So what would be the most realistic technology rates?

[Holland989]

New World cultures are pretty cool and all, but you can't have much of an argument for them being advanced in any way relevant to the game. Sidestep around the issue all you want, but dude, they didn't even have the wheel. Seems like it's extremely easy to take over the Americas, reform, and westernize as is anyways.

The Incas did know about the weels, but they didn't use it. i.e. using a chariot in the Andes Mountains doesn't seem that helpful to me.

 

[echolot]

I honestly would prefer if Ming was not allowed to conquer any province that isn't Han or Cantonese culture and instead get to create tributary state vassals at reduced WS cost. That way you could mess around with Chinese tech without making China insanely overpowered.

Absolutely agree!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The Asian techs are pretty bad. I would like Indian and Chinese tech to be similar to Muslim tech, so they can hold themselves decently enough.

Indian and Chinese are superior to Muslim outside of tech/MP costs. I'd rather be Indian than Muslim in some cases, just because your units don't fall off completely until tech 20+, unlike Muslims who fall off so badly at 12 that Chinese/Indian can roll them just like the Europeans can.

I know most people on here don't like non-European starts it seems, but if you build a decent Indian empire, spend military points only on tech (no idea groups), you'll hit 12 around the same time or even a bit before the Muslim AIs. You then have a good 100+ years to absolutely stomp all over every single Muslim nation that doesn't have the tag "Ottomans" with pathetic ease. It'll feel just slightly harder than if you were European, and that's because Tercios have 21 pips and the Indian infantry have 20 pips at tech 12. Muslim stays at what...12 pips until tech 20? No amount of ideas will to save them from an 8 pip disadvantage. If you bypass the Ottomans you can absolutely roll everybody else. This is a good time to vassal/annex the Papal State too since they usually don't have big allies and 30+ Indian tech 12 troops can handle <10 tercios fighting at once easily, and it's the only way for Eastern to get a 3rd missionary . Not to mention this lets you be closer to Europe to ally vs the Ottomans and colonials that would otherwise cause you problems .

If you just got rid of the MP penalty and let units scale up to 30, everyone Chinese and higher would be fine (Chinese shouldn't be behind Indian, though). Sub-Saharan and new world would still need work though...perhaps via a mechanic similar to what native councils get.

 

[Saintrl]

If you just got rid of the MP penalty and let units scale up to 30, everyone Chinese and higher would be fine (Chinese shouldn't be behind Indian, though). Sub-Saharan and new world would still need work though...perhaps via a mechanic similar to what native councils get.

The devs did mention in the CoP Post Mortem dev diary that they might do something similar with sub-saharan and south america like they did with the north american natives.