Pathetic Africa and Early Colonialism

[Dusk313]

Pretty much in every game Mauretania is overrun by Portugal and Leon/Castille; Aragon, Aquitaine or France (depending of the bookmark) conquers Kabylia, Sicily goes for Tripolitana and Tunis, and only Egypt remains independent from European rule. But then, Egypt always successfully invades Nubia and Abyssinia while in real history thoses areas were very difficult to conquer or at least not to worth the trouble. Similarly, Asturias rarely sets the Reconquista in motion and is absorbed by the Umayyads and the steppes of Cumania are conquered by the Byzantines.

These regions were mountainous, arid, with deserts or vast plains. They should be hard to get, to conquer and maintain. Poor Africa should be more fleshed out, especially Mali, which most of the time survives intact, but due to the boringness down south. There is nothing to do or to whom interact as Mali (except that ravaged Mauretania agonizing in the monstrosity called Crusade for Andalusia). Where is the Kanem Empire???

 

[killerbee256]

Sicily did invade part of north Africa in real life, except in real life people don't switch there culture so quickly so they they didn't have as much an long term influence on the area.

 

[Secret Master]

Pretty much in every game Mauretania is overrun by Portugal and Leon/Castille; Aragon, Aquitaine or France (depending of the bookmark) conquers Kabylia, Sicily goes for Tripolitana and Tunis, and only Egypt remains independent from European rule.

I haven't seen this happen in about 18 months.

I see the Umayyeds push into Aquitaine with some frequency, but Europeans wiping out Islam in Mauretania almost never happens in my games. Hell, the AI can't even manage it with me coming from the other side as the Copts in Abyssinia.

I've seen Muslim Egypt conquer Abyssinia a few times, but I also see them lose it to liberation rebels every single time they conquer it. So, I'd call that a wash.

 

[Talq]

All of that is because in game its far easier to conquer and assimilate large areas than in real life in period. It could be 'solved' by dialing aggression down to negligible, but operating in a barely changing world does kill the charm of the game.

Mali is also unhelpful to the Africans. In practice it causes the AI in Morocco to commit troops fighting wars down there, then get ripped apart by anything else that happens.

 

[klopkr]

I think this is the outcome of making muslims no longer OP. Those african kingdoms are actually very small and could use a boost in provinces. Or terrain could actually start meaning something.

 

[Dragatus]

There are a few factors that the game does a poor job of portraying.
- terrain effects are overshadowed by tactics (terrain gives a 10%-25% bonus mostly, while tactics can give a 300% bonus)
- population is not a thing (all troops are free to fight enemy armies, none are needed for occupation)
- vassal troops magically poof into existence anywhere you want them

A few ideas howto solve this:
- bonuses from different sources (tactics, terrain, technology, buildings) could be multiplicative rather than additive
- population of provinces could become a thing (won't happen in CK2, but could be something for CK3)
- when you call vassals into war they could function as allies

 

[elvain]

Pretty much in every game Mauretania is overrun by Portugal and Leon/Castille; Aragon, Aquitaine or France (depending of the bookmark) conquers Kabylia, Sicily goes for Tripolitana and Tunis, and only Egypt remains independent from European rule. But then, Egypt always successfully invades Nubia and Abyssinia while in real history thoses areas were very difficult to conquer or at least not to worth the trouble. Similarly, Asturias rarely sets the Reconquista in motion and is absorbed by the Umayyads and the steppes of Cumania are conquered by the Byzantines.

These regions were mountainous, arid, with deserts or vast plains. They should be hard to get, to conquer and maintain. Poor Africa should be more fleshed out, especially Mali, which most of the time survives intact, but due to the boringness down south. There is nothing to do or to whom interact as Mali (except that ravaged Mauretania agonizing in the monstrosity called Crusade for Andalusia). Where is the Kanem Empire???

I can only agree with posters above that this has several major reasons.
@Dragatus above has just summed it up very well - the terrain really needs to play some role in warfare and there should be more bonuses/maluses tied to it.
For the arid mountains I don't see many possibilities except some kind of cultural bonuses, in accord with Draginus, I'd suggest culturaly defined buildings providing terrain specific bonuses).
The major thing is IMHO the way the game in this region treats the desert. There were powerful nomadic tribes in the desert which would support any muslim state against christian invaders and those invaders whould loose terribly when facing these nomads in the desert/semi desert areas off the coast. The nomads and cavalry units should have better bonuses there, especially the cultural camel units.

Other problem is that those regions are done so poorly, that it makes one cry (they didn't even bother to give north African provinces propper borders, they just thrown out some cubic shapes and gave them some names. That was one of things I have adressed in my mod, which you can see in my signature. There you can see for instance improved Maghreb, West Africa also gets a minor boost so it isn't so worthless, and also there is the kingdom of Kanem added, to give the Ifriqiya (Tunis+Libya) more background

 

[iron0037]

How about garrisons costing monthly maintenance if the holding owner isn't the same culture and religion as the province? Make cultural conversions of the provinces way slower; in fact, make it much more possible for the character to be assimilated by the local culture in many circumstances. And make vassals of a different culture from their liege way more likely to form factions. You could go even further and have a chance that vassals of a different culture risk devolving into tributaries when a new monarch ascends to the throne.

Basically, occupation after conquest should last longer and be more costly. The player should have to choose between financial losses and peasant revolts during a forced assimilation of the people or permanent risk of faction revolts if enlisting local lords as vassals. This would be much closer to reality and help with blobbing. But if you made these changes, the game would be much harder, and you'd have a hundred angry players bemoan how Paradox ruined the game .

 

[Zhetone]

In 867 I always see West Francia and Aquitaine conquer North Africa, it's seriously annoying. West Francia is pushing into Mauretania and Aquitaine taking Algeria in my game, while the Umayyads are conquering parts of Aquitaine proper. Priorities please???

The cause of course is partially that Algeria in the 867 start has a non-Sunni/Shia Islam religion so they get no help in holy wars.

 

[Damarrocarion]

I made some suggestions earlier to give the area there some variation.

 

[Chunakun]

The area to holy war should be restricted from two sea regions to one sea regions. Because now, even if Aquitiane loses Mallorca they still can go for Kabilia. Is there a way I can mod this out for myself?

 

[PG908]

Don't forget Pisa (or another Merchant Republic) eating Africa!

 

[elvain]

btw what is the usual time for catholics to take over North Africa in your games?

I'm currently running test games with a mod where there is only a Trans-Saharan trade route added and after 90 years (in 2 playthroughts so far) it seems like it might give them some bonus. Then I'm considering to add terrain bonuses for armies based on cultural buildings and see what happens, but first I want to check the current situation.

 

[Dakilla TM]

I mostly play from 769 so seeing Africa get invaded by Europeans is a rare sight. I know Lombardy always guns for Tripolitana and then loses it to Muslim Africa(kingdom). Oh and the rare time an adventurer gets some land but loses it quickly due to no real allies nearby.

Is the problem really that bad in the later start dates? I'd pay good money to see it happen in the earlier dates

 

[elvain]

definitely yes. I wan another 2 test games in 1066 and in both of them European conquest was rather quick. In First game Pisa managed to conquer (and quickly convert) all of today's Tunisia. In the other, Pisan invasion of Tunisia was tackled by coalition of Hilalian tribes, but another one directed Algeria (Hammadids) and was successfull. Soon after Aragon took another part of the coeas, later extending it to the mainland - all that within 50 years. So in my tests it's 2-2 - twice the Maghrebians kept their land safe for about 100 years, twice they failed within 50 years. Testing will go on

 

[queermobile]

btw what is the usual time for catholics to take over North Africa in your games?

I'm currently running test games with a mod where there is only a Trans-Saharan trade route added and after 90 years (in 2 playthroughts so far) it seems like it might give them some bonus. Then I'm considering to add terrain bonuses for armies based on cultural buildings and see what happens, but first I want to check the current situation.

I mostly play from 867 or 1081 and I've looked over before the century is up and see an already completely converted (religion AND culture) Mauretania (and occasionally but far less frequently in 867, Tunisia) more often than not. This problem seems relatively mitigated in CK+ because you can't holy war across sea tiles, but it makes the new problem of not being able to take Mallorca as Aragon...

I don't recall this ever really being an issue before Horse Lord, and it's gotten exponentially worse post-conclave.

 

[Gnorrosch]

Sicily did invade part of north Africa in real life, except in real life people don't switch there culture so quickly so they they didn't have as much an long term influence on the area.

Also, historic Sicily only controlled some port towns and never controlled the hinterlands. I believe, the main problem with the quick changes is how the Holy War casus belli works: You take whole duchies, and the effort to conquer them is more or less the same, regardless of the duchy's size. That makes it the ideal casus belli for almost all instances, with very few exceptions. Ideally, Holy War would only target counties. De jure, with its drawback that you will not be able to hand out new titles neatly, should claim the duchy. That would be much more balanced and would slow down the reconquest of Spain as well as the conquest of North Africa considerably.

Furthermore, taking the duchy of Tunis from Africa completely cripples the kingdom with only one war. If Tunis was split in two duchies, Africa should be much more resilient even with the current casus belli.

 

[Talq]

I don't recall this ever really being an issue before Horse Lord, and it's gotten exponentially worse post-conclave.

Actually, the 'problem' was there from pretty much from 1.0 (barring one small period when the Muslims were fairly strong) it just gets hidden in 867 and 769 by the presence of the Ummayads - around CL the AI's aggressiveness had merely been turned down so it was less noticeable.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Also, historic Sicily only controlled some port towns and never controlled the hinterlands. I believe, the main problem with the quick changes is how the Holy War casus belli works: You take whole duchies, and the effort to conquer them is more or less the same, regardless of the duchy's size. That makes it the ideal casus belli for almost all instances, with very few exceptions. Ideally, Holy War would only target counties. De jure, with its drawback that you will not be able to hand out new titles neatly, should claim the duchy. That would be much more balanced and would slow down the reconquest of Spain as well as the conquest of North Africa considerably.

Furthermore, taking the duchy of Tunis from Africa completely cripples the kingdom with only one war. If Tunis was split in two duchies, Africa should be much more resilient even with the current casus belli.

Honestly I think casus belli's are the problem in the first place.
upon winning a war with a casus belli, the victor should only get the title he fought for and any holdings he had occupied.
take for instance a war to claim the english throne. In real life a victor(even one who was not the reigning king) is not generally going to give back castles he sieged and conquered to nobles who supported his rival claimant.

The holy war casus belli should work as follows. say lombardy holy wars the duchy of tunis. They should get the duchy of tunis(title) and any holdings that they had sieged at the time of victory, nothing more;

obviously this would lead to a lot more counties being divided between rival independant realms, but what's wrong with that if we already have the unify county casus belli to sort that out?

 

[elvain]

Actually, the 'problem' was there from pretty much from 1.0 (barring one small period when the Muslims were fairly strong) it just gets hidden in 867 and 769 by the presence of the Ummayads - around CL the AI's aggressiveness had merely been turned down so it was less noticeable.

I think this is one of the main issues. Africa is ill-represented in the first place and then in order to create some gaming ballance (to make the game work somehow historically), the devs had to OP the muslims somehow. Once this has been tweaked, they can still remain as threat in regions where they have some tactical depth, like the Middle East, but in North Africa this depth was not givene to them (though there was). Ideally this could be adressed if muslims had some mechanics working as designed for them, right now the only thing they have is ill-working decadence which has been nerfed to the point it doesn't work at all. Also the game ignores the fact that muslim military power in North Africa and Middle East worked differently and was based on elements which don't exist in game - tribes and slave armies.

[shameless selfpromotion mod on]
I have suggested whole set of mechanics to fix it, but before (if ever) they implement them, it would be good to fix it alternatively.
[shameless selfpromotion mod off]

Furthermore, taking the duchy of Tunis from Africa completely cripples the kingdom with only one war. If Tunis was split in two duchies, Africa should be much more resilient even with the current casus belli.

Totally agree. It would both be historicaly accurate and help the gameplay.
[shameless selfpromotion mod on]
That's why I did it in my overhaul of CK2 map.

[shameless selfprpmotion mod off]