Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 20th of April 2021

[Jamnesia]

Y'all really need to expand Scandanavia, Poland, the Baltic, and maybe colonies they all just feel so underdeveloped for how important they were to real history. especially since countries that were barely important in 1444 have these massive mission trees and sweden barely has a tree

 

[ELPhantomII]

So, is there no plan to change "Excommunication" CBs so that target countries can't just buy an indulgence mid-war and making it effectively a no-CB war?

 

[Gurluas]

Are the new Nation Designer updates still planned? I thought they would be added to this version.
Things such as the rest of the Ck2 religions.

 

[EMT0]

So long as we're throwing out feature requests and attention on areas that are lacking...as someone from Peru, your current Mesoamerica and Andes design makes my blood boil and I refuse to touch any part of it nowadays. It goes beyond misguided or inaccurate, something which I could deal with, but it's so insultingly wrong that it leaves me incredulous. I stick to the Old World exclusively out of frustration and do not play colonizer states in Europe so as to avoid playing with these mechanics. I'm not going to drop a drive-by post, I'm actually gonna list all of my grievances here:

1) Agriculture, what's that? - Paradox has decided that all New World states will start with the same institutions; that is to say, none. The idea that the Mesoamericans or Andeans didn't practice a form of feudalism is ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous, even. The Andes mita system was arguably one of the most comprehensive and effective forms of state-controlled labor in the world during this time period. We have so much Inca construction that remains standing to this day thanks to how organized their labor system was not just in agriculture but for public works, road building, establishing settlements, etc.

I don't really know what to add here beyond just stating that no, this is incredulously wrong. Words fail me to go more into this topic because I feel like I'm being gaslighted. The truth of the matter is that Paradox had no idea how to properly model non-settled states such as steppe hordes, the tribes of the Arabian interior, and the hunter-gatherers of the New World and decided well, they'll start without feudalism as an institution. And if steppe hordes, the same 'backwards' steppe hordes that brought gunpowder to Europe don't have feudalism, well, neither does anybody in the New World. I don't agree with this setup at all in the Old World, but let's not do the double silly in the New World for arbitrary reasons

2) Every New World religion is Aztec blood sports - So...reforming religions. The organized states of the New World in Mesoameria and the Andes are doomed to perish and unable to change their society without changing their inherently flawed religions that practice human sacrifice. All New World peoples tore out hearts by the tens of thousands for their religion...hmmm, wait a sec. It's almost as if this was a strictly Aztec phenomenon and while some human sacrifice was practiced, it was the Aztec that were infamous for it and all of their neighbors thought they were lunatics. Stick the reforming the religion business due to extreme human sacrifice to the Aztecs. The Inca practice of human sacrifice was only ever internal and restricted to stereotypical stuff like trying to get rid of a drought or the death of an emperor. It'd make far more sense to give a diplo rep negative to Andean and Mesoamerican states that practiced some form of human sacrifice once they make contact with Europe. The Aztecs...well, they're not my ballpark. But it's important to highlight just how much of an anomaly the Aztecs were, and that the current system that delegitimizes the religions of the New World is a tremendous frustrating design choice. And pretty clearly made so as to reuse the same mechanic across all three major civilizations in the New World(and doing the Muisca dirty in the process).

3) Oh backwards, backwards people, just sitting there waiting to die - There are multiple elements to this; a complete failure to understand why Spain was so successful in conquering established states in the New World, as well as either blinders or indifference to the complexity of New World organized states and their achievements. Let's start with the latter first, and focused exclusively on the Inca as those are my area of comfort on the topic.

The Inca were not backwards. I know, I know, you learned otherwise. And here's the caveat; the only thing that's true about that statement is with respect to their weapons and armor. The Inca were a highly centralized realm spanning almost the length of the Roman Empire at its peak from one end to the other. And instead of a sea that can provide rapid transportation from end to the other, there were mountains. The Inca system largely ran on its bureaucracy based out of Cuzco through which labor was controlled. This realm was so stable that it took the death of its emperor and the heir apparent back to back in order to start a civil war; prior to this, the Inca had no succession crisis at all. Despite the inherent hostility of the terrain, the realm was reunited, but the Spanish showed up days after the civil war ended. The one that ravaged the entirety of the Inca realm, lasted years, and further spread the disease that killed both the emperor Huayna Capac and his heir Ninan Cuyochi? Yep, that one. To say that the Inca system was stressed to all hell would be putting it lightly, yet despite that, it held. It would have probably started to recover. Up until the Spanish arrived at the best moment imaginable to topple it all over, but more on that later.

Back to the Inca, their political system was very complex and they had the economy to match. Yes, I hear you say, no currency, no writing system. To that, I say, centrally-ran economy and the quipu system. The Inca didn't manage to run this entire system and keep it rock solid throughout their entire history via the seat of their pants. Their economy was robust, demonstrably effective, and productive. Inca agricultural yields to this day are something we struggle to emulate on the terrain they farmed on. It was risk-mitigating, with a focus on stockpiling food in safehouse throughout the empire. The Inca were talented craftsmen both with metal and stone and built things such as suspension bridges, aqueducts, and mortar-free buildings that are standing to this day in one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world.

On the conquest itself, well, I highlighted it up above to an extent. Pizarro showed up at the best time imaginable and decapitated the head of the state; taking the Sapa Inca hostage after an enormous political crisis had only just finished. This paralyzed all possibility of responding, and the Inca fell having never fought a proper battle because by this point they'd exhausted the armies long past their due service time(all men were obligated for a fixed amount of time to serve in the army) just wrapping up the Inca civil war. What about the Battle of Cajamarca? Well...that wasn't really a battle. Let me explain the Inca perspective. The Sapa Inca went to meet Pizarro as the first act of a new Sapa Inca looking to legitimize himself, and before he even got a chance to step foot in Cuzco after concluding the civil war. He went to meet Pizarro because he saw an opportunity for a show of strength by having these foreigners do the equivalent of kowtowing to him, Andean style. For more info on this, the book 'History of the Inca Realm' by Maria Rostworowski covers this in detail. To keep it short, Andean civilization had developed where hosting others with your own hospitality was a way to affirm the vassalage of the person being hosted. Rather than going to war, you'd lavishly treat the petty ruler and in exchange receive what you want out of that war be it labor, goods, vassalage, or all of the above. It's an act of submission by the one accepting. Coming from two entirely different and independently developed civilizations, neither understood what the other was after, especially with the language barrier.

So, Battle of Cajamarca. The Sapa Inca shows up with his army, but his army is largely unarmed and dressed for the ceremonial show of strength. He greets Pizarro's party warmly, and hosts them as is the tradition in the Andes. To him, they're submitting to him. To the Spanish, well, we know what happens. The Spanish pre-planned to ambush Atahualpa and got fortunate that his show of strength meant minimal guards and no weapons. They ambush his guard which included some of his best generals, capture the Sapa Inca, and with the majority of his army not even armed nor close, demand a ludicrous ransom for his release. With all organization collapsed, so did the army which never engaged directly with the Spanish and instead dispersed after a loooong civil war. In other words, the 'battle' is really just Spanish propaganda to glorify their conquest of the Inca. It was a small ambush where the Spanish arguably arrived at the best time imaginable and rolled a 20. Even a few days later and Atahualpa would have been in Cuzco and busy with far bigger fish to fry than interloping Spaniards. And the Inca weren't the Aztec; the Inca were more demographically cohesive, better governed, and with far fewer tribes to incite against the Inca and almost no significant organized neighbors like the Aztec had with their vassals and enemies. It's telling that the most notable native aids were the Chachapoyas which were a recent conquest during the reign of Huayna Capac; again, that's down to the mita system. The Inca were brutally efficient at demographic control and wrote the script on how to assimilate the recently conquered via resettlement, controlled marriages, encouraging Quechuafication, etc.

So with all that said, Paradox are doing Mesoamerica and especially the Andes dirty, and placing them on the same level as the tribal societies of the New World that didn't practice agriculture. Can basically be summed up as pulling the 'they're all the same' card on an entire hemisphere of people. And that's ignoring the ability of the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530 ingame and the silly as all hell ability to wipe stacks of natives at 5-to-1 losing odds. All of that so that Paradox can model a failed narrative on the conquest of the Aztec(which depended on the Spanish playing the diplomacy game and functioned more like supporting the independence of all of their vassals) and the Inca(actual stars align scenario where barely any battles were fought). And that's on top of all the hurdles Paradox added because that was too easy. Between forcing a religious reformation of their religions for arbitrary reasoning that applies to only one society in the New World, penalties to production in the New World because the New World natives are too simple to know how to handle gold, terrible development for how prosperous the region was before the conquest, etc....it's maddening and frustrating as all hell.

 

[Lombii]

So long as we're throwing out feature requests and attention on areas that are lacking...as someone from Peru, your current Mesoamerica and Andes design makes my blood boil and I refuse to touch any part of it nowadays. It goes beyond misguided or inaccurate, something which I could deal with, but it's so insultingly wrong that it leaves me incredulous. I stick to the Old World exclusively out of frustration and do not play colonizer states in Europe so as to avoid playing with these mechanics. I'm not going to drop a drive-by post, I'm actually gonna list all of my grievances here:

1) Agriculture, what's that? - Paradox has decided that all New World states will start with the same institutions; that is to say, none. The idea that the Mesoamericans or Andeans didn't practice a form of feudalism is ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous, even. The Andes mita system was arguably one of the most comprehensive and effective forms of state-controlled labor in the world during this time period. We have so much Inca construction that remains standing to this day thanks to how organized their labor system was not just in agriculture but for public works, road building, establishing settlements, etc.

I don't really know what to add here beyond just stating that no, this is incredulously wrong. Words fail me to go more into this topic because I feel like I'm being gaslighted. The truth of the matter is that Paradox had no idea how to properly model non-settled states such as steppe hordes, the tribes of the Arabian interior, and the hunter-gatherers of the New World and decided well, they'll start without feudalism as an institution. And if steppe hordes, the same 'backwards' steppe hordes that brought gunpowder to Europe don't have feudalism, well, neither does anybody in the New World. I don't agree with this setup at all in the Old World, but let's not do the double silly in the New World for arbitrary reasons

2) Every New World religion is Aztec blood sports - So...reforming religions. The organized states of the New World in Mesoameria and the Andes are doomed to perish and unable to change their society without changing their inherently flawed religions that practice human sacrifice. All New World peoples tore out hearts by the tens of thousands for their religion...hmmm, wait a sec. It's almost as if this was a strictly Aztec phenomenon and while some human sacrifice was practiced, it was the Aztec that were infamous for it and all of their neighbors thought they were lunatics. Stick the reforming the religion business due to extreme human sacrifice to the Aztecs. The Inca practice of human sacrifice was only ever internal and restricted to stereotypical stuff like trying to get rid of a drought or the death of an emperor. It'd make far more sense to give a diplo rep negative to Andean and Mesoamerican states that practiced some form of human sacrifice once they make contact with Europe. The Aztecs...well, they're not my ballpark. But it's important to highlight just how much of an anomaly the Aztecs were, and that the current system that delegitimizes the religions of the New World is a tremendous frustrating design choice. And pretty clearly made so as to reuse the same mechanic across all three major civilizations in the New World(and doing the Muisca dirty in the process).

3) Oh backwards, backwards people, just sitting there waiting to die - There are multiple elements to this; a complete failure to understand why Spain was so successful in conquering established states in the New World, as well as either blinders or indifference to the complexity of New World organized states and their achievements. Let's start with the latter first, and focused exclusively on the Inca as those are my area of comfort on the topic.

The Inca were not backwards. I know, I know, you learned otherwise. And here's the caveat; the only thing that's true about that statement is with respect to their weapons and armor. The Inca were a highly centralized realm spanning almost the length of the Roman Empire at its peak from one end to the other. And instead of a sea that can provide rapid transportation from end to the other, there were mountains. The Inca system largely ran on its bureaucracy based out of Cuzco through which labor was controlled. This realm was so stable that it took the death of its emperor and the heir apparent back to back in order to start a civil war; prior to this, the Inca had no succession crisis at all. Despite the inherent hostility of the terrain, the realm was reunited, but the Spanish showed up days after the civil war ended. The one that ravaged the entirety of the Inca realm, lasted years, and further spread the disease that killed both the emperor Huayna Capac and his heir Ninan Cuyochi? Yep, that one. To say that the Inca system was stressed to all hell would be putting it lightly, yet despite that, it held. It would have probably started to recover. Up until the Spanish arrived at the best moment imaginable to topple it all over, but more on that later.

Back to the Inca, their political system was very complex and they had the economy to match. Yes, I hear you say, no currency, no writing system. To that, I say, centrally-ran economy and the quipu system. The Inca didn't manage to run this entire system and keep it rock solid throughout their entire history via the seat of their pants. Their economy was robust, demonstrably effective, and productive. Inca agricultural yields to this day are something we struggle to emulate on the terrain they farmed on. It was risk-mitigating, with a focus on stockpiling food in safehouse throughout the empire. The Inca were talented craftsmen both with metal and stone and built things such as suspension bridges, aqueducts, and mortar-free buildings that are standing to this day in one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world.

On the conquest itself, well, I highlighted it up above to an extent. Pizarro showed up at the best time imaginable and decapitated the head of the state; taking the Sapa Inca hostage after an enormous political crisis had only just finished. This paralyzed all possibility of responding, and the Inca fell having never fought a proper battle because by this point they'd exhausted the armies long past their due service time(all men were obligated for a fixed amount of time to serve in the army) just wrapping up the Inca civil war. What about the Battle of Cajamarca? Well...that wasn't really a battle. Let me explain the Inca perspective. The Sapa Inca went to meet Pizarro as the first act of a new Sapa Inca looking to legitimize himself, and before he even got a chance to step foot in Cuzco after concluding the civil war. He went to meet Pizarro because he saw an opportunity for a show of strength by having these foreigners do the equivalent of kowtowing to him, Andean style. For more info on this, the book 'History of the Inca Realm' by Maria Rostworowski covers this in detail. To keep it short, Andean civilization had developed where hosting others with your own hospitality was a way to affirm the vassalage of the person being hosted. Rather than going to war, you'd lavishly treat the petty ruler and in exchange receive what you want out of that war be it labor, goods, vassalage, or all of the above. It's an act of submission by the one accepting. Coming from two entirely different and independently developed civilizations, neither understood what the other was after, especially with the language barrier.

So, Battle of Cajamarca. The Sapa Inca shows up with his army, but his army is largely unarmed and dressed for the ceremonial show of strength. He greets Pizarro's party warmly, and hosts them as is the tradition in the Andes. To him, they're submitting to him. To the Spanish, well, we know what happens. The Spanish pre-planned to ambush Atahualpa and got fortunate that his show of strength meant minimal guards and no weapons. They ambush his guard which included some of his best generals, capture the Sapa Inca, and with the majority of his army not even armed nor close, demand a ludicrous ransom for his release. With all organization collapsed, so did the army which never engaged directly with the Spanish and instead dispersed after a loooong civil war. In other words, the 'battle' is really just Spanish propaganda to glorify their conquest of the Inca. It was a small ambush where the Spanish arguably arrived at the best time imaginable and rolled a 20. Even a few days later and Atahualpa would have been in Cuzco and busy with far bigger fish to fry than interloping Spaniards. And the Inca weren't the Aztec; the Inca were more demographically cohesive, better governed, and with far fewer tribes to incite against the Inca and almost no significant organized neighbors like the Aztec had with their vassals and enemies. It's telling that the most notable native aids were the Chachapoyas which were a recent conquest during the reign of Huayna Capac; again, that's down to the mita system. The Inca were brutally efficient at demographic control and wrote the script on how to assimilate the recently conquered via resettlement, controlled marriages, encouraging Quechuafication, etc.

So with all that said, Paradox are doing Mesoamerica and especially the Andes dirty, and placing them on the same level as the tribal societies of the New World that didn't practice agriculture. Can basically be summed up as pulling the 'they're all the same' card on an entire hemisphere of people. And that's ignoring the ability of the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530 ingame and the silly as all hell ability to wipe stacks of natives at 5-to-1 losing odds. All of that so that Paradox can model a failed narrative on the conquest of the Aztec(which depended on the Spanish playing the diplomacy game and functioned more like supporting the independence of all of their vassals) and the Inca(actual stars align scenario where barely any battles were fought). And that's on top of all the hurdles Paradox added because that was too easy. Between forcing a religious reformation of their religions for arbitrary reasoning that applies to only one society in the New World, penalties to production in the New World because the New World natives are too simple to know how to handle gold, terrible development for how prosperous the region was before the conquest, etc....it's maddening and frustrating as all hell.

I honestly understand your frustrations, but from a gameplay perspective and no actual overhauls to the region these changes were necessary to somehow simulate some kind of history. Without these balances (such as removing feudalism), Inca would destroy the colonizers, probably colonize themselves, and u would see 90% of the time Inca or anyone else dominating the region, which shouldn't really happen tbh, atleast not every time. Without any major updates u won't see a change, because it would break the entire colonial game as a whole. What I would blame here instead would be the incapability of Paradox to implement sufficient changes to the mesoamerican nations within 2 DLC's that would reflect the nations as they really were in history. The fact that they made 2 dlc's that focus on those regions and still fail miserably in terms of delivering these aspects make me think that either they don't care about the region, are completely clueless on what they are doing, or are planning YET another dlc or update. Colonizing needs to be fixed aswell, it's so old and ahistorical to the extent that u almost never see the AI do anything remotely close to what was historical or atleast possible in history.

Examples would be portugal colonizing everything before anyone (ruining all mission trees for (spain,gb), that then snowballs into AI declaring war without their pernament claims, tanking their mana, and many times ruining the spanish conquest of south america (The fact that I see portugal AI conquer mexico 50% of the time when they don't even have the missions to do so is concerning really) aswell as mamluks colonizing austrialia 90% of the games, expel minorities being useless, treaty of tordesillias ruining colonization for catholic AI and so on. The fact that these things havent been fixed yet means that the mesoamerican region won't be either, and it cant really be fixed as of right now, because golden century made Spanish AI kind of garbage tbh. They are either 1000 dev by 1500 year super monster that later on has 10000 debt or a 500 dev useless nation that still has 10000 debt and loses to france every war. They should fix the whole great bullion famine event too, taking gold in americas as a european nations gives u these amazing modfiers, but u lose them when u create a colonial nation, making the whole thing useless in the end.

In summary, PDX should fix AI colonizing and Colonization as a whole before fixing South america, otherwise its just gonna break the game more. For now all we have is egyptian australia, but tbh its one of the best things this game has to offer at the moment.

 

[SassySoviet]

- Papal states no longer becomes a daimyo when vassalized.
What

 

[Gamergeo]

Good news, really.

But I'm sorry, I can say more than : wait and see.
Before Emperor there was also alot of news about reducing the technical debt and improve AI... and we got Emperor.

So of course the future of the game needs that mentality, but wait and see Pdx

 

[EMT0]

I honestly understand your frustrations, but from a gameplay perspective and no actual overhauls to the region these changes were necessary to somehow simulate some kind of history. Without these balances (such as removing feudalism), Inca would destroy the colonizers, probably colonize themselves, and u would see 90% of the time Inca or anyone else dominating the region, which shouldn't really happen tbh, atleast not every time. Without any major updates u won't see a change, because it would break the entire colonial game as a whole. What I would blame here instead would be the incapability of Paradox to implement sufficient changes to the mesoamerican nations within 2 DLC's that would reflect the nations as they really were in history. The fact that they made 2 dlc's that focus on those regions and still fail miserably in terms of delivering these aspects make me think that either they don't care about the region, are completely clueless on what they are doing, or are planning YET another dlc or update. Colonizing needs to be fixed aswell, it's so old and ahistorical to the extent that u almost never see the AI do anything remotely close to what was historical or atleast possible in history.

Examples would be portugal colonizing everything before anyone (ruining all mission trees for (spain,gb), that then snowballs into AI declaring war without their pernament claims, tanking their mana, and many times ruining the spanish conquest of south america (The fact that I see portugal AI conquer mexico 50% of the time when they don't even have the missions to do so is concerning really) aswell as mamluks colonizing austrialia 90% of the games, expel minorities being useless, treaty of tordesillias ruining colonization for catholic AI and so on. The fact that these things havent been fixed yet means that the mesoamerican region won't be either, and it cant really be fixed as of right now, because golden century made Spanish AI kind of garbage tbh. They are either 1000 dev by 1500 year super monster that later on has 10000 debt or a 500 dev useless nation that still has 10000 debt and loses to france every war. They should fix the whole great bullion famine event too, taking gold in americas as a european nations gives u these amazing modfiers, but u lose them when u create a colonial nation, making the whole thing useless in the end.

In summary, PDX should fix AI colonizing and Colonization as a whole before fixing South america, otherwise its just gonna break the game more. For now all we have is egyptian australia, but tbh its one of the best things this game has to offer at the moment.

Yeah, the limitations are both in how Paradox has modeled/balanced the region and the linearity of their design for colonization. If it were anybody but the Aztec at the head of Mesoamerica's political hierarchy, I don't think New World colonization would have kicked off anywhere near as fast or as effectively, nor would states in Europe have been quite as interested. If it were any other state, It wouldn't have been as easy to conquer the region, and in turn, invading the Andes would have been physically impossible without ports and resources on the Pacific.

Paradox doesn't have the scope nor interest in imagining a scenario where the Spanish weren't able to exploit the instability and resentment in the Aztec Empire to topple the whole thing and were instead forced to act as traders and courtiers to start instead of conquerors. I sort of don't blame them, if I'm being honest., because the entire game premise is European colonialism into the rest of the world. Spanish success in Mexico inspired Spanish adventures not just in the Andes(Muisca and Inca) but also the Rio de La Plata, the American South, the Pueblo lands, etc. as well as inspired the colonial ambitions of the non-Iberian states to emulate Spain. I can absolutely understand not wanting to consider the consequences of a failed conquest of Mesoamerica because it turns the entire premise of the game upside down.

What would be nice, however, would be to at least ditch the tropes and bad history so that it isn't arbitrarily deterministic against the organized states of the New World. Force the player/colonizing AI to actually do what was done historically, which would be to either play the diplomacy game or to waltz in during peak instability, and don't pretend as if Europeans are just built different or some other nonsense. I share your frustration about the DLC they've dropped for the New World. I really regret giving them money for it and validating their terrible ideas.

On the topic of never accurately representing IRL, one thing that isn't actually related at all to New World natives is their borders for La Plata/Peru. For some reason, Chile's under La Plata :') Chile has NEVER been governed from Buenos Aires in their entire history. They were either very loosely governed from Lima, or autonomous and effectively their own colony. I'm Peruvian and we stereotypically have beef with Chile, but throw some damn respect on their country, goddamn. Either make it its own colonial region or have it(and Bolivia) share a colonial nation with Peru. If there's one thing that makes it abundantly clear that they have no idea what they're doing in Latin America, it's their colonial borders in South America. Actually just tabbing open Wikipedia and copying the first map they see levels of research.

The Inca also have no way of reaching their historical borders before Europeans show up, and that's with a player actively trying to recreate it. It's probably lowest on my list of concerns but it's just another thing that baffles me that they thought they could get away with charging money for. I don't know what Paradox thinks they've done in the Andes, but this ain't it chief.

I think fixing colonization is doable just using the systems that EUIV has, but I agree it's horribly done as-is. I actually tackled the topic just yesterday as it's my first time in a long time visiting the Paradox forums after hearing about the new upcoming update and figured well, I talked about colonialism, let's talk about colonization too.

 

[Arizal]

Yeah, the limitations are both in how Paradox has modeled/balanced the region and the linearity of their design for colonization. If it were anybody but the Aztec at the head of Mesoamerica's political hierarchy, I don't think New World colonization would have kicked off anywhere near as fast or as effectively, nor would states in Europe have been quite as interested. If it were any other state, It wouldn't have been as easy to conquer the region, and in turn, invading the Andes would have been physically impossible without ports and resources on the Pacific.

Paradox doesn't have the scope nor interest in imagining a scenario where the Spanish weren't able to exploit the instability and resentment in the Aztec Empire to topple the whole thing and were instead forced to act as traders and courtiers to start instead of conquerors. I sort of don't blame them, if I'm being honest., because the entire game premise is European colonialism into the rest of the world. Spanish success in Mexico inspired Spanish adventures not just in the Andes(Muisca and Inca) but also the Rio de La Plata, the American South, the Pueblo lands, etc. as well as inspired the colonial ambitions of the non-Iberian states to emulate Spain. I can absolutely understand not wanting to consider the consequences of a failed conquest of Mesoamerica because it turns the entire premise of the game upside down.

What would be nice, however, would be to at least ditch the tropes and bad history so that it isn't arbitrarily deterministic against the organized states of the New World. Force the player/colonizing AI to actually do what was done historically, which would be to either play the diplomacy game or to waltz in during peak instability, and don't pretend as if Europeans are just built different or some other nonsense. I share your frustration about the DLC they've dropped for the New World. I really regret giving them money for it and validating their terrible ideas.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. Instead of creating mission trees overpowering countries on dubious premises, they should make it possible for alternative scenarios to emerge from the gameplay.

As you say, the Aztec and Incan empires didn’t fall solely due to firearms and, with a few years to adapt, they could have been real challengers for the Spanish. Somehow, the game should be able to reflect that those organized cultures weren’t mere tribes and were capable to resist adventurer’a expeditions. It’s mostly their internal problems which doomed them.

 

[Devilemi]

Thx

 

[NaughtyNuzzler]

So long as we're throwing out feature requests and attention on areas that are lacking...as someone from Peru, your current Mesoamerica and Andes design makes my blood boil and I refuse to touch any part of it nowadays. It goes beyond misguided or inaccurate, something which I could deal with, but it's so insultingly wrong that it leaves me incredulous. I stick to the Old World exclusively out of frustration and do not play colonizer states in Europe so as to avoid playing with these mechanics. I'm not going to drop a drive-by post, I'm actually gonna list all of my grievances here:

1) Agriculture, what's that? - Paradox has decided that all New World states will start with the same institutions; that is to say, none. The idea that the Mesoamericans or Andeans didn't practice a form of feudalism is ridiculous. Beyond ridiculous, even. The Andes mita system was arguably one of the most comprehensive and effective forms of state-controlled labor in the world during this time period. We have so much Inca construction that remains standing to this day thanks to how organized their labor system was not just in agriculture but for public works, road building, establishing settlements, etc.

I don't really know what to add here beyond just stating that no, this is incredulously wrong. Words fail me to go more into this topic because I feel like I'm being gaslighted. The truth of the matter is that Paradox had no idea how to properly model non-settled states such as steppe hordes, the tribes of the Arabian interior, and the hunter-gatherers of the New World and decided well, they'll start without feudalism as an institution. And if steppe hordes, the same 'backwards' steppe hordes that brought gunpowder to Europe don't have feudalism, well, neither does anybody in the New World. I don't agree with this setup at all in the Old World, but let's not do the double silly in the New World for arbitrary reasons

2) Every New World religion is Aztec blood sports - So...reforming religions. The organized states of the New World in Mesoameria and the Andes are doomed to perish and unable to change their society without changing their inherently flawed religions that practice human sacrifice. All New World peoples tore out hearts by the tens of thousands for their religion...hmmm, wait a sec. It's almost as if this was a strictly Aztec phenomenon and while some human sacrifice was practiced, it was the Aztec that were infamous for it and all of their neighbors thought they were lunatics. Stick the reforming the religion business due to extreme human sacrifice to the Aztecs. The Inca practice of human sacrifice was only ever internal and restricted to stereotypical stuff like trying to get rid of a drought or the death of an emperor. It'd make far more sense to give a diplo rep negative to Andean and Mesoamerican states that practiced some form of human sacrifice once they make contact with Europe. The Aztecs...well, they're not my ballpark. But it's important to highlight just how much of an anomaly the Aztecs were, and that the current system that delegitimizes the religions of the New World is a tremendous frustrating design choice. And pretty clearly made so as to reuse the same mechanic across all three major civilizations in the New World(and doing the Muisca dirty in the process).

3) Oh backwards, backwards people, just sitting there waiting to die - There are multiple elements to this; a complete failure to understand why Spain was so successful in conquering established states in the New World, as well as either blinders or indifference to the complexity of New World organized states and their achievements. Let's start with the latter first, and focused exclusively on the Inca as those are my area of comfort on the topic.

The Inca were not backwards. I know, I know, you learned otherwise. And here's the caveat; the only thing that's true about that statement is with respect to their weapons and armor. The Inca were a highly centralized realm spanning almost the length of the Roman Empire at its peak from one end to the other. And instead of a sea that can provide rapid transportation from end to the other, there were mountains. The Inca system largely ran on its bureaucracy based out of Cuzco through which labor was controlled. This realm was so stable that it took the death of its emperor and the heir apparent back to back in order to start a civil war; prior to this, the Inca had no succession crisis at all. Despite the inherent hostility of the terrain, the realm was reunited, but the Spanish showed up days after the civil war ended. The one that ravaged the entirety of the Inca realm, lasted years, and further spread the disease that killed both the emperor Huayna Capac and his heir Ninan Cuyochi? Yep, that one. To say that the Inca system was stressed to all hell would be putting it lightly, yet despite that, it held. It would have probably started to recover. Up until the Spanish arrived at the best moment imaginable to topple it all over, but more on that later.

Back to the Inca, their political system was very complex and they had the economy to match. Yes, I hear you say, no currency, no writing system. To that, I say, centrally-ran economy and the quipu system. The Inca didn't manage to run this entire system and keep it rock solid throughout their entire history via the seat of their pants. Their economy was robust, demonstrably effective, and productive. Inca agricultural yields to this day are something we struggle to emulate on the terrain they farmed on. It was risk-mitigating, with a focus on stockpiling food in safehouse throughout the empire. The Inca were talented craftsmen both with metal and stone and built things such as suspension bridges, aqueducts, and mortar-free buildings that are standing to this day in one of the most earthquake-prone regions of the world.

On the conquest itself, well, I highlighted it up above to an extent. Pizarro showed up at the best time imaginable and decapitated the head of the state; taking the Sapa Inca hostage after an enormous political crisis had only just finished. This paralyzed all possibility of responding, and the Inca fell having never fought a proper battle because by this point they'd exhausted the armies long past their due service time(all men were obligated for a fixed amount of time to serve in the army) just wrapping up the Inca civil war. What about the Battle of Cajamarca? Well...that wasn't really a battle. Let me explain the Inca perspective. The Sapa Inca went to meet Pizarro as the first act of a new Sapa Inca looking to legitimize himself, and before he even got a chance to step foot in Cuzco after concluding the civil war. He went to meet Pizarro because he saw an opportunity for a show of strength by having these foreigners do the equivalent of kowtowing to him, Andean style. For more info on this, the book 'History of the Inca Realm' by Maria Rostworowski covers this in detail. To keep it short, Andean civilization had developed where hosting others with your own hospitality was a way to affirm the vassalage of the person being hosted. Rather than going to war, you'd lavishly treat the petty ruler and in exchange receive what you want out of that war be it labor, goods, vassalage, or all of the above. It's an act of submission by the one accepting. Coming from two entirely different and independently developed civilizations, neither understood what the other was after, especially with the language barrier.

So, Battle of Cajamarca. The Sapa Inca shows up with his army, but his army is largely unarmed and dressed for the ceremonial show of strength. He greets Pizarro's party warmly, and hosts them as is the tradition in the Andes. To him, they're submitting to him. To the Spanish, well, we know what happens. The Spanish pre-planned to ambush Atahualpa and got fortunate that his show of strength meant minimal guards and no weapons. They ambush his guard which included some of his best generals, capture the Sapa Inca, and with the majority of his army not even armed nor close, demand a ludicrous ransom for his release. With all organization collapsed, so did the army which never engaged directly with the Spanish and instead dispersed after a loooong civil war. In other words, the 'battle' is really just Spanish propaganda to glorify their conquest of the Inca. It was a small ambush where the Spanish arguably arrived at the best time imaginable and rolled a 20. Even a few days later and Atahualpa would have been in Cuzco and busy with far bigger fish to fry than interloping Spaniards. And the Inca weren't the Aztec; the Inca were more demographically cohesive, better governed, and with far fewer tribes to incite against the Inca and almost no significant organized neighbors like the Aztec had with their vassals and enemies. It's telling that the most notable native aids were the Chachapoyas which were a recent conquest during the reign of Huayna Capac; again, that's down to the mita system. The Inca were brutally efficient at demographic control and wrote the script on how to assimilate the recently conquered via resettlement, controlled marriages, encouraging Quechuafication, etc.

So with all that said, Paradox are doing Mesoamerica and especially the Andes dirty, and placing them on the same level as the tribal societies of the New World that didn't practice agriculture. Can basically be summed up as pulling the 'they're all the same' card on an entire hemisphere of people. And that's ignoring the ability of the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530 ingame and the silly as all hell ability to wipe stacks of natives at 5-to-1 losing odds. All of that so that Paradox can model a failed narrative on the conquest of the Aztec(which depended on the Spanish playing the diplomacy game and functioned more like supporting the independence of all of their vassals) and the Inca(actual stars align scenario where barely any battles were fought). And that's on top of all the hurdles Paradox added because that was too easy. Between forcing a religious reformation of their religions for arbitrary reasoning that applies to only one society in the New World, penalties to production in the New World because the New World natives are too simple to know how to handle gold, terrible development for how prosperous the region was before the conquest, etc....it's maddening and frustrating as all hell.

Completely agree on pretty much every point - I would go even further beyond the Andes and Mesoamerica, too. EU4 is not a game designed to represent non-Western societies well (which makes sense, because of who developed it) but it could go so much further toward accurate representation of societies that don't fit within the confines of more traditional structures. Hell, even most "tribal" societies had extremely complex sets of laws, ceremonies, etc. that formed the backbone of their societies. I hate that, in so far as the game is concerned, tribal societies are simply viewed as "simple" rather than "different". I can see how that would be difficult to codify in any sort of game language, but more effort could certainly be made.

 

[Sete]

Fun fact of the day: it was a Portuguese Conquistador the first one to make contact with the Incas 8 years before Pizarro

Aleixo Garcia, was a Portuguese explorer and conquistador who explored the Río de la Plata, and later Paraguay and Bolivia, in service to Spain.

 

[Sergeant Major Gross]

- You can now specify to never mothball certain forts.

Thank you but why is this an Expansion Feature instead of a Free Feature?

 

[IndigoRage]

As you say, the Aztec and Incan empires didn’t fall solely due to firearms

Would say they weren't much of a factor at all. As in both cases Spain's case relied on exploiting internal instability. Disloyal tributaries in the case of the Aztecs and the aftermath of a civil war in the case of the Inca. They obviously are part of their capacity of bringing the instability a bit of an extra shakeup, but the conquistadors alone were extremely few in number and relied heavily on locals in both cases.

 

[Old Tercio]

So with all that said, Paradox are doing Mesoamerica and especially the Andes dirty, and placing them on the same level as the tribal societies of the New World that didn't practice agriculture. Can basically be summed up as pulling the 'they're all the same' card on an entire hemisphere of people. And that's ignoring the ability of the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530 ingame and the silly as all hell ability to wipe stacks of natives at 5-to-1 losing odds. All of that so that Paradox can model a failed narrative on the conquest of the Aztec(which depended on the Spanish playing the diplomacy game and functioned more like supporting the independence of all of their vassals) and the Inca(actual stars align scenario where barely any battles were fought). And that's on top of all the hurdles Paradox added because that was too easy. Between forcing a religious reformation of their religions for arbitrary reasoning that applies to only one society in the New World, penalties to production in the New World because the New World natives are too simple to know how to handle gold, terrible development for how prosperous the region was before the conquest, etc....it's maddening and frustrating as all hell.

I agree with your premise but I can feel the "indigenismo" coming from this post you did, (before you say anything I am a hispanoamericano, Costarricense)
first, you say that "the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530" I agree but that's the nature of the game, as the game has failed to emulate what really happen in the conquest and forces you to send your main army to speed up the process, basically you will need a good stack and full annex the native states as fast as you can, but in reality this is the more "preferable" way.

That is because if we are going to use the "historical" argument, then the new world was conquered by "private" entrepreneurship, almost everyone forgets that the Crown offered "licenses" to conduct trade and diplomacy and search for land for the land, but our ancestors (Cortez and Pizarro) mostly did it on their own expense and not the crown, it's why we hear how 500 conquistadores had conquered the new world and one of the reason for the "conquistador civil war" in south America, post the conquest, Spain basically had to place order for the unruly conquistadores who were going against the established crown law.

It actually goes both ways as paradox failed to show the might of the new world empire and how cunning and iron willed were the conquistadores on their quest, but I got to say that if Spain employed their might (actual resources and superior military technology) there is no way the new world empires would have stand a chance, you are talking of full plate armour that the Hidalgos could easily buy (they were the core of the conquistadores btw) and imagine if Spain had sent the "Gran Capitan" and his proto Tercios to the new world anything can happen but I can place my bet that the natives wouldn't stand a chance against an organize and recently professionalized army.

I just hate how a lot of people tend to minimize Spain's power during the time of conquest and over exalt the native empires.
But you are right, Paradox has failed to show the splendor of their achievements and how they pop over the natives of North America.

 

[DebbieElla]

Stay on topic, stay nice to each other, thanks.

 

[sprites]

a thousant less bugs , reducing the count by 657? nice!

 

[Arizal]

Would say they weren't much of a factor at all. As in both cases Spain's case relied on exploiting internal instability. Disloyal tributaries in the case of the Aztecs and the aftermath of a civil war in the case of the Inca. They obviously are part of their capacity of bringing the instability a bit of an extra shakeup, but the conquistadors alone were extremely few in number and relied heavily on locals in both cases.

Well, if I believe what I read elsewhere, their skin color and their firearms made them look like gods, or at least impress the natives enough for them to think that their doom was coming, that they should submit. No matter if a few other battles and they would have been powerless from lack of munitions.

 

[Tax the Poor]

*Read my Thread on "The Counterintuitiveness of Hegemonies" for Context*
( https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...e-counterintuitiveness-of-hegemonies.1451563/ )

YOU FIXED IT! Thank you kindly.

...now make demolition of buildings easier....

 

[Vulpes Cinerea]

So with all that said, Paradox are doing Mesoamerica and especially the Andes dirty, and placing them on the same level as the tribal societies of the New World that didn't practice agriculture. Can basically be summed up as pulling the 'they're all the same' card on an entire hemisphere of people. And that's ignoring the ability of the Spanish to drop 40,000 men in the New World in 1530 ingame and the silly as all hell ability to wipe stacks of natives at 5-to-1 losing odds. All of that so that Paradox can model a failed narrative on the conquest of the Aztec(which depended on the Spanish playing the diplomacy game and functioned more like supporting the independence of all of their vassals) and the Inca(actual stars align scenario where barely any battles were fought). And that's on top of all the hurdles Paradox added because that was too easy. Between forcing a religious reformation of their religions for arbitrary reasoning that applies to only one society in the New World, penalties to production in the New World because the New World natives are too simple to know how to handle gold, terrible development for how prosperous the region was before the conquest, etc....it's maddening and frustrating as all hell.

I think Paradox should buff the cultures you describe to reflect history properly. But only when they add smallpox, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, chicken pox and measles as well. You know, to reflect history properly.