I really enjoy the exploration and colonization game in EU IV, almost always taking Exploration ideas even if it might make more sense not to. There's one aspect that feels like it could be better, however, and that's the way the native attacks work. I had the following ideas for how to integrate it better with existing systems and hopefully make it more fun and less tedious.
Overview of Native Attack Mechanics
Native attacks at the moment act a lot like rebels used to act before the unrest system: they're random events which happen more or less often based solely on the local native population's aggressiveness. They also don't happen nearly as often for the AI as they do for players, which I believe I heard once is because the AI is poor at keeping the necessary small stacks in its colonies to fend them off. They're not a mechanic that provides much engaging strategic thinking; you just throw some units in the province and keep army maintenance up and they never actually impact you in any way, or you attack them a few times to reduce population to zero because the bonuses for keeping them alive aren't very impressive and don't even bother with the army.
I think this can be improved, by making it so that there is a real decision to be made between clearing the natives out of a province and leaving them alive. Thus I'd like to propose the following changes:
1. Native population directly slows colonization.
For a prepared player native attacks don't really do anything that impacts your game most of the time. They might drain a tiny bit of manpower now and then, but as long as they don't outright defeat your armies they never impact your colonization efforts. Thus, I propose that for every 100 natives in a province, the Global Setter Increase decreases by -1. Yes, this wouldn't have much of an effect on provinces with <1000 natives; but for provinces with ≥5000 natives this becomes quite significant. Provinces with 7000–8000 natives would be almost uncolonizable early in the game.
This change would have the benefit of working exactly the same for humans and the AI. It would naturally slow down colonization in more densely-populated areas, and would also give a real incentive to attack natives to speed up colonization, which leads to:
1a. Increase the value of leaving natives in a province by having them provide more bonuses upon colony completion.
Make it an interesting choice: do I attack these natives to speed up colonization, or leave them so they give me great bonuses when the colony is finally finished? Province development is ok, but I don't tend to develop colonies very much. If it were something like "for every 500 natives in a province when it becomes a colony, that province randomly gains +1 to one of the three kinds of development" I'd be much more incentivized to leave the natives alone. Give them some kind of bonus that makes me actually stop and think about whether to attack them or not.
The ability to make such a choice relies on it being an informed choice, however, so I also propose the following changes to the actual native attack mechanics:
2. Instead of being random, integrate native attacks with the already-existing (and excellent) unrest system.
The unrest system, in my opinion, is a massive improvement over the way rebels used to work. Instead of having a chance to randomly spawn anywhere, every month, the unrest system is localized (so you know where the problem is and where rebels are likely to spawn) and much easier to read and prepare for. Thus, I propose that native attacks be treated like rebels with respect to the unrest in colonial provinces (basically, if a colonial province has unrest, it will spawn natives instead of any other kind of rebel). This allows players to work within the existing mechanics to help mitigate the chance of native attacks; for instance, taking Humanism ideas to simulate trying to work with the natives and thus lowering the unrest in the province. This will allow you to see exactly how much chance of native attack you have with each province, and better gauge if it's worth it to leave them alive.
This could be helped along by:
2a. Native population and aggressiveness both increase unrest.
The numbers would of course need polishing, but as a ballpark, something like every 100 natives and every 1 aggressiveness increases the unrest by +0.1. This would provide a similar setup to what already exists—provinces with lots of aggressive natives being more dangerous—but would be more transparent and clear to players exactly how much more. This would make it easy to see exactly which provinces would have positive unrest if you were to colonize them, and whether you'd need to station soldiers there.
2b. Have colonists in a province raise unrest.
This one's a bit more speculative and could easily be left out, but if native attacks happen based on unrest, why not have colonists increase unrest slightly in provinces they are in, the way missionaries do? I have no idea what might be good—you'd want it low enough that colonizing a province with 100 natives wouldn't give you unrest without there being serious problems in your empire, but it should also be high enough that you can't waltz into Madagascar without a problem. This would definitely need some testing to work out. Doing this would give a hopefully interesting choice: do I leave my colonist in a province to speed up growth, or remove him to lower unrest? Though if this removing a colonist is actually beneficial more than 20% of the time colonization might need to be sped up slightly given the other slow-downs proposed above (though slightly slower colonization wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing…).
Anyway, those are the thoughts I've had while playing for how to hopefully make colonizing even more fun than it is now. Rewriting native attacks to use unrest would allow the systems and resources already created around unrest to be utilized more fully, and possibly provide more options for random events (events that temporarily raise or lower unrest in a colony, etc.). Thanks for reading that massive wall of text, and I'd be interested to hear people's thought.s
Overview of Native Attack Mechanics
Native attacks at the moment act a lot like rebels used to act before the unrest system: they're random events which happen more or less often based solely on the local native population's aggressiveness. They also don't happen nearly as often for the AI as they do for players, which I believe I heard once is because the AI is poor at keeping the necessary small stacks in its colonies to fend them off. They're not a mechanic that provides much engaging strategic thinking; you just throw some units in the province and keep army maintenance up and they never actually impact you in any way, or you attack them a few times to reduce population to zero because the bonuses for keeping them alive aren't very impressive and don't even bother with the army.
I think this can be improved, by making it so that there is a real decision to be made between clearing the natives out of a province and leaving them alive. Thus I'd like to propose the following changes:
1. Native population directly slows colonization.
For a prepared player native attacks don't really do anything that impacts your game most of the time. They might drain a tiny bit of manpower now and then, but as long as they don't outright defeat your armies they never impact your colonization efforts. Thus, I propose that for every 100 natives in a province, the Global Setter Increase decreases by -1. Yes, this wouldn't have much of an effect on provinces with <1000 natives; but for provinces with ≥5000 natives this becomes quite significant. Provinces with 7000–8000 natives would be almost uncolonizable early in the game.
This change would have the benefit of working exactly the same for humans and the AI. It would naturally slow down colonization in more densely-populated areas, and would also give a real incentive to attack natives to speed up colonization, which leads to:
1a. Increase the value of leaving natives in a province by having them provide more bonuses upon colony completion.
Make it an interesting choice: do I attack these natives to speed up colonization, or leave them so they give me great bonuses when the colony is finally finished? Province development is ok, but I don't tend to develop colonies very much. If it were something like "for every 500 natives in a province when it becomes a colony, that province randomly gains +1 to one of the three kinds of development" I'd be much more incentivized to leave the natives alone. Give them some kind of bonus that makes me actually stop and think about whether to attack them or not.
The ability to make such a choice relies on it being an informed choice, however, so I also propose the following changes to the actual native attack mechanics:
2. Instead of being random, integrate native attacks with the already-existing (and excellent) unrest system.
The unrest system, in my opinion, is a massive improvement over the way rebels used to work. Instead of having a chance to randomly spawn anywhere, every month, the unrest system is localized (so you know where the problem is and where rebels are likely to spawn) and much easier to read and prepare for. Thus, I propose that native attacks be treated like rebels with respect to the unrest in colonial provinces (basically, if a colonial province has unrest, it will spawn natives instead of any other kind of rebel). This allows players to work within the existing mechanics to help mitigate the chance of native attacks; for instance, taking Humanism ideas to simulate trying to work with the natives and thus lowering the unrest in the province. This will allow you to see exactly how much chance of native attack you have with each province, and better gauge if it's worth it to leave them alive.
This could be helped along by:
2a. Native population and aggressiveness both increase unrest.
The numbers would of course need polishing, but as a ballpark, something like every 100 natives and every 1 aggressiveness increases the unrest by +0.1. This would provide a similar setup to what already exists—provinces with lots of aggressive natives being more dangerous—but would be more transparent and clear to players exactly how much more. This would make it easy to see exactly which provinces would have positive unrest if you were to colonize them, and whether you'd need to station soldiers there.
2b. Have colonists in a province raise unrest.
This one's a bit more speculative and could easily be left out, but if native attacks happen based on unrest, why not have colonists increase unrest slightly in provinces they are in, the way missionaries do? I have no idea what might be good—you'd want it low enough that colonizing a province with 100 natives wouldn't give you unrest without there being serious problems in your empire, but it should also be high enough that you can't waltz into Madagascar without a problem. This would definitely need some testing to work out. Doing this would give a hopefully interesting choice: do I leave my colonist in a province to speed up growth, or remove him to lower unrest? Though if this removing a colonist is actually beneficial more than 20% of the time colonization might need to be sped up slightly given the other slow-downs proposed above (though slightly slower colonization wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing…).
Anyway, those are the thoughts I've had while playing for how to hopefully make colonizing even more fun than it is now. Rewriting native attacks to use unrest would allow the systems and resources already created around unrest to be utilized more fully, and possibly provide more options for random events (events that temporarily raise or lower unrest in a colony, etc.). Thanks for reading that massive wall of text, and I'd be interested to hear people's thought.s
- 3
Upvote
0
