Indigenous Australians

[SaphireSeas]

Then we could get around to discussions of Maori tribes and Australians, because both of them make way more sense once Natives actually work in the region.

You are correct in saying that Aboriginals and many other so-called "primative" Natives were not nearly as primitive as many seem to think-(edit incorrect grammar)
However, while the Aboriginals did have all these things, I am yet to hear a compelling argument for adding a nation tag. Nation tags should require a centralised governmental organisation of some kind, which I am yet to hear an archeologist tell me. Many North American Tribes, like the Iroquois did have some kind of government, in their case having a council and organising border tribes to have armies. I'm not saying the Aboriginals didn't have a form of government, merely that I am yet to see one as organised say, as the Iroquois.

As for New Zealand, Maori have only lived there for about 200 years at game start, and definately do not deserve a tag then. By the time they get to a point where they might deserve one, they are fighting the Musket wars while European colonisation blooms around them. If it was decided that these brief Maori empires to become tags they would be very short lived, And would only have existed for 30 years, Starting at the very earliest in 1807(1820 would be a better date) and through to the 1840s, and personally, I wouldn't give a tag to them then anyway, because these 'empires' collapsed on the death of their conquerors.

 

[fetusthebard]

No, this doesn't make sense. The Polynesians spread around the Pacific Islands because they were empty before they arrived. Sailing to the American Pacific coast might be possible for a few Polynesians; but for them to be able to displace any existing natives stretches credibility. Similar to how Vikings did not establish permanent colonies on American Atlantic coast. (And repeating myself, you can do the quoted with a custom nation).

What are you talking about? Many of the Polynesian island chains were inhabited and multicultural by the time expansion came to the islands. By the time that Europeans arrived, navigators in these chains -many of whom were from outside of any particular island's native population- were kept on retainer and acted as a high class to the natives there. That's actually one of the reasons that the Polynesians were so good at navigation, they had extensive "guilds" of navigators sharing knowledge and sailing pretty much everywhere. The comparison to the vikings is nutty.

I do think my original comment was misunderstood though. I'm saying that all Pacific native populations rise and spawn tags after enough growth, not are replaced by other people. So if there was an especially good at whatever created mechanic, Hawai'i (or Tahiti, or Samoa, or whatever is decided) could influence a mass of tags to appear in the region as more people traded and built up in the region, causing a Pacific "land grab" and some interesting naval interactions to a region that is in need of them. We would also obviously need fixed trade nodes to make it so that the Pacific isn't dumped into Mexico for some reason, but that seems doable. I never envisioned Pacific Islands colonizing the American Coast, and I honestly don't know where that misunderstanding came from.

NA nations don't need ships to see other nations.

NA and SA nations don't just sit around, they do move and they do actively fight each other.

This is patently false, I have never once seen a SA native that has actively fought anyone, unless they accidentally touched borders with an Inca or European nation and were quickly wiped from the game.

 

[BuchiTaton]

This is patently false, I have never once seen a SA native that has actively fought anyone, unless they accidentally touched borders with an Inca or European nation and were quickly wiped from the game.

I dont have developers statistics, but at least on most of my games and some from other players, I usually see Mapuche, Arawak and Charrua moving next to Andine nations and even allying with and taking land from them.

And for sure historically both NA and SA had a lot of interaction between native nations that could be represented on game.

For me is obvious that developers did not added Polynesian and Melanesian nations because the geographic caracteristics of thier region.
1- Those kingdoms don have much space to move around.
2- They would need a special kind of "native navy".
3- Also long range oversea migration mechanic.
4- Even if devs add navy and oceanic migration mechanic, they probably dont want those nations to colonize Australia, Siberia or America each game.

The game is more about play "Wide" than "Tall", if either AI or players have a way to expand their polynesian empire they for sure gonna move to the closer regions, so australian and american coasts are the obvious areas to take over. That is just like the game is now, so is logic that most players see this as the obvious outcome of add oceanian native kingdoms.

Now there is a region that talk more about Polynesian nations that Oceania itself. The Caribbean, with Golden Century devs added a lot of provinces there (Hispaniola is more detailed that Portugal!) but even there they did not added Island Caribs, Tainos (proper) or Ciboney playable nations. Those nations are complety justifiable to be on game by the current standards, so maybe the only real reason to not add them is the lack of some form of representation of native ships on game.

Personaly I think polynesian and melanesian kingdoms could be added, but like other native nations already on game, they need new mechanics to make them at same time more realistic historicaly and fun to play.

 

[fetusthebard]

I dont have developers statistics, but at least on most of my games and some from other players, I usually see Mapuche, Arawak and Charrua moving next to Andine nations and even allying with and taking land from them.

And for sure historically both NA and SA had a lot of interaction between native nations that could be represented on game.

I am interested in the veracity of this, because every single time the New World is revealed all of those nations are either dead, or isolated like they always are. I've never seen one win a war, and it makes sense considering the tech penalties, base tax (and therefore army size) and alliance webs that the Inca form to keep themselves protected. I'd love the stats on this, I doubt they are as useless as the Koryaks, but still. At least the Koryaks start a province or two away from each other.

And historically there was little interaction in SA non-Andean natives as compared to the Pacific Islands, which had trade webs (especially in incense and naval supplies) ranging thousands of kilometers (no joke, Hawai'i traded incense that could be traced all the way with China some 9500 km away).

3- Also long range oversea migration mechanic.

No! This is not a mechanic that makes sense. It should not be included for these nations. I don't agree with migratory mechanics across most sea borders, but this is something that makes little to no sense. Deckhand was completely incorrect when they said that Polynesian cultures did not increase in population externally, we have the genealogy and historical data to say that with certainty. There was a vast increase in populations in major trade stops and navigating these complex island formations was incredibly lucrative for the people hired as retainers. But very few of these could be called an abandonment of one island to another. And with the complex structural buildup on many of these islands, including permanent structures, temples, and later palaces, there was a great cost associated with just picking up and leaving. They couldn't really justify the kind of temporary foresting and farming that many of the Natives of NA could do. This extends to the peoples that lived in the fertile areas of Australia too, many of them were not actually nomadic, that was something that Northern and Central Australia were more used to. I think it would be more true to the reality of the region to have migration locked but influence extend in the region after reforming (somehow) and influencing the islands surrounding you to form their own governments.

 

[BuchiTaton]

And historically there was little interaction in SA non-Andean natives as compared to the Pacific Islands, which had trade webs (especially in incense and naval supplies) ranging thousands of kilometers (no joke, Hawai'i traded incense that could be traced all the way with China some 9500 km away).

Just some examples.

The vitality of this long-distance trade in elite items is revealed by ethnohistorical information from just before Spanish Conquest. Chiefdoms flourished in Columbia, Venezuela, the Ecuador coast, and greater Amazonia that remained independent of the Inka. These paramount chiefdoms had well-defined trade networks. For example, Buriticá, in the Cauca-Patía depression of Columbia, had contacts that extended throughout northern South America to Central America, trading gold, emeralds, slaves, fish, salt, textiles, and gold objects in various directions. The Spanish in fact were surprised by the involvement of chiefs in commerce. Again, these exotic objects serve all over the Americas to reinforce the special position of elites and were exchanged most commonly as gifts between emissaries of various polities on the occasion of ritual visits, alliances, marriages, and similar types of contact.
...
With the rise of elites, exchanges of rare and valued items become more prominent. The exoticism of distance becomes one of the driving forces behind elite exchange, and thus the energy and goods 39 expended to acquire them could be considerable. What is distinctive about these economic exchanges is that the use value of such items would largely be in prestige rather than in any other more tangible form. Such valuables are used by elites to reinforce their status and separateness from others in their society. However, elites would also use such goods to redistribute to clients and would become the source of necessities that must come from afar. This type of exchange was still very widespread in the New World on the advent of Europeans, dominant in the Caribbean, Amazonia, northern South America, and most of Central America.

(Storey R., 2001)

As in North America and Mesoamerica, longdistance exchange in South America started with the earliest hunter-gatherers of the Paleoindian period. Exchange throughout the Amazon Basin was probably extensive in most periods, but since the bulk of the material culture consisted of perishable goods this trade is difficult to document archaeologically. Early explorers and travelers reported active riverine exchange systems that some scholars treat as models for earlier periods.

(Smith M. E., 2010)

This article "La tecnología marítima prehispánica en los contactos intraoceánicos Andes-Mesoamérica" (Melgar-Tíscoc E. 1999) give ous a good description of the maritime trade routes between Mesoamerica, the Caribbean, Orinoquia and the Andine coast of also some thousands of kilometers. Same with the Amazonia riverine trade routes .

The european chronicles, native oral tradition, linguistic, human genetics, botanical and material archeologic evidence all also point to significative interaction like migrations, wars, trading, land management and infrastructure (like Terra Preta, fortifications, dams canals, etc.) in regions like El Gran Chaco, Orinoquia and the Amazonia. Also the warring paramount chiefdoms of Mato Grosso and coastal Brazil.

So I dont see what you mean with "little interaction".

About "migration" maybe I should have used the word "colonization". Anyway as far as I know the word MIGRATION is valid also for "the intentions of settling, permanently", not just temporarily. But I guess in the game context "colonization" is expansion and "migration" is move from one place to other all your population.

Now, again. The real question is How Oceanian could be implemented on game as viable and fun nations?

I want to know what is your vision of them on game, their tech value, how gonna work their ships, if they are supposed to be played "tall" or "wide", should they just wait for europeans to show or can they colonize Australia or America?

Realy Im sure developers already know about what kind of society Polynesians or Melanesians have, the real problem is how implement them on game, because again American and Siberian natives have a lot of place to move., Oceanians dont, and players need some kind of gameplay to overcome that.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So how large was the hawaiian navy?

Significantly larger than many tags in the game that can trivially build ships shortly after getting coastline. There are tags in EU 4 that are allowed to build ships despite never having built any ocean-going craft whatsoever in their history. If Hawaii or Xiu so much as put one boat in the water anytime in EU 4's era, they did more with ships than tags that are allowed to build them from day 1.

Pdoxs insistence on objectively arbitrary ship denial remains one of the most cancerous changes ever implemented in EU 4, though certain more recent ones do overtake it by negatively impacting all playable nations rather than "only" gutting new world tags with paid DLC by forcing players to wait 80-100 years out of 377.

 

[Ixal]

Significantly larger than many tags in the game that can trivially build ships shortly after getting coastline. There are tags in EU 4 that are allowed to build ships despite never having built any ocean-going craft whatsoever in their history. If Hawaii or Xiu so much as put one boat in the water anytime in EU 4's era, they did more with ships than tags that are allowed to build them from day 1.

Pdoxs insistence an objectively arbitrary ship denial remains one of the most cancerous changes ever implemented in EU 4, though certain more recent ones do overtake it by negatively impacting all playable nations rather than "only" gutting new world tags with paid DLC by forcing players to wait 80-100 years out of 377.

And what tags would that be? More primitives where it is questionable if they should even be tags?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And what tags would that be? More primitives where it is questionable if they should even be tags?

Literally every inland tag in the game that never gained an ocean border before being conquered/annexed/integrated into a larger one. Inca and Maya put more boats in the ocean than Salzburg, Rwanda, and Tibet. The game allows all three of the latter to build boats freely within a very short time of holding cores next to water.

We're not talking warships, the game straight up blocks simple colonization/transport, which is a flagrant violation of both history (the people in the Caribbean got there somehow) and internal game consistency. There's no coherent justification for it but it was implemented anyway, to the strict detriment of EU 4's experience. Sounds familiar given some recent patch choices, but let's not pretend that the last three patches are an example of some new trend in EU 4 development.

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

Ultimately stemming from EU4 not having tech group based boats or artillery (or something similar like special primitive boats).

Giving natives access to transports (symbolising fleets of canoes) with a low amount of combat pips works well, as combat isn't impacted between the native tags, but against colonisers they will lose heavily.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ultimately stemming from EU4 not having tech group based boats or artillery (or something similar like special primitive boats).

Giving natives access to transports (symbolising fleets of canoes) with a low amount of combat pips works well, as combat isn't impacted between the native tags, but against colonisers they will lose heavily.

True, and this was suggested almost immediately, near the time primitives magically lost the ability to build any boats at all. It was also pointed out at the time that while cogs wouldn't be perfectly historical, simply letting primitives only build cogs would nevertheless get the job done w/o new assets - cogs can't fight anything effectively other than other cogs...and even in that case "effectively" is using the word loosely. Good enough as an abstraction if seeking to avoid extra work.

There was no reason to leave the new world in its largely agency-less wait fest period state for IRL years. There still isn't.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Agree, in fact naval combat is some of the part of game that need the most a complety rework.

Different kinds of ships related to tech groups would be the best. This would help to do a better representation not just of the differences between american or oceanian native boats vs europeans ones, but also between asiatic and european ships.

Modernize non western nations should be also divided in different topics. For example:
- Horses
- Guns (hand guns)
- Cannons
- Ships
etc.

I mean, Sioux can get wild horses from the ones they catch after spanish introduction, then purchase guns by trade, but I dont see why they must turn in a sedentary centralized nation that can build cannons and ships just by be next to a western colony.

 

[Ixal]

Literally every inland tag in the game that never gained an ocean border before being conquered/annexed/integrated into a larger one. Inca and Maya put more boats in the ocean than Salzburg, Rwanda, and Tibet. The game allows all three of the latter to build boats freely within a very short time of holding cores next to water.

We're not talking warships, the game straight up blocks simple colonization/transport, which is a flagrant violation of both history (the people in the Caribbean got there somehow) and internal game consistency. There's no coherent justification for it but it was implemented anyway, to the strict detriment of EU 4's experience. Sounds familiar given some recent patch choices, but let's not pretend that the last three patches are an example of some new trend in EU 4 development.

So really argue that the Inca were more advanced than Salzburg because the latter didn't have a cost?
The knowledge of how to build ships was widespread in Europe, the Middle East and Asia and any nation there, once it gained a coast, could find people to build ships. By your logic, Austria should not have been able to build ships as it doesn't start with a coastline. But guess what happened once they did aquire one.

The Inca on the other hand could not build a ship, no matter where they lookded on the continent. The knowledge for that was not there and they were not even close to discover how to build anything being worthy of being called a ship in EU4s timeframe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So really argue that the Inca were more advanced than Salzburg because the latter didn't have a cost?

That isn't my argument.

The Inca on the other hand could not build a ship, no matter where they lookded on the continent. The knowledge for that was not there and they were not even close to discover how to build anything being worthy of being called a ship in EU4s timeframe.

They could not build European-style ships that were effective in combat. They *could* build ships that were effective in transporting goods and people along the coastlines. The game randomly does not allow this because reasons.

 

[BuchiTaton]

So really argue that the Inca were more advanced than Salzburg because the latter didn't have a cost?
The knowledge of how to build ships was widespread in Europe, the Middle East and Asia and any nation there, once it gained a coast, could find people to build ships. By your logic, Austria should not have been able to build ships as it doesn't start with a coastline. But guess what happened once they did aquire one.

The Inca on the other hand could not build a ship, no matter where they lookded on the continent. The knowledge for that was not there and they were not even close to discover how to build anything being worthy of being called a ship in EU4s timeframe.

Certainly TheMeInTeam´s idea that european or asiatic nations that didnt have historical coast line should not have ships (in short time*) is absurd.

But you are also losing the point about native boats (if ship is wrong for you), we are not asking for current on game european ships that are already shared with asiatic and africans nations. What natives need is a very weak transport ship, becuase if you did not know, nations like caribs used to raid isles and the coast, or other time tribes assaulted european ships, killing all their crew, like maori did. For sure to do that kind of things you need some form of boat.

If developers add a more interactive, fun and complex naval combat mechanics they can figure some (unusual but possible) situations where this small boat could defead unsuspecting and solitary european ships. But of course this must be a small chance in proper circumstances, the real objetive of native ships if make gameplay factible for oceanic and caribbean natives, not massive top tech native navy taking over europe.

 

[fetusthebard]

So I dont see what you mean with "little interaction".

I do not mean to belittle the interactions of South American tribes in the least. I probably should have made that point a bit more clear to begin with. But even from what you provided, I don't think you can deny the significantly greater extent of Polynesian trade networks. 9500 km is a monumental distance to travel. That's 5135 nautical miles, It'd take a week in the modern era, and was most likely multiple months in a ship even with an exceptional navigator at this time. This isn't a river trade mission, the ancient Egyptians could travel thousands of kilos doing that. This is the open ocean. European nations couldn't do this at the game's start. Many wouldn't for hundreds of years afterwards. That's all I meant. If you're looking for complicated navigational interactions between cultures, Polynesia is the posterchild.

About "migration" maybe I should have used the word "colonization". Anyway as far as I know the word MIGRATION is valid also for "the intentions of settling, permanently", not just temporarily. But I guess in the game context "colonization" is expansion and "migration" is move from one place to other all your population.

Now, again. The real question is How Oceanian could be implemented on game as viable and fun nations?

I want to know what is your vision of them on game, their tech value, how gonna work their ships, if they are supposed to be played "tall" or "wide", should they just wait for europeans to show or can they colonize Australia or America?

The migration in game fits more with the NA movement of tribes such as Powhatan when settlers from Virginia disrupted their society, shifting capitals further and further back. That should not (in my opinion) ever be allowed over major waterways, as the mechanics in-game do not accurately depict how such an undertaking would work. It also leads to some strange exploits, ie the Koryak to Australia chain. There are of course other things going on with that particular example, but it doesn't make much sense. And I currently have a very fun Australian game where I do just that, so no bias here.

Just put them in the game. There are plenty of tags that are supposed to do nothing for hundreds of years. As far as fun gameplay goes, some reformation would be the way to go in my opinion, similar to the Aztec, Mayan, and Inti reformations. This one would be heavily based on tribal buildup (perhaps with the new Colonist development mechanic for particularly isolated islands) leading to new tags spawning in nearby provinces. The more that spawn in, the closer to reform.

Tech value doesn't really exist anymore, but these would be tribal nations at game start, so no Feudalism obviously. Getting it should be made easier though imo (not just for these nations, for everyone). I'd be fine with normal ships, as I already said there are many nations in game that didn't have cannon-bearing ships at the start date but do because the game is an abstraction. And Hawai'i at the very least had a large navy. Since the expansion of the nearby islands is a tall strategy, I suppose tall, but the development shouldn't increase dramatically or anything. And Development is a bad mechanic for this kind of growth anyway, really it should be native population of the islands. I don't think colonization should be possible before reform without significant monarch point cost and the colonial range to do so, which should be lowered. The way to expansion in the region should be through vassalizing and annexation of the nearby tags that spring up due to expanding populations.

 

[morefire15]

The Australian Aboriginal nations are "tricky" to contextualize as nations with the current knowledge about their pre-european history. You are right about their use of early techniques of land management, agriculture, aquaculture and sedentarism in the case of some regions of western Australia. But if these are the criteria to add native nations to the game almost all of Africa (save Kalahari and the deeper Kongo), South America (except Tierra del Fuego and the deeper of Amazonia) and North America (but Artic and the Rocky Montains) would be complety covered of playable nations.

Now I must point that Im not realy againts of add some Aboriginal tags, after all I am myself working in a update for my MOD that is going to add provinces and these nations to Australia:
> Whadjuk (Noongar culture)
> Bidjigal (Eora culture)
> Wathaurong (Kulin culture)
> Kamilaroi (Murri culture)

With their own religion and tech group (my Polynesian already have their own religions and tech group also).

But the true is that I would also understand dev reasons if they never add Aboriginal nations. The Oceania nations that I think have way more reasons to be on game are Polynesian, Melanesians and Micronesians (Same reason I already have 11 of them in my MOD, but I am still gonna add the sixth Maori tribe).

Most of Amazonia had agricultural tribes.

Only the Chaco desert, certain small spots of Amazonia and Tierra del fuego had hunter gatherers.

There were a lot of people called "Cambeba" that inhabited the area between the Inca empire and Manaus. There should be also more tribes in the Amazon. There should be higher development in the Americas as a whole. At least in the non-hunter gatherer zones (already mentioned). Once european peoples create their colonial nations (5 provinces). Then there should be an event that decreases the uncolonized provinces' development as waves. For example:
-In 1492, Spain starts colonizing the caribbeans, in 1530, Spain creates its first colonial nation in the Caribbeans.
-Then, there is an event (in x years) that decreases 50% the development of the uncolonized provinces of the Caribbeans.
-20 years later, it spreads to the adjacent area (Colombia/MesoAmerica/Mexico/RioGrande...etc) or something that shows how more than 90% of natives died due to the wave of epidemics.
-Then, the modiffiers of old world diseases happen after this.

The development of new world nations need to be reworked. Both spanish accounts and incan sources by chronicles tell that incans managed to maintain an army of 100k size.

There are several uncolonized zones in the andean zones that were already occupied by tribes, chiefdoms, other kingdoms... For example, Madre de Dios, Cochabamba, the entire Peruvian coast region, northern Quito, Northern Chachapoyas, the area between Pacajes and Mapuches, and of course the amazonian border between the andean nations and them. There were lots of tribes between Manaus and Cusco. If you look for "Terra Petra" in google, maybe this will help to conceptualize the ammount of people that were living in the Amazon. Remember that more than 90% of natives died of disease, so I believe this reduction of uncolonized provinces' development may help with representing this scenario a bit more.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Certainly TheMeInTeam´s idea that european or asiatic nations that didnt have historical coast line should not have ships (in short time*) is absurd.

I never made such a case. I used them as examples to nullify a popular reasoning flaw on this forum:

Players often like to say "X did not happen historically, therefore it should not be possible in EU 4". Pointing out examples like "Salzburg did not build ocean going craft historically" is a good way to demonstrate why that reasoning fails.

The first thing I quoted in this recent discussion is the question about how many boats Hawaii had. In reality, a) people got there somehow and b) people got between the islands there somehow. Similarly, people made it into the Caribbean and moved quantities of goods along the coastlines.

These are non-trivial distances to swim, so I wonder how this was accomplished? It's a Scooby Doo mystery!

Just put them in the game. There are plenty of tags that are supposed to do nothing for hundreds of years. As far as fun gameplay goes, some reformation would be the way to go in my opinion, similar to the Aztec, Mayan, and Inti reformations.

The western hemisphere reforms should probably not depend on having a western border. Do away with that and you can also do away with the "tech boost".

 

[fr-rein]

The western hemisphere reforms should probably not depend on having a western border. Do away with that and you can also do away with the "tech boost".

I disagree.
Western Border option should remain, although maybe fixed a bit to look more like old westernization.

But what should be is ability to create your own Feudalism, not buy pouring development, but by more advanced reforms. I see no sense when I pour all MP as a tribe in development and get all techs later for free just by getting as a neighbor a weak colonial nation.
In fact, you can develop Renaissance, Colonialism and Printing Press without Feudalism. This is already as ridiculous as it gets.

Lastly, having navy for primitives should be a case, but probably tied to some reform. Would be quite nice too.

 

[Hawkslime]

Lastly, having navy for primitives should be a case, but probably tied to some reform. Would be quite nice too.

Make sure to give it extra attrition or something so it won´t cross oceans. I really don´t want to see Sunset Invasion in EU4

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Make sure to give it extra attrition or something so it won´t cross oceans. I really don´t want to see Sunset Invasion in EU4

The AI can't even pass 5 reforms in EU 4.