AGC & EEP: Spain

[LlywelynII]

Two ideas:

• Replace "Bankruptcy of Spain" events with a number of events forcing loans, expenditures, construction projects, military actions, aid to coreligionists to simulate why Spain ended up going bankrupt despite its massive influxes of capital. It makes more sense & is more fair to a human player who somehow manages to ride it all out better than his counterparts IRL.
• Rework a number of the Spanish-in-America events to reflect just how impressive the actions of Cortes & Pizarro were - in game terms, what happened was that Cortes/Pizarro moved their units into Tenochtitlan/whereveritwas under treaties of military access & took the rulers hostage - they didn't fight 30,000 Aztec warriors on an even playing field: they slaughtered the Indians in a way the game just doesn't (& can't) replicate. IIRC, Pizarro lost no men out of 280 & killed 8-9,000 from an army of 40-60,000. The Spanish conquest of America should be *MUCH* easier and more event-controlled in its early phases (eventually there was some successful guerilla actions, esp. in Peru) than it currently is.

What do y'all think?
jay.

 

[Alyosha]

I defintely agree with the first point, as I can't stand that the only trigger for the bankruptcy is owning a few provinces. It seems that in my games as Spain my inflation is on the downward path when suddenly I'm hit with events telling me my economy is terrible, even though some of my neighbors are holding 3 or 4 simultaneous loans and many have gone bankrupt.

As for the second point, I like it, but am not sure how to implement it. Personally I don't mind so much sending 20k men into Mexico, as they are not so much for the conquest of the Aztecs, but keeping the peace afterwards. I've always been in support of AI.Spain only events that make conquest of the Aztecs and Incas easier, because this is one area where there is consatant inconsistency (I've never, I mean never, seen an AI Spain conquer the Incas).

 

[unmerged(5605)]

Hmm...I just got an idea. I know I haven't posted before but...

It was so damn easy for the Spanish to conquer the Aztecs and Incas in EU1 because they couldn't build forts. Why don't we just create 'random' events that remove forts for any and all Native American Nations? If events can boost a fortress up a notch, they should be able to drop it down to zero. They could be set to fire often enough to ensure any forts that were built got destroyed fairly rapidly.

I know, technically speaking there were fortified cities in some of the more built up areas. And, this would make it a lot easier for a player who *wanted* to play Native Americans (why you would in this game I will never know) to sweep over. But in my mind, it's better than event driven conquest.

 

[LlywelynII]

(I've never, I mean never, seen an AI Spain conquer the Incas).

I was about to say that I had, but then I realized that I'm playing the 1620s Mercantilist scenario . There really should just be an event once AI Spain discovers Cajamarca giving them Pizarro, the majority of the Incan Empire & a roomful of gold.

Why don't we just create 'random' events that remove forts for any and all Native American Nations?

Because they might not fire & they'd be kinda silly - why not just not give them forts? Isn't there a way to set the AI not to bother? I know *Spain* never fortifies a damned thing in the West Indies.

(why you would in this game I will never know)

Who *doesn't* want to invade Spain from Aztec warships? It's, like, number four to do on the counterhistorical list after saving Byzantium, winning the HYW, & leading China to world domination. Right now, the only thing that makes playing Mesoamericans dull is the derth of decent events and leaders after the 1510s.

jay.


EDIT: This is the 1419 scen. Doesn't Spain *start* with the New World in 1515?

 

[Stonewall]

In most of my EEP games, Spain conquers the Aztecs and Incas. The Conquest of the New World events have gone a LONG way to making this happen quite consistently.

EDIT: I don't play 1419, so my observations are based on the 1520 scenario.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Originally posted by Llywelyn

Rework a number of the Spanish-in-America events to reflect just how impressive the actions of Cortes & Pizarro were - in game terms, what happened was that Cortes/Pizarro moved their units into Tenochtitlan/whereveritwas under treaties of military access & took the rulers hostage - they didn't fight 30,000 Aztec warriors on an even playing field: they slaughtered the Indians in a way the game just doesn't (& can't) replicate. IIRC,

Well Cortes had an army of at least 20,000 or so when he finally reduced Tenochtitlan. His "taking the emperor hostage" ploy didn't turn out terribly well in the end, as he lost about 1/3 of his European forces in the Noce Triste, and all his allies abandoned him.

 

[LlywelynII]

Re: Re: AGC & EEP: Spain

Originally posted by Isaac Brock
Well Cortes had an army of at least 20,000 or so when he finally reduced Tenochtitlan. His "taking the emperor hostage" ploy didn't turn out terribly well in the end, as he lost about 1/3 of his European forces in the Noce Triste, and all his allies abandoned him.

And here is why I post these things with question marks after them. I'd forgotten about that...

Pizarro eventually had to put down Incan rebellions, too, but he didn't need that many, did he?

jay.

 

[Kaigon]

It is quite possible to "lock" the americans at tech 0, if that's desired. You just have to make sure that no one else has the tech and make the shock values horrible bad, as well as morale. To prevent the americans from getting to land tech 1, we just have to raise the cost.
Talk about this here...

 

[Stonewall]

I have noticed that in the 1520 scenario start, the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean aren't Spanish cultured or religioned. Here is a fix for that problem.

# Spanish Colonies
province = { id = 29 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 39 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 137 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 138 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 139 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 140 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 142 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 143 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 144 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }
province = { id = 151 religion = catholic culture = "iberian" }

In addition, since ai Spain has an extremely hard time colonizing new areas would it be worthwhile to create some events that give the ai a colonization boost once it owns a colonial province? I was think ing of something along these lines:

[color=white]
event = {
	id = xxxxxx 
	random = no 
	country = SPA
        trigger = { owned = { province = 137 data = -1 }}
        date = { year = 1500 }
        offset = 30
	name = "The founding of Havana"
	desc = "Havana was founded by Spanish settlers in the early 1500's."
	style = 2 
	action_a = { 
		name = "Yes, found the city." 
		command = { type = population which = 137 value = 1000 } 
                command = { type = provinceculture which = 137 value = iberian }
                command = { type = provincereligion which = 137 value = catholic }
		
	}
}
[/color]

This allows colonial cities to actually develop on the Caribbean islands where the natives usually kill off all the colonists before city size 1000 is reached.

EDIT: Sorry, I meant for the first part to go in EEP bug section.
EDIT2: Added the changes advocated by Kaigon.

 

[Kaigon]

Originally posted by Stonewall

[color=white]
event = {
	id = xxxxxx 
	random = no 
	province = 137 # Havana
        date = { year = 1500 }
        offset = 30
	name = "The founding of Havana"
	desc = "Havana was founded by Spanish settlers in the early 1500's."
	style = 2 
	action_a = { 
		name = "Yes, found the city." 
		command = { type = population which = 137 value = 1000 } 
		
	}
}
[/color]

Shouldn't the event fire for Spain only, and culture should be changed to iberian (religion to catholic). The culture/religion change is only necessary if the event can fire if Havana is a TP (needs to be tested)...

 

[Stonewall]

Originally posted by Kaigon
Shouldn't the event fire for Spain only, and culture should be changed to iberian (religion to catholic). The culture/religion change is only necessary if the event can fire if Havana is a TP (needs to be tested)...

Yah, you are correct. The event should only fire for Spain, and the cluture and religion should be changed as well. I wasn't thinking about TP's. Editted to reflect this change.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

Originally posted by Kaigon
Shouldn't the event fire for Spain only, and culture should be changed to iberian (religion to catholic). The culture/religion change is only necessary if the event can fire if Havana is a TP (needs to be tested)...

I tested this with 1.05. The event will fire if there is a TP. This will change the religion and culture, but the population command does not work on a TP - the population will not change and it will not become a colony/city.

Basically if the AI puts a TP there it will lose almost all the benefit of this change.

By the way, I'm not so sure Spanish colonization is so bad. In my games they seem to do alright. If their difficulties come from beta chnages I'd suggest holding off on this sort of thing until we see where the beta ends up.

 

[unmerged(6159)]

When should Aragon be inherited

I think this is a question that ought to be discussed. We left it alone in the EEP, and I added an event to try to make the inheritance come off more often, but I'm coming around to the point of view that for gameplay reasons Aragon should be inherited in 1476.

As is France has much too much of a free reign in this period, and Spain will never send Gonzalo de Cordoba to Italy. It's certainly justifiably historically, but I think that gameplay suffers too much by postponing the inheritance until 1516.

 

[unmerged(9145)]

In my own game I removed the American nations and replaced them with natives. The result is quite consistent: both Spain and Portugal colonize in a very historical fashion without having to send huge armies of conquest across the ocean. Even better, the armies they do send tend to wipe out the natives, which is quite historical (both in terms of Spanish acts of genocide and the wave of deadly diseases that followed the Spanish invasion).

If ever I'm interested in actually playing the Aztecs, Incas, or Mayans, I can always add the nation back into the game manually. But for the AI it's no contest that removing these nations improves European colonization enormously (and removes the player cheat of 'instant empire').

As for the claims of Spain's huge military victories...let's not forget that Spain did not fight these actions alone with a lousy 300 men. They fought these battles with 300 Spaniards *AND* tens of thousands of Indian allies, former subjects of the Incas who were very pissed off at being enslaved as second-class citizens and saw the Spaniards as a means of payback. There was never any battle, anywhere, where 280 Spaniards defeated 50,000 Indians by themselves - that's just revisionist claptrap, an effort by neo-nationalists to conveniently discount the contribution of the Indian allies. Although how you can just 'forget' that at one point somewhere around *250,000* Indian allies marched with the Spanish is beyond me....

It should also be noted that once the Incas realized the Spaniards weren't gods, but just plain bastards, they managed to destroy a number of heavily-armed and quite large Spanish forces (primarily through ambush) later on even though their weapons were extremely primitive. And after the former Spanish allies realized that the Spanish were no better than the Incas (and considerably worse, in many cases), Spain had to ship large numbers of men to South America to make up for the loss of allied cannonfodder.

If you want to keep the nations and yet don't want to force the player to ship troops early on, you could write some events that give the Spanish free troops in South America once they have a colony down in a particular province, or one of a set. This could represent the effect of those Indians that allied with the Spanish, and essentially won the early battles for them. The allies show up for the first few years (the free troops), and then stop after they figure out that the Spanish are even worse assholes than their Incan masters were....

Max