It's Time to Call Out the American colonial debacle in EU4
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You are confusing "adopted" with "invented".
He may well have promoted its use in his army, but the Stirrup was invented many hundreds of years earlier in central asia and was introduced to europe by central-asian invaders like the Avars. This is even stated further down in the document you linked.
Stirrup - Wikipedia
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Balance aside, nobody considers that the cannons you build could just be purchased from Europeans? Because, believe it or not, guns were among many goods traded to Native Americans in exhange for things, such as furs, for example. Really not much of a strench in a game where you can, again, start in Okinawa and conquer the world.
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You know what's funny? Since 1.31 came out I haven't seen a single thread discussing the merits of including Yuchi and Catawba cultures in the Muskogean group or asking how much we really know about the location of tribes around the Great Lakes pre Beaver Wars. But we get twice weekly threads about how historical it is that North American tribes can now grab up more land before the Europeans arrive. Now why is that?
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Colonisation was conquest. Ask an indigenous person in Oceania or the Americas if that's somehow a surprise to you.
European colonies, without exception, relied on the conquest and slaughter of the indigenous peoples.
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That was not always true, and especially not in early North America. True, the British were very harsh in some parts of the world, but in general there were peaceful colonies along the coastline in North America -- initially, although things changed based on who else came in. For the initial colonies that were primarily about fleeing religious persecution in Europe, those were peaceful colonies, some of which didn't fare so well and were helped out by the Natives, thus the original "Thanksgiving" feast. There's a clear difference between a religious colony and a typical British colony of that day, and no doubt the British were more focused on clearing things out.
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Are you saying that people are only allowed to criticize aspects of the game that they find unrealistic if they also criticize other aspects of the game that you find realistic? Because I don't think that's a particularly reasonable stance to take.
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Guns (as in rifles) and Cannons are two different things. Rifles are a 1-man weapon, 1-man transported and maintained; whereas cannons required a team of horses and a group of men, just to move/equip/maintain and fire it. And cannons were not as easily transported across the ocean, nor were they ever traded or sold to indigenous people in North America, ever. Cannons were not trade goods, they were national assets like an ICBM, and just like an ICBM, you don't sell them. In their prime, cannons were "Weapons of Mass Destruction" - if you could kill 10 or more people with one shot. You didn't sell away that tech.
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Poster standards don't have to be consistent with my standards to be coherent. However, poster's standards do have to be self-consistent to be coherent. "I care that the game is unrealistic but I also don't care that the game is unrealistic" is not rationale that leads to any consistently beneficial changes in a game.
I am making a falsifiable claim. Namely, that there is no coherent standard that singles out NA natives as uniquely "fantasy" or "unrealistic", per OP complaint, compared to a wide swath of other nations and core gameplay mechanics. I even gave the conditional action which would prove me wrong if accomplished (coming up with a general standard for "unrealistic" that anticipates natives as unrealistic, but not say coalitions or other positions/limitations). OP didn't do it, and you misrepresented my statements per the quote above.
It's still an open claim, however. Those standards could, in principle, still be presented here. Maybe OP will do what 50+ OPs in the past over numerous years could not do, and rarely even tried to do. I leave open that possibility.
Ignoring it and repeating "x isn't realistic", on the other hand, is not reasonable. That statement, on its own, is refuted.
Too early for well-established European colonies, too. Not that the game makes any effort to prevent that either.
Is there a particular reason a western nation couldn't ship guns and horses to NA rather than Africa, if it so desired?
Actually, it's not clear that fielding units implies that. Numerous countries in EU 4 with joke levels of productive capability and relative technology in the period nevertheless can field armies that can shoot and utilize arty in the game. Irish minors, Indian subcontinent tribes, hordes, and rift lake Africans can all attain military hardware similarly. You can use whatever head cannon you like for that of course, at the end of the day it's a game mechanic. But it's not clear why NA Indians wouldn't be able to similarly utilize that stuff if supplied, or why they "should be uniquely penalized relative to these positions".
And they were even harder to transport long distances overland, requiring riverine transport or significant terrain considerations. Yet in EU 4 armies march at identical speeds regardless of their presence.
Probably much easier to ship 1000 cannons across the Atlantic, than to march with those same 1000 cannons from Madrid to Azov overland, taking a route through the alps. Which the game allows and can even be done with forced march, lol.
90% of the work (give or take) was done in advance by disease...something you might have noticed EU 4 only barely models, and that I alluded to earlier that it is also only minimally modeled elsewhere.
If you don't model that, it's not reasonable to expect similar outcomes when it doesn't happen at the scales it did in history.
While the reason varies from poster to poster, framing it as simply disagreeing with ahistorical things or fantasy mechanics is dishonest. Could even be poster not being honest with self, as to why this particular unrealistic thing is particularly bothersome.
If anybody ever takes me up on that "define standards" offer to demonstrate the strength (or lack thereof) of argument, perhaps real reasons will come to light.
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Because they were such a lasting force? Stop watching dances with wolves they’re gone bro
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This thread is about the problematic "Look and Feel" of Colonization of the Americas in the 1500s. If you don't like the way Novgorod appears in the same time period, then by all means - start your own thread about how unrealistic Novgorod's game play and progression is, as I'm sure you can pedantically frame the issues with the game design and tech advance presentation of the period, complete with multi-quotes.
As for Africa and shipping cannons - that was about the 1700 time frame, not the 1500s, that guns were being shipped for trading to Africa. Yes, a 1700-era tall ship and sea captain had much more capability to navigate to the New World, but not a 1500s ship. And, it's not centric to my discussion, but I acknowledge that mid-1500s colonization of North America is "early" but that's not the point of this thread, although you could make your own thread about pacing issues and "when" the discovery and colonization of North America should commence in EU4, have at it.
Just don't expect someone to take your multi-quote threads and willingly become a Research Assistant for you to race off and do a project and get back to you on it. If I walked into an auto-shop with a flat tire, and only need that fixed, I guess you'd tell the service rep at the counter that he can't fix my tire until my car has a complete inspection to provide in detail all the other problems with the car --- when all I care about is getting the flat tire fixed.
In life, you can make isolated complaints, without trying to fix everything that is wrong with the system. That doesn't mean the person is wrong, it just means they're more focused than you on a single-issue/task problem set.
Go ahead, fix ALL of EU4, and get back to me on that later and report in, salute 3 steps from my desk, and await further instructions.
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North America is the only place that allows a colonisation focused game, which includes a centuries long process with lots of investment to be done before getting anything in return. And by then your colonies might even become strong enough to break free.
As a European coloniser, east you go for conquest and economic exploitation, west you go for nation building and babysitting your colonies. South you go just to get to the east (which is a pitty as historically and geographically it is IMHO the best region on Earth). Only Australia is somewhat similar to what North America is, though it’s spoiled with gold mines (which is understandable as the original game design obviously intended it to be colonised at last and therefore provided a buff).
Why abandoning this in terms of gameplay and historicity good and accurate setting? Why not improving it?
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Well then why aren’t you asking for Europe to be nerfed? It has so much dev compared to the rest of the world when in reality China was far ahead of Europe until the 1600s.
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By all means, start your own thread on that topic, perhaps even in the Suggestions area for EU4, but that's not what this thread is about.
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That fact isn't lost on anybody, but it's also not what I challenged in this debate. Other than perhaps the basis for determining that it's "problematic".
I could, but I have instead chosen to discuss in this thread, which advocates change and what "should" happen in EU 4 with incoherent rationale. Similar rationale has been used in EU 4 in the past, and the resulting patches made the game worse.
All I asked to refute my point is that you present your own standards for "unrealistic", which was your sole basis for asserting something was wrong.
Normally, you wouldn't need to research your own standards.
There are standard processes for determining whether a tire is damaged, and whether it is sufficiently inflated. Some set of measures, that when followed allow someone to anticipate whether future tires tested are working properly. You might care whether the tires used undergo those processes.
You might also think it's a bad idea if someone proposes standards that do not, in fact, result in safe tires.
You can make isolated complaints, and you can implement fixes worse than the alleged problem, yes. You can advocate for a game to become a completely different game too. There are no rules against those things.
Similarly, there's no rule against others pointing out that incoherent rationale for making changes to a game world tends to make the game worse on average, and has made it worse in the past.
They were not gone in 1700 however, bro.
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South America, especially the east coast, is wide open. You may run into the Incan tags eventually, but there is a huge, pretty much uncontested area for colonization.
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One of problems with EU4 i fact, that in place "long-timed civilization, social and political processes" players get main buttons with rapid-actions. So primitive tribe in 1 September can use only tomahawks, spears, javelins, bows etc. and in 2 September can use pistol cavalry, mobile field artilery and pre-napoleon muskets. In 1 September tribe have primitive agriculture without farm animals, in 2 September tribe have crop rotation, selective breeding, etc. From stone age to pre-industrial age in one day. This is strange...
Here some form of solution can be progress bars. Maybe in institution style, maybe in old westernization style and maybe in other. Adoption horses, cows and others farm animals; learning of metallurgy; urbanization; transfer common/collective farms to private estates etc. This would open gate to deeper rethinking of societies and state in Pdx games.
Also important to easier colonization of North American East Coast were plagues. Spaniards brought old-world diseases that massacred the indigenous people and disaeses expand faster than european colonists. Many tribes in Amazon or in North American was dead, before discovere by Europeans. Dead and hollow proto-cities and greater villages were discovered, and those werent ancient ruins (like a mayan ruins).
Even after gaining immunity, local communities were severely weakened. They had lost human base to create effective resistance force to civil colonization (here I mean "without support of regular soldiers; used military force only adventurers and ex-soldiers"). Rapid reduction of the population density brought a certain primitization of life and later low density lead to limited the possibilities of modernization.
I think, that without taking these two elements into account, each indigenous rework will create new abominations (current we have "primitive megalopolis with greater power than of whole Italian Peninsula").
Here some form of solution can be progress bars. Maybe in institution style, maybe in old westernization style and maybe in other. Adoption horses, cows and others farm animals; learning of metallurgy; urbanization; transfer common/collective farms to private estates etc. This would open gate to deeper rethinking of societies and state in Pdx games.
Also important to easier colonization of North American East Coast were plagues. Spaniards brought old-world diseases that massacred the indigenous people and disaeses expand faster than european colonists. Many tribes in Amazon or in North American was dead, before discovere by Europeans. Dead and hollow proto-cities and greater villages were discovered, and those werent ancient ruins (like a mayan ruins).
Even after gaining immunity, local communities were severely weakened. They had lost human base to create effective resistance force to civil colonization (here I mean "without support of regular soldiers; used military force only adventurers and ex-soldiers"). Rapid reduction of the population density brought a certain primitization of life and later low density lead to limited the possibilities of modernization.
I think, that without taking these two elements into account, each indigenous rework will create new abominations (current we have "primitive megalopolis with greater power than of whole Italian Peninsula").
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You do realize that "Rapid Collapse of Society" is a thing... right?
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Its really sad how the long support cycle has made EU4 worse instead of better.
Colonization (and several other mechanics) worked as they were supposed to, but to churn out more DLCs they were then changed into something completely ahistorical by having stone age tribes uplift themselves to renaissance levels within a few hundred years.
And now Paradox will certainly not revert their DLC changes.
I can only hope EU5 will be more sensible and not make those tribes playable.
Colonization (and several other mechanics) worked as they were supposed to, but to churn out more DLCs they were then changed into something completely ahistorical by having stone age tribes uplift themselves to renaissance levels within a few hundred years.
And now Paradox will certainly not revert their DLC changes.
I can only hope EU5 will be more sensible and not make those tribes playable.
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