Paradox, please real Westernization
- Thread starter Afinati
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
That doesn't mean it should be on the exact opposite side of the spectrum. Westernization being easy, cheap, quick, and accessible early is just silly and makes for bad gameplay. I know you've got a vendetta against realism but jeez.
- 7
- 1
Name game is "Europa Universalis"
All sees only a part of "Europa", so everybody calls "This is EUROPA Universalis, so ROTW is nothing".
Nobody see part "Universalis".
Universalis in Grand Strategy is Universalism.
Age of Universalism is ancient (persian, alexandrian, hellenic, roman) and medieval (papal, roman imperial, islamic).
This all...
- 3
- 2
I feel like every time this discussion comes up it just gets the exact same response regardless of the suggestions and problems that people have with it. Can we at least admit that the current tech and modernization system could be improved and that it is worth discussing? At least consider the discussion rather than just saying, 'no' and ignoring it. That isn't really helpful.
- 31
No "realistic" Westernization until a "realistic" logistics system is implemented. No one wants 120,000 French troops tearing up all of Asia because "lol westernization got nerfed but I can throw troops anywhere with no limit".
- 8
Only Russia managed to westernize during eu4s time era. So it would be appropriate atleast AI never performs Westernization. The players obviously free to choose whether they want to westernize or not. This would be more historically accurate.
I agree with the OP that it is somewhat ridiculous how easy it is currently. At the end of the game half the earth is Westernized.
I agree with the OP that it is somewhat ridiculous how easy it is currently. At the end of the game half the earth is Westernized.
- 7
- 5
The AI should, in general, play well. If Westernizing when possible is good play, the AI should do it. If you don't like the AI doing it, you should argue for the whole system to be rebuilt from the ground up.
- 12
- 1
It'd be better if tech penalties were light enough that Westernization wasn't necessary, or if we had more dynamic ways of increasing tech speed for non-Europeans.
For example, you border Western nations? Tech boost. You lose a war against a Western nation? Bigger tech boost. You're exceedingly large? Tech boosts are decreased.
Westernization is necessary for gameplay as is, because otherwise ROTW can barely remain competitive - you essentially have to dump all of your mil points into tech, and if you're a primitive nation, even that won't help. But it's far from ideal.
Full shift to the Western tech group, for me at least, would ideally be a special case for Eastern Europeans. Or perhaps for other nations that pick a restrictive set of national ideas.
For the rest of the world, what I'd like is to have the tech group penalties only apply for the start of the game, and have a more varied set of events/decisions affect the tech cost in smaller ways. If you make the right choices throughout the game, eventually you can reach parity with Western nations in one or more groups. For example, maybe ever few years you're presented with an event where you can get a bonus to stability/income/unrest reduction, or decrease your tech penalty by a small amount in addition to penalties to stab, income, etc. Penalties should be more severe for larger nations.
For example, you border Western nations? Tech boost. You lose a war against a Western nation? Bigger tech boost. You're exceedingly large? Tech boosts are decreased.
Westernization is necessary for gameplay as is, because otherwise ROTW can barely remain competitive - you essentially have to dump all of your mil points into tech, and if you're a primitive nation, even that won't help. But it's far from ideal.
Full shift to the Western tech group, for me at least, would ideally be a special case for Eastern Europeans. Or perhaps for other nations that pick a restrictive set of national ideas.
For the rest of the world, what I'd like is to have the tech group penalties only apply for the start of the game, and have a more varied set of events/decisions affect the tech cost in smaller ways. If you make the right choices throughout the game, eventually you can reach parity with Western nations in one or more groups. For example, maybe ever few years you're presented with an event where you can get a bonus to stability/income/unrest reduction, or decrease your tech penalty by a small amount in addition to penalties to stab, income, etc. Penalties should be more severe for larger nations.
- 7
- 1
Please
But most people will read whatever their personal bias directs them to.
Are you really trying to prove universal technological superiority of Europeans by providing example of a single Asian nation having worse ships than the most powerful maritime nation at the time?
Shipbuilding technology isn't universal proof of technological backwardness or superiority.
- 5
- 5
In the 1.11 days that was possible and quite entertaining. One nice thing about it was it could be as difficult as you wanted, since you could go to lesser and lesser techs and choose to invade Europe. In fact, some friends and I were talking about playing a game where we wiped western tech off the map. Would have been fun. With the increased demands on admin points though it's really not possible if you want a significant empire today. You need to westernize when you can and get to admin efficiency.
- 1
Surly AI needs to be better in many ways, but westernazation is not one of them. In the current patch it's easier then ever to westernazie so AI does it of course. And we end up with this fantasy world, totaly unrealstic and far away from history. So I say lets nerf westernazation for AI, but let it be an option for all the fantasy players out there.
After all, paradox games share a common focus upon historical immersion, so this current state of westernazation has to go!
- 2
- 1
Let's talk about fantasy worlds. In particular, let's talk about the fantasy world where France can send 120,000 troops all the way over to Bengal to crush those primitive Indians and Southeast Asians. Let's talk about a fantasy world where AI Portugal can dedicate 40,000 troops to Goa whenever it wants, without a single bit of threat from, say, AI Morocco, assuming they're still around. Let's talk about a fantasy world where AI Spain can devote 70 thousand people or more to their remote conquests of Malacca without a single supply problem, or even France or Portugal taking advantage of their entire army being halfway across the world. Maybe once we fix that fantasy world, we can talk about the fantasy world that let's the weak nations actually fight back a little.
- 15
.png){kind=avatar}
I repeat that you do not understand the post you were quoting. The guy was sarcastically or ironically using the argument about the title of the game at the end of his rant because people use it. You responded to him as if he didn't want change. You took the last sentence of his lament and seemed to apply it as his view of why things shouldn't change.
Also, I'm no expert but I thought the name "Europa Universalis" was meant to basically mean "Europe Everywhere" since the game takes place during the time that European powers started colonizing, starting trade posts, and spreading its general influence upon the rest of the world. The board game the series was based on and the original game only allowed you to play as major European powers, which might also be a good part of the reason the name was chosen. I don't think the theory of universalism had any influence in creating the title.
I really don't see the problem here. The Native American nations rarely present a problem for European Nations. Even if they westernize, they never pose a major threat, merely a nuisance. Even when playing as a native nation, you are barely able to compete with any western nation. You have to be very careful when going to war with a colonizer or you end up at war with multiple majors and all of their colonial nations. You are usually behind in tech or lacking ideas as well.
Hopefully this new Revanchism will make it easier to retake land. My last game could have used this feature. I was the Incas and Spain attacked me 3 years before westernization was done. Then England attacked me, and then Portugal. It's not fun losing tons of land within 5 years after spending 100 years to get to that point.
Hopefully this new Revanchism will make it easier to retake land. My last game could have used this feature. I was the Incas and Spain attacked me 3 years before westernization was done. Then England attacked me, and then Portugal. It's not fun losing tons of land within 5 years after spending 100 years to get to that point.
Last edited:
Historically plausible westernisation may not be worth putting in, but currently westernisation is one of the weakest (imo the weakest) mechanic in the game from a pure gameplay perspective, regardless of whether we want a game with any historical plausibility at all. In effect, westernisation is a case of not spending MP on tech, so you fall behind, so you can spend lots of MP to get the privilege to spend less MP on (the same) tech in the future.
It's your call - it's your game, after all
- but were I looking after it, I'd rework tech, idea groups and westernisation together. If there are different tech groups, actually give them different tech, rather than 'you can have european tech but it'll cost you 25/33/50% more' (which is also hardly historically plausible, or fun gameplay, while we're at it). Westernisation could be improving in tech up to a point where you can switch tech groups to a 'modern' tech group (which, if you wanted to make it a complete sandbox, could not be an automatic option for European nations either - after all, there's no clear reason why India wouldn't have modernised before Europe, per se).The tech groups could then be more like trees than ladders, and involve choices (so the gameplay of teching actually involves interesting choices, instead of filling buckets with monarch points sequentially), with the choices having an impact on which national ideas are able to be chosen (so, for example, that there are real trade-offs to choosing admin ideas, even if you're going on a conquering spree).
These choices then increase (or decrease) movement towards a 'modern' tech tree, where the current tech tree (going forward, old choices would remain in place) would be replaced by a 'modern' tech group. You could place choices in the tech tree that help move the nation closer to modern, but that there's a trade-off involved, for example. For ROTW nation tech groups, if you were looking to be historically plausible (my preference, but your game, not mine
), the trade-offs are harder, and the movement potentially slower, but still make it possible (if hard choices are made) to westernise at a similar pace to european nations. Make the hard choices inspired by historical developments, and suddenly westernising becomes interesting and enjoyable, tech decisions become more interesting, and tech decisions inter-relate with gameplay in unique ways for each nation. It'd be a bit of work, but it'd (in my opinion) make for more meaningful tech, idea and westernisation gameplay. And, by holding onto the tech tree before it goes modern, every nation still has pre-modern flavour to its modern state, so instead of a world full of clones in 1750, every nation is unique.It also means you can do things like load the chinese tech tree with choices between stability and modernisation - so china can modernise, but it's likely to throw it into a revolution that could mess everything up in doing so. This would be far more interesting than just whacking a great big tech penalty on China, and can mean China (by dint of having its own tech tree) can start with historically plausible tech to boot.
Further, the units available for your army could be based on the tech chosen, and it would enable greater depth of military units should there be an interest in fleshing out military gameplay in future DLC.
Just my 2 cents, but there's so, soooo much more potential for interesting gameplay in the tech/idea group/westernisation part of the game than is currently there now.
As an aside, at least last time I westernised (1.13 beta), the text in the box that pops up when you succeed it (that your military is now up to western standards) referred to the way your military would be using western units post-westernisation. That the text has remained the same while the gameplay has changed so much highlights the mess westernisation is from a gameplay perspective at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I love EU4 and it's a great game despite the mess that westernisation is, but it's a great game in spite of westernisation as it stands, not because of it, and removing westernisation from the game altogether would make it a better SP game (more variety, more challenge), not worse. Of course, if you want a better MP game, then you should also remove westernisation and tech groups, throw any concept of historical plausibility out the window and just have at it. Either way, westernisation as it stands now doesn't serve the game in a positive fashion.
I'd argue it does the opposite - everyone westernising removes variety from the game (after all, but the mid-1700s everyone's westernised, more or less, and the same flavour of tech group). Also, part of EUs (and other PDS games) charm is that all starting points aren't equal. A small ROTW nation should be challenge beyond the first 50-100 years. At the moment, every nation in EU plays the same after about the mid-1600s or so, and the only people this serves are the MPers looking for a balanced, Risk-style MP experience (this isn't a bad thing, mind, but there are more SP games played than MP). Were westernisation a tiny but more historically plausible, there'd be more gameplay variety in EU, and more challenge to boot.
You may not have seen me call for it, but I'm a big fan of both improving westernisation and supply/logistics, totally agree they go hand-in-hand.
Last edited:
- 28
Very good post.
To be honest, I think 99% problem would be improved if the process (and it should be a process with multiple steps) was renamed Modernization, instead of westernization.
It would include all the advances that made Europe skyrocket by XIX century, but that already were strong enough to make conquest from abroad almost impossible.
Things like free press, Parliament, universities, scientific method, a "certain" degree of religious freedom.
By extension that would also mean that not all european countries would be equally advanced, just as Europe should, way more often than not (but not always), be more advanced than the rest of the world.
What arguably is bad from many POVs is having tons of countries having tech 32 and being "westernized" by game´s end.
To be honest, I think 99% problem would be improved if the process (and it should be a process with multiple steps) was renamed Modernization, instead of westernization.
It would include all the advances that made Europe skyrocket by XIX century, but that already were strong enough to make conquest from abroad almost impossible.
Things like free press, Parliament, universities, scientific method, a "certain" degree of religious freedom.
By extension that would also mean that not all european countries would be equally advanced, just as Europe should, way more often than not (but not always), be more advanced than the rest of the world.
What arguably is bad from many POVs is having tons of countries having tech 32 and being "westernized" by game´s end.
- 5
No, Victoria 2's westernization was pretty crap. The amount of time it ended up taking resulted in a lot of the game already being over by the time you finished, and there was hardly anything to do while westernizing. You basically either sat there and waited on incredibly long timers or you tossed dice and hoped to not get discovered on your conquer CB fabrication. It was incredibly boring and unfun to do and it took up a very notable amount of game time. At least in EU4 it only ends up taking around 10-15 years out of a game whose length is 376 years.
Last edited:
- 7
- 2