Petition to make New World nations actually playable.

[Fawr]

Not really. As you yourself just stated, there are thousands and thousands of native allies to take into account. The fact that a single Spanish unit can easily wipe out the New World nations without much danger and with no Native aid is obviously not the ideal representation.

I don't think you and I are arguing the same thing. Let me put my point another way. The Spanish should have a reasonable chance to take down the largest Amercian empires while only commiting hundreds of their own soldiers. There are many options for different mechanics to get to that point, but which abstraction you use isn't the main point. The main point is that committing trivial numbers of men should give good success ratios for the Spanish, or the game balance is wrong. In EU3 the game balance was off because the Spanish had to commit ahistorically many troops to get any chance of historical results.

Also, you must remember that in the early 16th century it would have been next to impossible for Spain to dump loads of troops into the New World. At that point the Spanish empire consisted mostly of fledgling colonial outposts, not full grown colonies. On top of that, the Spanish did send several failed expeditions into Native lands. When they were beaten back, they did not immediately return in greater numbers. Instead they often went back to their colonies for a few years to regroup and perhaps seek better leadership.

It may indeed take a year (or 5) before they return - just like what the British did in their French/Indian wars. News has to travel back to Madrid, an decision needs to be made, and then something done about it. None of that was fast in the 1500s, but on the other hand that doesn't give enough time for disease to become a non-issue, or even for much raising of captured horses.

 

[ZhugeKongming]

I don't think you and I are arguing the same thing. Let me put my point another way. The Spanish should have a reasonable chance to take down the largest Amercian empires while only commiting hundreds of their own soldiers. There are many options for different mechanics to get to that point, but which abstraction you use isn't the main point. The main point is that committing trivial numbers of men should give good success ratios for the Spanish, or the game balance is wrong. In EU3 the game balance was off because the Spanish had to commit ahistorically many troops to get any chance of historical results.

There's no game balance issue here. Spain has to commit forces to conquer the New World, yes (and this is really the key distinction; forget the numbers, there is nothing about Cortez and Pizarro's activities that imply agency on the part of the Spanish throne), but it's still trivially easy compared to conquest in any other part of the world, and it can still be done with relatively miniscule armies. The cost to payoff ratio isn't really all that different from history. Yes, the numbers next to your armies aren't exactly the same as real life, but the historical end result is still easily achievable by any halfway competent player so I don't see how this is a "game balance" issue. The real issue is that there are whole dimensions to the conquest of the Americas that have no representation at all, so we get ugly kludges like the ability to annex New World pagans outside of the usual province size annexation limits. I consider it far more important to work in some kind of meaningful and detailed interaction with Native Americans--as both enemies and allies--than to make sure that Cortez's expedition has an autistically exact troop count.

 

[Fawr]

There's no game balance issue here. Spain has to commit forces to conquer the New World, yes (and this is really the key distinction; forget the numbers, there is nothing about Cortez and Pizarro's activities that imply agency on the part of the Spanish throne), but it's still trivially easy compared to conquest in any other part of the world, and it can still be done with relatively miniscule armies. The cost to payoff ratio isn't really all that different from history. Yes, the numbers next to your armies aren't exactly the same as real life, but the historical end result is still easily achievable by any halfway competent player so I don't see how this is a "game balance" issue. The real issue is that there are whole dimensions to the conquest of the Americas that have no representation at all, so we get ugly kludges like the ability to annex New World pagans outside of the usual province size annexation limits. I consider it far more important to work in some kind of meaningful and detailed interaction with Native Americans--as both enemies and allies--than to make sure that Cortez's expedition has an autistically exact troop count.

So long as the different mechanics aren't an excuse whereby you make it harder for the Spanish and easier for the Americans then I have not objection. However other posters (including the OP) seem to want to change the balance and not just the mechanics, this is an example of what I think it wrong about this thread:

2nd: The fact that it was historically plausible for them to have not only survived but beat back European invasions to be shown in game. The Spanish were only able to take advantage of EXTREMELY unlikely political situations to divide and conquer. The player, since he knows what is coming, should be able to prevent those incredibly unlikely scenarios and save his realm.

 

[unmerged(189294)]

Well, there are several cases when Cortes' army could have been massacred by the Aztecs alone, and he would certainly not have suceeded without getting alliances with other natives who disliked the Aztecs.

This is probably an argument for adding more provinces/nations as Aztec vassals/events/other ways of better modelling the situation though.

 

[geodejade87]

So long as the different mechanics aren't an excuse whereby you make it harder for the Spanish and easier for the Americans then I have not objection. However other posters (including the OP) seem to want to change the balance and not just the mechanics, this is an example of what I think it wrong about this thread:

My stance is that the specific conquests by Cortés and Pizarro hinged on some really unlikely coincidences, that probably wouldn't be repeatable under different circumstances. But even if Cortés had been killed, it wouldn't have changed history that much. The spanish were coming to the new world in greater and greater numbers, and the infectious diseases were wrecking havoc all over the place. I really do think it was only a matter of time before the Spanish made a concerted effort to conquer Mesoamerica. It might not have been as easy for them had Cortés's attempt not been successful, but it probably would have happened anyways.

 

[Dafool]

So long as the different mechanics aren't an excuse whereby you make it harder for the Spanish and easier for the Americans then I have not objection. However other posters (including the OP) seem to want to change the balance and not just the mechanics, this is an example of what I think it wrong about this thread:

I think the point that Calanctus and I were trying to make is that isn't so much about how easy the conquest should be, but more so about what you have to do to achieve it. I don't want to see the Spanish conquering the New World with just a single unit. I also don't want to see them conquering it with ten units. I also don't want to see the Spanish unable to conquer it at all. I want to see a single unit and a bunch of Native allies and ravaging diseases, or at least something to represent the latter two. Currently the game sidesteps the entire issue and just makes the Natives so weak that they can't defend themselves regardless of the circumstances. So ultimately yes, we would be strengthening the Natives, but only so that they can more accurately fall from normality into a heaping mess, one that a European nation should be able to conquer.

 

[illapa]

Fawr the problem with your argument is that according to you if X nation contributes Y number of soldiers and it is equal to what they did historically there should be the same response. According to that the Ottoman troops should be the worst in the world as 120,000 ottomans failed to take vienna which had at most 23k troops. In reality Spain sent a few hundred soldiers who simply picked a side in what was essentially a civil war and won. Had Spain sent 1000 troops to EITHER the Aztec or Inca Empires and

A: The Aztecs had not been brutal to their tributary vassals and very recently done a very unpopular mass sacrifice

B: The Inca had not been in the middle of a succession crisis and civil war between the north and central parts of the empire.

the Spaniards would have been laughably annihilated. According to you since the game can't represent the fact that Spain used tens of thousands of native troops we should just make it so that a band of 1000 can win.
If either of those above situations had not happened the Spanish would need to have been armed with 50 caliber machine guns with unlimited ammunition to annihilate armies that outnumber them 80 or even 100 to 1; since I believe the above representation is ridiculous I think the game should be modified to include the natives auxiliaries with a changing of the mercenary system or just European friendly rebels spawn all over the nation.

Dafool basically hit it right on the head with his above post. Everyone here wants it to be very likely for Iberia to have large colonial empires. Its just that no one here likes how it is portrayed and wants it so that if a player takes control of the natives they have a chance to pull it off without using gamey tactics or reloading the save every time Castile drops 20k troops on your shore which would require some 60,000 native troops to deal with which is way higher than any native nation can hope to muster.

 

[geodejade87]

I think the point that Calanctus and I were trying to make is that isn't so much about how easy the conquest should be, but more so about what you have to do to achieve it. I don't want to see the Spanish conquering the New World with just a single unit. I also don't want to see them conquering it with ten units. I also don't want to see the Spanish unable to conquer it at all. I want to see a single unit and a bunch of Native allies and ravaging diseases, or at least something to represent the latter two. Currently the game sidesteps the entire issue and just makes the Natives so weak that they can't defend themselves regardless of the circumstances. So ultimately yes, we would be strengthening the Natives, but only so that they can more accurately fall from normality into a heaping mess, one that a European nation should be able to conquer.

This. Well said. I think you've just summarized the entire point of this thread, or at least the position we've been arguing for 50+ pages.

 

[Eh up me duck]

the Spaniards would have been laughably annihilated.

Woah. Citation needed? This is the first time I've seen such brazen revisionism in this thread.

 

[geodejade87]

Woah. Citation needed? This is the first time I've seen such brazen revisionism in this thread.

Illapa's speaking from a purely hypothetical situation where he's assuming that the political climate of the Aztec and Inca empires was radically different from what it actually was. Its kind of like saying "if the U.S. hadn't entered World War II, the Nazis would have won." You can't really provide a citation for that, because that's not what happened, so its just speculation. Personally, I think Illapa worded that poorly, because there's a lot of assumptions that go into that statement.

To reduce it down to what I think he's getting at, he's basically saying that if the social conditions were different and the conquistadors were unable to secure the support of native allies, they wouldn't have been able to stand up to a united empire with just the few hundred soldiers they had with them. That's probably true, but in the end it doesn't matter that much. The social conditions were what they were, and any speculation on what they might have been is somewhat counterproductive. And even if the initial conquistador expeditions were defeated (which they easily could have been), more would have shown up eventually. Not to mention, smallpox.

This gets to the broader question of whether or not the player, with the benefit of knowing the history in advance, would be able to do anything to stop it. Or at least mitigate the damage. That's a question beyond the scope of this thread, and gets at larger questions about the philosophy of Paradox. In my opinion, given that this is an alternate history game, the player should be able to change that if he gets the conditions just right, but it should be really hard. In fact, I'd say it should be just as hard as westernization was for natives in Eu3.

 

[Eh up me duck]

I'd agree with pretty much all of your post. One caveat should be I don't see how the natives could possibly have survived with their civilisation and culture intact when population loss alone completely destroyed them. Even if the Spanish couldn't destroy them, there'd be little exchange of technology from the West. Sure they might pick up some muskets but they couldn't mass-produce them, and they wouldn't be able to capture sufficient horses to start a population. So really, unless they spontaniously had some kind of completely independant industrial revolution...which I think we can agree is pretty unlikely, at some point the flow of Europeans in the surrounding area would crush them.

 

[Fawr]

Fawr the problem with your argument is that according to you if X nation contributes Y number of soldiers and it is equal to what they did historically there should be the same response. According to that the Ottoman troops should be the worst in the world as 120,000 ottomans failed to take vienna which had at most 23k troops.

Yes, I believe that if you choose historical choices then on average you should expect things to end up with historical outcomes.

In reality Spain sent a few hundred soldiers who simply picked a side in what was essentially a civil war and won. Had Spain sent 1000 troops to EITHER the Aztec or Inca Empires and

A: The Aztecs had not been brutal to their tributary vassals and very recently done a very unpopular mass sacrifice

B: The Inca had not been in the middle of a succession crisis and civil war between the north and central parts of the empire.

the Spaniards would have been laughably annihilated.

History can often look like a large sequences of coincidences, but the world only has one history. Thats like assuming that if columbus was discoraged by his rejections and had never given up that the the world would be completely different.

According to you since the game can't represent the fact that Spain used tens of thousands of native troops we should just make it so that a band of 1000 can win.

Thats blatently false. Please read my previous two posts, in there you will find suggestions for how I think it should be done. Of course if thats too much work for the devs then there are many alternatives which maintain balance. You could do it all as an event chain for the Spanish monarch, so long as the balance is right. Or you could abstract that conquistadors always are assumed to come with native allies. You shouldn't give up and do it in an unbalanced way.

I think the point that Calanctus and I were trying to make is that isn't so much about how easy the conquest should be, but more so about what you have to do to achieve it. I don't want to see the Spanish conquering the New World with just a single unit. I also don't want to see them conquering it with ten units. I also don't want to see the Spanish unable to conquer it at all. I want to see a single unit and a bunch of Native allies and ravaging diseases, or at least something to represent the latter two. Currently the game sidesteps the entire issue and just makes the Natives so weak that they can't defend themselves regardless of the circumstances.

I agree with all the above. Anyone else disagree, or is this some sort of consensus?

So ultimately yes, we would be strengthening the Natives, but only so that they can more accurately fall from normality into a heaping mess, one that a European nation should be able to conquer.

I don't object to the strength of the Americans prior to first contact (so long as they are balanced with each other), so I'm perfectly happy to agree here too. I think the balance is about right for the 1500s in EU3 (so balance off giving the Americans forts with giving them rebels allying with the invaders). I also believe that after first contact a process of modernisation (Japanese style from the 1800s) was very likely to be unsuccessful.

 

[Eh up me duck]

History can often look like a large sequences of coincidences, but the world only has one history. Thats like assuming that if columbus was discoraged by his rejections and had never given up that the the world would be completely different.

History is a river, not a branch. You think the Europeans would sit in Europe, building ships they knew could cross the oceans...and didn't think to just said west and see what happened?

 

[Dafool]

History is a river, not a branch. You think the Europeans would sit in Europe, building ships they knew could cross the oceans...and didn't think to just said west and see what happened?

It's true that history tends to move in a direction. At the time the game starts, the discovery of the New World was likely imminent. However, the particulars of it could be quite different and that is something the game needs to understand and represent. If Columbus had disappeared, a new Spanish expedition was sent out and also disappeared, and then Spain quits trying to sail westward, then things change drastically. Maybe Portugal ends up discovering the Inca or Aztecs. How might the Portuguese have handled that situation? The particulars need to be flexible. That's vital for a game like EU3 or EU4.

 

[Arilou]

It's true that history tends to move in a direction. At the time the game starts, the discovery of the New World was likely imminent. However, the particulars of it could be quite different and that is something the game needs to understand and represent. If Columbus had disappeared, a new Spanish expedition was sent out and also disappeared, and then Spain quits trying to sail westward, then things change drastically. Maybe Portugal ends up discovering the Inca or Aztecs. How might the Portuguese have handled that situation? The particulars need to be flexible. That's vital for a game like EU3 or EU4.

The problem I think is that even if the europeans are repelled, the natives are still going to suffer from diseases, which is very likely to cause social collapse (and in general collapse in the ability to resist anyhow) and it's not as if the europeans are going to disappear. (if the time period shows us anything it's that they're persistent buggers)

 

[StephenT]

Maybe Portugal ends up discovering the Inca or Aztecs. How might the Portuguese have handled that situation?

Well, if you look at the way that small, heavily-armed bands of Portuguese under people like Albuquerque and Almeida seized land in Persia and India and Arabia - against opponents who were much more advanced than the Aztec and Inca - I suspect the answer will be "pretty much the same as the Spanish".

 

[BritNavFan]

There's no game balance issue here. Spain has to commit forces to conquer the New World, yes (and this is really the key distinction; forget the numbers, there is nothing about Cortez and Pizarro's activities that imply agency on the part of the Spanish throne), but it's still trivially easy compared to conquest in any other part of the world, and it can still be done with relatively miniscule armies. The cost to payoff ratio isn't really all that different from history.

In Mesoamerica and Peru, true. In North America, false. (De Soto's expedition in fact conquered nothing, where according to EUIII rules it would have conquered a string of provinces from Georgia to the Mississippi.) In Africa (which works by the same rules), also false. Zimbabwe was not, in fact, occupied by Europeans during the EUIII period, but taking it is a standard move in an EUIII game if you're in that part of the world.

I'd like to see Mesoamerica and Peru made more interesting. I'd like to see North America made different and Africa different again.

...so we get ugly kludges like the ability to annex New World pagans outside of the usual province size annexation limits...

Heh. We get ugly kludges like making the Oirat Mongols Buddhist in 1399, because if they're correctly defined as Pagan any of their neighbours would be able to insta-annex them.

 

[Dafool]

Well, if you look at the way that small, heavily-armed bands of Portuguese under people like Albuquerque and Almeida seized land in Persia and India and Arabia - against opponents who were much more advanced than the Aztec and Inca - I suspect the answer will be "pretty much the same as the Spanish".

You suspect, but that's about it. However a look at the Portuguese colonial empire or even just an examination of those explorers' conquests says something different. Perhaps, without Mexico there to guide them, the Portuguese only reach the Inca in to 1540's or 1550's. Perhaps the Portuguese just find and forcibly install a trading post in the area. Smallpox and other diseases spread. The Inca Empire is greatly weakened. Perhaps over time the Jesuits make their way into the Inca Empire, and find a devastated population willing to convert. Suddenly we have a Catholic, Portuguese dominated, Native puppet state. That's a very different, yet still entirely possible situation. It's no less real or hypothetical than yours. How exactly is that supposed to happen in game? Perhaps with the new trading system, it might actually be worth it to simply vassalize, and if possible convert, the Natives and then exploit their trade nodes with your superior trading technology. It's those types of options that really make the New World exciting in new capacities. EU3 never really provided those options.

 

[Fawr]

Well, if you look at the way that small, heavily-armed bands of Portuguese under people like Albuquerque and Almeida seized land in Persia and India and Arabia - against opponents who were much more advanced than the Aztec and Inca - I suspect the answer will be "pretty much the same as the Spanish".

You suspect, but that's about it. However a look at the Portuguese colonial empire or even just an examination of those explorers' conquests says something different. Perhaps, without Mexico there to guide them, the Portuguese only reach the Inca in to 1540's or 1550's. Perhaps the Portuguese just find and forcibly install a trading post in the area. Smallpox and other diseases spread. The Inca Empire is greatly weakened. Perhaps over time the Jesuits make their way into the Inca Empire, and find a devastated population willing to convert. Suddenly we have a Catholic, Portuguese dominated, Native puppet state. That's a very different, yet still entirely possible situation. It's no less real or hypothetical than yours. How exactly is that supposed to happen in game? Perhaps with the new trading system, it might actually be worth it to simply vassalize, and if possible convert, the Natives and then exploit their trade nodes with your superior trading technology. It's those types of options that really make the New World exciting in new capacities. EU3 never really provided those options.

This is where the thread appears to leave historical evidence behind and starts becoming fantasy. However there are historians who do look at the big picture and the what if scenarios with some rigour. Do either of you have any basis for these suggestions?

Particually for Dafool, why would discovering the Inca later have made it any less likely that a conquest happened?

 

[Dafool]

This is where the thread appears to leave historical evidence behind and starts becoming fantasy. However there are historians who do look at the big picture and the what if scenarios with some rigour. Do either of you have any basis for these suggestions?

Particually for Dafool, why would discovering the Inca later have made it any less likely that a conquest happened?

Well, EU3 and EU4 are not games where real life circumstances always play out. Fantasy might be too strong a world to describe this. Hypothetical is perhaps a less charged term. Anything reasonably possible, ie someone trading with the Inca instead of outright conquering them, are worth thinking about.

As for my hypothetical, it was simply part of the example I provided. The original premise was "What if Spain doesn't end up colonizing much, if any, of the New World?". This is certainly within the realm of possibility in EU3 and presumably EU4. My entire point is that Portugal discovering and interacting with the Natives might be entirely different. Currently the game is mainly geared towards conquering them outright, an option that certainly should be there. However, it is an interesting idea to consider if the Inca Empire had survived long enough for the Jesuits to arrive, or if the Portuguese managed to puppet them, much like the Spaniards initially tried to do. These are both reasonably plausible ideas, and it certainly wouldn't hurt immersion if similar types of reasonable options were available to the player, whether colonizer or Native.