Avoiding Arbitrary Penalties and Euro-Centrism

[1alexey]

I find this tread amusing.

About half the posters just want to change the "westernisation" name so it doesn`t "insult" their feelings.

Another wants to replace a system of "arbitrary" modifiers by another system of arbitrary modifiers. I mean, does it metters if you westernise, or take a reform with other name, but similar underlying idea, to improve teching rate?

THen, if we just agree that on average Europe should be dominating, and reversing the momentum is up to a player, that what is wrong with the Current system?


PI either needs to entirely scrap the tech and tech group system, or it can live the current westernisation system like it is, cause changing some labels doesn`t change the essence.

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

I don't get why people keep comparing the GDP of Britain or France with that of India during the 18th and 19th century. The former is a singular state the latter wasn't a singular state and is a subcontinent which is culturally, linguistically more diverse than Europe (still is to this very day). Wouldn't comparing the GDP of Europe with India be fairer.

Why do people compare GDP/c at all?

Maybe it shouws some interesting trends in the continent? That British in 1600 were already slightly better production wise, and skyrocketed in 2 centuries, while India stagnated.

Anyway I think buffing non-Western military units (or maybe giving Western units a huge penalty when they fight on a different continent) , removing the technology penalty on government and land techs (maybe production as well) is the way to go.

As was metioned earlier, the "subcontinent which is culturally, linguistically more diverse than Europe" stagnated, while the "singular state" did not.

As for units, it is plain stupid to make penalty in a way Unit X fights Y worse on continent Z. Mainly becasue the preformance is more dependent on terrain, that can be very similar type to the one from where the unit originates.

Then, there is also an expirience factor. People tend to learn new tricks in new enviroment.

The biggest problem is now how do you recreate Portugal having holdings in India and SE Asia, because this did historically happen and the game mechanics doesn't allow Portugal to blockade Delhi into submission giving them Goa in a peace deal (I know that's not what happened but bare with me here)

Well, there are trade roads, and what seemto be improved Diplomacy.

 

[deadlychipmunks]

Why not just have a system where every country advances at the same rate, more or less (modified by ideas, rulers, and such), but have each culture group get different bonuses per level. For example, Western European would have excellent bonuses for each level of naval research throughout the game period, while Indian would have very poor bonuses. But Indian groups would have better production bonuses for a large part of the game, while Western European would be very poor at the beginning, but rapidly increase (past the Indians) by the 1700's. That way, you could have relatively realistic tech rates throughout the game for all cultures.

Westernization could be handled by having a country that wanted to emulate a certain tech group (India wanting to model itself after Western Europe, for example) convert its own technologies to the nearest equivalent of Western European technologies. For example, Indian naval 20 might only convert to Western European naval 5, but Indian production 20 might convert to Western European production 25 (at 1600 or so) This way, I think, avoids charges of Eurocentrism, while keeping a balanced rate of technology. Any thoughts?

 

[1alexey]

Why not just have a system where every country advances at the same rate, more or less (modified by ideas, rulers, and such), but have each culture group get different bonuses per level. For example, Western European would have excellent bonuses for each level of naval research throughout the game period, while Indian would have very poor bonuses. But Indian groups would have better production bonuses for a large part of the game, while Western European would be very poor at the beginning, but rapidly increase (past the Indians) by the 1700's. That way, you could have relatively realistic tech rates throughout the game for all cultures.

Westernization could be handled by having a country that wanted to emulate a certain tech group (India wanting to model itself after Western Europe, for example) convert its own technologies to the nearest equivalent of Western European technologies. For example, Indian naval 20 might only convert to Western European naval 5, but Indian production 20 might convert to Western European production 25 (at 1600 or so) This way, I think, avoids charges of Eurocentrism, while keeping a balanced rate of technology. Any thoughts?

What does it achieves?
Other than comforting the Indian player that he doesn`t have all that bad tech, it`s just India sucks, period, and the only way to change that is to assimilate to become European.

Again, tech level is just a number.

 

[deadlychipmunks]

What does it achieves?

Well, it acheives the same balance we had before, but gives more flavor to the various culture groups.

Early on in the game, Indian technology, except for naval, was somewhat ahead of Western Europe, and Europe didn't catch up until the 1600's or so. Under my system, an Indian player at 1650 (for example) might look at the rapidly increasing Western European tech and say "I need to westernize, and gain access to these new ideas which would help my country". Or, he might decide, "Gee, the vast cost and crippling revolts aren't worth it to me to westernize, I'm better off keeping up as best I can, and hoping my much larger population will keep me on a somewhat even footing".

By giving a large enough cost to the player to westernize, it makes it a real choice whether to do it or not, but my system resolves nearly all the problems as I see it. Western Europe wouldn't be able to conquer the world by 1500, Western Europe WOULD be able to conquer the rest of the world by 1750. And an Indian player would see that his area of the world was generally more technologically advanced than Europe in 1400 but that he's gonna have a lot of work to do to stay even with a European country by 1750, all of which is inline with historical precedent, but giving the player the option to change the course of history.

I think you're looking at the question of technological advancement in hindsight, where it's clear that Western European ideas won out (were generally "better") by the 1750's, but it would be by no means clear to anyone that that would be the case in 1400.

 

[Closet Skeleton]

I shouldn't bother with this since this is page 11 and I posted once on page 1 but oh well.

Thats pure fiction:

1. Incas, after conquer of new lands, did very little to improve local economy. The only thing, they did, was redistribution of product. But thats nowhere near to your "industralization".

Most of the scale of production was already there, but it was still just as high if not higher than Europe.

2. Spaniard never threw off their metal armors to take incas. This happened in conquest of Mesoamerica.
Partly because cotton armor was good enough armor against native weapons, partly because their metal armor was quite rusty and destroyed.

Maybe I got that one wrong then.

Fabric armour isn't worse against guns than steel armour. Modern bullet proof armour uses synthetic fibers, not metals. The Inca had a more advanced understanding of textiles than Europe.

3. Your view of Incas is from fantasy, not reality. Incas didn't make any developement (apart of roads). Only bureaucracy. You would have to search for developement in other areas. Like in Mesoamerica or in Moche valley.

The Inca didn't do much. But neither did Europe, and yet Europe can happily advance 50 levels of 'production technology' while Inca can't.

What did Europe do to increase farming production in this period? Field Enclose and importation of American crops (eg becoming more like the Inca and Mesoamericans). That's about it.

I don't see how anyone could claim that Incan military tech was anywhere near that of Europe, guns and steel weapons are simply more advanced than what the Incans had available.

'More advanced' is a meaningless statement. Guns and steel did not allow the Europeans to stomp over the Inca. It took decades with a lot of the fighting done by natives. Once the Spanish had to fight in the mountains their technology didn't give them any real advantage at all and their quick conquest of the low-lands was through subterfuge and backstabbing, not technology.

And yet it was Spain that conquered most of the world and not the Inca. I'd be interesting to hear your implementation of tech in a way that would please the majority of players (who play European nations).

I don't think those European players would mind too much if they had to be challenged to conquer America.

Spain conquered America through subterfuge, luck and diplomacy. You'd have to rewrite the game concept pretty heavily to represent it with any level of realism.

The Inca never had the opportunity to conquer the world. If you used a time machine to immunize a bunch of Inca and then teleport them to Europe during the Black Death they might be able to conquer the place fine.

A good number of those were bought legitimately. Taking a few trade ports is not the same as conquering the entire country. Pre-1700s, just about any Indian country could have easily evicted the European trading posts if they wanted to. Point is that they didn't. India was the richest part of the world back then, why cut off trade with your main markets?

Yeah, the Portuguese took those ports because the natives found it economically advantageous to let the Portuguese have them. None of this 'european super tech dominates everyone' nonsense. The only important European technological advantage was in long range navigation.

 

[1alexey]

Most of the scale of production was already there, but it was still just as high if not higher than Europe.

Care to show the yeild/aeria statistics.

Fabric armour isn't worse against guns than steel armour. Modern bullet proof armour uses synthetic fibers, not metals. The Inca had a more advanced understanding of textiles than Europe.

First, they didn`t had bullets to do testing.
Second, in case of the bulled, hardness metters. Steel>textile.

Syntetic fibres of today have nothing to do with textile, in the slightest.

Oh, by the way, best personal armour uses cyramic.

The Inca didn't do much. But neither did Europe, and yet Europe can happily advance 50 levels of 'production technology' while Inca can't.

Let me guess, Europeans advanced metallurgy.

What did Europe do to increase farming production in this period? Field Enclose and importation of American crops (eg becoming more like the Inca and Mesoamericans). That's about it.

So, the words agriculture production efficency was flat in all time periods before the genetically modified seeds?

'More advanced' is a meaningless statement. Guns and steel did not allow the Europeans to stomp over the Inca. It took decades with a lot of the fighting done by natives. Once the Spanish had to fight in the mountains their technology didn't give them any real advantage at all and their quick conquest of the low-lands was through subterfuge and backstabbing, not technology.

Logistics didn`t allow Europeans to bring a dosen of thousands of man and artilery to roll inca flat. Still European weapons were more advanced, and more effective on 1:1 basis.

I don't think those European players would mind too much if they had to be challenged to conquer America.

Unfortunately, we can not have smaller than 1k units, so conquering Incas will always go at ahistorical disadvantage of the later, due to overwelmingly larger numbers of Europeans than IRL.

Spain conquered America through subterfuge, luck and diplomacy. You'd have to rewrite the game concept pretty heavily to represent it with any level of realism.

Just about any conquest was requiring those. That doesn`t cansel the need to swing the sword and fire the gun, sometimes.

Yeah, the Portuguese took those ports because the natives found it economically advantageous to let the Portuguese have them. None of this 'european super tech dominates everyone' nonsense. The only important European technological advantage was in long range navigation.

If they would, they would just gift them, no?

 

[Blastaz]

Unfortunately, we can not have smaller than 1k units, so conquering Incas will always go at historical disadvantage of the later, due to overwelmingly larger numbers of Europeans than IRL.

:rofl:

 

[Evie HJ]

Gars - I think the core point here would be to make long-range military operations significantly harder. Then you both make it harder for westerners to conquer places they shouldn't (while still allowing them to do it once they reach a sufficient tech edge), and you disallow non-west

That said, the Ottos should be ahead in tech, at least land, for a long time then fall behind slowly starting in the XVIIth cent. but mostly in the XVIIIth.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

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.

The right concept is that for an african kingdom conquer a european province is near to the impossible, but for an european country fight out of europe should be more difficult.

 

[Garek Maxwell]

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.

This, coupled with a heavy attrition cost for countries fighting far away from home. This could be tied to country capitols, so European countries can't fight well due to being accustomed to their own climate. Getting anywhere in Africa would be rough, and South America too.

Coupled with this, there should be a situation where the Incans, if they're all united and have no problems, should be more than capable of fending off the Europeans well into the 1700s, but as time goes on the player or AI would have to take advantage of the terrain. This makes it more like the situation in Africa, where Europeans just couldn't get anywhere for the longest time due to harsh terrain, disease, etc.

On top of all that, Native Americans should have more of a chance of surviving for a long long time. If the Europeans tried in real life what they commonly try in game (ignoring the problem where half of Europe declares holy war on them instantly upon discovery), they would have lost considerable numbers, risked uniting previously divided tribes, and likely never got very far in colonizing the Americas. Colonies would probably have been burned to the ground every chance the Natives had, making them almost like the Hordes in behavior, but not quite. And in real life the colonists seemed to often starve and do very poorly despite similar climates, so peaceful action with the natives to sustain colonies should be a virtual requirement for North America at least. The interaction with Europeans should also give large tech bonuses to the natives, allowing them to catch up quickly, which they did in real life for quite a while. It didn't exactly take them long to adopt guns after all.

 

[Fishman786]

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.

A simple solution for that is to model disease and climate more intensely. There could be a modifier which causes non-African armies in Africa to take massive attrition and die off in a few months, even in an occupied province. Since you are making a whole new game rather than a patch, it might be possible to change the AI so that it knows that taking provinces with the 'malaria' modifier is worthless.

 

[Camara]

When Portugal got to India Portugal had some advantages:

- Ships (matched only by the Ottomans when they appeared in the Indian Ocean)
- Artillery (some venetian and ottoman pieces started to appear in indian countries)
- Muskets were somewhat better, but minimal advantage

The musket advantage was pretty minimal, in a big scale it was mostly irrelevant. What Portugal relied on was the naval power, without it the Portuguese Empire in Asia would never exist.
The army had no significant advantage in wars, that's why Portugal waged war and conquered mostly coastal cities. In inner territories Portugal lost the naval card and become yet another army there. And the numbers of Portugal were naturally very small, so suicide would it be.
The main terrestrial portuguese victories in Asia were due mostly to the bravery of the portuguese soldiers, that were very disorganised but plain crazy brave. The portuguese army tech was not better. I'm not sure on the tactics, maybe Portugal was slightly more organised, I can't comment on that.

Something different happened in the Ottoman-Ethiopian wars. The very small portuguese regiment with firearms was significantly better than the spearmen ethiopian army and was the main reason why Ethiopia wasn't annexed by the Ottomans, which naturally had firearms too.

 

[PiriReis]

And what about the Portuguese who controlled all major Indian coastal ports by the 1550s?

This is was done with sheer diplo and trading not only by force.

@ Closet Skeleton
+1

 

[Herr Doctor]

This is was done with sheer diplo and trading not only by force.

And? This supposed to prove what?
The Europeans had enough resources and developed technologies for such long and dangerous voyages, were skilled enough to manipulate locals or to use force when needed, to build decent fortifications and to protect them.

 

[Colombo]

The diplomacy and trade, that stood in Europeans ruling the world (search for allies in distance territories and try to destroy local power by usage of such allies etc) should be implemented. It wouldn't be just more realistic, but mutch more fun as well. Not only for player plaing european power, but for player playing as local "backward" state as well.

 

[PiriReis]

And? This supposed to prove what?

This proves that it was not by only done by sheer hard power and technology, in EU3 you can steamroll the whole of China or India before 1500, that's just unrealistic and IMHO no fun.

The Europeans had enough resources and developed technologies for such long and dangerous voyages, were skilled enough to manipulate locals or to use force when needed, to build decent fortifications and to protect them.

Nothing special about. Ever heard of Zheng He?
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?613631-One-Man-s-Odyssey

 

[Herr Doctor]

This proves that it was not by only done by sheer hard power and technology, in EU3 you can steamroll the whole of China or India before 1500, that's just unrealistic and IMHO no fun.

I did not say that Portugal is supposed to "steamroll" any Oriental power. For me AI Portugal having holdings in India and the Spice Islands is both realistic and fun. For you may be it is more fun to see AI Chinese colonies in Greenland and Northern Scotland.

Nothing special about. Ever heard of Zheng He?
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?613631-One-Man-s-Odyssey

And? What colonies or trade factories the Chinese expeditions founded?

 

[ZechsMerquise73]

Instead of having numerical modifiers on what's happening, and penalisations for everybody whose not a European, expand the game's detail and you'll expand the realism. Why didn't Europeans conquer here or there very fast? What gave them the advantage here? What could have happened to change those situations? Simulate those things, and you'll have a game with meaningful outcomes instead of a number cruncher. Give potential for history to change.

Why worry too much about weird things like Africa invading a part of Europe? Weirder things are going to happen anyway: Like Sweden colonizing Russia every game.

 

[1alexey]

Why worry too much about weird things like Africa invading a part of Europe? Weirder things are going to happen anyway: Like Sweden colonizing Russia every game.

Sweden grabing Parts of Russia happened IRL, and Africa invading Europe happeded IRL.

 

[Blastaz]

Nothing special about. Ever heard of Zheng He?
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?613631-One-Man-s-Odyssey

The problem with China is it is imposible to even write an AI as incompetent as China was in real life in exploiting its inate advantages, let alone letting someone as cunning as a human play with them...