Exploration: Too easy by an order of magnitude

[Junuxx]

I was playing as France, not really intending to put in much effort to be a big colonizer, but by the end of the 1450s, I thought I might as well take QftNW and see if Portugal hadn't planted colonies everywhere yet. As I said, I wasn't really trying to go this route; in a recent discussion, EU3 players generally agreed that it is quite possible to get Quest for the New World in the 1420s or even earlier. But that is a slightly different aspect of, or a different problem with exploration and colonization in EU3. Let me give you a brief outline of the exploits of my single explorer in the years 1460-1471. This is not meant as bragging at all; I started late, I had the lousiest possible explorer and I could have improved my exploration in many ways. It is a big problem precisely because anyone could pull this off with little effort, and I just wanted to bring this under your attention again.

It is the year of our lord 1460, and Jean Baptiste de la Tour d'Auvergne leaves the port of Caen with 2 carracks, Le Saint Philippe and Le Duc de Bourgogne. He was a sturdy but rather dim fisherman from a nearby village, and nobody really understood why the king of France had selected him to lead an expedition to boldly go where no Christian had gone before. And surely, nobody -especially himself- would believe at that point that he was not to return to European shores for 11 years, discovering the coasts of virtually the entire world in the process.
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My navy hadn't done anything at all up to that point in this game, so I had zero naval tradition. I hired an explorer and I got a 0 fire, 3 shock, 0 maneuver dude. Would have made a reasonable admiral, but with no maneuver skill he's no use whatsoever as an explorer; slow and unlikely to discover coastal land provinces. Yet, after establishing a colony in the Canaries in September 1461, he went on to discover THE ENTIRE WORLD:

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Just for fun, compare this to a few maps of some of the most famous expeditions in the Age of Exploration -explorations led by, presumably, highly skilled men, with many ships in multiple voyages, decades apart.

It took Columbus 12 years and four expeditions to map just a part of the Caribbean!

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So this is totally ridiculous. Well, not totally, as I could have hired several explorers at 100% naval tradition, send them out in different directions and have every coastal province and every ocean province discovered by this time, and that would have been even more ridiculous. But still it doesn't make any sense at all, and I hope this clarifies that we should really have a better mechanism for exploration in a future EU game.

TL;DR: Even Gavin Menzies would think that the portrayal of exploration in this game is implausible.

 

[Hootieleece]

Did you have attrition because that slows me down.Having to return to port.did you abuse military access?

 

[Ashantai]

If you abuse the fact that nations with no previous contact start at 100 relations you can get people to allow military access for repairs. Add to the fact that each sea zone adds to your naval tradition and that coastal attrition is low, you can see the problem. The fact the AI doesn't take naval attrition and therefore just merrily ploughs its way through the world also means that there's little to stop them.
We also have one fundamental advantage; we KNOW there is another continent over there, we know exactly where to go.

My suggestion would be to make the AI suffer naval attrition even if it requires the next expansion/game to change the AI to allow that. The next step would be to make coastal naval tradition much more fierce.

Lastly, put a restriction on who you can get military access with; maybe only people of your religious group? That'd stop the absurd Mali/Kongo/Mutapa military access path.

Also cut down the amount of tradition gained from exploration. it's far too easy for the player to get 6/6/6 admirals just because they have a ship mapping every coastal port between England and Japan.

 

[brifbates]

Did you have attrition because that slows me down.Having to return to port.did you abuse military access?

Naval supply range in the coastal provinces is the true culprit. Once you know the map it is pretty easy to map huge amounts of territory while taking almost no attrition. Beyond that a mere 2 access agreements will allow the coastal mapping he observed-one in Mexico and another in the near/middle east. It's more likely he had more because doing it with that few puts your ships at some risk at the extreme edges of eastern Asia.

 

[Junuxx]

Yep I got Military Access from Morocco, Mali, Kongo, Swahili, Adal, Oman, Vijayanagar, Pegu, Ming, Korea, Fujiwara, Majapahit, Maya, Creek, Inca and Zapotec, in that order. That's a bit exploity, but it's not something only true diehards can figure out, it's rather obvious.

I think it's fairly realistic that you can do some repairs in a harbor in India or China. For Africa or the New World, less so. But most importantly, you can't get new crew or new orders if you don't go home once every few years!

Also, there is no risk of losing ships to storms, mutiny, desertion, disease, hostile natives, reefs, etc etc etc.

 

[robb1993]

what Ashantai said. We know roughly where Cuba and Haiti and Jamaica are. The reason it took Columbus 10 years was he had no idea what was out there. He was basically going for a sail and looking what was there and hoping for the best.

 

[George LeS]

Naval supply range in the coastal provinces is the true culprit. Once you know the map it is pretty easy to map huge amounts of territory while taking almost no attrition. Beyond that a mere 2 access agreements will allow the coastal mapping he observed-one in Mexico and another in the near/middle east. It's more likely he had more because doing it with that few puts your ships at some risk at the extreme edges of eastern Asia.

You've got a point. IMO, you should never be attrition free (except for your commander's M value) when (a) exploring a TI seazone, or (b) sailing along a coastal zone where the land province is TI. This means you are sailing in unfamiliar territiory, uncharted shores and unexpected currents and winds. You should get attrition, at full.

I'd go further and have some (lower than the above) attriton when off empty provinces; again, these are largely uncharted waters. Sure, you know something, but there are no local pilots to hire.

If anyone would like to test it, PM me.

On the general point, forgive me for plugging Rex Maris, which I should be posting soon in a much improved form. In my current test, I started in 1482 as POR, and still haven't discovered Brazil. (I have gotten a lot in Asia & discovered all of Africa.) The exploration side is almost done, and more flexible than before.

 

[AndrewT]

what Ashantai said. We know roughly where Cuba and Haiti and Jamaica are. The reason it took Columbus 10 years was he had no idea what was out there. He was basically going for a sail and looking what was there and hoping for the best.

Well no, he (believed he) knew exactly what was out there - India, China and Japan - he was just wrong by the width of the Pacific Ocean. By no means was he just"going for a sail and looking what was there and hoping for the best".

 

[unmerged(80402)]

So the mission name should be : "Go west try find china" instead of "discover moron"? XD

 

[Ashantai]

True AndrewT, but we know the exact shape of the continents from the minimap, they didn't.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Well no, he (believed he) knew exactly what was out there - India, China and Japan - he was just wrong by the width of the Pacific Ocean. By no means was he just"going for a sail and looking what was there and hoping for the best".

The Pacific? Did he ever reach the Pacific?

 

[unmerged(80402)]

The Pacific? Did he ever reach the Pacific?

BUahahahahaah... lol... Andrew, you got totaly owned XD

But it is true, atlantic ocean, my dear andrew, atlantic. This is A that stands for NATO.

 

[Lama43]

Columbus thought that Atlantic and Pacific were the same, i see no mistake here.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Columbus thought that Atlantic and Pacific were the same, i see no mistake here.

Well, Pacific Ocean, is name that came much later, after Columbus died... i believe it was given by magellan? Anyway, then it is quite a big mistake.

 

[xereck]

Vikings discovered Canada 500 years before Columbus discovered The Caribbean. Had the trade routes by land been closed 200 years prior to what they did in history I bet it would have encouraged earlier european exploration as well

While EU2 followed historical colonisation rather strictly, EU3 is more of an open sandbox so I don't really see what the problem is. You're still around 500 years after the vikings in exploring the Canadian coast and only 30 years ahead of the Portuguese to finding India

Not exactly implausible.

 

[Lama43]

A discovery 200 years earlier would still be unlikely even with the stimulus imho, simply because i doubt that ship architecture allowed long ocean voyages.

 

[Klarum]

BUahahahahaah... lol... Andrew, you got totaly owned XD

But it is true, atlantic ocean, my dear andrew, atlantic. This is A that stands for NATO.

He clearly meant that Columbus had no Idea the American continent and then the Pacific where there. He thought after crossing the Atlantic would reach East Asia. You are the owned by your own limited inteligence and interpretation skills.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

He clearly meant that Columbus had no Idea the American continent and then the Pacific where there. He thought after crossing the Atlantic would reach East Asia. You are the owned by your own limited inteligence and interpretation skills.

OMG...

You're clearly german. If i am wrong then i apologize germans, if not well, i do not.

 

[xereck]

A discovery 200 years earlier would still be unlikely even with the stimulus imho, simply because i doubt that ship architecture allowed long ocean voyages.

Again, Vikings did it with longboats in the 10th century....more recently someone even sailed with a ship made of papyrus(!) from Africa to the Americas. The ship technology was already there in the 10th century, it was simply because of the ottomans closing the trade routes to asia that exploring alternative routes became necessary. Had they done so 200 years earlier than what is written in history, we would most likely have seen exploration already by then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_ocean
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra_II#The_boats_Ra_and_Ra_II

 

[DDRJake]

You are hugging coastlines and almost completely avoiding deep sea naval attrition because you know the way. Try sailing from Lisboa to the Americas as if you had no idea what's out there. You'd quickly find your fleet at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Alternativly, try the Random Map Generator to try for real.