please don't do Australia dirty again

[Lindaegan]

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

One day people will understand that the Europeans did not conquer the world using solely European soldiers and their superior European genes. Until then we will have to contend with such dehumanizing, Eurocentric rhetoric, peddled in the name of "historical accuracy." Perhaps I'm just slow, but I fail to grasp why there is this undercurrent narrative throughout this forum which pushes hard this idea that all natives were irrelevant losers who all magically died one day and lost to the invading colonial empires because they were "less advanced" or something. Inevitably they will go on to use this kind of inane logic to justify the removal of these tags entirely. I can accept that the native tags are portrayed poorly in EUIV, but that is no reason for them to be removed, both for gameplay reasons (why reduce player agency?) and historical ones (why effectively negate the lived experiences of these peoples?).

On some level I have a feeling that this is almost entirely due to the dearth of native nationalists. If I suggested that the Ottomans be removed, certain individuals would (justifiably) come down upon me like the Hammer of Thor. The thunder of their vengeance would echo through these forums like the gust of a thousand winds. Not so for the natives, though gladly there are people like OP and you who would defend their inclusion regardless.

 

[Pellucid]

In the grand list of things I hope they spend time and resources on, Australia is very, very low.

 

[Nnorm]

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.

I dont want to spend hours on diplomacy screen to interact with meaningless tribes in Australia or Africa. It is not necesaary, and will make gameplay even worse.

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

Colonization sucks in EU IV, but not because we dont have every uncolonised province as Independent nation against whom we have to declare war to conquer.
And adding multiple tribal countries in the last year made colonization actually worse, not more interesting.

 

[Jespoke]

The addition of the Australian native tags to EU4 was a bit of a travesty in my eyes. It made the gameplay and accuracy of colonizing Australia worse, it harmed performance, and what we got for it was the option to play boxed in tribes until you hit the time to reform into a state, at which point you either become a horde to exploit your way out of the box, or wait around for 150 years.

The colonization system of EU4 may not be terribly in-depth, but the events about interaction and conflict with the native population are still a far more accurate representation of interaction with hunter-gatherer people than going to war with a tag.

 

[viola]

One day people will understand that the Europeans did not conquer the world using solely European soldiers and their superior European genes. Until then we will have to contend with such dehumanizing, Eurocentric rhetoric, peddled in the name of "historical accuracy." Perhaps I'm just slow, but I fail to grasp why there is this undercurrent narrative throughout this forum which pushes hard this idea that all natives were irrelevant losers who all magically died one day and lost to the invading colonial empires because they were "less advanced" or something. Inevitably they will go on to use this kind of inane logic to justify the removal of these tags entirely. I can accept that the native tags are portrayed poorly in EUIV, but that is no reason for them to be removed, both for gameplay reasons (why reduce player agency?) and historical ones (why effectively negate the lived experiences of these peoples?).

On some level I have a feeling that this is almost entirely due to the dearth of native nationalists. If I suggested that the Ottomans be removed, certain individuals would (justifiably) come down upon me like the Hammer of Thor. The thunder of their vengeance would echo through these forums like the gust of a thousand winds. Not so for the natives, though gladly there are people like OP and you who would defend their inclusion regardless.

Sigh

Anyone here with a modicum of historical knowledge already knows that European colonists and European conquests had to rely on native support and manipulating alliances with the locals in order to achieve their goals. No one is arguing that the natives magically disappeared upon contact with Europeans because of their inherent backwardness either, because most people here know that most natives died of diseases after coming into contact with Europeans who inadvertently brought all their Eurasian plagues with them that quickly hit the American and Australian natives, all at once in quick succession, with very predictable outcomes in a world before germ theory. Indeed, the American natives could have had spaceships, but unless they also had advanced emergency vaccination systems their numbers were still going to get gutted.

Finally, it's very unlikely that people who oppose North American and Australian tags do so because they personally hate natives and are brainwashed by evil colonialist propaganda. You see, Europa Universalis is a video game, and video games are played for "fun" (a term that can mean multiple things), and the thing with native tags is that they've been historically really crappy at being fun, to play as or play around, whether you interpret "fun" as pure gameplay mechanics or historical accuracy. After a decade of trying to make native tags work and them not working some people are just wondering whether we should even bother, because these tags do represent societies that are dramatically different from the majority of "normal" EU tags (Eurasian settled states) or even just settled Americans, since no one in their right mind is arguing to remove Mesoamerican or Andean tags.

Now, I'm a native tag enjoyer, I like the idea of these peoples being potentially playable or at least properly represented in some way in the game, I'd love if we could find a way to have even the Australian natives be playable and be fun and not completely awful gameplay and history-wise, but it's clear it's a pretty hard feat to accomplish, and many people have a reason to think it might just be wasted time to try to force a game meant to represent Bureaucratic early modern states into representing very different kinds of societies.
So, maybe tone down the pointless moralism because no amount of public outrage is going to make the gameplay for those nations any easier to represent in EU5. Also, it's distasteful to use the history of oppression of native peoples as a hammer to shut down discussions you don't like, so try to avoid that in the future.

 

[Aliquam]

Please don't sabotize this game by adding 300 trade routes, 400 countries and 500 cultures in Australia.

 

[alexkowal123]

One day people will understand that the Europeans did not conquer the world using solely European soldiers and their superior European genes. Until then we will have to contend with such dehumanizing, Eurocentric rhetoric, peddled in the name of "historical accuracy." Perhaps I'm just slow, but I fail to grasp why there is this undercurrent narrative throughout this forum which pushes hard this idea that all natives were irrelevant losers who all magically died one day and lost to the invading colonial empires because they were "less advanced" or something. Inevitably they will go on to use this kind of inane logic to justify the removal of these tags entirely. I can accept that the native tags are portrayed poorly in EUIV, but that is no reason for them to be removed, both for gameplay reasons (why reduce player agency?) and historical ones (why effectively negate the lived experiences of these peoples?).

On some level I have a feeling that this is almost entirely due to the dearth of native nationalists. If I suggested that the Ottomans be removed, certain individuals would (justifiably) come down upon me like the Hammer of Thor. The thunder of their vengeance would echo through these forums like the gust of a thousand winds. Not so for the natives, though gladly there are people like OP and you who would defend their inclusion regardless.

I agree, I do think it is just people being taught history from the perspective of their native country rather than anything really sinister, and people not being able to relate to different societies

 

[alexkowal123]

I dont want to spend hours on diplomacy screen to interact with meaningless tribes in Australia or Africa. It is not necesaary, and will make gameplay even worse.



Colonization sucks in EU IV, but not because we dont have every uncolonised province as Independent nation against whom we have to declare war to conquer.
And adding multiple tribal countries in the last year made colonization actually worse, not more interesting.

wym meaningless, can you not see your own ignorance? Just because you're personally not interested in other regions of the world doesn't mean they shouldn't be focussed on/included

 

[alexkowal123]

Sigh

Anyone here with a modicum of historical knowledge already knows that European colonists and European conquests had to rely on native support and manipulating alliances with the locals in order to achieve their goals. No one is arguing that the natives magically disappeared upon contact with Europeans because of their inherent backwardness either, because most people here know that most natives died of diseases after coming into contact with Europeans who inadvertently brought all their Eurasian plagues with them that quickly hit the American and Australian natives, all at once in quick succession, with very predictable outcomes in a world before germ theory. Indeed, the American natives could have had spaceships, but unless they also had advanced emergency vaccination systems their numbers were still going to get gutted.

Finally, it's very unlikely that people who oppose North American and Australian tags do so because they personally hate natives and are brainwashed by evil colonialist propaganda. You see, Europa Universalis is a video game, and video games are played for "fun" (a term that can mean multiple things), and the thing with native tags is that they've been historically really crappy at being fun, to play as or play around, whether you interpret "fun" as pure gameplay mechanics or historical accuracy. After a decade of trying to make native tags work and them not working some people are just wondering whether we should even bother, because these tags do represent societies that are dramatically different from the majority of "normal" EU tags (Eurasian settled states) or even just settled Americans, since no one in their right mind is arguing to remove Mesoamerican or Andean tags.

Now, I'm a native tag enjoyer, I like the idea of these peoples being potentially playable or at least properly represented in some way in the game, I'd love if we could find a way to have even the Australian natives be playable and be fun and not completely awful gameplay and history-wise, but it's clear it's a pretty hard feat to accomplish, and many people have a reason to think it might just be wasted time to try to force a game meant to represent Bureaucratic early modern states into representing very different kinds of societies.
So, maybe tone down the pointless moralism because no amount of public outrage is going to make the gameplay for those nations any easier to represent in EU5. Also, it's distasteful to use the history of oppression of native peoples as a hammer to shut down discussions you don't like, so try to avoid that in the future.

I do think it is very possible to make chiefdoms fun, just with pops and estates, although I see they're only having one set of pops for everywhere which doesn't fit tribes at all so I'm not hopeful. It would be a real shame if mechanics for tribes aren't expanded further than EU4 imo, as they would just become irrelevant to people's gameplay and be an afterthought when there's so much potential. Atm I think most people just play natives for the novelty, they might as well not be playable

 

[alexkowal123]

Please don't sabotize this game by adding 300 trade routes, 400 countries and 500 cultures in Australia.

I don't think anyone is proposing that

 

[Sapa Inca]

Finally, it's very unlikely that people who oppose North American and Australian tags do so because they personally hate natives and are brainwashed by evil colonialist propaganda. You see, Europa Universalis is a video game, and video games are played for "fun" (a term that can mean multiple things), and the thing with native tags is that they've been historically really crappy at being fun, to play as or play around, whether you interpret "fun" as pure gameplay mechanics or historical accuracy. After a decade of trying to make native tags work and them not working some people are just wondering whether we should even bother, because these tags do represent societies that are dramatically different from the majority of "normal" EU tags (Eurasian settled states) or even just settled Americans, since no one in their right mind is arguing to remove Mesoamerican or Andean tags.

I think that it is not a fair comparison to use EU3 or EU4 as a reference for native gameplay, because Project Caesar is the first game of EU series with pops and the difference of granularity in the map of Project Caesar compared with EU4 will be huge.
A more fair frame of reference would be with the native tribes of Imperator Rome, if germanic migratory tribes work in that game, tribes in the Americas and Australia can work too in Project Caesar.

 

[Aliquam]

because they were "less advanced" or something

But they, in most cases, were? Ever heard of historical concept of "great divergence" which is a name for a moment in time where Europe diverged from the rest of the world, developing itself orders of magnitude above all else, being able to shape the world as it is now?
Moral judgement can be only one, but denying that collectively Europe was more developed than the countries it colonised is straight denying facts.

 

[alexkowal123]

But they, in most cases, were? Ever heard of historical concept of "great divergence" which is a name for a moment in time where Europe diverged from the rest of the world, developing itself orders of magnitude above all else, being able to shape the world as it is now?
Moral judgement can be only one, but denying that collectively Europe was more developed than the countries it colonised is straight denying facts.

The Great Divergence was realised during the 19th century so has next to no relevance here?

 

[Aliquam]

The Great Divergence was realised during the 19th century so has next to no relevance here?

It culminated in 19th century, as a result of long ongoing processes, including extraction from colonies.
You still haven't addressed why do you consider aborigenal tribesmen in Australia being at the same level of socioeconomic and technological development as Europe, in Europa Universalis' timespan.

 

[alexkowal123]

It culminated in 19th century, as a result of long ongoing processes, including extraction from colonies.
You still haven't addressed why do you consider aborigenal tribesmen in Australia being at the same level of socioeconomic and technological development as Europe, in Europa Universalis' timespan.

When have I said/implied that??

 

[Aliquam]

When have I said/implied that??

One day people will understand that the Europeans did not conquer the world using solely European soldiers and their superior European genes. Until then we will have to contend with such dehumanizing, Eurocentric rhetoric, peddled in the name of "historical accuracy." Perhaps I'm just slow, but I fail to grasp why there is this undercurrent narrative throughout this forum which pushes hard this idea that all natives were irrelevant losers who all magically died one day and lost to the invading colonial empires because they were "less advanced" or something

 

[alexkowal123]

The addition of the Australian native tags to EU4 was a bit of a travesty in my eyes. It made the gameplay and accuracy of colonizing Australia worse, it harmed performance, and what we got for it was the option to play boxed in tribes until you hit the time to reform into a state, at which point you either become a horde to exploit your way out of the box, or wait around for 150 years.

The colonization system of EU4 may not be terribly in-depth, but the events about interaction and conflict with the native population are still a far more accurate representation of interaction with hunter-gatherer people than going to war with a tag.

I think it's more the implementation rather than the addition

 

[alexkowal123]

Is that me? The point of the great divergence is that prior to it, there wasn't lots of difference between the world's societies in terms of advancement (obviously Europe was much more advanced at this time than say Australia, but much less so than people assume due to recency bias). And personally I think the cause of the Great Divergence was the industrial revolution which has been extremely slow to diffuse (some technologies diffuse very quickly, like guns or things that can be sold). Not saying cultural movements didn't affect this, from what I've read the old Chinese leaders were luddites due to the emphasis on stability in Chinese culture

 

[Pellucid]

Is that me? The point of the great divergence is that prior to it, there wasn't lots of difference between the world's societies in terms of advancement (obviously Europe was much more advanced at this time than say Australia, but much less so than people assume due to recency bias). And personally I think the cause of the Great Divergence was the industrial revolution which has been extremely slow to diffuse

Look, I don't think humans become any less human because they don't have cool advanced technology, and I'm very glad that as a society we've moved past thinking some societies deserve to be treated as subhuman because of some arbitrary standard of who counts as a "modern" human.

But it's frankly just ridiculous to pretend that Europe and these tribal societies were basically the same until the Industrial Revolution. Australia and the Americas were literally still in the Stone Age. They weren't just a little behind, they were almost five THOUSAND years behind Europe, Asia, and most of Africa in terms of scientific development. Pretending that this isn't that big a deal just so that you don't appear to be a bigot makes you look like a fool.

So I'm going to reiterate that that lack of scientific understanding didn't make North American or Australian natives less human than anyone else, and that their societies were very complex and interesting and maybe even deserve a game of their own, but it's very difficult to faithfully represent them in a game that's fundamentally designed to portray European politics, as evidenced by their awful and unrealistic depiction in EU4. If I have to choose between the EU4 method or the EU2 method (where they're just a province modifier), I'll take the EU2 method. Hopefully we get an EU5 method that's better than either, though.

 

[alexkowal123]

Look, I don't think humans become any less human because they don't have cool advanced technology, and I'm very glad that as a society we've moved past thinking some societies deserve to be treated as subhuman because of some arbitrary standard of who counts as a "modern" human.

But it's frankly just ridiculous to pretend that Europe and these tribal societies were basically the same until the Industrial Revolution. Australia and the Americas were literally still in the Stone Age. They weren't just a little behind, they were almost five THOUSAND years behind Europe, Asia, and most of Africa in terms of scientific development. Pretending that this isn't that big a deal just so that you don't appear to be a bigot makes you look like a fool.

So I'm going to reiterate that that lack of scientific understanding didn't make North American or Australian natives less human than anyone else, and that their societies were very complex and interesting and maybe even deserve a game of their own, but it's very difficult to faithfully represent them in a game that's fundamentally designed to portray European politics, as evidenced by their awful and unrealistic depiction in EU4. If I have to choose between the EU4 method or the EU2 method (where they're just a province modifier), I'll take the EU2 method. Hopefully we get an EU5 method that's better than either, though.

I disagree that it would be difficult to represent their politics in a game designed for Europe. There's been lots of studies on tribal politics that aim to understand fundamentals that exist in western politics (they were often democratic). All it would take is different pops and estates, and expand the federation/confederation mechanic to make them fun.

Also I said Europe was much more advanced than say Australia so you're second paragraph is a strawman. See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...gy-aboriginal-indigenous-people-a8518056.html

Thank you for for your first paragraph, although I do think you're in the minority of people here because people generally don't think that deeply (not saying that's a bad thing)