"Inhospitable" modifier for provinces

[Loaf Warden]

In the "S-Iberia" thread, there's a long discussion about how to keep Western European countries (usually Spain and Portugal, hence "S-Iberia") from colonizing Siberia every game while the Russians rarely get there. I came up with an idea that could both solve that problem and potentially open up other, currently "wasteland" areas, to local populations while keeping colonizers out.

The idea is that a new type of modifier would be created and applied to certain specific, pre-determined provinces, which for the purpose of the suggestion I'm going to call the "Inhospitable" modifier. (The name isn't as important as the function, and if the devs decide they like the idea but not the name, I don't mind what they call it.) Basically, this modifier would block colonists who have to travel from overseas from being able to settle that province. The "Inhospitable" modifier would be independent of the province's terrain, and wouldn't need to be divided into different types; in-game, the one modifier could represent frozen tundras, scorching deserts, rainforests, regions with high levels of malaria, or anything else that kept the colonial empires from being able to use those lands in the game's timeframe. Basically, the two conditions in which an Inhospitable province could be colonized are:

-A particular Diplo tech level, near or at the highest tech in the game, has been reached;

OR

-There is an unbroken chain of a country's directly-owned provinces between their capital and the Inhospitable province.

So, to use Siberia as an example, if Russia has expanded across Eurasia to the borders of where the Inhospitable provinces are, they can use them because they can walk there from Moscow (or St. Petersburg) without leaving their own territory. But Spanish or Portuguese colonists can't use it because they have to come from overseas, at least until very nearly the end of the game. If the Russians still aren't there by 1800 (or whenever), it's because they had their chance and failed, at which point it's fair for other powers, in what is almost the Victoria 2 era anyway, to start being able to make use of them.

Other regions could then have some or all of their wasteland filled in and replaced with Inhospitable provinces. So the Apache or the Shoshone could settle the Great Basin Desert, because their capitals are local, but European colonizers can't. Europeans can settle around the coasts of Australia, but it'll take a very high tech level before they can begin to move inward. The Portuguese can't use the deep rainforests of the Amazon, but the Tupi can, or an independent Brazil.

And Africa could be filled in much more. There were plenty of peoples in central and southern Africa who would be cool to have in the game (and let's be honest, the region where the Mutapa live is plain weird-looking), but there's always been the issue that if Africa had more provinces, the Europeans would have their Scramble for Africa three centuries early and create an a-historical mess. But designate all those provinces as Inhospitable, and doesn't that solve the issue? The local Luba and Bunyoro and Buganda (etc.) nations can live in there, and even expand if they take Expansion or Exploration to get a colonist, but the British and French and Iberians couldn't. They could still settle around the coasts, as now, but it would be so close to the end of the game before they could start pushing for the interior that they'd never have time to fill it up before Victoria 2 begins and the real Scramble comes. (Of course, they could still send armies in and conquer the local groups. But they couldn't expand the territory even if they did that because it's not connected to their own capital.)

The only issue that I can see off the top of my head is having the Ottomans or Mamluks blobbing all over Africa, since their capitals are accessible. But do they take Expansion or Exploration? I'm not sure the AI would do that. But if the player wants to focus their efforts on that, well, I don't think that's game-breaking. A small price to pay for the advantages of having more African states and fewer instances of S-Iberia, in my view.

 

[Danfish77]

I like what you're trying to do here, but I can't help but feel like this will force nations to act unrealistically. Why shouldn't a very Pacific-oriented Spain be able to colonize Kamchatka and eastern Siberia? Spain had the Philippines, they could have pushed into Japan, and certainly could have profited from trading around the Sea of Okhotsk or even permanent settlement. I think rather a change in AI is required, either to correctly assess what little use the area is or to enforce more historical outcomes.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Well, the S-Iberia thread had a variety of proposals for how to change AI behavior to solve the problem. There is something to the "very Pacific-oriented Spain" point, but the problem in the game is that either Spain or Portugal (or more rarely, Great Britain) seem to grab that area every game. Granted, my solution would mean they basically never get it, which may not be ideal either. To me, though--and I recognize that other people have different priorities--the potential to open up Africa without opening up a Scramble is the other major pillar on which this idea was built. I very much want to see more provinces throughout the African interior, with African states occupying some of them, but I'm as concerned as anyone else about making sure Africa doesn't get completely taken over by European powers in the EU4 era, which is what would happen if more provinces were simply added without an additional system in place to keep them out.

In other words, it was the S-Iberia issue that made me think of the Inhospitable modifier, but if the devs find a better way around that problem--making Siberian colonization by Western European powers rare without making it impossible--I'll be perfectly happy to see it. I still would really, really like them to consider using the Inhospitable modifier to open up Africa and a few other areas like the Great Basin and the Amazon Rainforest to local powers only.* Wasteland, in-game, is there to keep Europeans out of certain areas they weren't inhabiting during the game's timeframe, but just because Europeans couldn't use the land yet doesn't mean nobody could. I think this Inhospitable modifier would allow the game to better reflect that fact by making sure local peoples can use the land in their own area, which they're accustomed to and know how to live in, while simultaneously making it impossible for Europeans (and other overseas colonizers--a player-controlled Ming couldn't colonize the Amazon Rainforest either) to carve up the entire world amongst them before 1821.

*In my original post, I mentioned Australia as an example. On further reflection, I'm not sure it's necessary to have Inhospitable provinces in Australia in lieu of wasteland. There are no tags that exist in Australia, so it's not as important that more provinces be available for the use of locals. Unless they decide to add a few Aboriginal groups later, which is possible but probably unlikely. Or they decide to make more land available for custom nation-designer starts in the area. Still, I can see that Australia would be a low priority for this, compared to Africa (priority one, in my view) and the other areas I mentioned.

 

[Canute VII]

I like the idea. You could also link the inhospital modifier to the concept of national ideas for, say, africans. Europeans could aquire these throug some new ideas. Exloration idea group could be split up into pure exploration and colonisation. Or expansion idea group could take on a new idea or bonus (after all ideas within the group are available). I actually like the last conceptio better since land powers with free terrain at their borders usually would prefer expansion idea group, whereas western europeans would rather incline to the exploratio idea group.