The pace of westernisation - too fast, too slow or just right?

[Axe99]

Starting a new thread so it wouldn't derail the broader westernisation thread that's cooking at the moment - @TheMeInTeam, this thread is for you (TMIT was looking for details, and this kind of details would have been a bit unwieldy in that thread) . @josh127 - you may also be interested, but no pressure, just mentioning as you were involved in the other thread .

Purpose of the thread is to discuss, with examples, the current pace of westernisation in the game. I'm a historical plausibility fan, and I'm not sure there's any sensible definition of westernisation that has the current in-game spread as historically plausible. On the other hand, if we're not worried about historical plausibility and want a more risk-in-detail style experience, I'd argue that westernisation and tech penalties should be removed altogether - but that's a discussion for this thread:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/paradox-please-real-westernization.882621/

Or any othe the threads linked in this post:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...al-westernization.882621/page-7#post-19978004

This thread here is all about what the actual pace of westernisation is in the game at the moment. I've run four tests so far, and will do one test per post, kicking off with test 1. All tests are unmodded EU4 1.13.1.0 (13a0), unless marked otherwise (ie, it'll change if a patch comes out and this thread is still kicking).

So - test 1. I wasn't watching non-stop, but I dropped in every half-hour or so to look at how things were going. In this test, things got going fairly slowly - the first country I spotted as westernised was Muscovy, but it's likely that the Commonwealth (also westernised at this time) went first.

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It heated up a little after that, with both the Ottos, Mamluks, Timbuktu (first african westernisation) and Golden Horde westernised by the time I checked in on them at 1620.

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The first native tribe to go was Pueblo, in 1640.

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1663 saw Hedjaz and Kazan join the westernised club.

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1696 saw the native american tribes making good on westernisation. Examples provided here are Choctaw, Wichita and Miami, but there were a couple of others - the north american tribes had a 'strong' westernisation game in this test.

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Over in Europe and Asia, 1696 also saw Persia and Tlemcen join the club.

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By 1722, Bukhara and Yemen were doing the western jive as well.

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In 1749, Songhai joins Mali (they beat this by 200 years in test 2, they must have taken one test to warm up....), to complete sub-saharan Africa's westernisation.

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As an aside, thirty years after westernisation, Bukhara has pretty much caught up and is in the 'green' tech group. Not a bad effort from them.

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India was a slow westerniser in test 1 - Kutai beat them to the draw in 1767, at which point Kilwa had also westernised.

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It took until (around) 1800 for Gujarat, Delhi and Baluchistan to join the westernised club. Bahmani's never did, despite easily having the earliest opportunity, assuming Portugal cored Goa (which I think they get in an event, but it's been a little while since my last Portugal game).

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Majapahit joins the club in 1805, then the last nation to westernise before I stopped in 1815 was Shun, in 1814.

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I'll post up test 2 (not as detailed) later, and tests 3 and 4 are just 'how the world looked in 1815', as they were run overnight. I know, lack of commitment to examining the issues by sleeping, have I no backbone?

 

[zorkman]

It is a joke at the moment. In reality no nations westernised in this period & it should be taken out. If it is going to be used it needs to be introduced a lot later & being really hard to do.

 

[PhroX]

I'd be very interested at what point the nations that westernised actually caught up with Western Europe in terms of tech and ideas. Because that's what really matters, not what tech group they happen to be in.

 

[cloudwasher]

It is a joke at the moment. In reality no nations westernised in this period & it should be taken out. If it is going to be used it needs to be introduced a lot later & being really hard to do.

Well, if they went by history, then all the native american nations would lose 90% of their development from european diseases. Some liberties are taken... Without them, it's EU1 all over again, and no country outside of Europe is playable unless you liked getting stomped. I played EU1 sir.... this game is much better

I do think there should be more requirements to westernize.... you should be at +3 stability to initiate it. You should have either 100 legitimacy or a monarch with a skill levle of 5 or higher ina category. The monarch point cost should remain the same, but the unrest should go up to +10 instead of 5, and a flat modifier of -15% income to cover the financial cost of the reforms. Basically, IMHO, I think it should be a trying experience that can rip your country apart if you aren't ready for it. As its set up now, I've often westernized while still fighting offensive wars without much problems, especially if you have religious IG and convert all your provinces. The high tolerance value basically counteracts the +5 completely where you can have no revolts at all other than the event generated ones, which is unrealistic to me.

 

[Axe99]

I'd be very interested at what point the nations that westernised actually caught up with Western Europe in terms of tech and ideas. Because that's what really matters, not what tech group they happen to be in.

Working out what point they westernised (and running enough tests to get an idea of the average, rather than one-offs) would take a lot of time - I was hoping that getting snapshots at 1815 of where nations were at would do a decent enough job, as at the end of the day the question is 'does the world westernise too fast', and a snapshot of the world in 1815 tells us if it did or not, and is a lot less work then monitoring tests all the time. Does this sound reasonable? If not, and you know of console commands to create saves at specific points or something like that, it'd be very handy .

Edit: Speaking of which, here's the first test at the end. The only non-western green is Ming, everyone else is that's green is western (including a few North American natives). Songhai, which only westernised in the last 60-70 years, has caught up to European tech, more or less. Persia is more advanced than Great Britain. Ideas-wise, Songhai is behind (on 27), but Persia had done pretty handily (on 45).

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[frolix42]

Even though @Wiz apparently hates the term, I think Paradox will eventually go to a system which has more realistic or historical outcomes.

There is a reason that EU4 is set during a fixed historical period. In EU4 we have historical starts, historical events, and even historical lucky nations. History is infinitely interesting and therefore buffing ROTW with an institutional reform system, that is anachronistically easy and widespread, is less interesting.

 

[Axe99]

Grabbed the screenies for test 2. Unlike test 1, there was much greater westernisation in the east and earlier westernisation in Africa. The whole world didn't westernise, but by 1815 if you weren't westernised then you were definitely in the minority (which you probably were in test 1 as well, but there's no question in test 2).

Benin kicks off proceedings with a pretty impressive 1544 westernisation, followed by Songhai in 1549:

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Poland westernised in 1550:

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Tupinamba went in 1569 and Timbuktu in 1571.

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Pequot and Tunis have gone in 1619.

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And then I must have went to bed or the like, because that's the last of the 'in-progress' shots. However, the world as it stood in 1815 is very western. Unlike test 1, green isn't necessarily western (although very much usually is), and much of the non-green has also westernised. Impressive, is that OPM in South America that's Andean and keeping up with tech!

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Some highlights of the situation in 1815 is Songhai being right up there on ideas and tech, and Kanem Borno's no slouch.

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All of India was westernised, although it looks like Bahmani's had gone significantly earlier, as they were the only ones who had caught up on tech.

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Much of the rest of Asia had also gone western - Yue, Champa, Wu, Jin (screenshot not included, but if anyone doubts, just say and I'll post up ) and Pasai. In the last screenshot, Majapahit is both green in tech and Chinese in 1815. Who said tech groups held nations back? Probably best we don't look at their ideas though .

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Two tests down, and in both cases the world in 1815 was very, very 'western' relative to historical developments, and the nations that started westernising, did so well before it occurred historically. Tests 3 and 4 will only be snapshots at the end (I'll post that up tomorrow), but test five will have some earlier time periods as well.

 

[Metztli]

It is a joke at the moment. In reality no nations westernised in this period & it should be taken out. If it is going to be used it needs to be introduced a lot later & being really hard to do.

If westernization doesn't exist how other nations will be anyway near to playable ?

 

[Zakath]

If westernization doesn't exist how other nations will be anyway near to playable ?

Would need another mechanic. It's not as if there weren't benefits to the non-western social structures, they were often far more socially stable than the relatively speaking frothing radicals of Europe. A few options which spring to mind is to give lowered stab costs, cheaper armies, more manpower, etc as potential tradeoffs. It could be a set of slides / toggles to determine your national values, or it could be a set of benefits tied to the tech group with a possibility of migrating one way or another etc.

Lots of options, but it's not something that would just pop up overnight. It would need new mechanics.

 

[Afinati]

Thanks for the data. Looking forward to seeing how the next two tests turned out.

 

[PhroX]

Even though @Wiz apparently hates the term, I think Paradox will eventually go to a system which has more realistic or historical outcomes.

There is a reason that EU4 is set during a fixed historical period. In EU4 we have historical starts, historical events, and even historical lucky nations. History is infinitely interesting and therefore buffing ROTW with an institutional reform system, that is anachronistically easy and widespread, is less interesting.

Arguably true, but there's so much more wrong with the technology/modernisation systems than just westernisation being anachronistic, so why do people keep focusing so much on that? Europe being better at technological advancement than the rest of the world, without having to put in any effort, in 1444 is every bit as anarchronistic as the current westernisation system.

 

[AurochsAway]

Westernisation isn't important in itself. What matters is how technology groups as a whole including westernisation translates to tech levels at each period in the game. Can I ask that you post more zoomed out (whole world) tech-level maps, for an easier summary than scrolling through each picture?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Good call making this a separate thread. I'll add to it when I can too...since I have some saves it's just a matter of taking a couple screens when next I start a session.

I think an important evaluation of "too soon" is "when is this nation going to catch up to western standard in tech and ideas". Who's on par in military tech by 1700? Who's on par in all 3 before then?

As an experienced player, I'm typically (mostly) caught up by 1650 if I westernize by 1550, but the AI is slower of course.

For example being ~tech 25 across the board in 1815 should be viewed as a failure (therefore Sind failed to catch up for example, but Bahmanis succeeded); the 25/25/25 type nation never caught up. Something like Poland doing it by 1550 is going to be essentially western standards by 1750. IMO don't bother counting Poland. They get (and take) the free decision for owning Danzig and thus don't incur the costs of "westernization". Pdox wanted them to go freebie western for little effort. Muscovy is more legit since it actually has to pay to switch groups as an AI in most cases.

Edit:

This is why I didn't believe your Dahomey time of "westernizing by 1504" by the way:



I doubt your Dahomey did this . That other Portuguese province is an unfinished colony, as of the screen shot, and they couldn't westernize off that, would need to conquer a Portuguese province or lose an interior core via conquest.

As of ~1550 I'm the only western nation in sub-Saharan Africa and though that's not a representative sample of AI westernization spread, I'm not far enough ahead in tech yet, despite the 1509 finish.

My ETA of being caught up in administrative/diplo/miltech (not just miltech) and ideas is post-1600. This leaves you with limited "solutions" without a total rework:

1. Make westernization harder: possibly viable, if you get more in return for doing it (and make the comparisons to "historical" westernization less disingenuous).

2. Make westernization more costly: untenable, as evidenced by OP's pictures most AI that westernize never catch up as-is.

3. Make the AI not westernize: Wiz is against this and it's one of those cases I agree with him. The AI is lacking enough given game resources that it doesn't also need to play poorly *on purpose*.

The final thing worth pointing out here is that

1) westernization is not *clearly* defined in game terms, so calling it ahistorical is, to some degree, fabricating a definition that is not necessarily shared.

2) making an argument against it solely because "it didn't happen in history in this time period" is hindsight bias, not a credible consideration. A credible consideration is whether it is viable for the leadership of a given nation to attempt whatever it is that in-game westernization is supposed to represent.

All in all, it's a stopgap mechanic that needs to say until we get something that isn't a stopgap mechanic. It's not a particularly fun process so I'd definitely prefer something better; burning points while doing less as a result isn't exactly the most engaging thing and most of the choices the player has to make while doing it are trivial.

 

[zorkman]

If westernization doesn't exist how other nations will be anyway near to playable ?

That is the reason they are challenging nations. So you think that to make everything playable you dumb every nation down to the common denominator. The best way as others have said is to give help to other nations. One way is to restrict the unrealistic way countries can colonise, the ease in colonising, & the amount of troops they can effortlessly send over with no real repercussions. I wasn't a great fan of the Magna Mundi mod for EU3, but one thing it did right was they way countries colonised.

 

[Afinati]

That is the reason they are challenging nations. So you think that to make everything playable you dumb every nation down to the common denominator. The best way as others have said is to give help to other nations. One way is to restrict the unrealistic way countries can colonise, the ease in colonising, & the amount of troops they can effortlessly send over with no real repercussions. I wasn't a great fan of the Magna Mundi mod for EU3, but one thing it did right was they way countries colonised.

I played 600 hours of EU3, but I almost never touch mods. What did Magna Mundi do? How would you see EU4's system change?

 

[josh127]

That is the reason they are challenging nations. So you think that to make everything playable you dumb every nation down to the common denominator. The best way as others have said is to give help to other nations. One way is to restrict the unrealistic way countries can colonise, the ease in colonising, & the amount of troops they can effortlessly send over with no real repercussions. I wasn't a great fan of the Magna Mundi mod for EU3, but one thing it did right was they way countries colonised.

Used to be fun and challenging to play without westernizing. Now you miss out on all the goodies because of added MP costs. Not being able to use features is kinda not fun, and ironically since you can focus MIL if you fall behind, it's not challenging either. You just don't get around to doing as much.

And then I must have went to bed or the like, because that's the last of the 'in-progress' shots.

Check out the first post in this thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ur-europa-universalis-4-observer-game.822357/
It shows how you can add a setting that will autosave every X months. In that case it's set for 1200 months or 100 years, but you might want to go with 600 months so there's 50 year splits. A lot nicer than babysitting multiple observer games (although sometimes watching it is fun too).

Also, back to the original question you asked on the thread, I feel it's just fine. You showed very few countries in either of those screenshots that even in 1815 were competitive western nations. Yes, they had the tech group, but that doesn't make them western. Even in India where it usually gets a bit earlier start thanks to the Goa event you showed only Bahamanis was caught up. Keeping in mind also that's 1815, not the 1550 - 1600 spread across the entire globe like is being claimed in other threads.

I must say though the best thing in those screenshots was seeing that nicely sized Shan. What a throwback that is!

 

[Axe99]

Westernisation isn't important in itself. What matters is how technology groups as a whole including westernisation translates to tech levels at each period in the game. Can I ask that you post more zoomed out (whole world) tech-level maps, for an easier summary than scrolling through each picture?

I'm putting an 1815 summary in for each test - at the bottom of the first and I think at the top of the second. I'll try and include summaries at each time interval from test 7 onwards (when I do the autosaves). Is that the kind of thing you're looking for or am I missing something? (apologies if not and I am missing something )

I think an important evaluation of "too soon" is "when is this nation going to catch up to western standard in tech and ideas". Who's on par in military tech by 1700? Who's on par in all 3 before then?

For example being ~tech 25 across the board in 1815 should be viewed as a failure (therefore Sind failed to catch up for example, but Bahmanis succeeded); the 25/25/25 type nation never caught up. Something like Poland doing it by 1550 is going to be essentially western standards by 1750. IMO don't bother counting Poland. They get (and take) the free decision for owning Danzig and thus don't incur the costs of "westernization". Pdox wanted them to go freebie western for little effort. Muscovy is more legit since it actually has to pay to switch groups as an AI in most cases.

Good call on Poland . In terms of 'caught up' though, one of the issues is that the world wasn't all 'green' in 1815, so if we're looking at a historically plausible spread, then something like 25/25/25 is arguably too high for sub-Saharan Africa, but not high enough for India. There are obvious issue's with EU4's tech model from a historical plausibility perspective, but don't want to go there in this thread.

My ETA of being caught up in administrative/diplo/miltech (not just miltech) and ideas is post-1600. This leaves you with limited "solutions" without a total rework:

1. Make westernization harder: possibly viable, if you get more in return for doing it (and make the comparisons to "historical" westernization less disingenuous).

2. Make westernization more costly: untenable, as evidenced by OP's pictures most AI that westernize never catch up as-is.

3. Make the AI not westernize: Wiz is against this and it's one of those cases I agree with him. The AI is lacking enough given game resources that it doesn't also need to play poorly *on purpose*.

I think the best solution going forward would be a total rework - dedicate a DLC to 'modernisation' (changing the term while we're at it) and mix up the way tech groups, idea groups and tech works. At the moment, the implementation of those three elements mean that individual nations have fairly limited individual flavour (relative to what they had historically) and even less in MP, where there are certain optimal ways to play that everyone will follow. That said, if they were going to do a stopgap, I think option 1 would be the way. One thing I'd do would be to actually increase rate of tech gain during westernisation (that was, after all, most likely what was actually happening, unless 'westernisation' in game is a very creative interpretation of the term), so that instead of finishing westernisation behind, you finish it ahead, but you finish it with less stability and more unrest.

Note that the OP is only one test - test 2 had much greater success at catching up, test 3 even less (see below ).

The final thing worth pointing out here is that

1) westernization is not *clearly* defined in game terms, so calling it ahistorical is, to some degree, fabricating a definition that is not necessarily shared.

2) making an argument against it solely because "it didn't happen in history in this time period" is hindsight bias, not a credible consideration. A credible consideration is whether it is viable for the leadership of a given nation to attempt whatever it is that in-game westernization is supposed to represent.

All in all, it's a stopgap mechanic that needs to say until we get something that isn't a stopgap mechanic. It's not a particularly fun process so I'd definitely prefer something better; burning points while doing less as a result isn't exactly the most engaging thing and most of the choices the player has to make while doing it are trivial.

1) Agreed, but as per my OP, I can't think of a way to define westernisation (and tech groups) where in-game results would be historical - so no matter how it's defined, I can't see how it could be historical, and haven't seen anyone posit an explanation that would work from a historical plausibility perspective. Even the way the trigger works isn't particularly consistent with the spread of knowledge/corporate/military/social structures.

2) Agreed - for example, there's every chance India would have been similarly as advanced as Europe if it hadn't been done-over by Portugal, Britain and France. That said, given the starting point in 1444, I think it's highly, highly implausible for sub-saharan states and north american states to westernise at the pace they do in-game. Other locations are far more complex discussions. My concern would be that the world goes towards homogeneity because of westernisation, which is unlikely during the time period (technological advance tended away from homogeneity, not towards it, at the very least well past this time period). It is very rare to get a game of EU4 ending in a way that would set up a historically plausible 19th century from a 'technological dispersion' perspective, whether it's China, India or Europe leading the charge.

Check out the first post in this thread: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ur-europa-universalis-4-observer-game.822357/
It shows how you can add a setting that will autosave every X months. In that case it's set for 1200 months or 100 years, but you might want to go with 600 months so there's 50 year splits. A lot nicer than babysitting multiple observer games (although sometimes watching it is fun too).

Thanks heaps, will run this tonight . Plan is a new test a day for a while, and see what we get. Will set the gaps at every 25 years, so we don't miss too much early on, but won't post updates for every 25-year gap in the thread!

Also, back to the original question you asked on the thread, I feel it's just fine. You showed very few countries in either of those screenshots that even in 1815 were competitive western nations. Yes, they had the tech group, but that doesn't make them western. Even in India where it usually gets a bit earlier start thanks to the Goa event you showed only Bahamanis was caught up. Keeping in mind also that's 1815, not the 1550 - 1600 spread across the entire globe like is being claimed in other threads.

I've definitely never claimed that it's spread across the globe at 1550-1600 (but not suggesting others haven't) - my complaint is more that the whole world westernises, and it often feels like it happens by around 1750. The first three tests show that there is indeed widespread westernisation by 1815 (with the save games, we'll be better placed to hit 1750), which I don't feel is particularly good from either a historical plausibility or gameplay perspective, but that it's not always as widespread as I first thought . However, given that very, very few countries actually made changes that would have amounted to 'westernisation' in-game, I think the spread of westernisation (even if it holds tech back, so the countries aren't 'advanced' per se) is deeply historically implausible. Now, I'm not suggesting this is inappropriate for the game just based on that alone, but I do think the game would be more interesting if there were different tech groups. If colonising and empire-building were more plausible, we shouldn't see non-western nations getting completely hammered (that didn't really happen until the Victoria II time period, after all), so ROTW gameplay should still be enjoyable.

 

[josh127]

Now, I'm not suggesting this is inappropriate for the game just based on that alone, but I do think the game would be more interesting if there were different tech groups.

I think a lot of people, regardless of what they want in the westernization argument would agree that a new system would probably be best. I haven't read through the different suggestions for systems, so I can't say what I feel a good alternative would be, but there's always that question of how complex it would be to change. Paradox has made some major changes that I wouldn't have expected to see in DLC, but would they consider changing the entire tech system if there was a good enough idea out there, or are we asking too much for a DLC? Keeping in mind that the majority of the work on it would have to go into the free patch.

 

[Axe99]

And onto Test 3. This was an overnighter, before Josh127 had told me about the save game trick, so it's just an 1815 snapshot, and a fairly 'non-western' one, as far as they go. While sub-Saharan Africa and a number of north american nations westernised, the flow eastwards only ever made it to northern and western India - all of the green in the far east (including Japan) is part of a European (Spain in Japan's case) or north American nation:

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As well as the usual suspects in Sub-Saharan Africa, Kongo also westernised, due to Portugal taking the coastal provinces and giving them shared cores with a western nation.

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Mutapa (or whoever is in Eastern Africa) didn't westernise, but Makuria and Kaffa both went for it. Haasa did as well, as did Persia, but Hedjaz stayed faithfully Muslim .

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Unlike tests 1 and 2, westernisation didn't spread that far east. The furthest it got was Afghanistan, Gujarat and Malway - Delhi (and Bengal) stayed Indian, and as far as I could see, the Chinese tech group stayed Chinese (unless it was conquered by Imperialist westerners).

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North America, however, was subject to a wave of westernisation as per tests 1 and 2, with some nations catching up in tech (but not idea groups).

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As a random aside, Paradox would have been happy with the AI's attempts in this game, as Sweden had a pretty good run .

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[Afinati]

I'm doing my own observer game with saves at 50 year intervals. By 1600, Russia and Poland and Hungary have westernized. No doubt it will pick up pace.