Exploration: Too easy by an order of magnitude

[unmerged(80402)]

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.

Well compas was known by XIV century, and magnetism of the earth was known is XII century. Astro-Navigation was known by ancient times. Caravels were built by 1450 - those were first EUROPEAN ships able to sail thru the ocean.

I think the most limiting factor preventing europeans from discovering americas, were lack of good ships, and caravell changed it, because they were able to sail thru ocean easily enough.

SO my point here is : Sailing thru ocean, should be prevented until naval tech 9(then you get caravels). But this would need to change something with sea provinces leading to Iceland.

 

[Junuxx]

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.

If you read the first post, you'd have seen that the complaint isn't that it is too early, historically, but too easy and too fast. Yes, the Vikings reached Canada, but they couldn't have continued to circumnavigate the Americas all the way to Alaska in a single expedition, could they now?

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.

Yes I hugged the coastline, which is completely reasonable I'd say. The explorers who went around Africa to reach India did pretty much the same thing. I only crossed ocean provinces two times, in the narrow bit between Liberia and Brazil, and between Iceland and Greenland. But if I hadn't known where to cross, I'd just try somewhere two ocean zones deep, return to repair up in Mali, Kongo, Iceland, Lisbon or wherever I thought was a good point of departure and try again. It would take a few more years but it wouldn't be significantly different.

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

Fun, but not a real solution, see above.

SO my point here is : Sailing thru ocean, should be prevented until naval tech 9(then you get caravels). But this would need to change something with sea provinces leading to Iceland.

That might actually help a bit. Just change it to "can't discover ocean provinces until Naval 9" and you'd get around the Iceland issue. But once you hit Naval 9, you would still be able to discover the entire world in 10 years, with a single unskilled explorer.

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.

This sounds promising!

 

[AndrewT]

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?

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.

I didn't say he reached the Pacific, did I? I said he was wrong - missed his target - by the WIDTH of the Pacific.

He was aiming for Japan and hit the Americas instead. Which ocean sits between Japan and the Americas, again, guys?

 

[Arakhor]

I understood what you were saying, Andrew.

 

[George LeS]

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.

Yes, absolutely. (I wish the RMG were working for the current beta.)

But again, at a minimum, you should be taking attrition every moment you are exploring (that is, trying to enter) a TI seazone, and it should continue through the end of the month you discover it. Coastal status should not count against this. If anything, it was more dangerous, until charted.

 

[George LeS]

...This sounds promising!

As usual, I've run into bugs, but I think they're fixed. (Validating now).

 

[Evie HJ]

I think the most limiting factor preventing europeans from discovering americas, were lack of good ships, and caravell changed it, because they were able to sail thru ocean easily enough.

SO my point here is : Sailing thru ocean, should be prevented until naval tech 9(then you get caravels). But this would need to change something with sea provinces leading to Iceland.

As I said the other day in another thread: that explorers used only caravels is a myth.There were many carracks involved in the exploration of the New World, and the age of discovery in general...including the first ship to succesfully circumnavigate the world. Columbus's flotilla also included a carrack, which crossed the Atlantic just fine (then ironically was lost in coastal waters due to running aground)

Which is where caravels really shone. They weren't great exploration ship because they could cross oceans and carracks could not; they were great exploration ship because they were smaller, could operate in shallower waters, and thus, were great for exploring unknown coastlines where bigger ships would have had larger odds of running aground.,

So the idea that "You cannot cross oceans until you have caravels!" is fairly nonsensical.

 

[Dafool]

Well, part of the obvious weakness of the mechanic is that we're not Columbus. If you've ever read his travel logs, you can tell pretty quickly that most of the time he had no idea where he was and had little understanding of what he was doing. We know where the coasts are. We know how far it's going to be until we hit land. We know where we can get military access. If you want more realistic exploration, then close your eyes, spin around the map a few times, send your ships off to wherever your pointer ends up, and then see what happens.

 

[springel]

Guillaume is completely right.

The Santa Maria was a small carrack, the other two, the Niña and the Pinto were caravels.

The Niña was fitted with three latin sails, that were not suitable for the deep Atlantic Ocean. That is why Columbus refitted her on the Canaries with square sails, otherwise she could not have made the journey.

Over all Columbus loved the Niña most, because she was agile in coastal waters, not because of her ocean characteristics.

 

[GaiusC]

Yes I hugged the coastline, which is completely reasonable I'd say. The explorers who went around Africa to reach India did pretty much the same thing. I only crossed ocean provinces two times, in the narrow bit between Liberia and Brazil, and between Iceland and Greenland. But if I hadn't known where to cross, I'd just try somewhere two ocean zones deep, return to repair up in Mali, Kongo, Iceland, Lisbon or wherever I thought was a good point of departure and try again. It would take a few more years but it would be significantly different.

Having access to faraway nations' land and ports is the major issue here.

Sure, the hugging coastline is an exploit, but because you actually use it. Now, in real history, they did this in Africa because they knew it could be circumnavigated and wanted to go on the other side. With the Atlantic, they barely knew about Greenland and had no idea how far Vinland was, if they even knew about it. So they did the only logical thing: they crossed straight through the middle.
We can exploit the game by hugging America's coastline because we know what it looks like, and that we can reach easily both Europe and Siberia through Arctic sea-provinces - something people didn't know at the time, specially for the Behring straits.
It's basically like people going straight for the Aztecs and Incas to get gold.

Besides, discovering the whole map this way isn't always very smart, because even if you try a WC, you'll have sooner or later some European minor power that will colonize Madagascar, California or Kamchatka.

 

[Konstantinos XV]

To be honest, I've always considered current exploration and colonization mechanics tedious and boring to manage. And, of course, very prone to abuse from players as described in the first post. My solution would've been decisions to fund expeditions to different areas and events to chart them. The gameflow could've felt much more natural (and outcomes more plausible?) in this case me thinks.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

I didn't say he reached the Pacific, did I? I said he was wrong - missed his target - by the WIDTH of the Pacific.

He was aiming for Japan and hit the Americas instead. Which ocean sits between Japan and the Americas, again, guys?

Well you maybe meant it but you said what you said XD. Still what you said was not clear what you meant. Anyway, i think if he knew about vinland, he might have anticipated that there is another continent between asia and europe when you sail west.

 

[George LeS]

To be honest, I've always considered current exploration and colonization mechanics tedious and boring to manage. And, of course, very prone to abuse from players as described in the first post. My solution would've been decisions to fund expeditions to different areas and events to chart them. The gameflow could've felt much more natural (and outcomes more plausible?) in this case me thinks.

Well, you won't like RM then. More realistic, but admittedly more work.

 

[Razalhague]

To be honest, I've always considered current exploration and colonization mechanics tedious and boring to manage. And, of course, very prone to abuse from players as described in the first post. My solution would've been decisions to fund expeditions to different areas and events to chart them. The gameflow could've felt much more natural (and outcomes more plausible?) in this case me thinks.

This. You're never going to have realistic exploration if the player has direct control over it.

 

[Dafool]

Well you maybe meant it but you said what you said XD. Still what you said was not clear what you meant. Anyway, i think if he knew about vinland, he might have anticipated that there is another continent between asia and europe when you sail west.

Generally speaking, just about any explorer of Columbus's time wouldn't have put much faith in the notion of Vinland. It would have been one of many tales about lost continents in the Atlantic. Most people of at that time still believed in the age old idea of a "world sea" that enveloped the three known continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Columbus was simply applying common sense. If there is a vast ocean surrounding the continents and the world is round, then going in one direction will eventually bring you to the other side. There was no proof of anything in between. Ancient geographic knowledge in fact suggested that that wasn't the case. We know better, but common logic said otherwise at that particular moment. The game doesn't really represent this too well, but there's no way to just make us forget about the Americas.

 

[PiriReis]

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.

And he was looking for a route to India/China



IMO only nations that have QFNW idea should get colonists or when you border hordes --> This way colonizing will be more historical and will pave the way for better borders...

 

[Ashantai]

Or unless you border uncolonised provinces like Russia.

 

[ajsciri4]

You should not be allowed to sail through ocean TI. You should have a new tab in the coat of arms screen called "Explorer's Guild" where you can pay a respectable sum (50d or so, and then add the cost of two ships, so say 80d) and click north, south, east, or west. Then, in five years you would discover a group of four or five TI territories and be able to repeat the process.

 

[Hootieleece]

In my current game Netherlands (5.2 Beta) I have not been able to replicate his exploits. I used Barques. I took QFTNW with 3rd NI (1465) I am tech leader but I was out of supply range and started taking attrition when I reached Greenland.My second explorer even had +2 manuever.

 

[Hootieleece]

I continued and figured out what op did and yes anyone can do it. I think that the 1530's will be fun. Lots of AI invasions of America and Africa.Since I basically discovered the whole map about 1480.