Avoiding Arbitrary Penalties and Euro-Centrism

[Captain Gars]

snip

Reducing European nations exploring, conquering and colonizing much of the world to "it was a fluke since they brought smallpox" is one way of looking at it, but it's not one I agree with. It certainly played a big part, as did the timing of the Spaniards arrival in some places, like the Inca Empire. But that doesn't mean that a larger commitment from Spain would eventually have led to the same result. I'm not saying that the book Guns, Germs and Steel has all the answers, but I find the explanations in it a lot more creditable than your conclusion that "Nothing in this period (1399-1821) pre-determined European domination of the world. Nothing."

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

 

[Herr Doctor]

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

There should be some system of the fortified trade factories in provinces to avoid large European conquering in Africa or India. May be even possibility to build several forts of various countries in the same province (like at the West African coast).

 

[tului]

Reducing European nations exploring, conquering and colonizing much of the world to "it was a fluke since they brought smallpox" is one way of looking at it, but it's not one I agree with. It certainly played a big part, as did the timing of the Spaniards arrival in some places, like the Inca Empire. But that doesn't mean that a larger commitment from Spain would eventually have led to the same result. I'm not saying that the book Guns, Germs and Steel has all the answers, but I find the explanations in it a lot more creditable than your conclusion that "Nothing in this period (1399-1821) pre-determined European domination of the world. Nothing."

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

This. There is a reason that at the start of Victoria 2 most of Africa is not colonized by Europeans. It simply was't possible to any large extent until well into the 19th century. There are several reasons, but there should be something to slow and stop them. Much more militant natives, disease events wiping out colonies, I don't know. It is something that would be nice to have addressed

 

[Herr Doctor]

I don't deny that Europe 'won' in many senses (though the Europe that 'won' was itself very different from the Europe that set out to 'win'). I'm pointing out how unbelievably skewed your perception of history is, by your cultural perspective. I'm not a post-modernist (nor a cultural relativist); there is an objective history, but the weird jumble of jingoism and fondness for colourful maps Europeans teach their children certainly isn't it.

And how are the points of view "the Incas provided Stalinist industrialization in the 16th century" or "the Ottomans are super-puper conquerors predestined to dominate Europe" presented at this thread are any less jingoistic and egocentric than just ascertaining of the obvious fact that there were European powers establishing their symbolical and actual colonial dominance all around the world?

 

[Blastaz]

There will be no arbitrary euro-centrism in EUIV, there will only be deliberate euro-centrism in EUIV.

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

1) Bring trading posts back allowing early colonising powers to quickly claim large amounts of land, locking out other european powers without war, but not have that much control/exploitation from it.
2) Introduce something like the Horde mechanic (but not constant wars) for North America and Africa so they are really quite difficult to conquer, unlike the push overs in central america. Having viscious tribes in africa that burnt your colonies over most of the continent, and where it would take many wars to conquer them would be one way of making it much harder to colonise Africa without a substantial investment of blood and treasure.
3) Increase Latin tech group dominance over the rest of the world but bring in a slow speed of 18 for all tech groups (bar pagans). So that everyone stays pretty even untill they get early gunpowder troops circa 1530, then allow Europe to pull rapidly ahead.
4) (biggest change) Bring in some sort of logistics penalty making it expensive to send troops to another continent. Only great powers would be able to afford foreign adventures and then only in limited numbers, but buff western troops from 1650 or so so that even small numbers of them can beat up ROTW powers.

2 and especially 4 would require some jiggery pokery to make sure they didnt cripple the ai but they would produce a platform that slowed down the speed of european dominance and acted as a break on colonisation.

 

[icedt729]

And EU III has that in large part, with the neighbor bonus - which is based on the number of countries in a tech group that are ahead of you technologically. Basically, lots of rich nations tech faster than a few huge ones.

The problem is that they have tech rates on top of that, giving the west a double advantage, when tech rate is designed to be (more than) powerful enough by itself, and neighbor bonus is not far from as powerful.

^This. The different tech rates are unnecessary and ahistorical, since the only things stopping the rest of the world from doing what Europe was doing were social and economic problems. It's not like Turks just innately learned things 60% as quickly as Frenchmen did. Give Europe the right resources, the right government types and the right sliders and you should see the kind of tech advantages they had historically, without putting in something as rough and arbitrary as across-the-board tech penalties for every other culture. Europe didn't overtake the Middle East or East Asia in any meaningful way until at least 1600 anyway.

This might just be a personal problem, but I'm especially bothered by how awful tech is in China's sphere. They should have major internal political obstacles to colonization or overseas imperialism or something, but for half the game's timeframe China had the world's highest income per capita, and it's not like we have European powers winning major land battles against anyone in East Asia in this period either. There's really no reason for the region to be so boring and backwards.

 

[Darkath]

Reducing European nations exploring, conquering and colonizing much of the world to "it was a fluke since they brought smallpox" is one way of looking at it, but it's not one I agree with. It certainly played a big part, as did the timing of the Spaniards arrival in some places, like the Inca Empire. But that doesn't mean that a larger commitment from Spain would eventually have led to the same result. I'm not saying that the book Guns, Germs and Steel has all the answers, but I find the explanations in it a lot more creditable than your conclusion that "Nothing in this period (1399-1821) pre-determined European domination of the world. Nothing."

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

It also has to do with conquering mechanics. For conquering the world, you should need a lot of manpower and the economy to back it up. When i see that a westernized japan can conquer non-westernized ming with 10k men in EUIII, i know something is wrong.

Borrowing from CK2 siege mechanics and heavy attrition might be a way to solve those 'too easy to conquer' issues.

I personally think that to hold on captured territories should require mens, otherwise the locals can just take it back. And i hate seeing 5000 men strong garrison coming out of nowhere.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

China is always the big problem for PDS games. Though if they ever do a modern day one they won't have to worry as much about how to restrict it.

 

[Sakura]

Yes, no one likes to see Ming border eastern Europe.

I've never been a fan of demographic and technological penalties on eastern Asian nations. I would prefer to see populous, non-backward countries that just aren't particularly interested in expanding for domestic/cultural reasons. I think that a combination of slider settings, national ideas, modifiers, etc., could be used to make that happen without too much extra work.

I think restricting diplomatic options for Asia would be a good call as well. Sure it'd be nice if something could be put in their place, but I'd be content just not to see crazy royal marriages, inheritances, alliances, etc., all over the place. The European diplomatic model doesn't really work well for the ROTW.

 

[Darkath]

Yes, no one likes to see Ming border eastern Europe.

I've never been a fan of demographic and technological penalties on eastern Asian nations. I would prefer to see populous, non-backward countries that just aren't particularly interested in expanding for domestic/cultural reasons. I think that a combination of slider settings, national ideas, modifiers, etc., could be used to make that happen without too much extra work.

I think restricting diplomatic options for Asia would be a good call as well. Sure it'd be nice if something could be put in their place, but I'd be content just not to see crazy royal marriages, inheritances, alliances, etc., all over the place. The European diplomatic model doesn't really work well for the ROTW.

Why china never sought to expand is more like because it was already a huge multicultural empire on its own, even the Ming couldn't really expand much further without risking dislocation, and over extension brought the manchus in (who took down the ming dynasty). In EuIII, the empire is one massive bloc. Sure sometimes you see Wu getting independance from the AI (by the way i never really understood what was up with the Wu cores, as Wu was not around anymore by far), but it's never really much of a trouble for the human player.

 

[Seelmeister]

There should be some system of the fortified trade factories in provinces to avoid large European conquering in Africa or India. May be even possibility to build several forts of various countries in the same province (like at the West African coast).

I definitely support this suggestion, although it would require some mechanism for either dividing provinces into different areas which can be controlled by different states, or allowing some form of development on other states territories.

Would certainly make the European holdings in Africa far more realistic for the games time frame.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

I'm not talking about British 18th century armies here. Obviously they performed quite well against massed melee infantry. I'm talking about 16th century pike and musket armies. Vs a Mughal army, for instance, basically rather like a Turkish army except with various Hindu warrior auxiliaries (Rajputs etc) rather than Janissaries, and with war elephants.

I presume Mughals would have trained their Elephants to be used to cannon since they used them themselves. They might not be well-trained enough against a wall of spears, but then again the people behind the spears probably haven't seen an elephant before. I would imagine the warriors trained in Hindu martial arts would be used as shock troops to break the pike formations, rather like how Europeans used zweihander swords.

Well, would you like to actually pick what comparison we're making? Either I've missed something early on in the conversation, or you've shifted position.
Are we comparing period to period, or what the nations had when they came into contact?

I'm fairly sure that the various Indian subcontinent armies had equivalent troops in so far as "heavily armoured melee infantry" goes. I do dispute the world beating quality of the khanda though, especially as vast quantities of the Western sword fighting styles were simply lost due to being militarily obsolete, and the focus shifting from swords being a weapon of war into a nobleman's plaything and a dueling weapon, or moving into the more specialised forms of sabre and cutlass for use on (relatively) unarmoured targets.
Within reason, if the balance and edge are similar, anything you can do with one sword of a given size can be done with another sword of the same size.

 

[ANO1453]

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

More meaningful terrain and climates. Even levels of provinces that have different requirements to be explored.
For example, we could make tropical provinces requiring a certain year to be explored, or a certain conquistador level. Or maybe high mountain ranges.
That makes a huge difference, specially if being at war doesn't affect the "discoverability" of those provinces.

 

[Seelmeister]

Perhaps a way to model this would be to introduce a 'familiary' rating with units? Ie if you start attacking tribes in rainforest with units raised and bled in Scandinavia you won't be successful, but after several campaigns the unit would gain experience and begin to acclimatise, perhaps reducing attrition and reducing combat penalties.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

What would be really cool (but probably a nightmare to code) would be if tech groups were context sensitive. If you think of some of the things that arguably helped Europe to get technological supremacy, like the reformation, trade, the rennaiscance etc, well, should Europe still get those advantages if those things are strangled in their cradle? If the Ottoman Empire conquers Northn Italy, becomes the biggest trading nation around the world and conquers enough of Christianity that the reformation never gets off the ground, shouldn't the Muslim world then be the best group?

It would be good if the groups were more or less level at the start, then events as I have described bump the entire culture that get them ahead.

 

[Franconian]

What would be really cool (but probably a nightmare to code) would be if tech groups were context sensitive. If you think of some of the things that arguably helped Europe to get technological supremacy, like the reformation, trade, the rennaiscance etc, well, should Europe still get those advantages if those things are strangled in their cradle? If the Ottoman Empire conquers Northn Italy, becomes the biggest trading nation around the world and conquers enough of Christianity that the reformation never gets off the ground, shouldn't the Muslim world then be the best group?

It would be good if the groups were more or less level at the start, then events as I have described bump the entire culture that get them ahead.

You could just count "conflict potential".

E.g.: if the own culture group / religion is in contact with 3 other religions (x3), 5 culture groups (x2), trades with 18 ressources (x1) and has 1 war per nation/year (x4), you could give it 41 "points". If this is high, you get 90% tech

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Reducing European nations exploring, conquering and colonizing much of the world to "it was a fluke since they brought smallpox" is one way of looking at it, but it's not one I agree with. It certainly played a big part, as did the timing of the Spaniards arrival in some places, like the Inca Empire. But that doesn't mean that a larger commitment from Spain would eventually have led to the same result. I'm not saying that the book Guns, Germs and Steel has all the answers, but I find the explanations in it a lot more creditable than your conclusion that "Nothing in this period (1399-1821) pre-determined European domination of the world. Nothing."

And just to be clear, I'm not a big fan of how easy it often is in the game for a European country to conquer outside of Europe. This is an area I personally like to see some improvements in and hopefully we will be able to deliver that. But it's always a delicate balance since most players don't want to see African invasions of Europe.

Yes.

As I see it, in a hands-off game Europe should end out dominating the world in an average game of Europa Universalis. However, it shouldn't be because of hardcoded numbers, but because of ingame mechanics. Europe(and more specifically western europe) should contain the recipe for success which enables them to make the leap into modernity. However, a player controlling any non-european country should be able to take the time to address these issues, and try to catapult their own chosen nation into modernity as well. Different parts of the world should have different things holding them back. It should also be possible for European nations to become backwards as well. For instance, if the Catholic Church had maintained it's power during the period, I could see the enlightenment being strangled before it does anything.

More specifically, China should be held back not because it's Chinese, but because it's such a huge empire straining due to the limited control a centralized government could have at this time. Any large empire should face similar problems. For instance, if a single country in Europe managed to conquer all of Europe, and hold itself together, it should face some of the social difficulties China faced.

Likewise, China should have a hard time blobbing all over Asia for the reasons they had in real life, not because of arbitrary nerfs.

 

[unmerged(271387)]

I would like terrain penalties for certain units,not necessarily for whole armies.For example the jungles in mesoamerica would render cavalry useless but the unique jaquar aztec units would be more powerful there

 

[Naselus]

I think a major part of the problem is that the 'curve of supremacy' was a bit off in EU3. Basically, the first century or so was touch-and-go for Europeans, but when you hit about tech level 12 or so (when all the next 10 levels techs suddenly cost 200g/level), Europe undergoes a sudden massive take-off moment and literally no-one can compete. Naval ranges are all that stop the French from taking over all of China in 1550... when they shouldn't.

It's fine for Europe to advance faster, frankly, since they did (and no arguments can really oppose that. Cartesian rationalism proved to be very good for science). But the problems come from having the neighbour bonus PLUS the culture groupings PLUS the variable tech level values; if it takes 50 years to go from tech level 4 to 5, then it should take about 50 years to get from level 5 to 6, rather than six months. I always remember gazing on with horror when some nation beat me to the point where army tech suddenly became cheaper than hell, and just knowing that I wouldn't be able to get to the level they were at now until they'd jumped 5 more tech levels.

Since Europe gets to the 'fast' techs first, it then proceeds to sit 5-6 levels up from everyone else - and so gets all the cash bonuses which allow it to tech even faster, so the lead they get is just too much, too early. They should lead... but not by 10-15 tech levels til the 1700s. The system as it stands is fine, it just needs some balance tweaking.

 

[diceyy]

I think a combination of neighbour / trade partner bonuses if they are more advanced in an area and resource linked bonuses is likely to be the best system.