EU 4 : Are australian tribes supposed to be so boring ?

[gafotir]

Hi all. I wanted to change venue and to play australian tribe eora for once, thinking i was gonna be able to expand in the pacific or, who knows, in south east asia. After having spent most of the game in speed 5, i am still trying in 1619 to find a way to leave that tribe thingy and move feudal. I am playing iron man in hard difficulty, so no option to load a saved game, am a settled tribe, have not done the Horde thingy because i was not aware of it at the time, have conquered most of Australia and have no european neighbours to allow me to go feudal. No fleet neither to explore elsewhere as i am still tribe.
This is really starting to get stale and soo boring that i am leaving this country to go somewhere else.


What is the use in having supposedly developped thoses regions to make them so boring to play ? Sorry Paradox pals, but this tribe thingy is really getting on the nerves of a lot of players. Especially when there is no clear explanation of the way you can get out of it.

 

[Frossa]

They were a mistake.

 

[st360]

People kept insisting on ever more absurd tags, until eventually 500 wandering stone age families where implemented as "nations".

The arguments where:

1) Its wrong this province is represented in EU 4 as just an empty colonizable province with 5000 natives living there because a tribe of 5000 natives who got colonized lived there. The only way to represent that is with a new nation. (maybe its even a bit racist they aren't already a nation?)

2) I read about/have ancestry/live nearby and I think making this province into a playable nation would be cool.

3) You don't have to play the new nations if you don't like them, you can just ignore it. More stuff is always better, don't ruin other peoples fun.

As for your first question, no. Australian natives shouldn't be this boring to play. They should be much more boring. Idea groups, armies, diplomats, merchants, development and technology should be disabled. You should only be allowed to click "migrate province " for 400 years untill colonial Australia auto annexes you. But Paradox decided to make the tags absurdly more fun.

 

[ForVictory]

They shouldn't even be in this game and neither do the Pacific islands and many north American tribes as nations.

 

[Sergeant Major Gross]

Yes. They're probably cooler then they're supposed to be because they shouldn't be real tags.

 

[Word_Smith]

EU4 simply wasn't build to depict societies like the Australian Aboriginals properly. Maybe in EU5, nomadic tribes will be handled in a way that represents them without shoehorning them into a gameplay loop meant to emulate the politics of European city-states.

 

[YetiBandito]

It isn't about gameplay it is more of a political or educatinal statement.

All other areas have some tribes to highlight that those areas were already settled.

 

[Restless Native]

EU4 simply wasn't build to depict societies like the Australian Aboriginals properly. Maybe in EU5, nomadic tribes will be handled in a way that represents them without shoehorning them into a gameplay loop meant to emulate the politics of European city-states.

What kind of gameplay would you suggest to portray a bunch of Stone Age tribes wondering around a desert for 400 years.

EU IV is game about history and civilisations. And there are mechanics, implemented well or not, about dynasties, war, diplomacy, religion, law, trade, economics, expansion, exploration, reforms, institutions, science, and many more aspects of civilasation.
Stone Age tribes have nothing to do with these and adding them to the game was a failure. There was no way to accomadation them in a game about progress 1000’s of years ahead of them and there should be no attempt to do so.

 

[Word_Smith]

What kind of gameplay would you suggest to portray a bunch of Stone Age tribes wondering around a desert for 400 years.

Victoria 3 seems to have the right approach. They're represented on the map, but not playable.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

What kind of gameplay would you suggest to portray a bunch of Stone Age tribes wondering around a desert for 400 years.

EU IV is game about history and civilisations. And there are mechanics, implemented well or not, about dynasties, war, diplomacy, religion, law, trade, economics, expansion, exploration, reforms, institutions, science, and many more aspects of civilasation.
Stone Age tribes have nothing to do with these and adding them to the game was a failure. There was no way to accomadation them in a game about progress 1000’s of years ahead of them and there should be no attempt to do so.

Amen

I can get why someone would like to have their country represented, but putting two completely different societies into one framework is never going to go well.

Even using the same template for European and East Asian societies is somewhat of a stretch (though I feel like Paradox has a done a good enough work with it).

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Victoria 3 seems to have the right approach. They're represented on the map, but not playable.

Maybe that's the better way though I can already see people suggest to unlock them, because they are already in some why not make them playable...

 

[Jihem]

I never understood what led Paradox to include them in the game. Simple market research should have led them to conclude that players would be very unhappy. It's insane to have extremely elaborate Oceanian content, while Persia or the Arabian Peninsula still have rudimentary content.

Not to mention that tag inflation is said to have an impact on the game's performance and lag. If so, then these Oceanian tribes should be removed immediately. There, it gives the impression that Paradox has explored another path, the transformation of EU IV into a kind of Civilization.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I don't get how having Australian playables leads players to be unhappy. In fact I'm the opposite, I think it's cool. You can be annoyed that Scandinavia and similar is lackluster, but taking it out on someone playing as Tonga seems counterproductive.

 

[ImAdrian]

Tbh there are so many tags in the game that it's close to impossible to make all of them feel unique and fun to play. Some are just fillers, you have the option to play them if you want for some reason, which is ok, but they are not all meant to be on the same level of fun.

 

[Word_Smith]

I don't get how having Australian playables leads players to be unhappy.

Though all of this has already been said before, even in this very thread, I'll summarize it for you.

1. Developer time is finite. Spending time on tags that don't fit the game mechanically actively subtracts from time that could be spent on developing the ROTW.
2. Processing power is finite. Adding more tags for the sake of adding more tags slows down the game for everyone.
3. For all intents and purposes, Aboriginal tags behave as Westphalian states when such mechanics do not represent their historical way of life, how they viewed themselves, or how they interacted with outsiders in any shape or form. Ever wonder why aboriginal tags end up building cities that rival the size of Istanbul and Beijing, even though the historical populations of some of these groups numbered in the mere thousands? Ever wonder why Aboriginals are building frigates and galleons centuries before European contact? Ever wonder why colonizers have to send diplomats to announce a full-on naval invasion in order to colonize Australia? It's just nonsensical.
4. It sets the bad precedent that even the smallest, most remote cultures must have playable tags. At that point, why even have a colonization mechanic if you're going to make it irrelevant? A particular culture not having a tag doesn't mean that they didn't exist or weren't important. It's simply acknowledging that they structured their societies differently at that point in history, and were thus treated differently by so-called "civilized" powers.

You can be annoyed that Scandinavia and similar is lackluster, but taking it out on someone playing as Tonga seems counterproductive.

Nobody is "taking it out on someone playing [insert Oceanian minor here]". We're talking about game mechanics, not people.

 

[currylambchop]

Hot take: the native tags are there to make it easier to blob as a coloniser by declaring war on them. Sad but that is the function they take at least when you’re not Playing them

 

[st360]

Victoria 3 seems to have the right approach. They're represented on the map, but not playable.

Yeh, just what Paradox needs to put the "X should be playable" crowd into a blood frenzy. "It clearly exists on the map and you could be playing it right now, but we grayed out the start button"

 

[MatthewP]

Hi all. I wanted to change venue and to play australian tribe eora for once, thinking i was gonna be able to expand in the pacific or, who knows, in south east asia. After having spent most of the game in speed 5, i am still trying in 1619 to find a way to leave that tribe thingy and move feudal. I am playing iron man in hard difficulty, so no option to load a saved game, am a settled tribe, have not done the Horde thingy because i was not aware of it at the time, have conquered most of Australia and have no european neighbours to allow me to go feudal. No fleet neither to explore elsewhere as i am still tribe.
This is really starting to get stale and soo boring that i am leaving this country to go somewhere else.


What is the use in having supposedly developped thoses regions to make them so boring to play ? Sorry Paradox pals, but this tribe thingy is really getting on the nerves of a lot of players. Especially when there is no clear explanation of the way you can get out of it.

When paradox added them it was much easier to reform and become a regular nation that could explore etc. As you can probably imagine from the responses on this thread so far, some people were VERY UPSET about this. So paradox nerfed reforming them and now the only real option to avoid sitting around for hundreds of years is the horde thing. That’s what you’re supposed to do as a player. I agree it’s a bit of a shame it’s semi-hidden and the other options are traps.

 

[Restless Native]

When paradox added them it was much easier to reform and become a regular nation that could explore etc. As you can probably imagine from the responses on this thread so far, some people were VERY UPSET about this. So paradox nerfed reforming them and now the only real option to avoid sitting around for hundreds of years is the horde thing. That’s what you’re supposed to do as a player. I agree it’s a bit of a shame it’s semi-hidden and the other options are traps.

But they were thousands of years behind. They should, under no circumstances, be able to skip the basics of civilisation to reform and catch up.

 

[gafotir]

Wrong. Who says history has to repeat itself ? Because it happened this way does not mean it could not have happened differently. There were some pretty powerful countries in Africa, in south america. They missed their calling but it does not mean they could not have become as strong as lots of European nations if the situation had not evolved otherwise.

I believe the main difference underlined in all thoses answers is linked to the definition of what EU 4 has to be. Some players consider it a historical game only, not allowed to depart too much from the historical standards as real history had them. In my case, as in the case of other players, EU 4 is a game that allows "what ifs". I would love for exemple to develop the maoris or the australian tribes to become leaders of oceania with, who knows, a foohold in asia.

And what i am advocating is not to make tribes as powertfull as nations,at start, far from it, but some measure of clarity regarding the possibilities to develop them. I dont want them to be mere ornements or there is no use in having created them.

Have fun.