Minor Countries Almost Impossible to Play

[Henry V]

Now, here's the thing - you guys don't seem to make the distinction between AI and human players. Remember, in EU2, China was so powerful that it was _the_ number one great power almost by default... but only if it was controlled by a human player. An AI player behaved in a more historically-accurate manner, resulting in a much weaker China.

I played China once in EU II. If you put down all the revolts you do come out on top; I had Conquistadors heading west through Siberia and greeting the Russians at the other end. It's really not much fun, though, because ALL you're doing for 20-30 years is raising armies frantically to deal with the White Lotus society.

A human can of course do more than the AI; I was able to make Poland, which wasn't even on the map in 1819, the world's foremost power on a couple of occasions. In Victoria, I was able to make Brazil a Great Power (admittedly #8 but at least on the list).

Russia is invincible under human control. You enact political reforms to turn it into a democracy and, without the threat of internal revolts, you have limitless manpower with which to raise armies and build factories.

 

[swilhelm73]

See, and this is the problem - the requirements for uncivilised nations to become civilised are so steep that even these three countries, unless they get their scripted events, cannot civilise. The generic civilising events are next to useless, because uncivilised nations are so restricted that even the most powerful nations of this kind simply do not ever meet the requirements.

Well, I can easily make China civilized in around 1840 obviously without relying on the scripted event. I'm pretty sure I've seen other people do it with Japan and Persia.

In short, the best compromise would be to impose the uncivilised nation restrictions at the AI level, not at the gameplay level. I do not think anybody here really want to see the AI-controlled uncivilised nations grow excessively powerful. All we want is the possibility of doing something if we play with an uncivilised nation. Because the main problem of uncivilised nations is not their lack of power - its the sheer, mind-numbing boredom of playing with one. It's just no fun when just about every option is unavailable because you're uncivilised.

Making such a change would not be easy for Paradox to do. However, it is VERY easy for an individual to do - just changing one line in the save file.

Also, I like the challenge uncivilized presents when I play China or Japan.

 

[Quarto]

But again, why not just mod your own game? It'll take you two minutes and everyone'll be happy. As I said in the post above "All that needs to be done to make a country civilized is to open your save with notepad and remove the line "primitive = yes"."

Because that's not the point. I don't want these countries to be civilised. I want it to be possible to civilise them through my actions inside the game.

 

[unmerged(25053)]

Actually, I thought the Timurid Empire/Mughals were THE #1 in EU 2...

Anyway, in order for this to be solved, China would have to be treated as a seperate type of 'uncivilzed' or the AI might run away with it. From playing just a few games, I can empathise that non-Chinese minors (uncivs) are probably very difficult to achieve 'civ' status.

Upgrading the RGO's might help this, however, RGO's are not the best at making money. Also, what does it really mean, in realistic terms, to 'upgrade an RGO'? Certainly not 'plant more grain/rice/corn/etc' but more along the lines of 'using tractors/better planting methods (like crop rotation)/better fertilizers/etc'. Could most countries do that in the 1800's? And I am not even getting into the problems of mining. I don't know. Most countries that had the people did expand to the best of their capability (knowledge of agriculture/mining/and so forth).

Ok, so I am taking the discussion into a new area (probably unwanted).

Again, by allowing the RGO's to be increased, does this solve all the problems of getting an unciv to civ? Or, are we actually discussing the problem of getting to civ in the first place.

Perhaps the problem is actually this:
Many countries within the game are not capable, in game terms, of being able to compete on any level with the major powers (primarly the civ'd nations).

I do understand and partly agree with the great difficulty in becoming civ. Maybe that is a victory criteria to shoot far as a player. Dunno.

That is the way the game is designed, since it is an attempt to portray a time period in history when Science and Technology were actually improved en masse and applied. (Not saying I lovingly agree, but, um, that is what the game is about).

On another note:

Paradox has very nice Commerce persona inventions (about the actual people involved). Too bad there is a total lack of such a thing (list of the greats in the field) for Science. Kinda missed Maxwell and even Einstein. (Was playing a game, it was 1915, and I said, "Gee, no Einstein. And we coulda done that nice Relativity experiment since I had not yet fought a WWI. And, come to mention it, no Planck, either! wow, the 20th Century is gonna be REALLY weird with no Relativistic QM equations!)

 

[Quarto]

Upgrading the RGO's might help this, however, RGO's are not the best at making money. Also, what does it really mean, in realistic terms, to 'upgrade an RGO'? Certainly not 'plant more grain/rice/corn/etc' but more along the lines of 'using tractors/better planting methods (like crop rotation)/better fertilizers/etc'. Could most countries do that in the 1800's? And I am not even getting into the problems of mining. I don't know. Most countries that had the people did expand to the best of their capability (knowledge of agriculture/mining/and so forth).

Given that expanding an RGO allows you to double the amount of workers (as opposed to reducing it, which would be the logical result of the things you mention), it seems that it does mean planting more grain/rice/whatever.

Again, by allowing the RGO's to be increased, does this solve all the problems of getting an unciv to civ? Or, are we actually discussing the problem of getting to civ in the first place.

No, it doesn't (which is why I'm surprised to see people so opposed to it). It does, however, give uncivilised players something to do - not much, but at least something. Right now, playing an uncivilised nation means doing absolutely nothing until the late 60s, when maybe you'll be able to buy some machine parts, steel, etc.. I don't know about the others here, but personally, I don't actually want uncivilised nations to be more powerful than they are right now - all I want is for them to not be so infernally dull when I play one.

 

[Aragos]

IMO, the main problem with the 'uncivilised nation' concept is that it tries to put into a single category a vast range of nations - it would have been better if there had been a continuum from uncivilised to civilised, where the further you get on the continuum, the more civilised abilities you'd get; it's worth noting that most Victorian-era Europeans considered Russia still somewhat uncivilised.

Now this is a great idea. A continuum of 'civilization' from woefully uncivilized (basically most of the uncolonized world in 1836) to highly civilized (UK). That would enable Vicky to differentiate between Bhutan, Zululand, China and Japan--and address some of the other threads attacking the entire civilized/uncivilized concept as 'western imperialist racist dogma' or some such nonsense.

 

[Aragos]

See, and this is the problem - the requirements for uncivilised nations to become civilised are so steep that even these three countries, unless they get their scripted events, cannot civilise. The generic civilising events are next to useless, because uncivilised nations are so restricted that even the most powerful nations of this kind simply do not ever meet the requirements.

This statement got me to thinking. Vicky fails to reflect one very important concept, one that is missing from most 'tech tree' based strategy games. The simple fact that information SPREADS. And if you are an imperialist colony builder, it SPREADS EVEN FASTER.

Example: The Singer Sewing Machine Company. When they sent their hordes of salesmen across the known world in at the turn of the century (and before), they sold not only sewing machines, but the very concept of replacing hand labor with machine labor. Not a big deal to a worker in London, Paris or New York, but a very big deal to the local village in upper Zululand or in New Guinea.

In Vicky terms, wouldn't it make sense to decrease the cost of civilizing, along with the research time for most techs, after certain discoveries are made by the first nation to do so? For example, lets say the UK is the first to discover Interchangeable Parts. They build a machine parts factory. Since the UK isn't executing every visitor to the country that tries to leave (the Shoguns and gunpowder come to mind), the knowledge that machine parts can be made and the methods of doing so would spread. The "Journal of Industry" in Prussia would have essays on the benefits of machine parts, etc.

And what does this have to do with civilized/uncivilized you ask? Well, like 'hard' (science, engineering) technology, ideas spread as well. As immigrants arrived in the more advanced nations, they kept contact with the home country. Wouldn't it be neat if the USA found out that there was a downside to immigration, that the hordes of Chinese in the USA are sending money and tech back home? That the Chinese actually figure out, after sending immigrants to build the thing, that railroads in America (and in China) are a good idea?

Bottom line is that the accellerated development of Great Powers should also accellerate the development of the rest of the world through 'bleed off' of technology. If the UK or USA gets all the techs by 1885, then don't be surprised that China is suddenly getting the early techs extremely cheaply (flintlock rifles at 1 RP, vice 10).

Just some food for thought.

 

[unmerged(30076)]

Well, that's got to be historically correct. After all, we all know that Japan, after hundreds of years of warfare against their Korean neighbours, mysteriously lost their ability to attack Korea in the early 19th century .

I didn't see any answer to the initial question among the heat generated by this thread. So just for the record, there is an event which gives the civilzed status to Japan - it is historically related to the end of the old regime, IIRC. I don't know if there is a way to hurry or avoid it, but I nevertheless kept my samurai and now ran (in 1889) a civilized Japan ranked 11th (9th at its best). And I enjoy it

- Cabbale.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

This statement got me to thinking. Vicky fails to reflect one very important concept, one that is missing from most 'tech tree' based strategy games. The simple fact that information SPREADS. And if you are an imperialist colony builder, it SPREADS EVEN FASTER.

It's true that ideally some mythical future version of Vicky would allow research times for techs to be descreased as a factor of how many of your neighbors already have it. Interestingly, Paradox seems to have had the same idea, because it's in CK, and if I am not mistaken, didn't EUII also provide a little discount if your neighbors already had a tech? It's surprising, therefore, that Vicky didn't have it, too.

 

[swilhelm73]

It's true that ideally some mythical future version of Vicky would allow research times for techs to be descreased as a factor of how many of your neighbors already have it. Interestingly, Paradox seems to have had the same idea, because it's in CK, and if I am not mistaken, didn't EUII also provide a little discount if your neighbors already had a tech? It's surprising, therefore, that Vicky didn't have it, too.

EU2 had the "neighbor bonus". If you were behind in tech you got a bonus to your research. For small countries this could be substantial, though it tended not to be for larger countries.

There was also a large penalty to getting ahead of the historical curve.

 

[unmerged(30105)]

I can build factories in uncivilized nations yet I cannot expand RGOs. Enough said obviously the failure to build RGOs by uncivilized nations is due more with the balancing of China then on attempts to keep the game Historical.

At least I am not talking about making every country civilied.

 

[swilhelm73]

I can build factories in uncivilized nations yet I cannot expand RGOs. Enough said obviously the failure to build RGOs by uncivilized nations is due more with the balancing of China then on attempts to keep the game Historical.

At least I am not talking about making every country civilied.

Not really. As I pointed out, the inability to expand RGOs acts as a game mechanism for a number of the problems that uncivilized countries had in dramatically expanding resource exports to the world at large.

If anything, uncivilized shouldn't be able to build factories either.

 

[unmerged(3921)]

From the standpoint of accuracy and realism its entirely appropriate that "underdogs" in Vicky should have a tougher time than "underdogs" in EUII. The amount of time they have to catch up is much less and the amount of ground they need to catch up is much larger. If people want a fun game with an "underdog" country they they have a full range of options via editing to do that. But forcing those changes into the default scenario would have negative (IMO) impacts on game balance for the greater majority of players who currently play larger nations in SP.

But if we are going to get into the topic of whether RGO restrictions and other uncivilized penalties are realistically modeling how these "underdog" countries historically had poor performance, then I must say they are not realistic. The RESULTS in terms of endgame performance may be semi-realistic. But the restrictions themselves are not.

In particular the main problem facing these uncivilized nations was not a lack of RGO collection facilities. Quite the opposite. The problem for these uncivilized countries was extremely low agricultural and resource collection productivity. In other words, the game modeling should be nearly full employment with each POP producing less output than a POP in a developed country. Nor should these uncivilized countries be exporting large quantities of goods but at low prices. Rather prices should be fairly good, but net availability of goods should be fairly low because they should be consumed almost entirely by the domestic population. In other words domestic demand is way too low and the penalties imposed if that demand is not satisfied is way too low. Where are the famines that racked India, Africa and China? In Vicky a POP can survive years without food and then eventually it just moves to a different province. How is that realistic?

As I said the RESULTS on country performance of the uncivilized restrictions appear to be fairly decent. But the manner in which they are implemented is wrong. That is part of the reason why the particular strategies used for countries like Japan, China, etc. have this zany sort of unrealism. Build a massive army, a small industrial base and colonize like crazy? Yikes, that doesn't sound like a reasonable recipe in reality. In reality the optimal strategy for these countries would have been to focus on improving agricultural productivity, including that hugely difficult nirvanna of "land reform". But we don't ever see that as a focal point for uncivilized nations in Victoria, because that simply isn't how the penalties for being uncivilized are implemented.

 

[unmerged(28310)]

quotes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chaingun
I repeat what said earlier, when you play as a minor there are not enough choices to make the game interesting. A good game allows many different approaches to different problems, which is certainly not the case for about 80% of the countries in this game. Also, I do not believe this problem can ever be corrected in Victoria, because the engine itself does not inheritently support more complexity. Even if it did, that extra complexity would have to be hidden to majors because it's currently they borderline excessive micromanagement already. (Although a good game design can avoid making complexity = micromanagment.)

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Here is where I am getting confused. It seems like alot of people have different concepts of minors,majors,easy nations,and hard. You state that 80% of nations are basically minors. I have read people on this forum call the Italian states minors and Sweden a minor. Sweden,all the Italians,South America countries,etc have alot to do. Colonize Africa,attack China and Korea to get more resources,etc. If you just keep what you have and don't try to expand your influence of course there is nothing to do.
Basically all the nations I have stated above are fairly easy,plus many uncivilized(China,Korea,etc) Just because you as a player have trouble with a country doesn't mean it should be made easier for you. I have read seemingly countless threads of people seemingly being shocked when someone comes in 7-8th as Two Sic.

-------------------------------------------
Am quoting myself ^
I didn't mean these statements to be directed at Chaingun personally and perhaps the part about if you have trouble you aren't ready is a bit harsh.
I guess Sweden is a minor-I didn't realize there national pop was so low. And the Italians are problay easier now in 1.03 since uniting Italy has been simplified.
As for uncivs being to hard I think I want to change my opinion a bit. Having to recruit 60-80divs(whatever it is) is a bit ridiculous. It seems for some uncivs it would be near numerically impossible to even get the manpower needed. China,Japan,Korea,and a few more not a real problem.
To the very 1st post you stated taxes at 50%,uncivs have such a low tax eff that you will make alot more money setting to 0% tax and 100% tariffs. But sell pop need resources(ex-grain-glass-etc)on bulk sell like once a yr playing 1.03(no idea about any other patches). If you don't will really hamper your tariff income. Can sell trees,iron,etc normally.

 

[unmerged(30076)]

Here is where I am getting confused. It seems like alot of people have different concepts of minors,majors,easy nations,and hard. You state that 80% of nations are basically minors. I have read people on this forum call the Italian states minors and Sweden a minor. Sweden,all the Italians,South America countries,etc have alot to do. Colonize Africa,attack China and Korea to get more resources,etc. If you just keep what you have and don't try to expand your influence of course there is nothing to do.
Basically all the nations I have stated above are fairly easy,plus many uncivilized(China,Korea,etc) Just because you as a player have trouble with a country doesn't mean it should be made easier for you. I have read seemingly countless threads of people seemingly being shocked when someone comes in 7-8th as Two Sic.

I agree with your last point - the game is not here to make things easier for you, nor more difficult - change the difficulty if you want that. But I am some what upset by the somewhat tremendous amount of prestige given by conquest.

For example I play Two-Siciles and rose from the 20th position to the 15th by invading and annexing Tunisia, and then exchanging Tunis to France vs some interesting techs which allowed me to greatly develop the industry in my country. I gained 25 prestige by annexing Tunisia, which was not too much, compared to the BB I incurred

Then England attacked France and asked me to join in the war. I refused and instead declared war on England, thus finding myself against tons of indians satellites and the Ionian Isles! Invading these two islands was a piece of cake of course, and I won 88 prestige by accepting not to annex them and taking only one of their two provinces!

This put me in fact on the 7th step - all because of these 88 prestige, too easily won IMHO.


Also: a unciv. gaining civ. status by invading and gaining mucho prestige and raising to the status of great power seems a bug to me. Why should Afghanistan learn 25 techs by invading their nearest negihbour ? A big loophole in my book, that I don't wish to exploit... but the IA might.

- Cabbale.

 

[IEX Totalview]

Was that with patch 1.03b?

 

[unmerged(30076)]

Was that with patch 1.03b?

It was with patch 1.03 for the French version. AFAIK, this is the latest available patch.

- Cabbale.

 

[kingmbutu]

the most positive solution so far has been the technology seepage one. although the gap between the civilized and unciv was great during this period, the spread of technology was actually much faster than in previous centuries. That increase continues today. Simply put, the first nation to discover railways has to go through ALL of the steps of discovery whereas the nxt nation doesn't. They can just read the manual and implement the procedure without all of the trial and error that makes the initial discovery take so long. SO, it would help the uncivs tremendously if the cost of technology went down as more are discovered worldwide.

 

[unmerged(27172)]

Honestly, I believe that minors are minors. They are there to be either annoying or conquered. If they were as playable as the Powers, they would no longer be minors. Playing Annam with the playability of France would be taking a European country and dropping it in amongst uncivilised neighbours.

The game plays by European rules, it is really hard to compete if you are not European. No one else stands a chance! Which is as it should be.

Try playing one of he SA nations for a good challenge. Argentina shoudl keep you busy for a while...All the civilised bonuses without the unstoppable power. A good balance.