So EU4 devs, will you return to the European Great Powers?
- Thread starter richelieu1628
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Well, I like the AI aggro setting, but the AI handicap is a bit extreme - I find the gameplay weird then.
First of all no one is saying that European technology was so much more advanced in the 15th technology. They may not have had proper bulkheads but it sure as hell didn't stop them from controlling the world by the 19th century.
The problem is that the most difficult settings have an even steeper difficulty curve. It doesn't fix the issue of most difficulty being concentrated in the beginning on the game. Some early games become almost unplayable (at least without strategies I consider too gamey).
Indeed. Once you're over the hump, you're over the hump. Gameplay after that doesn't become more interesting by how hard you make it to get to the hump. Again, the comparison to CK2 is super helpful, I think. You can totally inherit an imperial throne in CK2 and have a fun game with that. Inherit France in EU4 and it's game over.
That's odd. One of the biggest complaints about CK2 is how boring the game is once you become emperor.
personally, I think that Europe is fleshed out pretty well also. They have plenty of flavour events and unique mechanics, such as the religious wars and colonial nations. They also have plenty of historical events that can fire if certain conditions are met. The area i think is most in need of love from the developers is Africa. While an Asian DLC would be nice, Asia already has some unique mechanics. You have the Nomad mechanics, the Celestial empire mechanics for China, and the Shogunate/Daimyo system in Japan. The only areas in serious need of improvement then would be India and South East Asia. Africa, however, beside getting some map changes and new countries, hasn't really been touched by any of the DLCs. Many Asian countries and now all of the Native American countries have something unique about them that gives them their own style and charm, but Africa is as generic as they come. There should really be some development there next. I will, however, admit that North America was in more dire need, seeing as howthere were iniitally so few countries that getting stuck with nothing to do for long stretches of time was a real concern, but I really feel that all of the things they added in El Dorado could potentially have been done in Conquest of Paradise, thus allowing them to focus on another area of the world like Africa for this DLC
Not necessarily true. China, for example, started this period more poised to take over the world then the Europeans. They were conducting great voyages of discovery and had far superior weapons and naval technology. They almost certainly didn't discover America, but had they continued, there is a possibility that they might have. That all changed when a new emperor came to the throne and decided to turn his back on exploration. Had that not happened, and the Chinese continued to build on their successes, they might have overtaken Europe. As for the Native Americans, they may have been conquered by the Europeans, but with the exception of the Aztecs and the Inca, they did not go down easily. Indeed, even the Inca didn't go down that easy, as their was a massive revolt not long after the conquest. While they never rose to challege the Europeans, that doesn't mean that it was beyond the realm of feasibility. If it were not for some stupid mistakes by the Aztec and Incan emperors and small pox, the Europeans might not even have won. Also, it makes sense that westernization and reforming your government requires contact with the Europeans. Until you make contact with them, how would your people have any notion of how behind they were? European contact changed everything for the native peoples, even if they had driven out the Europeans, life for them would have never been the same. Also, before the Europeans come, you have had no exposure to their advanced technology and have nothing to copy or model your changes on. Personally, though, I think that they should potentially expand on the reform government/religion options and turn them into a unique process of westernization so you do not have to wait to fall behind again. Then, they could do the same for Asia and Africa. The end result would be that Westernization process is different for every region, which would be more historical and fun if you ask me.
If you want to talk about the Inca, let's put this in context. Pizarro made two expeditions to the Inca Empire, not one. The first one was to scout, and to push a proposal for conquest to the King of Spain. Here, he introduced smallpox. As a result, it rampages throughout the valleys of the Andes, and kills both the Emperor, and his heir. This leaves the throne open with no one having a valid claim, so two sons ends up fighting a brutal civil war, while the entire empire is being wrecked by smallpox. The Spaniards arrive literally, and I do mean literally, a handful of days after the civil war is ended. So, to recap:
1) Smallpox devastation
2) Civil War
3) Shaky legitimacy and weak control over Incan vassals as a result of civil war
So, the Incans are wrecked agriculturally, war weary as all hell, the weakest politically and in terms of stability that they've ever been since the start of the reign of Pachacuti if not farther back, and what's worse, the Incan Emperor tried to vassalize the Spaniards instead of confronting them. Let me explain; in the Andes, there was no currency and little in the way of true absolutism; traditionally, empires in the Andes rose and fell on the back of vassalage, the Inca themselves were an empire of vassals, although this was shifting more towards formal direct administration at the later stages of its existence. And in order to get anything done, you had to pay a tribute to your vassals. You wanted soldiers for your campaign? Well, time to wine and dine the local ruler with festivals, parties, gifts, and women. You want this dude, ruler of this land, to bow before you and acknowledge you as his sovereign without a war? Time to bust out the party favors. This was vital in the beginnings of the Inca Empire but fell out of practice as the Emperors gained enough power and land to directly ignore their vassals and they began to favor conquest over vassalization. Anyways, Atahualpa, winner of the civil war, needed to farm up the prestige and legitimacy of the Emperor, and this means currying favor with his existing vassals, including recently conquered tribes and states by his father, Huayna Capac. So the answer is to start the wine and dine game once again. The first recipients of this? The Spaniards. So he brought thousands upon thousands of men as a show of force to act as the stick, but unarmed to show the potential stick, while treating the Spanish to a feast as the carrot. It's the Emperor's misfortune that Pizarro was such a dishonest bastard, both in his grabbing the Sapa Inca hostage, as well as in the decision to renege on the freeing of the Sapa Inca after getting the ransom for him.
So to recap; if you put France at negative stability, gave them very high war exhaustion, drained them of their manpower, and made all of their vassals hate them and declare war on them at the same time I did, I could tapdance on the back of their heads as Brittany, or even Bar. The Inca are laughably underpowered, and the idea that a European power could conquer them even after all of these misfortunes is a result of Pizarro being one incredibly lucky SOB with balls made of titanium for not losing his nerve and heading back to Havana with a king's ransom.
Pizarro had a tiny number of troops. You couldn't conquer Inca in game with the anywhere near as few troops as he had.
Nor should you be able to do so, as you're not doing an "assassinate ruler" action with super DHE style lucky breaks, you're declaring a proper war in the game.
Did you just not read the post you were responding to at all?
My point was that even though the Inca in your game mightn't suffer all the catastrophic events they did in real life, it is harder to conquer them than in real life so it makes up for it. He was complaining that it was too easy since the player wouldn't get the same luck Pizarro got most of the time, but the player needs more troops than he had so it doesn't matter if they don't get Pizarro's luck.
I did. It was a long rant about Pizarro being lucky, which is true, but the point he made using the information was wrong.
I don't think you can attribute ranting to any part of my post but the very tail end where I call Pizarro a lucky SOB. Even you acknowledge that to be true so....where's the long rant? Where's the incorrect point? I stated nothing but facts about the Inca and the Spanish conquest. My point is that a united Andean empire shouldn't be an easy conquer unless they get FUBAR'd by unfortunate events. In which case you very easily conquer the Inca with a 10k stack over the course of a 40 year slog that almost fell apart to a rebellion anyways, and that's in spite of continuous reinforcements from Central America and Cuba. If you want to mimic history, of course.
Holy crud, I remember you from the CivFanatics forums and CivIV youtube Let's Plays. They were awesome
I mean, this many not be very fair to him/her but...
Castille4tehwin
Sergeant
If someone accused me of being biased towards the Inca, they'd be right. But I make a point of doing my best when discussing them to state facts and not extrapolate fanciful what-ifs. And this is a pseudo-history forum, after all. Some bias, intentional or not, comes with the territory.
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The incorrect point was the one you made in the last paragraph where you heavily implied that the game makes it far too easy to conquer the Inca. Too easy, sure, but not much. If you were to conquer the Inca at the same time as Pizarro did historically, you'd need far, far more troops than he had. And you would probably also have disease at your side, like he did. A civil war mightn't have happened in the game but you can't march in with the tiny army Pizarro had and win either.
It's literally impossible to have as few troops as he did most of the time in EU4. A regiment is too big.
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I think you're entirely missing the point. Pizarro could do what he did because the stars aligned. Every star. The point that's being missed is conquest by a foreign power shouldn't happen, unless everything that could go wrong for the Inca does go wrong. Like it did historically, to Pizarro's great success. Have you actually read up on Pizarro's conquest? Disease wasn't an active weapon, it was his grand fortune that his scouting expedition had the disease reach both the Emperor and his heir. Which in turn triggered a host of calamities on the Empire beyond the obvious 'lots of people die from smallpox'. Take away the death of either of the above two figures. And then you don't have a civil war compounded by smallpox at the same time. Or in other words...you can't pull a Pizarro. Unless everything goes horribly wrong(or right, depending on the perspective). Not to mention that the Inca are far more likely to attack first and ask questions later without the massive loss of legitimacy inflicted by the civil war, instead of trying to throw parties for strangers. Where they can kidnap an Emperor. And can in turn ransom him. Then kill him. And crush his completely unarmed army at the same time.
Do I really need to go on.
Like I already said numerous times, I KNOW the player isn't as lucky as Pizarro. But the player also needs at least several times the number of troops to conquer the Inca at the time Pizarro did. So it balances out. How hard can it be for you people to understand basic English?