Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise - Developer Diary 3: The Tribes

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Besuchov

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Welcome to the third Developer Diary for Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise. As you probably know by now, we’ve decided to postpone the launch of the expansion, now targeting early next year. The main reason for this is that with the success of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV, we at Paradox Development Studio have leveled up both in our expectations of ourselves and the demands of our fans. We could have finished this on time and even with the quality we are now used to. That is no longer enough – we want more. So for us on the team, this means that the basic production plan for the expansion stays fixed - but we’ve added lots of extra time for polish and tweaking.

Enough about business! Onward to the actual expansion! One of the major goals of this expansion is that we wanted to make North America a more interesting place to start in. As it is now, once you’ve wiped out the Huron or vassalized the Creek, you spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the English to come and steal your land. So we are going to expand North American nation options by adding a number of features that you will hear more about soon.

However, today, I will talk about one of the simpler things we’ve done - just adding more nations to North America.
First of all, there are still ‘uncolonized’ lands there. As always, this land isn’t empty, but best understood as not firmly under the control of any of the major tribes. European settlers or larger tribes can simply squeeze out or absorb local population with little trouble. But for the more organized tribes, you will need to fight a war if you want to take their land.

So we’ve added more than 20 new Native American states to the map. To fit all these in, we had to make some room - so we have removed some of the formerly useless wasteland and added even more provinces.
Why do this? Well, historically speaking, it’s very important to remember the Americas were heavily populated by organized societies. Scholars estimate that New World populations before Columbus could have been between 50 and 100 million (this includes Meso-America and South America), not to mention the sophistication of the Powhatan culture, marked by its walled capital, and the fact that the Mi’kmaq nation of Eastern Canada had trade connections with other nations in the Ohio Valley. Giving these societies the recognition that they are due is part of our mission as a strategy game developer.

On the game design side, more nations will mean more new challenges for players. Though it is certainly not going to be easy to turn these one-province minor North American states into global powers, it will present new ways of understanding the map, allow you to explore new strategies and, hopefully, present a greater variety of worlds for European colonizers – even if they don’t use our new random New World Map option!

Some of this is personal as well. We’ve added the Lenape - a personal favorite of mine for nostalgic reasons. This tribe was in Europa Universalis II back in the day and my favorite country to play was England. Lenape held a position on the eastern seaboard of North America that made them the ideal first target over there. Know your enemy and all that, so this encouraged me to read up on the history. This seems to happen a lot when you find something interesting in these games :)

Historically the Lenape where based around the Delaware River and gave names to many regional features, including Manhattan. The Lenape didn’t make it into the first Europa Universalis IV release - but now they are back :) Give them a warm welcome. No, not with gunpowder. Other examples of tribes new to Europa Universalis IV are the Shoshone, the Pawnee and the Potawatomi to name a few (also check out the enclosed screenshot).
We have a wealth of new nations for you to interact with and, let’s not forget, to be inspired to learn more about. See if you can find all the new tribes on the map :)

Next week I´ll expand a little on what you can do when playing one of these new Native American nations. They have some unique mechanics that we are very excited about.

native_americans.jpg
 
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Still can't read the name of the tribe in Connecticut.
 
Some of this is personal as well. We’ve added the Lenape - a personal favorite of mine for nostalgic reasons. This tribe was in Europa Universalis II back in the day and my favorite country to play was England. Lenape held a position on the eastern seaboard of North America that made them the ideal first target over there. Know your enemy and all that, so this encouraged me to read up on the history. This seems to happen a lot when you find something interesting in these games :)

Historically the Lenape where based around the Delaware River and gave names to many regional features, including Manhattan. The Lenape didn’t make it into the first Europa Universalis IV release - but now they are back :) Give them a warm welcome. No, not with gunpowder.

More playable NA nations looks awesome. For the Lenape, they still exist in scattered communities. Various groups of them were pushed west and north by increasing white settlement, and there's a small reservation a few kilometres from me in Southern Ontario. This group is known as the Delaware of Moraviantown (named after German Moravian missionaries from the late 1700's who encouraged them to settle in Upper Canada). Their settlement was attacked & burned by the Americans when they invaded in the War of 1812 (right after the battle that killed the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh), but they rebuilt across the river and are still there and trying to preserve their language and culture.

Some local history for you :)
 
I'm glad to see the Lenape present as a separate entity. I'm from the area, and it's really very interesting, including a few unique customs, as I've learned from local museums and books.
 
So, I wonder how this will affect colonization.
 
What about tribes in South America like the Tupi and others?
Do vassals (Louisiana, New Spain, Thirteen Colonies and etc) under European powers would be included in the devs?
 
Disappointed. Where are the South America tribes???

It has already been said that CoP focuses on North American Natives. South Americans would require different flavor so it is better to leave them for later. Better one major improvement now and one major later than two minor now and likely never anything more.
 
What about tribes in South America like the Tupi and others?
Do vassals (Louisiana, New Spain, Thirteen Colonies and etc) under European powers would be included in the devs?

This expansion focuses on north america mainly, so all the new tribes are there. What do you mean by "European powers would be included in the devs?"
 
I am interesting in seeing how this effects expansion in the New World by Europeans. It always seems that both human and ai players conquer native tribes early and thus the early expansion areas for Europeans always looks weird, such as the lands of the Huron on the Creek being taken before the East Coast is colonized.
 
So we’ve added more than 20 new Native American states to the map. To fit all these in, we had to make some room - so we have removed some of the formerly useless wasteland and added even more provinces.
Why do this? Well, historically speaking, it’s very important to remember the Americas were heavily populated by organized societies. Scholars estimate that New World populations before Columbus could have been between 50 and 100 million (this includes Meso-America and South America)

Quick Question: What will basetax look like in NA(north of Rio Grande) compared to CA and SA? Populations in CA and SA were much more concentrated than in NA. I will be disappointed if the majority of tribes I run into in the Great Plains have BT5 and 6 provinces. after a quick search,(not the best source) European populations were between 60-75MM. Granted Europe has about 1/4 the landmass that the New World has, but I'm a little skeptical of that 100 million number, especially if large portions of it are overflowing into NA(North of the Rio Grande).