the bounds of reason, especially one set 700 years ago and so that much closer to our present than ck

But what gameplay is possible that would be fun

tribal kingdoms/chiefdoms should be included as they were centralised and fit how the game is made. Tribes with no permanent/established leadership shouldn't be. I know it sounds like too low a bar but it isn't really as they were rarer than you'd assume. How pre-kingdom societies were represented in Vic 3 was the main reason I didn't get it tbh

 

[William the Merry]

tribal kingdoms/chiefdoms should be included as they were centralised and fit how the game is made. Tribes with no permanent/established leadership shouldn't be. I know it sounds like too low a bar but it isn't really as they were rarer than you'd assume. How pre-kingdom societies were represented in Vic 3 was the main reason I didn't get it tbh

But they werent centralised

 

[alexkowal123]

But they werent centralised

please google Elman Service, tribal kingdoms/chiefdoms are more centralised than tribes (which were generally ruled by gerontocracy/big man, see Gadaa system and the Boorana for an advanced version of this) but are less centralised than states/kingdoms. They are centralised enough where they have a single figure of leadership and an established method of succession, they just have less institutions

Edit: people disagreeing with facts, idk why

 

[William the Merry]

please google Elman Service, tribal kingdoms/chiefdoms are more centralised than tribes (which were generally ruled by gerontocracy/big man, see Gadaa system and the Boorana for an advanced version of this) but are less centralised than states/kingdoms. They are centralised enough where they have a single figure of leadership and an established method of succession, they just have less institutions

Google says these are all Oromo things?