Natives and Colonization

[Olaf Trygvasson]

I don’t think I’m alone in saying I strongly dislike the current colonization gameplay, mainly in the Americas. The AI can’t handle it at all, and even for the player it is usually too much of a hassle to provide any benefits. Native American tribes are just far too powerful, especially with the mechanics that allow them to form states that span half of North America by the time they face any real conflict with the Europeans. So this is what I propose:
1) remove the federation mechanics that allow natives to consolidate into a single state, or at least greatly nerf them
2) create an event chain that all native countries must go through when they encounter Europeans to simulate the plagues that ravaged their populations. Face them with a choice of either interacting with the Europeans, which will greatly reduce the development in their provinces, or reduce their contact which will lessen their development loss but slow institution spread and increase tech cost. If they are able to suffer the plague and survive, however, they gain new CBS against their fellow natives to allow them to help consolidate other tribes into coalitions like the Sioux, and unite to face the Colonial powers, albeit after those powers have already gained a strong foothold and are probably more powerful than the native coalition
3) create a mechanic by which CNs are able to rapidly culture convert conquered land. The English in particular didn’t really subjugate natives, they simply pushed them farther west, and the game doesn’t really model this. Instead, a 13 colonies usually has a handful of English provinces and many totemist provinces with native cultures and high unrest, which just isn’t how things happened. Giving them a bonus to culture conversion is the only way with current mechanics to simulate their forcing of native tribes to migrate further west, settling the abandoned land with their own people
I know that this may be unpopular because it could be seen as railroading the Native Americans into destruction- but that’s how history played out. It does a greater disservice to the Native American tribes to trivialize the challenges they faced in their struggle for survival. And it creates a more realistic and immersive experience for a player playing as a Native tribe, as they are constantly on the brink of annihilation at the hands of colonial powers.

 

[Lepaso]

Once upon a time we had Westernization. There is a reason we don't have Westernization any more. I do agree that the cultural tolerance hugboxes of acceptance that the CNs currently are is pretty bad, but that is because of Expel Minorities being a paid "feature", not because of anything to do with the natives, so blame Golden Century and the devs at the time for that; until they decide to remove that garbage from the game, CNs are going to continue to refuse to convert religion and culture. Note that you can't convert culture without converting religion first, and CNs are all forced to have 'No negative penalty from religion' as their NI Tradition, so giving CNs culture conversion bonuses isn't going to do anything, since all their provinces will stay totemist until the end of the game since they don't religiously convert.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Note that you can't convert culture without converting religion first, and CNs are all forced to have 'No negative penalty from religion' as their NI Tradition

While you can make a case for changing mechanics, I would like to once again speak into the void wrt AI conversions too:

There is no reason the AI should refuse to convert when doing so improves its unrest situation. This includes tolerance values < 3, and "no religious penalties". Once those provinces are low autonomy, converting them is inexpensive and results in less unrest.

The AI in general is weirdly reluctant to convert provinces, and that's noticeable when you feed subjects. They have a missionary, the province(s) in question can be converted in reasonable timeframes, and they're not in debt (in fact this same AI is willing to build forts or mass shipyards). If this is a general AI issue, it should be addressed because it is negatively impacting what all AI countries do. I think that's how it is, but if this is somehow subject-only it's callous.

Either way, the AI does not stack -unrest modifiers sufficient to get by on 0 tolerance provinces. This isn't some fetish + waaq + humanist + NI type of setup the AI is running. Any small amount of unrest will overcome the stability/legitimacy benefits, and if AI fights rebels even one extra time compared to converting, the ducat cost is more than converting. The current behavior isn't just bad in history terms, it's bad mechanically/represents a regression from prior CN behavior of actually converting provinces.

Indian sultanates are a bit less clear, since they can run dhimmi autonomy + 3 ToH and already be at +2 before legitimacy. At that point, conversion isn't adding something like 4-5 unrest reduction, but more like 1-2. Might not be as worthwhile in that case...AI would typically avoid uprisings in those once separatism is gone.

 

[Marquoz]

I don’t think I’m alone in saying I strongly dislike the current colonization gameplay, mainly in the Americas. The AI can’t handle it at all, and even for the player it is usually too much of a hassle to provide any benefits.

The first part of your statement is accurate. The AI can't handle North American natives (South American aren't an issue) and really struggles with the present system. However, for the player, said system is a fast and easy road to NA colonial nations that are vastly larger, stronger, and richer than at any point in EU4's nine year history.

Here's some proof. This is an ironman screenshot of North American in 1578 from my Spanish campaign in the current patch:

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

Every time a tribe or federation attacked one of my colonial nations, I Enforced Peace and grabbed another 15 or so provinces. The net result is that I'm ridiculously powerful in NA.

In case you think I didn't do anything but fight tribes, here are two shots of Europe. I'm Emperor, have smashed the Protestant Reformation, and recently revoked the privilege. My collection point is the English Channel, which will become even more lucrative when I finish eating England and take the rest of Low Country provinces that are part of it.

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

(I don't know why a thumbnail of the second screenshot isn't being shown)

South America and Africa have also gone well:

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

Steam Community :: Screenshot

Steam Community: Europa Universalis IV.

steamcommunity.com

Dealing with the Americas was a simple matter of parking an army and its dedicated transport fleet in that hemisphere. As I got stronger, I increased the number of armies there to two, although the South American one often bounced back and forth between there and Africa. But two armies for the entire hemisphere is a small force committment, and the payoff was far too great. Native aggression needs to take the strength of the mother country into account when making war declarations because having them attack a player's colonial nation is suicide for them. The natives need to draw things out as long as they can so that, on occasion at least, they reform and put up more of a fight.

 

[lilunxm12]

Some thoughts
1. the cost for adding tribal land is too low. Make the cost growth exponential or tie the cost to tribal development
2. tribal development grow too fast, there should be a penalty that the higher number of tribal/settled land, the slower the growth. Another solution is to make it inverse relationship between tribal development growth and current government reform level.
3. distance should be a huge penalty when forming federation and the monthly cohesion. The federation of haida,caddo and abenaki make 0 sense. And they would get the same amount of cohesion as other federation is BS.

Idealy, colonizers should face lots of migratory tribes and several federations consists of settled members with 2-3 provience, not some native empire

 

[Tisifoni12]

Having not played EU4 for some time I was surprised by the wars and consequences of wars between Native
American peoples and colonists. I think there needs to be some difference between the Central American and Andean ''civilizations' and the tribes of both North and parts of South America..

The Charrua conquered around 7 or 8 tile of the British Argentine. There was no sign of any rebellions by the British colonists. I, as Spain, did plant a colony, made a claim, declared war and took that territory. My Uruguay mostly of culturally British subjects. I then abandoned the newly planted colony which was in Brazil.

The British Louisiana colony was similarly taken over by a tribe. I similarly declared war etc., acquiring for Spain the culturally largely British of Mississipppi.

It has been a bit bonkers. I suspect rather than colonists ending up under the rule of tribes, there would be some damage to the colony, or perhaps some impact on further expansion, or displacement of population within the colony.

 

[ArtFart]

There's a known bug with the federation formation annexing land from the AI or player, so that doesn't help. But removing the federation mechanic is a very very bad idea. It'a rare unique mechanic in EU4 that actually makes playing the natives somewhat interesting over what it used to be. Furthermore, it's not totally ahistorical. I do think there needs to be greater debuffs from things like the Plague etc but overall, as the player, colonising the new world is easy. I'd even go as far in saying that the federations make it easier to colonise, as you don't have 5 different countries to take on rather one big blob that you can annex in one or 2 wars, it's quite handy actually.

As Marquoz said, enforce peace each time a native country attacks your colonies and you'll own almost all of North America in ~50 years from first landing. I recently had a Spain game go to the 1650s and saw the AI founding the thirteen colonies, Newfoundland and Louisiana, so I don't think they are totally incompetent at colonisation.

Some things could be improved but for the most part it's not awful imo.

 

[MachopPower69]

Every suggestion for a solution is "enforce peace" and it bugs me. Why does it have to be the solution when colonies instantly get attacked by natives?

And another thing about colonisation, who hates seeing the East coast always being owned by natives? For example, Ichisi owning all of Florida, Iroquois owning all of New York and half of New England.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Rather than having colony tiles being taken over by 'tribes' the team could perhaps find a way to implement other effects; from abandonment of tiles by colonists, (presumably the surviving colonists relocating within the colony or packing up and going back to their home nation), reduced colonisation rates, no further colonisation of adjacent tiles for X years . . .

Colonial expansion from the coasts has always been a bit fast.

 

[MachopPower69]

Rather than having colony tiles being taken over by 'tribes' the team could perhaps find a way to implement other effects; from abandonment of tiles by colonists, (presumably the surviving colonists relocating within the colony or packing up and going back to their home nation), reduced colonisation rates, no further colonisation of adjacent tiles for X years . . .

Colonial expansion from the coasts has always been a bit fast.

Of course colonial expansion on the coast is fast; more people live near water than in-land.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not a big fan of purely historical arguments in a game that intentionally deviates from them so sharply, but it's worth pointing out that using "history" to justify a nerf to natives in context of current EU 4 is not valid, excepting the core steal bug.

A quick glance at post empires thread suggests that European colonization in 1821 is typically ahead of historical progress in 1821 by a significant margin. Once in a while, a federation will win and get a large amount of land instead, but a) a significant % of these are a result of the player doing things like "form Rome" and trashing colonizers and b) it's not clear why natives succeeding once in a while is bad in a game where Ming and Ottomans often make it to 1821 as still-top world powers, absent player intervention.

"Did this happen in history" is genuinely an awful metric to evaluate whether mechanics are decent in EU 4. What matters is whether the mechanical interactions are reasonable. Right now, absent the core-stealing bug the natives are far weaker than Europeans and will, on average, be conquered or at least crippled prior to the end of the timeline.

Speaking of "strong natives", they're a double edged sword, and players fixate way too much on them being "too strong but still much weaker than any European start objectively". Paying for colonization is a bad deal in EU 4, while conquest is a much better deal. Having more land to conquer into colonies tends to come out way ahead in RoI. More native provinces = more income from colonies, sooner, when you conquer it and add it to CNs. This is part of the reason that Mexico/Peru conquest have been the only viable new world investments for many patches (the other part is gold provinces).

 

[Tisifoni12]

@TheMeInTeam

Colonisation is too fast, it could be 'nerfed'
'Interaction' with Native Americans varied across the Americas. At the moment Interaction is based on a one off choice between three options and subsequently subroutines controlling how 'tribes' interact with colonies. At present this seems to be European colonists are okay until they reach the arbitrary 5 tile size and become a colony state, at which point the natives declare war. This mechanism on my limited experience seems to result in the natives taking over European colonies, which I just don't see happening, or it pushes the player to enforcd peace and Conquer those tribes, further accelerating colonisation.

Victory for Native American people standing up to the colonists would on what historical evidence we have result in killing and enslavement. That is a function of their social and political structures' capacity for dealing with conquering other groups. A likely consequence of 'low level' warfare, rather than the large armies of the civilizations of Central America and the Andes, would be consolidation of colonies (at the extreme abandon a tile / tiles) or limitations on growth / expansion (guarantees not to encroach).

When the Pueblo Indians rebelled against the Spanish (1680) they massacred them. When the Inca plotted to deal with Pizarro's conquistadors they were going to kill all but three key individuals; one to train horses, the barber surgeon and I forget which other.

 

[Stadhouder]

I'm not a big fan of purely historical arguments in a game that intentionally deviates from them so sharply, but it's worth pointing out that using "history" to justify a nerf to natives in context of current EU 4 is not valid, excepting the core steal bug.

From a mechanical point the massive native federations isn't great either. Both the AI and newer players can't always handle them, while for experienced players they make it too easy and too fast conquer huge swats of land in NA.

 

[Tisifoni12]

If the game limited what can happen closely to the historical record there would be little point in playing the game, but when colonisation for example consistently outstrips what happened historically then that seems wrong. Sometimes it should get a bit further, sometimes not so far. Look at a map of the Americas in 1822, there are uncolonised areas, though Governments may have staked a claim.

 

[PtY]

There's a confluence of multiple poorly balanced mechanics creating these issues.


1) Native federations stealing cores when they unify is a serious bug and contributes a lot to the growth of native tribes.

2) Tribal development accrues too quickly and costs too little to settle. Allowing natives to settle development at a maximum cost of 50 monarch power per point of development acts as a way to circumvent the +50% development cost they suffer from being primitives.

3) Federation cohesion increases too quickly and too easily. Every member of a federation increases the federation's cohesion if that member is weaker than the federation's leader. There's no penalty for having federation members with different cultures and no penalty for federation size - there's even a bonus to cohesion for having 3+ members with the same culture.

I think:

• Federations should gain cohesion for members with the same culture as the leader; gain no cohesion for members in the same culture group as the leader; and lose cohesion for each member outside the leader's culture group
• Federations should suffer a penalty to monthly cohesion for having more than five members
• Federations shouldn't get a bonus to cohesion from having lots of same-culture members
• Federations should gain cohesion slowly except when under imminent outside threat from either a neighboring colonizer (this is already in the defines) or from having 3+ members with 5+ war exhaustion (in case the threat comes from other natives, such as the Iroquois wars against the Huron)

4) Non-tribes claiming tribal land makes little sense. Colonizers tended to push natives inland instead of outright conquering them. The main exceptions were the Spanish conquests of the Aztecs and Incas. Conquering "empty" tribal land and gaining provinces with wrong culture and religion also makes little sense.

I think:

• Tribal land should still become devastated when nations other than native tribes own it
  • Simulates natives attacking colonists
  • Incentivizes colonizers to go to war with natives to force them to revoke claimed ownership of tribal land
• Nations other than native tribes should have an inverse of the "Push back the colonizers" casus belli which targets native tribes and allows the attacker for force a defending native tribe abandon one or more provinces
  • If the province is fully owned it becomes unsettled
    • The native tribe migrates if able
    • Settled native tribe lose the "Settle down" reform and then migrate if able
    • Tribes unable to migrate (e.g. those that lose their last owned province in this way) are destroyed, not conquered
  • If the province is tribal land, the tribal owner loses that tribal land
  • This CB would always be available for any nation other than a native tribe which either
    • Borders a fully owned province of a native tribe, or
    • Owns a tribal province of a native tribe

5) Institutions spread to natives too quickly. This helps natives close the tech gap with neighboring colonizers too quickly and contributes to the issue of natives conquering colonial nations that aren't actively defended by their overlords.

I think institution spread should be slowed down in general - the lack of a tech gap and the over-proliferation of institutions aren't just problems in the Americas, particularly in the late game. Increasing the malus to institution spread from being a primitive nation would be a good start.


6) Colonization happens too quickly. The Americas filled up too quickly even before natives started creating massive federations.

I think the simple solution here is reduce global settler increases from technology, particularly in the early game. Spain, Portugal, Britain and the United States didn't begin to "fill up" the Americas until late 18th and early 19th centuries. Leaving vacant provinces in the Caribbean in particular (and overhauling the Treaty of Tordesillas mechanics) would be a major gameplay improvement.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Colonisation is too fast, it could be 'nerfed'

6) Colonization happens too quickly.

Colonization in the sense of sending a colonist and waiting is a bad deal. Slowing down the returns on new world conquest/settlement makes an already bad game option worse. We should not make already non-competitive options less competitive. Not on the basis that they are somehow "too competitive", and not on the basis of arbitrarily shoehorning historical results selectively.

'Interaction' with Native Americans varied across the Americas.

As it did between nations throughout the world. The game can only model so much nuance. We're not drilling down to making BS treaties with people who misunderstand them and/or reneging on those for example. Not in a game where truces have a 5 year floor.

From a mechanical point the massive native federations isn't great either. Both the AI and newer players can't always handle them, while for experienced players they make it too easy and too fast conquer huge swats of land in NA.

The game will always be easier for experienced players than beginners. The fact remains that native conquest as a major is one of the easiest moves to make in EU 4, on average.

"The AI can't handle it" is an argument that applies so universally that it's not useful justification for or against any particular mechanic. The same rationale would apply to nerfing the heck out of all of advisers, cannons, and debt, which is a good sign that it's not a useful point in this context/is too general.

If the game limited what can happen closely to the historical record there would be little point in playing the game, but when colonisation for example consistently outstrips what happened historically then that seems wrong.

The first and second part of this quote contradict.

Aq Qoyunlu consistently fails its historical success, same for Qing, Mughals, France, and England. On the flip side, HRE, Tunis, Ming, western Africans, and Vijayanagar routinely outperform historical outcomes. If "colonization outstrips history consistently" feels wrong, then the anticipated consequence is that all of these things also "feel wrong" to you.

Do all of them though, without exception? If not, why single out NA, which actually results in something kind-of close to history in a small % of games...as opposed to "never" as in some of the above examples? We will never see historical heights for England, France, or Mughals in current patch of EU 4...or at least the likelihood is so small that we'd expect to see relatively historical NA many, many times over before observing any of those one time.

5) Institutions spread to natives too quickly. This helps natives close the tech gap with neighboring colonizers too quickly

IMO this quote does not fully grasp just how many thousands of monarch points behind native positions begin, or just how long it takes to "close the gap" in monarch points relative to even crappy European minors.

Natives start 3600 points behind before unpausing (1200 per tech category), pay more for techs initially (add several hunred more per category), lose an additional point/mo/category (no estate privileges, amounts to >3k for nearly every native AI since they won't reform soon enough to make it less), are unlikely to afford advisers immediately (even further disadvantage to majors). In addition to this, they are saddled with unique limitations that are inconsistent with other places in the world...as if we're supposed to believe Inca had worse ship tech in 1490 than Rwanda (and by a wide margin!).

It is not an exaggeration to say that natives are functionally ~7k points or more behind Europeans by the time contact/possible reforming government is typical. In reality, neighbor bonus after embracing institutions only does so much. This is why posters in this thread who have some experience in EU 4 have examples where they trivially dunk on natives.

Even pre-nerf, at natives' strongest point after leviathan, I tried out an Irish minor start to see if it was really as bad as advertised:



"Natives catching up on tech too fast" isn't a thing in EU 4. They will catch up eventually, but it's by far one of the largest and easiest conquest windows the game presents anywhere to any nation.

 

[PtY]

Colonization in the sense of sending a colonist and waiting is a bad deal. Slowing down the returns on new world conquest/settlement makes an already bad game option worse. We should not make already non-competitive options less competitive. Not on the basis that they are somehow "too competitive", and not on the basis of arbitrarily shoehorning historical results selectively.

I'm sympathetic to the balance concerns, but I don't think they're a compelling argument against a more historical balance. If colonization is both ahistorically fast and not cost effective enough in EU4, then the best solution is likely to decrease both its speed and its cost.

IMO this quote does not fully grasp just how many thousands of monarch points behind native positions begin, or just how long it takes to "close the gap" in monarch points relative to even crappy European minors.

"Natives catching up on tech too fast" isn't a thing in EU 4. They will catch up eventually, but it's by far one of the largest and easiest conquest windows the game presents anywhere to any nation.

I do appreciate how badly off natives are, actually, but we seem to have different balance goals. I don't think AI natives should be able to overwhelm European colonizers once they have more than a few contiguous provinces, if ever.

I think the ideal balance for individual native tribes is for them to survive longer than they often do now, but controlling less land per tribe and constantly being pushed inland by European encroachment starting in the 1600s. In other words, as large and easy as the conquest window is, I think it should be larger and/or easier. (I'll also grant that a significant cause of the current balance could also be mismanagement by AI colonizers.)

I see your implicit argument that conquest opportunities should more homogeneous across the game's map and time period as akin to the argument that small nations require buffs to compete on a more even playing field with larger nations. I disagree. Outside the hands of players, natives and other disadvantaged nations should lose with historically plausible frequency to the AI, not just against players who can "trivially dunk on them."

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If colonization is both ahistorically fast and not cost effective enough in EU4, then the best solution is likely to decrease both its speed and its cost.

Sounds fine to me.

I see your implicit argument that conquest opportunities should more homogeneous across the game's map and time period

I don't make this case. I instead make a case for internal consistency of the rationale used for implementations in the game world (and of the game world itself).

Inherently, England has more conquest opportunities than Rwanda. There are many reasons EU 4's mechanics favor England. They are not arbitrary, they are consistent with why nations broadly have an advantage over each other otherwise.

Natives already get lots of special rules/exceptions, and those already cause problems. In fact those exceptions are undeniably a source of the "federation core stealing" bug. The problem with breaking your own rules in a game model isn't just theoretical; it reliably produces adverse outcomes in practice too.

In terms of historical stuff, it's not even clear that colonizers utterly failing was particularly less likely than some of the other things we take for granted in the game. It's a game first, and thus mechanics take priority.

Outside the hands of players, natives and other disadvantaged nations should lose with historically plausible frequency to the AI

I don't know what this means, and you don't either. History has a sample size of 1, with a lot of highly improbable outcomes that actually happened.

I don't think you're even capable of forming a model of reality that can pin down a reasonable basis for success rate of natives with historical constraints. I don't any human being can make a model like that and have confidence in its predictions.

In EU 4, it's even worse, because the game's model includes rules that make historical outcomes impossible, generally. Including the basic premise of "who makes decisions for this nation", but also things like economy, supply, and diplomatic interactions. This simply isn't a game where you can align 1:1 of "historically plausible frequency" to "game state" for any one particular outcome or mechanic without breaking the entire thing many times over the instant you try to generalize it.

For example, what % of games should the HRE be dismantled by France, based on history? What frequency of "Napoleonic conquest by AI" "plausible"? I don't think you can answer these using a model with predictive validity either...don't think such a thing exists.

 

[YellowPress]

.

For example, what % of games should the HRE be dismantled by France, based on history? What frequency of "Napoleonic conquest by AI" "plausible"? I don't think you can answer these using a model with predictive validity either...don't think such a thing exists.

You can answer a question of to what extent were napoleon and Louis xiv's policies similar, and so possible by someone other than napoleon

 

[Tisifoni12]

@TheMeInTeam
To clarify

A couple of time, playing as Mali I have tried colonising Brazil. Ahistorical, interesting, really annoys Portugal and Spain.

I see such ahistorical colonisation as okay. For say as an example Brittany to colonise Colombia okay. But for European powers colonising from the Eastern coast and Gulf Coast to colonise the Great Plains decades, potentially even a century earlier than historically seems improbable without the social and economic drivers of the Victorian industrial era.