Power of Asian nations

[Mowers]

I think China, Korea and Japan should start out in 1450 with where Europeans would be in 1650, but should not advance at all really. They should however have a lot fewer musket technologies and more primitive cannons, but more advanced naval armor.

The biggest difference should be in what I've termed military achievement levels. China and Japan should rely on CK style irregular provincial levies, which they can certainly stave off aggression with considering their massive size, but smaller European countries' powerful builtup regular armies should be a lot stronger and more numerous.

While Europeans should have techgroup bonus pulling up their land and naval achievement levels, Asia should have a techgroup gravity that pulls them down levels. China should start with a relatively high naval achievement level, but unless they dump tons of money into it, it will devolve over the centuries to incapacity, and a veritable fortune to actually advance.

Surely the core issue here was social?
Unless the social aspect is effectively built into the model you have to do the arbitary fix again and this only spawns more problems down the line.
Build the issue into the basic game model and you can avoid the problems that follow that we have seen before.

 

[Mad King James]

The "outward looking" and "inward looking" decision was never made, China was ALWAYS inward looking. The difference is that China made steady progress technologically for about 20 centuries, while Europe made about the same progress in about 2 centuries, because of a number of factors, some religious, some military, and some scholarly.

China is not the unusual special case, Europe is. If we are going to make special rules, there should be three:

1: Europe always advances in technology no matter what happens. The rest of the world should make advances very slowly, but should also fall back into decline slowly in technological areas. Only Europe made the linear progression of advancement. The Ottomans should be part of Europe for these purposes, but get shunted out of these special rules when their decline starts.

2: Countries not in the European techgroup should have to struggle to keep technological achievement levels, and countries that start out high in certain areas will be in a steady decline unless they dump a considerable amount of investment to keep things as they are, and a fortune to advance them.

3: Only countries in the European techgroup can have inventions, though they can spread from there to wherever regardless. Exceptions to this rule (Korean turtle ship armor, etc) can be handled by events.

 

[Sindai]

Some nations just aren't very fun to play historically. I don't think it's worth the development time to try and come up with a bunch of special mechanics to make playing China without any major wars fun.

As already pointed out, most of the major issues here are AI. It's easy for a human player to dominate anywhere in the world, and the Chinese AI should usually be extremely peaceful.

 

[Symmetry]

I think China, Korea and Japan should start out in 1450 with where Europeans would be in 1650, but should not advance at all really.

Hmm... My understanding is that this is a little optomistic, and that even by 1600 Europe had pretty much caught up with and started to pass Japan in terms of economic development, and that Japan was doing the same to China at about the same time.

Of course, EUII doesn't model one of the main problems the Chinese had with expansion, that the larger a country is the more layers of bureaucracy there are between the top and the bottom, so the less efficiently the government opperates. Since China was so very huge, it had to spend more effort just staying together than the smaller European states. Of course, mechanisms to penalize China in this area could be used for playbalance too...

 

[Meldorian]

In real history the conquering only started after 1775. (some exceptions like North America) Even in India the Europeans could only get some small claims and trade posts. They where not the omny powerfull host we claim them to be in our nowadays history. It would make the game a lot more interesting if the colonial size would be a bigger challenge.

But that is exactly what I didnt like about EU2. You're Mecklenburg, it's 1600, and you want to get some nice, rich provinces? Go and conquere spice- and chinaware-provinces in India, maybe the CoT at Kutch, too. And since when does Macao cover more area than the Portugese homeland? The province Portugal gets by event from China in EU2 sure does.

 

[Mowers]

China is not the unusual special case, Europe is. If we are going to make special rules, there should be three:

<snip>.

I am very wary of special rules as its an immediate acknowledge that your core model is effectively wrong. Build the model and then add special rules if you have to.

For every special rule you add it creates 2 additional problems, dont go there unless you really have to.

 

[Judge]

And don´t forget India. The Mughal empire is a sad creature in EU 2 despite it being one of the most powerful empires at the time. No European power could deal with the Empire until the late era of the game (EU 2).

Moreover India is much more complex than described in the game. The Marathas for example is very poorly portrayed. I did some modding of my own and I finally got some acceptable results. However the limits of modding don´t allow a good result. So please take a look at India in EU III. I am willing to provide help with research if needed.

 

[Stingray]

But that is exactly what I didnt like about EU2. You're Mecklenburg, it's 1600, and you want to get some nice, rich provinces? Go and conquere spice- and chinaware-provinces in India, maybe the CoT at Kutch, too. And since when does Macao cover more area than the Portugese homeland? The province Portugal gets by event from China in EU2 sure does.

Err... I think you misunderstood him there. He's saying that you shouldn't be able to conquer large areas of land in India/China, at least not until the very end game, as this wasn't possible in the time frame.

 

[Meldorian]

Err... I think you misunderstood him there. He's saying that you shouldn't be able to conquer large areas of land in India/China, at least not until the very end game, as this wasn't possible in the time frame.

But it is possible in EU2. And that is what I didn't like about EU2. I was actually agreeing with him. Is my English that bad? o

 

[Mowers]

But it is possible in EU2. And that is what I didn't like about EU2. I was actually agreeing with him. Is my English that bad? o

Hopefully with a CK vassal style system this wont be possible.

What would be good is if over time technology and social changes allow more direct overseas control thus allowing the development of empires but at a historic rate. Or you risk medium term destablisation trying to balance one too many wayward and uncontrollable regions. Which of course would be brilliant.

 

[Arilou]

Wow, luckily I stopped myself there and actually read what you said.

But yeah, tying the ability to hold direct control over overseas territories to technology would be a good idea.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

ex-mudders on the right path.

If you start forcing actions you are immediately opening a can of worms that will never go away regardless of how many patches you release.

You have got to get the model right first.

Why did Chinese junks sail up the Thames?

What key reasons held back China?
I dont believe lack of ambition is going to get into top 30 list of reasons. Its those reasons you have to build into the model, not force as an arbitary mechanism, otherwise your model will fail.

Actually, what ex-mudders propose is very unrealisitc. China shouldn't have dozen cultures, as it had significant sense of unity, and very strong drive towards unifying the country during periods of disintegration. In sort of way, it indeed was lack of ambition, but thats obviously not the only reason, others did exist too. And the reason behind this 'lack of ambition' is more important that its existence.

 

[Thanak]

I don't agree with the techgroup concept

Europe did progress because it had all the right element (multiple country in similar strenght range, centralised government, regular wars, population base meeting the minimum requierment...)

If for some reason those element are recreated in Asia, there is no reseason why the tech should be fixed.

I would do away with the techgroup concept and expend the neighboring bonus concept.

Also military tech should progress a lot slower if there are no war going around.

 

[Duuk]

Rather than "tech group", I'd like to see an actual "neighbor bonus" based on who is actually next to you.

In addition, there is a VERY simple game mechanic from CK that can be quickly modelled to stifle China.

Demense size penalty. Change this to "Country Size Penalty", since tech costs in EU represent not only the cost to "discover" the tech, but also the cost to IMPLEMENT the tech across your entire Empire.

With China's size, their demense size penalty could be as much as -95% of their income! Have "social" techs reduce the demense penalty, but have China start with fairly limited techs in this field.

In this way, they could start with an "advanced" military and beauracracy, and never really advance further.

The best parts about this system are that it 1) models history very well. Large empires stagnate. Always have. and 2) can be applied dynamically, meaning that if you get too large without advancing the social technology of your Empire, you'll stagnate too.

This prevents "Special China Rules" and falls squarely in line with the Situational Engine.

 

[Mowers]

Actually, what ex-mudders propose is very unrealisitc. China shouldn't have dozen cultures, as it had significant sense of unity, and very strong drive towards unifying the country during periods of disintegration. In sort of way, it indeed was lack of ambition, but thats obviously not the only reason, others did exist too. And the reason behind this 'lack of ambition' is more important that its existence.

Hey there, hows tricks?

I am no china expert by a long shot..... Having said that.....
I think its argueable to say that China does have lots of different "cultures" during the time period but that for a number of reasons, primarily a lack of a decent sized enemy and their own size, they neither had the resources to expand further (in an effective manner) or the ability to completely control what they had all the time. The lack of pressure to innovate ensured that they lagged behind. Although we should remember they dont lag behind that much in this time frame. As as you say, the reason rather than its existance and capturing those reasons are key.

What I dont want to see is the Vicky error where we had band aid fixs for lesser tier nations along the lines of prestige and all the game play issues that incurred subsequently. Not all peasants are the same

Furthermore if we remove, and we should as its historical nonsence, the states ability to control the pace of social and technical innovation then we can ensure that countries like China simply dont have the ability to have 95% of their expenditure developing technologies - rather than the 00.1% (if that!) of expenditure that was HISTORICALLY spent on developing technologies.

Removal of control of techs ( I know its hard to swallow but its a historical make believe and other more fun elements of game play can be added to replace it - so dont fret ) would go a LONG way to solving alot of the problems in the EU2 series.

 

[Duuk]

Removal of control of techs ( I know its hard to swallow but its a historical make believe and other more fun elements of game play can be added to replace it - so dont fret ) would go a LONG way to solving alot of the problems in the EU2 series.

Or just stymie their ability to devote significant resources to tech improvement. See also: My above post.

Why put a strange limit on specific countries rather than just put in a solid, dynamic system that limits ahistorical (or historical!) growth?

 

[unmerged(3921)]

>Of course, EUII doesn't model one of the main problems the Chinese had with expansion, that the larger a country is the more layers of bureaucracy there are between the top and the bottom, so the less efficiently the government opperates.

Excellent point, but keep in mind that in MP, EUII absolutely DOES model this issue. With no ability to pause the game, huge country size develops it own diseconomies of scale...

W.r.t. China, yes there are many "cultures" but what is notable is the historical ability of the Chinese socio-political entity to keep them together. The reason for that is actually quite clear - their written linguistic system is ideomatic rather than phonetic. Thus result in any number of cultures with different spoken languages to share a single written language and thus have the SAME literary culture. Thus there is no such thing as Cantonese literature, for example. It's all Chinese literature. That is an incredibly unifying force. It would be as if Italians considered Shakespeare as a local playwright. If you want to model this issue you have to get down to the specific timeframes when each regional ethnic group either chose to adopt the Chinese written script or was able develop their own. It's a rich area for event writing, but one that to date hasn't been addressed by the EU community.

As far as expansion/lack of aggression goes, it's clear that China fell into the latter camp. And the reason for it is actually also pretty clear. There was simply a lack of economic motive. The claims that China didn't expand because it was under outside pressure are only half true - China didn't really expand much when it wasn't under outside pressure either. In fact the opposite correlation is noted as the period of greatest Chinese expansion (into Central Asia) was also a preiod of greater pressure from outside. So why did the economic motive exist for Europe and not China? Primogeniture for one. Look at who the risk taking explorer/conquistadors were in Europe. Almost all second or lower sons from upper middle class families. Where were those same people in China? Sitting around waiting to get an equal share of the family inheritance.

 

[unmerged(11633)]

The Qing were one of the most expansionist Chinese dynasties. They conquered Tibet, the Chagatai Khanate (modern day Xinjiang), and Mongolia. Vast areas, larger than western Europe.

One may say that the Ming dynasty had problems expanding (they tried and failed to conquer Dai Viet), but the Qing really didn't.

 

[unmerged(11600)]

Rather than "tech group", I'd like to see an actual "neighbor bonus" based on who is actually next to you.

In addition, there is a VERY simple game mechanic from CK that can be quickly modelled to stifle China.

Demense size penalty. Change this to "Country Size Penalty", since tech costs in EU represent not only the cost to "discover" the tech, but also the cost to IMPLEMENT the tech across your entire Empire.

With China's size, their demense size penalty could be as much as -95% of their income! Have "social" techs reduce the demense penalty, but have China start with fairly limited techs in this field.

In this way, they could start with an "advanced" military and beauracracy, and never really advance further.

The best parts about this system are that it 1) models history very well. Large empires stagnate. Always have. and 2) can be applied dynamically, meaning that if you get too large without advancing the social technology of your Empire, you'll stagnate too.

This prevents "Special China Rules" and falls squarely in line with the Situational Engine.

Me like. One aspect of the board game that I liked but was largely missing in the computer version is a good counter to the steamroller effect. The board game had random revolts and diplomatic upheavals that would keep countries from achieving dominance without serious penalties. BB wars just don't do it (and can actually worsen the problem).

-Pat

 

[Duuk]

Me like. One aspect of the board game that I liked but was largely missing in the computer version is a good counter to the steamroller effect. The board game had random revolts and diplomatic upheavals that would keep countries from achieving dominance without serious penalties. BB wars just don't do it (and can actually worsen the problem).

-Pat

I've always felt that BB wars had a VERY limited chance of success, because if they failed they made the problem worse, and it became a self-propogating problem.