They are a province modifier with 3 attributes: Quantity, agressiveness and ferocity and they do nothing beyond periodically attack your new settlement and kill settlers.
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Australian natives improving their technology in some degree and engaging in some type of state building or confederation is also possible, the time period is full of tribal people around the world that for the first time in their history created a state.
I dont think that it should be standard AI behaviour in the same way that I dont want to see AI Ulm empire in the majority of games, but players should have this type of agency.
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They increase goods produced based on quantity and assimilation. Helping sick natives helps them populate your colony too
Do you also cherish mamluke australia as a beleiveable alt his?
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Absolutely! Australia wasn't colonized until very late in EU4 time period, and even then, the colony struggled. Perhaps taking a less Eurocentric perspective might allow Southeast Asian nations to colonize the continent as an alternative to the Europeans. IDK. I think my Chola Empire reborn might want some of it
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I dont want Mamluk AI to colonize Australia in the majority of the games but if the player choose Mamluks and want to invest in exploration tech and create Mameluk Australia I dont see any problem.
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So, you don't know anything about them. I don't either, but I'm not asserting that they have nothing interesting to offer. I don't think forming a "settled society" is what we care about most here, considering that I don't think anyone believes that the game shouldn't have nomadic gameplay be fleshed out and interesting.
I don't think you actually understood my point, but it doesn't matter that much - I've seen this exact argument levied for why there shouldn't be natives in the New World in EU4 either, and frankly, I don't like it. I don't think EU is a great fit for making playing as these states interesting, but:
a. I don't think that that's a reason to refuse to even give them a fair shake.
b. I don't like arbitrarily deciding to turn groups of people into essentially a field hazard
There are definitely regions of the world where anything resembling a state wouldn't be large enough to represent accurately on a map (like some of the princedoms in the HRE lol) but australia isn't one of them.
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If you nothing of them, you should look into them and think of how they compare to what else was uncolonised at game start in eu4
The smattering of tags they had prior to leviathan was fine and let you play as nomadic confederations well, the changes afterwards were terrible as then you had all of french lousiana unified within 60 years of game start under native rule
Having them permanently be 1/1/1 tech with a few thousand max will be a speed bump. Is the smallest of speed bumps better than a field hazard?
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most of Africa was colonised through protectorates/conquest, rather than by colonies, and there isn't a mechanic for this in EU4, other than diplomatic vassalisation I guess
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That's a really good point. I'm not sure how this could be done ingame other than the historical states popping up later on, like Oukwanyama and Ondonga in 1650 or states in the congo basin in the late 14th/15th and 16th centuries.
Would be cool if there was like a releasable mechanic where you could play for instance an Ovimbundo state from the start, or even the southern African ones like Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Tswana
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I think one of the issues with depicting anything in central Australia is that, while it is possible for people to live there, it's not possible to do anything on the sort of scale measured by a grand strategy game. Yes, there's lots of tribes in those areas, but you wouldn't exactly build a city out there, or someone would have done so already.
That said, I do think it would be good to give a nod to alt history by allowing a sufficiently determined player (or maybe a native faction with some inbuilt bonus) to have at least a light presence further inland, especially to access Australia's enormous ore deposits. I could imagine a tense and exciting moment around someone marching an army briefly through the Simpson desert, knowing it will suffer brutal attrition, but that their unprepared enemy will have no defences against a flanking attack more audacious than anything they imagined. Alternatively, native tribes could use this space as a staging ground for guerilla warfare against colonial powers that would fall prey to the desert itself if they were careless in their counterattack. It'd be like Dune, but with a lot more beer and foul language (so, more like the books).
As for how to depict native tribes themselves, I think there are a lot of fascinating differences between them and what we think of as conventional Western civilization. People talk about the different beliefs of tribes, but even the core cosmology of Aboriginal tribes is mind-bending compared to other religious frameworks. They typically hold that all their mythology takes place outside of the time-space continuum, in a sort of parallel plane of existence where everything happens simultaneously at all points in time (or at least that's my understanding of it). Depicting any part of Aboriginal society in a game built to simulate European powers is going to be an enormous challenge with a lot of details lost in translation, and I could understand any company being hesitant to take on such a task.
That said, I do think it would be good to give a nod to alt history by allowing a sufficiently determined player (or maybe a native faction with some inbuilt bonus) to have at least a light presence further inland, especially to access Australia's enormous ore deposits. I could imagine a tense and exciting moment around someone marching an army briefly through the Simpson desert, knowing it will suffer brutal attrition, but that their unprepared enemy will have no defences against a flanking attack more audacious than anything they imagined. Alternatively, native tribes could use this space as a staging ground for guerilla warfare against colonial powers that would fall prey to the desert itself if they were careless in their counterattack. It'd be like Dune, but with a lot more beer and foul language (so, more like the books).
As for how to depict native tribes themselves, I think there are a lot of fascinating differences between them and what we think of as conventional Western civilization. People talk about the different beliefs of tribes, but even the core cosmology of Aboriginal tribes is mind-bending compared to other religious frameworks. They typically hold that all their mythology takes place outside of the time-space continuum, in a sort of parallel plane of existence where everything happens simultaneously at all points in time (or at least that's my understanding of it). Depicting any part of Aboriginal society in a game built to simulate European powers is going to be an enormous challenge with a lot of details lost in translation, and I could understand any company being hesitant to take on such a task.
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1. Once again, I'm not the person advocating that aboriginal societies not be represented in the game whatsoever in response to an OP who clearly knows their stuff. I may not know much about them, but I'm not writing them off as uninteresting.
2. Referencing the incredibly bad implementation of native societies in the New World in EU4 as a given for this game is pretty poor, frankly. I believe that turning these people into an empty field hazard with whom no diplomacy can be conducted bar a "native policy" set in a preexisting menu is not only rather dehumanizing, but also makes colonial gameplay less interesting. Diplomacy with these regions was actually extremely important for the growth of the first colonies, and the way the game portrays these conflicts as extremely faceroll-y is not only historically inaccurate, it's pretty demeaning. The internal politics of the Aztec empire and the smallpox epidemic were more important for Cortez's conquest than the technological advantage conferred by having come from Europe, for instance. So, "is the smallest of speed bumps better than a field hazard?" I don't actually even think they should be small speed bumps. Numerous colonies were destroyed because they lost conflicts with natives.
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Sometimes I wonder if I've just been playing a different game to people on this forum, because I genuinely struggle to think about anything with EU4 colonization that didn't suck at least a bit
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This is quite possibly the worst take I've read in the forums, ever
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Then read about them so you can agree or dispute them as uninteresting
hence why the events help modify specific relations with specific natives
Plague and tech were important but the strategic depth of the empire preventing a slow retreat ala alexander and darius is another factor to include
they will be small speed bumps if theyre a few thousand soldiers max vs your whole army at modern tech
Yes small settlements, not a full colonial nation. Massacres of colonists resulted in more hardline treatment of natives often so the success was fleeting.
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Maybe instead of being empty, these types of areas should be inhabited by very weak, unplayable one-province factions locked out of several game features, which colonial powers have the option to displace at any time.
However, displacing these tribes would boost the population of neighbouring tribes and anger them, with a risk of 'activating' them as a serious concern, at which point they are no longer locked out of the means to fight back against you, and can continue to grow in power.
Would this be a good balance? I feel like it would take natives seriously without getting in the way of the course of history, and could be expanded on in some DLC down the line to make the small tribes more viable as an option for players.
Maybe we could even have some alternative path where explorers peacefully trade with these tribes instead of colonizing, removing their debuffs while making them like you instead of hate you, and possibly resulting in a strong alliance with a rising new power.
However, displacing these tribes would boost the population of neighbouring tribes and anger them, with a risk of 'activating' them as a serious concern, at which point they are no longer locked out of the means to fight back against you, and can continue to grow in power.
Would this be a good balance? I feel like it would take natives seriously without getting in the way of the course of history, and could be expanded on in some DLC down the line to make the small tribes more viable as an option for players.
Maybe we could even have some alternative path where explorers peacefully trade with these tribes instead of colonizing, removing their debuffs while making them like you instead of hate you, and possibly resulting in a strong alliance with a rising new power.
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Modern eu4 was spawned by game balance, id prefer project caesars historical depth to be used by a historical game
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If you are able to bring the entirety of your army to the New World at any point in EUV's timeline, we have lost sight of historical plausibility quite a while ago.
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Okay, apply that logic to yourself first. You're the one arguing that it shouldn't exist, and frankly, the burden of proof is on you. I don't really understand why you're trying to foist this onto me.
The events? This is what I meant by the sense that I've been playing a different game to everyone else, because those events are astonishingly uninteractive and dull. There's about 3 of them and you'll see most of them multiple times in a single exploration, let alone a single playthrough. Their consequences are completely negligible. That's not "conducting diplomacy", that's a random popup you could probably click through with your eyes closed. Events aren't a substitute for good systems, they're a corrolary to them. Engaging colonial gameplay will require at least decently engaging interactions with native countries.
The majority of the armies of the conquistadors were comprised of indigenous ppl. The point I'm making is that most colonists were poorly equipped and would have to rely on the assistance of people who lived in these regions to get themselves started
Why is your entire standing army in the new world? That's a bad problem to begin with - and not in the "it's fun but unrealistic" way, it's both unrealistic and makes the game more dull. Colonists in the new world were an extremely risky investment, so the idea that you should divert a significant number of your forces to go to some unknown place and leave yourself undefended would've been delusional. Shipping huge armies across to the new world mid-war is extremely boring. Shipping them back is also extremely boring. (To say nothing of colonies being automatically pulled into wars and capping your war score at like 40% even when you occupy all of the enemy's mainland provinces)
Native tags should never be fighting entire European militaries, they should be fighting comparatively ragtag colonial militias from colonial tags, which is a much more even matchup.
Small settlements, which was the vast majority of what existed for about 100-200 years of the game's timeframe - such as the various port cities owned by European powers dotted throughout the globe.
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