AFAIK, in Victoria I you had a concept called "colonial war", which could change borders in colonial areas without battles in Europe.
These were very annoying, and universally hated.
Firstly Phalanxia, I must say that I very much agree with your points and have been arguing them myself for some time. Africa in VIC2 is extremely poorly represented, it's like the Devs were going to make more countries but just made Sokoto and gave up (resulting in it literally just sitting there on it's own for the entire game, until getting conquered). I've pointed out the problems to the Devs several times, but they seem to be uninterested in doing anything (i.e. like when I pointed out that
Africa doesn't have enough Population, though I just fixed that one myself).
That's a great post, thanks for contributing. Your map of Africa is much more interesting than the current version, and it would be awesome to see something half as detailed in Vicky itself. How do you feel about the current colonisation mechanics regarding beige areas? Also, is there a process by which Ethopia unifies itself through event? I can't see the devs putting in nine different tags for Ethiopia, given that the Abysinnian state is much more familiar to the the average player, and that also it was the only native state which survived the Scramble.
I think another issue with Africa in V2 is the maintenance of colonies does not seem to be represented as a cost to the state.
Almost all of the settler colonies (Kenya, South Africa, Algiers, French West Africa, etc.) ran at a loss, at least for the first few years, while infrastructure was developed. Congo was unusual for running at a profit in the first three years, and this was because of brutal use of force by the Belgian crown, which suffered significant infamy and loss of prestige when the Congo rubber-gathering processes were publicized.
Another significant issue, in my opinion, that is not covered in the game are European policies towards the natives. The British, for example, in Nigeria used local rulers to enforce their rule, a sort of vassal relationship. In other regions, like Kenya, they encouraged Europeans to become landowners there. The French, on the other hand, used the assimilation system, and theoretically made (the majority of) their African possessions actual French provinces with representation in parliament-- they had unusual testing systems wherein they determined if Africans were 'French' enough to be French citizens.
I'm not even sure what the German model was, but I do know there was a genocide in Namibia under their rule (German Southwest Africa was how it was written in what I've read).
So, the economic models could be divided into at least 4 categories: brutal repression (German Southwest Africa, Belgian Congo under Leopold, Dutch spice islands), assimilation (French Algiers, West Africa), settler colony (Kenya, Cape colonies), or local rulership (Nigerian sultans)
Do these categories make sense? How could they be translated into game terms?
I sympathise with the idea of making the colonial system more detailed, but this issue is big enough to deserve its own thread. Feel free to start it if you wish!
My thoughts on the issue that I'll copy-paste into any new thread on the topic: given that some of these administration policies were essentially institutionalised crimes against humanity, I'm wary of allowing the player to be too repressive. That said, imperialism can't be sugar-coated, and it's something the devs would have to think about quite carefully if they choose to tackle it.
The categories do somewhat make sense, but I would say that those policies were more directed by the local climate and economy than being completely directed by the government/player. Those areas of the world which were tropical and inherently unfriendly to European settlement such as the Congo, the Dutch East Indies etc. were never the target of serious long-term European settlement. I would also group Rhodesia and Kenya into this category, given that the white percentage of the population was so small in both cases (About 1% in Rhodesia).
Assimilation is a potentially misleading term, as it implies that the whole of society was the subject of a project by Europeans to "uplift" them to Western standards. This was not the case, as Europeans recognised how dangerous an educated society was - nearly all of the independence leaders in the post WWII era had at some point been educated in the Westernised, educated elite. There were never any attempts by European powers to fully integrate the natives of their colonies into the colonist society. Japanese policy towards Korea is the exception that proves the rule, as the Japanese claimed that the Japanese and Koreans were really just the same people, something that was not possible to do in any other instance of colonialism.
In light of this, I would propose three different categories: exploitation, client rule and settler colony, with different strengths and weaknesses depending on consciousness, militancy, RGOs, climate etc. One thing that comes to mind is that settler colonies should be able to build factories.
French Algeria was much more of a settler colony than it was an assimilation based one. At the start of the 20th Century, a third of the population was European.
I remember reading somewhere that outside of Namibia the German colonies were the best administrated in the colonised world, but I may be completely wrong and would be happy to e challenged on it.
