AI management of naval logistics is not sufficient to beat another AI of same skill that does not have to manage naval logistics, even if it would otherwise have a large advantage.
The AI also has poor understanding of colony management.
Also, right now there are bugs with federations stealing land w/o war + bug with truces, and the AI can't/doesn't know how play around those bugs. That these should be fixed is uncontroversial, I hope.
I agree that AI has poor understanding of colonial management, but there were a time when it was rare a colonial empire get beaten by a native coalition. I hope this performance is a combination of what you said about the bugs + the "non intervention policy" (i'll call it that way, when colonies get attacked and the metropolis doesnt intervene). And i hope this change.
Probably not, they've tried on and off for many patches. It's improved somewhat, but still nowhere near comparable to its ability to march on land.
This is similar to the reason Portugal never makes serious headway against Kilwa, and that Europeans can't press an objectively large advantage against Indian nations even during the windows in the game where those are most meaningful.
Geeee, kilwa/zimbabwe and all african nations from this region are upsetting me. They now conquer south africa from european powers by 1600. Its just so frustranting to see how hard is for the european colonial powers to establish international and distante trade routes.
This preference has been stated many times over the years on EU 4 forums, but it has yet to be backed by reasons that make said preference coherent.
Why "should" most of them fall to colonizers? I have yet to hear an answer that does not have bizarre implications on EU 4's rules as a whole and imply forced/shoehorned outcomes generally.
It "should" because thats whats happened. As i said earlier, we need to find a middle ground. Nor the situation prior to now was good, neither is now. I really dont know how to change this. But right now the changes made are having "bizarre implications on EU 4's rule as role" since the colonial powers are not becoming... colonial powers.
The fact of the matter is that if the Europeans were actually the inept imbeciles that the AI is consistently in EU 4 when it comes to intercontinental logistics, then the western hemisphere would never have been held, same for India and East Indies. While the methods the Spanish used to conquer Mexico/Peru were awful, they were also not something the game could replicate, or even model. A human might ally one Indian nation and get it to betray others to make conquest easier. The AI though?
I agree. History is just to rich and to specific to replicate in a game. As i read what u wrote im starting to think the AI were smarter before all those changes, because it was common to see france, spain and, mostly, uk conquering at least the coastal areas of southeastern Asia. By now, im not saying its impossible, but im not seeing it happening in my last games.
You can say that all you like but without something like machine learning AI (which would outplay you with sufficient training and make the game unwinnable) it's probably not feasible. You'd have to alter the game's rule structure from the ground up, to the point of making a new game.
You'd also have to come up with a way for Asian countries to progress/succeed in a way they did not historically, that still makes sense in the game model. If you can't, you wind up exchanging one set of ahistorical rules for another (because for example the game allows Bharat to hold Spain and culture drift to Spanish, after which their tech restriction just for being "Asian" would be...awkward).
I think some things needs to be clarified. The game is not able to perform the wole tech differences that existed. I do not hope it does. However, all the institutions are overtuned. Feudalism might be the only one that is working in a decent way since its spawn is defined by default. Renassaince is reaching the whole ottoman domains in just 30 years. There were games that the ottos were "renassainced" even before the german principalities. And when the ottos get the full institution, oh geez this sucks, because theyre blobbing again, and almost the whole middle east gets the institution and then africans and asians rapidly get the institution too. Global trade, Manufactories, Enlightment and Industrialization are all spawing in whole world in less than 50 years each. Ottos are getting Printing Press and Colonialism in less than 50 years after its first spawn.
I didnt like the westernization mechanism, and as you said, its not historical and not interesting to the game to restrict so much the tech advances that human players can achieve when playing these nations. But we need to moderate. Global trade, for example, should spawn only in nations with 4 or more merchants or accordingly with its trande range (but never in all provinces that is spawing now). Industrialization should spawn first only in the most industrialized nations, not in every industrialized province. Englightment should spawn only in the most tech advanced nations and at a very slow pace in every province (the ones that are not in the domains of the most tech advanced nations) that have a university.
Renassaince, Colonialism and Printing Press (at least the press associated with the religious movements) are all unique european institutions and should not be spawning so fast as it is.