Why are native provinces in Africa so absurdly powerful?

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vaLor-

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May 26, 2020
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Pic related as the subject:
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Provinces like these are scattered throughout Africa, with natives numbering 4000 in every province, with high aggression causing them to rise up constantly*, and with tactics and morale bonuses that puts the African nations to shame (I lost 850 troops to Busoga that I conquered, but these natives cost me 2000 units). Even with my mostly min-maxed setup (112.5% discipline) I would be unable to get to the east coast and back with my army intact.

This "mechanic" makes for some pretty absurd in-game scenarios in Africa, where wars are often decided by armies walking or retreating into native stacks and getting wiped by them.


For the record, I don't have a problem with native sizes or the fact that they rise up when moved through, but the rate of occurrence and the quality of their armies are both way too high.

* There's no published formula for aggression to chance to rise up during movement that I could find, but the province rose up 5 out of 6 times that I tested.
 
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I mean it should be hard to travel around inner Africa in this time period, but due to supply issues and tropical diseases, not because of weird native mechanics.
 
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It made a bit more sense when natives could be assumed to represent the more organised and powerful groups within Africa, but now that (some of) said groups have been made into actual tags it’s seriously strange.
 
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It made a bit more sense when natives could be assumed to represent the more organised and powerful groups within Africa, but now that (some of) said groups have been made into actual tags it’s seriously strange.
 
1) EU 4 does a very good (poor?) job in pampering players expectations that you can just walk an army across the continent, or conquer a land and after the first obligatory nationalist rebellion its profitable and yours forever. In reality, Africa wasn't properly colonized until the 19th century, and most of those provinces should be wastelands (or more realistically, uncolonizable and with a 100% attrition every month).

2) Technically, all the natives count as one "nation" in the game, so they get a lot of army tradition from real nations marching their armies over them and getting into battles. Even more so since loosing gives you more military tradition than winning, and natives often loose. At 100, army tradition gives the natives (or anyone else) +25% morale.
 
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1) EU 4 does a very good (poor?) job in pampering players expectations that you can just walk an army across the continent
I don't have any problem with this whatsoever, however it should be consistent to all provinces, and not unique to the herculean natives of Central Africa.
 
Wait mil tech 4 or 5 to no-cb the coast ? You're in 1445 so it's pretty much expected.

I feel the other way: at tech 10, I just undecovered all north america with 1k infantry... The fault to my army recovering during the trip I think.

I know supply line is not an option, but I'll be glad if at least they unabled armies to recover in the "wild". We're even able to change conquistador when they die or you just need another general somewhere around the globe...
 
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We're even able to change conquistador when they die or you just need another general somewhere around the globe...
Yes, my general assigned to an army beyond the Urals was instantly able to teleport to lead an army in Cologne just in time to battle the Austrians.
 
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I dunno... Considering the fact that the historical Great Powers were not strong enough in EU4's timeframe to penetrate that deep into Africa, I think it's fine as it.
that is completely out of left field and irrelevant to OP's complaint, lol
 
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There still were smaller unorganized tribes around africa, asia and americas at that time, and i think its perfectly fine that they actualyl are able to provide some resistance. They are stuck at a low technology level, so they quickly become weaker. I think its perfectly realistic that if you sent a small colonizing party deep into africa at this time, they would struggle fighting the small native groups around. Even in your example, you take 2000 casualities, and this is at tech 3. At this time you only have simple spear, sword and bow units, which are not that different to what a tribe could field in weaponry. If Paradox were to nerf the natives further, you could just walk past all of them with no struggle at all.
 
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that is completely out of left field and irrelevant to OP's complaint, lol

Sorry. I very much disagree. The OP is talking about native uprisings, and I think my response is consistent with how Paradox has had the map setup for multiple versions of the game now:


The African provinces have always had higher aggression natives and therefore been harder to colonize and explore than ones in America. You can see that is the case on the wiki. I mean, even at the opening of V3, the vast majority of Africa is still not yet colonized:

"By 1841, businessmen from Europe had established small trading posts along the coasts of Africa, but they seldom moved inland, preferring to stay near the sea. They primarily traded with locals. Large parts of the continent were essentially uninhabitable for Europeans because of their high mortality rates from tropical diseases such as malaria.

"As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa (referencing, Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (1991) ch 1)
 
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Sorry. I very much disagree. The OP is talking about native uprisings, and I think my response is consistent with how Paradox has had the map setup for multiple versions of the game now:
You are welcome to disagree (would be nice to see that done with some basic rationale supporting the disagreement though, haha), but you made a non-sequitur statement and that's not a matter of opinion.

"Because European powers struggled with Malaria in this time period, it is "historically" justified that natives in Africa being particularly strong in combat, including against other Africans in 1444" --> this isn't historical rationale, it's magic.

You might prefer that natives in Africa are particularly strong. It's objectively inaccurate to claim that such a preference can be based on history using the rationale you chose. "The Spanish get malaria" does not explain disorganized African gigachad tribes randomly fighting better than at least somewhat more organized African tribes. That's not a thing in causal history. Unless you can provide evidence that Malaria makes Africans fight very effectively, including against other Africans in the same place, what you stated was strange.
 
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You are welcome to disagree, but you made a non-sequitur statement and that's not a matter of opinion.

"Because European powers struggled with Malaria in this time period, it is "historically" justified that natives in Africa being particularly strong in combat, including against other Africans in 1444" --> this isn't historical rationale, it's magic.

You might prefer that natives in Africa are particularly strong. It's objectively inaccurate to claim that such a preference can be based on history using the rationale you chose. "The Spanish get malaria" does not explain disorganized African gigachad tribes randomly fighting better than at least somewhat more organized African tribes. That's not a thing in causal history. Unless you can provide evidence that Malaria makes Africans fight very effectively, including against other Africans in the same place, what you stated was strange.

No, I am saying that the game abstracts things like malaria outbreaks into this native uprising mechanic to simulate how difficult the terrain was. I really do not think it merits a different system. Sorry.
 
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No, I am saying that the game abstracts things like malaria outbreaks into this native uprising mechanic to simulate how difficult the terrain was. I really do not think it merits a different system. Sorry.
That's a massive leap in logic. Even more so given that by the time Europeans get there, 3 regiments can dumpster nearly every native uprising possible in Africa because they're either a) high enough tech or b) are AI and took the native policy that blocks uprisings, allowing no-uprising colonies and a march across Africa with complete immunity to native uprisings.

History suggests it should be easier for an African nation to march 1-2 provinces than it is for a European colonizer to cross to continent West to East, wrt native uprisings/hostility (especially if this is somehow an abstraction for malaria, lol). We observe the opposite. This is not explained by saying "history!". It is not (somehow) explained by malaria. It is not explained by any abstracted causal model, at all.

Whatever the reason for preferring this particular implementation, abstracting historical "great power" struggles with malaria into 1444 movement of African armies through natives, while actual Europeans there are unlikely lose a single soldier to natives is nonsense. We're not getting there with "history". Sorry.
 
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Whatever the reason for preferring this particular implementation, abstracting historical "great power" struggles with malaria into 1444 movement of African armies through natives, while actual Europeans there are unlikely lose a single soldier to natives is nonsense. We're not getting there with "history". Sorry.

I am talking about the history that Europe did NOT paint the African map the way they did the Americas. That is my point. You can split hairs all you want about what precisely caused the history, but I will still say that the current implementation at least supplies us with historically plausible outcomes... unlike Portuguese Caribbean, Castilian Brazil, etc.
 
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I am talking about the history that Europe did NOT paint the African map the way they did the Americas. That is my point.
I know, which is why it's non-sequitur to make this point in a thread complaining about how effectively African natives fight more organized African nations at the game start. The mechanic in question does absolutely nothing to stop colonization of Africa, and only influences European armies in Africa in edge cases (non-colonizers marching there).

I'm not "splitting hairs". You might as well have cited the Sunni-Hindu conflicts of India as a reason for the natives in Africa fighting Kongo much more fiercely than say natives in Mexico fighting Aztec. That would be every bit as relevant and "historically based" as European struggles with malaria.

but I will still say that the current implementation at least supplies us with historically plausible outcomes
???

Native presence in these provinces has nothing to do with European colonization of Africa. The AI reliably picks the policy that blocks uprisings in its colonies (which also blocks uprisings from marching over uncolonized land). The current implementation of native count/fierceness has precisely 0 impact on the colonizer outcomes observed, lol. Give AI France a path to the rift lakes, and it will fill in all of that land w/o issue and without losing a single man to either natives or malaria.

So no, issue OP talks about does not "supply us with historically plausible outcomes", and we're back to "malaria makes Africans fight other Africans better, for a brief window of history, somehow" being a "historical" argument per above ^_^
 
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