Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise – Dev diary 2: Exploring a new world

[unmerged(553851)]

It seems to me that the basic point of randomizing the New World is not to simulate some sort of accurate geological model, but to simulate the lack of knowledge Europeans had, and thusly, the player.

Explorers don't know about plate tectonics. They don't know about weather patterns, desert zones etc... Adding real life rules to creating an 'accurate' model based on present day tectonic plates is just a crutch to give some players 'advance' knowledge of the New World. Knowledge the explorers just did not possess.

If you want to remove some inaccuracy, how about the one where the explorers don't have to return to the home country to show there discoveries? As it is, It doesn't matter if your conquistador/explorer is lost, you still get his discoveries.

Actually, no. If anything, simulating real-life geomorphology would make the New World harder to predict. Right now, it's easy to wrap one's head around the mechanics of continent generation: a few large blocky landmasses with deserts in the center, no (visibly) complex island chains. From the two maps we were shown, continents seem to be centralized towards the Northern Hemisphere as well (the EU4 map shaves off about 10 degrees latitude from the southern hemisphere, compare the location of Cape Horn to that of Tasmania, the Americas should be much farther south). Having a tectonically-generated New World would be much more exciting to explore and potentially open up many new strategic opportunities from a geographical standpoint. Granted, I realize the difficulty involved in that kind of endeavor, but still, I think it's a nice goal to work towards :happy:

 

[unmerged(150945)]

Will the Aztec Empire's borders be fixed in non-random Americas? They were a lot further to the south than they are now.

Basically if the Zapotec provinces became Aztec, except for Zapotec itself, that would fix it.

 

[Lord Finnish]

I've seen all kinds of alternate history, but I sure never saw one going back 4 billion years!

 

[Ignudo]

If you want to remove some inaccuracy, how about the one where the explorers don't have to return to the home country to show there discoveries? As it is, It doesn't matter if your conquistador/explorer is lost, you still get his discoveries.

that's a pretty good point. As an obsessive Prussia player I really haven't done that much exploration but there is certainly a lot of potential in simulating explorations better.

 

[Ignudo]

It seems to me that the basic point of randomizing the New World is not to simulate some sort of accurate geological model, but to simulate the lack of knowledge Europeans had, and thusly, the player.

but please don't forget that exploration is only part of the game. What's the worth of simulating the pre-Columbus ignorance about the new-world if you get stuck with an absolutely hideous world for the rest of the game.

First, and foremost this is a historical grand strategy game, so the default option will always be the real world. However, I can see the excitement that a random new-world adds to the game and especially some of its core strategic elements. Unfortunately, this trade-off won't make sense to a lot of people if the new world keeps looking like some strange planet.

 

[Ignudo]

here is a pragmatic suggestion:

Why not include a couple of pre-designed alternative world maps? To achieve the primary goal from a gameplay perspective, which is that you cannot anticipate how the new world looks and make strategic decisions accordingly in 1450, it would actually be enough to have maybe 10+ alternative maps that are different enough to each other. This also has the advantage, that every part of the world could be included. I could imagine maps with different Americas but also ones where Australia and Africa are different as well as countless combinations (like same Americas but different Africa). Even if America turns out the same in your particular game, this will come to you as a surprise! Probably the biggest advantage of this option would be that you could harness the communities dedication to make this a great feature as I'm sure some people would enjoy to design their alternative worlds.

 

[balmung60]

but please don't forget that exploration is only part of the game. What's the worth of simulating the pre-Columbus ignorance about the new-world if you get stuck with an absolutely hideous world for the rest of the game.

Honestly, that's going to be early enough that you could probably afford to just start a new game and roll up a new New World or something.

But really, odds are that you'd get used to whatever map you rolled after a while and it'd seem less ugly/strange.

 

[Ignudo]

But really, odds are that you'd get used to whatever map you rolled after a while and it'd seem less ugly/strange.

I'm aware of that and I tried to get into that perspective but to be honest with these maps that's kinda hard. Even good random maps will like strange at first but if you can appreciate their quality this makes the getting used to much easier.

 

[Wolfskehl]

Where are the south american tribes? e.g Tupi tribes(Tupinambás,Tamoios,Potiguaras,Tupiniquim etc) and Tapuia tribes(Tarairyou, Janduwy, Cariris etc).

 

[sr999]

The amount of provinces is not constant. There will never be more, but there can be fewer.

This is a simple statement with dramatic and subtle strategic consequences.

What it means is that nations such as France and England can probably afford to "wait and see" on the choice of exploration ideas, because they generally cannot be worse off than the original timeline ("OTL") in not choosing exploration as their first set of ideas, and might even benefit from avoiding exploration if there turns out to be only a few archipelagos or whatever by way of landmass. This is because they can never do better than OTL in respect of exploitable colonial land. If there was a chance (perhaps small) that there would be a bigger New World in this timeline ("TTL") then the choice for such countries would be far more excruciating (observation only, not a suggestion).

Countries such as Castile and Portugal, optimized for colonization and/or trade, must still go for it hoping that the New World will have roughly as much land as OTL. If that hope is misplaced in TTL they may lose out in relative terms. As consolation they will, inevitably, end up going for Asia earlier than otherwise, so in fairness this is not quite as much of a strategic risk as it may seem.

Side note: the OTL option of hiring (or selling) unemployed explorers/conquistadors would get around this for the AI, but (in my view) would be overpowered if available to human players...

 

[CatKnight]

This has been an amusing thread.

Which part of 'these aren't the final maps' are you people missing? "It doesn't look realistic. There are deserts in the middle." "The province borders look ugly." Wah. They aren't done yet. They never CLAIMED to be done yet. If it still looks like this in December, THEN complain.

"No tectonic plates." Please. Some of the best, most realistic looking fantasy worlds I've seen were prepared by authors with no degree in geology, and some of the most embarrassing pieces of tripe put together by people who should have known better. The tectonic map posted earlier IS pretty. I've seen prettier from fractals or even pen and paper.

 

[Sun_Wu]

Because of the Rocky Mountains, enormous air masses from the west are forced more southward, where they absorb heat and moisture before heading in Norway's direction. In this way, the mountain range helps to create the dominant southwesterly winds that bring so much warm, moist air towards Norway.
It is primarily thanks to these winds, believe the Bergen-based climate researchers, that most of Norway has an annual mean temperature well above the freezing point. This is 5°C to 10°C warmer than the annual mean temperatures at the same latitude around Earth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120906074029.htm

The Rockies have to be there

 

[Vedinu]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120906074029.htm

The Rockies have to be there

That is some research perhaps...
But it is the stream that brings most of the extra warmth, from Gulf of Mexico.

 

[TrojanAC]

I loved this feature in Imperialism II (you are late to do something in this line, i waited for this a long time ) and i'm going to love it in eu4 =)

 

[geminisama]

Don't get sucked in by the trolls

To be trolling, you would honestly have to be upset by my words, which were suggesting the dlc should work with other dlc before release, and then suggest I said them solely to provoke you, and others, into anger, without any concern for what happens to me for "trolling" staff. I haven't heard such misuse of that web-slang in a LONG time. If you honestly think me having my opinion, and then expressing it in a public forum, is trolling, you should vastly reconsider how you view posts on the internet.

 

[Phi]

This has been an amusing thread.

Which part of 'these aren't the final maps' are you people missing? "It doesn't look realistic. There are deserts in the middle." "The province borders look ugly." Wah. They aren't done yet. They never CLAIMED to be done yet. If it still looks like this in December, THEN complain.

It is not complaining, it is criticism. Maybe they never thought about the relationship between deserts and latitude, or mountains and rainfalls. By mentioning this, Paradox can decide if they want to use these simple heuristics in their algorithm. Maybe these were not necessary and they already thought of it, but decided against it. Or they thought of it and plan to implement it. I do not really see, how criticising maps, when there is still developing time left to change the algorithm is in any way not better than complaining in December.

 

[Elfryc]

It is not complaining, it is criticism. Maybe they never thought about the relationship between deserts and latitude, or mountains and rainfalls. By mentioning this, Paradox can decide if they want to use these simple heuristics in their algorithm. Maybe these were not necessary and they already thought of it, but decided against it. Or they thought of it and plan to implement it. I do not really see, how criticising maps, when there is still developing time left to change the algorithm is in any way not better than complaining in December.

I believe the difference between a constructive criticism (a.k.a. "suggestion") and complaining (a.k.a. "whining") is only the tone used in the posts.

At least, that seems to be an evidence for a few people, but not to everybody here.

 

[Jess135]

I've seen all kinds of alternate history, but I sure never saw one going back 4 billion years!

Prehistoric landmasses weren't actually blocky like these alpha landmasses, we just don't have enough information to represent them in any more detail.

 

[Korsan82]

Can you also add a "random map option" for the entire map, not just the Americas? I'd like to see that... Maybe with reduced number of countries if its not possible otherwise.
There was one EU3 mod that did this but something official would be much better..

 

[KPJ]

Would it be possible to get a second dev diary on these random maps when they're complete? I feel like this discussion is all a bit pointless for a feature that isn't complete. And in future can you show us the complete features before you show us the incomplete ones? Imagine what better buzz it would be if the random maps were only rumoured and were saved until the last dev diary and they actually looked great and people were impressed? Stuff like confederations and federations could be described in text and would probably make better early dev diaries because it's something where you can explain the concept to us and the fine-tuning of specific numbers can be worked on later.

I'm really torn on this expansion, I think Paradox generally makes pretty great expansions and it's seldom that I've been disappointed or regretted a purchase. And this is coming from someone who paid full price at release on every major CK2 DLC. And yet, based on what I've seen so far, I might actually be waiting for this one to come on sale. Hopefully my concerns are eased with release because I would very much like to keep supporting Paradox at full price.

Anxiously watching,
KPJ