As a great fan of Africa and it’s history I was initially rather pleased with Origins and have already played several fun runs. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, brought to a continent that sorely needed it, in my opinion. While I have no particular love for mission trees, as they go Origin’s ones are top notch. However, having now played several African nations I’m left disappointed by what was ultimately brought to the continent. The simple fact remains that most of the DLC is missions, and there is only so much that missions can do and add to the appeal and dynamics of a region. I also consider replayability not at all helped by them.
However, it is worst than that: Having brought the mission trees up to par with recent standards it has become much more obvious that the other aspects of the region are out-dated and remain woefully underdeveloped.
Let’s look at West Africa. With missions that bring countless claims any player can now conquer all of the region reliably within 40 to 50 years. Several factors are to blame. The obvious critique is that there should have been more provinces and tags added, but we’ve had and continue to have that discussion elsewhere, so despite my own misgivings I’ll just leave that issue to rest here.
Then there’s development, which despite some boosting remains rather lackluster, with historical centers of great wealth and population still represented by low development. Particularly considering the size of many of these provinces. Because AE was also reduced as part of this patch, taking even the great historical cities of West Africa poses not even a little bump for any would-be conquerors.
Nothing else stand in the way either: There are absolutely no interesting diplomatic or political mechanics in the region; no HRE like in Europe or Shogunate, or tributary-systems like in Asia, and West Africa lacks the diversity of states that for example India has to make it interesting despite a lack of such mechanics. There are no regional powers that make playing even an OPM a challenge; Mali, despite looking bigger, appears weaker than ever. In my view, the Hausa or Mossi could have gotten a sort of mini-HRE mechanic where despite internal rivalries they would have had a common defensive alliance to more successfully help them defend against outside aggressors, although this would have worked better if there were actually more of them, as there should be. Oyo could have been boosted and maybe given tributaries from the start to protect the fetishists from the islamic empires. Anything really, to make playing here slightly more interesting!
As is, most nations will simply have two to three allies, all of pretty equal size (there’s a real lack of diversity in this in the region) and pose no threat beyond the first few years. The powerhouse of the region, Mali, is extremely crippled and does not pose any interesting threat or play a similar role to other great regional powers. It doesn’t even have an interesting rivalry dynamic with Songhai that for example Bahmanis-Vijayanagar have.
With most nations in West Africa now able to pretty quickly unify the entire region within several decades (and I can’t stress enough how unlikely this should be from a historical or even a purely geographic pov; we’re talking about a third of a vast continent here!) you will find yourself in pretty much the same position before 1500 no matter which country you picked. This obviously greatly harms replayability in this region.
I have found a similar thing in East Africa, although the problem is less pronounced there are most countries like Ajuuraan and Kilwa at least get an ‘out’ through their missions, being able to head into the Indian Ocean.
I don’t know how much of my frustration with this is caused by the game seemingly becoming much more easy and fast expansion even more forgiving, or perhaps by my high expectations for the DLC, but either way I am left with a taste of disappointment. We are unlikely to ever see Africa revisited, nor am I now pleading for that, so this is now it for that great, interesting and dynamic continent. And that just makes me sad.
However, it is worst than that: Having brought the mission trees up to par with recent standards it has become much more obvious that the other aspects of the region are out-dated and remain woefully underdeveloped.
Let’s look at West Africa. With missions that bring countless claims any player can now conquer all of the region reliably within 40 to 50 years. Several factors are to blame. The obvious critique is that there should have been more provinces and tags added, but we’ve had and continue to have that discussion elsewhere, so despite my own misgivings I’ll just leave that issue to rest here.
Then there’s development, which despite some boosting remains rather lackluster, with historical centers of great wealth and population still represented by low development. Particularly considering the size of many of these provinces. Because AE was also reduced as part of this patch, taking even the great historical cities of West Africa poses not even a little bump for any would-be conquerors.
Nothing else stand in the way either: There are absolutely no interesting diplomatic or political mechanics in the region; no HRE like in Europe or Shogunate, or tributary-systems like in Asia, and West Africa lacks the diversity of states that for example India has to make it interesting despite a lack of such mechanics. There are no regional powers that make playing even an OPM a challenge; Mali, despite looking bigger, appears weaker than ever. In my view, the Hausa or Mossi could have gotten a sort of mini-HRE mechanic where despite internal rivalries they would have had a common defensive alliance to more successfully help them defend against outside aggressors, although this would have worked better if there were actually more of them, as there should be. Oyo could have been boosted and maybe given tributaries from the start to protect the fetishists from the islamic empires. Anything really, to make playing here slightly more interesting!
As is, most nations will simply have two to three allies, all of pretty equal size (there’s a real lack of diversity in this in the region) and pose no threat beyond the first few years. The powerhouse of the region, Mali, is extremely crippled and does not pose any interesting threat or play a similar role to other great regional powers. It doesn’t even have an interesting rivalry dynamic with Songhai that for example Bahmanis-Vijayanagar have.
With most nations in West Africa now able to pretty quickly unify the entire region within several decades (and I can’t stress enough how unlikely this should be from a historical or even a purely geographic pov; we’re talking about a third of a vast continent here!) you will find yourself in pretty much the same position before 1500 no matter which country you picked. This obviously greatly harms replayability in this region.
I have found a similar thing in East Africa, although the problem is less pronounced there are most countries like Ajuuraan and Kilwa at least get an ‘out’ through their missions, being able to head into the Indian Ocean.
I don’t know how much of my frustration with this is caused by the game seemingly becoming much more easy and fast expansion even more forgiving, or perhaps by my high expectations for the DLC, but either way I am left with a taste of disappointment. We are unlikely to ever see Africa revisited, nor am I now pleading for that, so this is now it for that great, interesting and dynamic continent. And that just makes me sad.
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