EU4 Development Diary - 18th February 2016

[Kliwarrior]

Seeing that max tech is 32, your suggestion is just that colonization shouldn't be possibly (in essence, make it wasteland again)

No, I said that tech barrier is actually non viable. They are not wasteland anymore (new nations) .
I think that the only mechanism that can prevent a (quite historical) conquest of the Interior of Africa is an absurd coring cost .
Attrition *should* be the correct mechanism , but for how it is implemented (and mainly for the 5% cap) makes this way not effective.

 

[El_Cid_]

I should think about doing african Power before 1.16.. More countries sounds like more problems
Nevertheless great changes!

I came to the opposite conclusion! It ought to make for a much more interesting start and will allow building up a nice big power Base before eating West Africa

 

[margustoo]

Because they don't have smaller provinces for Livonia? It only got divided for the first time ever (north to Estonia, south to Latvia) in 1920s.

It is still quite stupid reason to make half of Estonia into Latvian simply because you want to see Livonia spawn. In real life that would never happened if Estonians or Latvians would have rebelled. Estonian, Livonian and Courland duchies would have only been created if German nobles would have rebelled. Officially Estonia was divided between Livonian and Estonian duchy but culturally Estonians were still one ethnicity.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Because they don't have smaller provinces for Livonia? It only got divided for the first time ever (north to Estonia, south to Latvia) in 1920s.

This exactly the reason

 

[margustoo]

This exactly the reason

I call it bulls*it reason. Livonia would have only spawned when German nobles would have rebelled. Estonians and Latvians didn't cared if they were under serfdom in Courlandian, Livonian or Estonian duchy.

 

[Pomeranian]

I don't think yyou get how devestating these diseases were. Technology is dependent on science, and science on what people knows, especially people's with little or no written language. When people starts dying yeah you do the math.
As for the Maya their civilisation was already gone when the europeans arrived.

The mesoamericans could possibly have an event which moves them to a separate tech group after the European arrive, although I still don't think it should be as extreme as it currently is. But having them start 90/85 points behind the sub-Saharan Africans is a bit silly really.

As for china and india see the response below. Also remember the empire of Mali started the reinessance by being a rich powerful and so on empire. They are hardly fur clad savages. Ethiopia is one of the oldest advanced civilisations on earth.

I can't see your below post. I agree with Ethiopia being in the Muslim tech group and think they should stay there as they were more developed than other sub-Saharan nations. Mali should be moved there too.

 

[Shimohi]

Soon we will have another thousand provinces.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I would like to propose that given how many people have responded to the "fetishist" religion, there should be an achievement called "the gods must be kinky". I personally don't ever go for achievements but it would be funny.

 

[LinusLinothorax]

You guys probably didnt reworked Makuria, did you?

 

[azope]

will you make something about color of trade note like black for zanzibare (for people ) with for victoria lake (for elephant ) and gold for ethiopia (for gold ) because 3 blue kill blue

 

[srd5090]

Can a developer please address the question of whether to not we are going to see incredibly anachronistically early scramble for Africa?

If the intent is to not have an early scramble, what is being done to prevent it? As I see it now, a European nation is going to conquer their way to owning half of Africa.

 

[DDRussian]

Perhaps this expansion would go well with an Africa Unit Pack? Maybe along the same line as the El Dorado pack with later units being based on "if these nations westernized, what would their soldiers look like?"

Also, to reflect the difficulty of colonizing Africa before the industrial revolution, maybe you could add modifiers for extra attrition for individual tech groups or everything other than a single tech group (i.e. either Western takes extra attrition or everything other than the African tech group takes extra attrition). That or link it to different cultures/groups, with cultures not matching the province taking extra attrition.

 

[wolfing]

Sounds good, but feels to me their tech group should be more similar to the ones in America, after all, central African tribes had no technology at all that I know of, while, say, Incas and Aztecs had lots of stuff going on in architecture and religion in the same era.

 

[Darkath]

From what I've read, the new worlders, especially in central America, would have still been miles ahead of the African civilisations in terms of administrative technology due to their understanding of mathematics and astronomy so it's a bit unfair to put the Mesoamericans so far behind the Africans. Also, I think one of the big issues with the African tech group (now groups) is how close they are to the Indians and Chinese (only 10 points lower than the Indians and equal to the Chinese).

In game term each tech group should have different bonuses and maluses for each type of tech. Chinese should have the best administrative tech (at least on par with europe), some penalties for military tech, and huge penalties for diplo tech (to point out how much they sucked at dominating the seas and colonizing)
African should have somewhat ok military tech, but terrible admin and diplo. Meso American should have super terrible diplo and terrible military but ok administrative. etc. etc.

 

[hashinshin]

I've always thought that reforming your government in America should reduce your tech penalty for at least military to maybe 10-20%. At least North Americans had modern weaponry sans cannons and were able to fight back reasonably well, they just lacked the numbers.

 

[azope]

In game term each tech group should have different bonuses and maluses for each type of tech. Chinese should have the best administrative tech (at least on par with europe), some penalties for military tech, and huge penalties for diplo tech (to point out how much they sucked at dominating the seas and colonizing)
African should have somewhat ok military tech, but terrible admin and diplo. Meso American should have super terrible diplo and terrible military but ok administrative. etc. etc.

yes and byzance his own tech like hight inca or western

 

[zsImmortal]

As for the Maya their civilisation was already gone when the europeans arrived.

Maybe the Mayan classical period, but not the Mayans. They still held out well into the 17th century.

 

[funguide]

We need new achievements for Africa. How about a one culture achievement but africa specific?

 

[PhroX]

I would like to propose that given how many people have responded to the "fetishist" religion, there should be an achievement called "the gods must be kinky". I personally don't ever go for achievements but it would be funny.

Maybe a play on the fact that "Kinki" is an alternative name for the Kasai region of Japan?

 

[The_Meme_Man]

It is pretty much mandatory that they update African unit models, though I wouldn't really care if they go for "Africans adopting Western Uniforms" or "Africans doing something indigenous for Napoleanic uniforms" like how the Aztec, Maya and the Inca have some unique alternate-history uniforms (like the Mayans maintaining nose piercings).

As for tech, besides maybe a few changes I kinda like how it is currently, though I think Central Africa should have a tad bit more inferior tech than it has now. Talking also about early Scramble for Africa, I don't see it being much of a problem because I rarely see Western powers go into the interior of Western Africa anyway, and I see one huge advantage that the Congolese have over the Aztec and the Inca is that they have a lot of land to expand to (albeit less developed). The Aztec had their corner of Mexico to vassalize 5 times before annexing and that was it, they had to send a colonist to boarding provinces to nab as much arguably useless land as they could in Texas and Central America, either beelinging Panama or just sitting around developing. Same with the Inca (Probably more so because, at least I, had no incentive to go out of the rather rich Andes besides the Pampas and/or beelining Panama). The Congo, however, is completely inhabited, arguably a smaller version of India. We will have to see just how developed those provinces are, but even Central-Asian levels of development can stack up nicely with the Congo not having to deal with Horde mechanics. The Congo has a lot of room to become relatively intimidating for a Western power who doesn't want to use its entire army to attack an African kingdom.

I got off the topic about tech, but overall I think even the start of 1444 the Western World was surely seeing light towards utterly dominating the rest of the world technologically some point or another. China after the Yuan dynasty had stagnated technologically, and the Ming were known for diplomatic contact, not technological development (before 1444 the Ming were busying themselves with making diplomatic contact with all of Asia, including the Middle East). The only other groups of people who were making significant technological games alongside the West were the Turks, the Egyptians, the Iranians, and the Indians (and probably the Koreans, I am not well-read on Korean history, but I know that this time period was rather good for Korea).

What WOULD be cool, similar to how Westernization is a core gameplay feature in Victoria II (though IMO it's not that great, but that is VIctoria II, this is EU4), would be a game mechanic (perhaps for a later update) which involves non-western powers spending time and effort to make their tech and culture equal to Western tech and culture. Basically, a new approach to Westernization that would allow non-Westerners to start sooner without relying on neighboring Western powers. I think it would work in an alternate history sense, like for example if the Ming emperor were to decide that the administration needs reformation due to contemporary corruption, or that the military needs serious reformation (since historically the Ming were facing horrific military defeats against Oirat and Vietnam). Indian rajas could decide to foster more rationalist and scientific thinking. Muslim nations could reform their view on religion to be more supportive of scientific discovery like the time of the Caliphate. Essentially, this would be a form of westernization where nations can start early (even 1444), deal with less revolt (since this is an indigenous advancement, not just "adopting Western ideas"), but significantly slower (with the choice to speed up if you don't mind fighting rebellions and civil wars). Perhaps it could require a skill of king (I would argue that a 1,1,1 king is not smart enough to herald reform). The end product would be a Ming helmet, Indian Turban, African mask, or whatever tech icon, with a golden gear saying it "has a 100% tech cost". It would add that flavour of the ENTIRE planet advancing into the future instead of just the West (since historically it was a matter of Westerners making good decisions based on circumstance where others did not, and this would be the alternate history for when weak Non-Westerners made good decisions, and strong Non-Westerners got seriously ambitious).


tl;dr about tech: A new mechanic for nations to choose indigenous reform and advancement over the adoption of Western ideas to accomplish earlier but arguably harder "westernization," which would literally just be whatever non-western tech becoming equal to western-tech, which furthermore other nations could "Westernize" off from. However, I don't think there should be a mechanic should allow Westerners to "easternize" because the time period is literally about the West opening itself up to the knowledge of the rest of the world.