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

[Axe99]

Test 4's results this time, another overnighter so there's no record of when it all starts, but it's a pretty western world by the end of it. Anything green on the overview is western, other than Majapahit (that's twice they've beaten their technology malus to stay up ahead - go Majapahit ), and a good amount of the orange and red is as well, including most of India, China and South-east Asia. This is one of the game's where I'd bet good money that a substantial proportion of the world would have been westernised by 1750.

Starting with the overview:

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Sub-Saharan Africa was yet again a hotbed of westernisation, although unlike some of the other tests never really caught up, so I'm guessing went fairly late. Songhai is also westernised on this pic, but Ashanti and Yao aren't.

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The Middle-east, on the other hand, almost definitely went fairly early. The Otto's are westernised, which is no surprise, but Ethiopia, Oman and Mutapa are all well along as well. Persia, on the other hand, stayed Muslim.

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It looks like in this game that the Bahmani's took that apple of westernisation from the Portugese, as India westernised and westernised hard. I think Mewar was still Indian, but they'd be the only one. All the (formerly) steppe hordes to the north are also well westernised.

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Westernisation presumably came through India, as Bengal isn't as far along, nor is Pasai (and Kutai, Majapahit and Tidore or Ternate (whichever of the two ate the other)) were all Chinese.

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The extent of westernisation in this game was such that even Lan Na and Dali westernised! Dai Viet and Champa, however, were still Chinese.

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I'd bet good money that Russia's spread east was one of the stronger forces for westernisation in this game, reflected by both Manchu and Japan being westernised, and Manchu caught up on tech. Korea was also westernised.

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With western pressure pushing from the south and the north, I guess it's no surprise that the heavenly kingdom caved as well. Wu, Qu, Jin, Shu and Shun were all western, although like Bengal clearly late to the party.

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South America had one western state, and a few non-western native states still around.

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North America had what is by now looking to be a standard smattering of up-to-date tech westernised, lagging tech westernised and non-westernised states. Miama and the other one under Iroquois are both western, but anything in red isn't.

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I was thinking, I'd stop posting South America and North America from now on unless they do something interesting? It seems to work out pretty much the same each game - none to very little in South and Central America, and a fair bit in North America. If I don't mention them in future tests, assume they turned out that way. If the Aztecs or Incas westernise or something like that, I'll be sure to mention it .

 

[qwertzuiop]

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.

I'm sorry but, whenever I read a post suggesting that westernization should just be taken out completely without any replacement or change to the tech system, I feel like you might as well suggest to change all provinces outside of Europe into wasteland.

Now, it's not actually that bad, but the game doesn't need any more imbalance. I've been playing almost exclusively non-western countries in the last few months (mainly Muslim tech and Hordes, some Indian tech too), then I went back to Europe for a Denmark game and I noticed how big the advantages of European countries really are. It's true that you can keep up in some parts even with a worse tech group (e.g. keeping up in mil tech as a horde vs Eastern tech at the start - not too difficult).

But if you look at the whole picture, can a non-western country keep up in all technologies while having the same amount of ideas and buildings/development? (I'm still playing with the old building system). Can they afford to re-roll generals like mad because you can't get rid of the magical green 999 anyway? Can they take a deliberate tech malus, e.g. for taking the defender of the faith or the counter-reformation without any further problems? Can they have a terrible king and still keep up? No, they can't. They can westernize very fast, that is true, but if they ever manage to close the gap to the leading countries then it only happens very late in the game.

A human player can solve many problems with a creative approach, but the AI defines the overall game balance. Except in multiplayer, of course. So if you make non-western countries a bigger challenge for the player, it means that they won't be able to achieve anything if controlled by the AI. That's why I'm talking about imbalance. But I guess the real problem is actually the word "westernization" itself, if it was renamed to "upgrade your technology here, all similarities to the real world are unintended" it would probably not cause any confusion.

 

[Afinati]

So, I've done my own timelapse. I have save files for every fifty years. You can find all of them along with some screenshots at this link:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3vpp0b5gbfmcyje/AACVJEhiAO-jCvAVofCPz12ea?dl=0


Here's the political mapmode at the end.

Also, here's pretty much every westernized (not western, but westernized) country painted in black. ... I was a little lazy with the painting, but you get the idea.

The following is a brief overview from my glancings. These are the decades in which I noticed nations having westernized, not necessarily the decades in which they did westernize.

(average tech, ideas)

1540's - Poland (31, 51)

1580's – Russia (30.33, 36)

1590’s – Hungary (30, 47)

1630’s – Ottomans (31, 47)

1650’s – Morocco (gone)

1680’s – Songhai (28.33, 21), Gujarat (29, 22)

1690’s – Makuria (29, 30), Haasa (30.33, 43)

1710’s – Persia (29.33, 33), Lithuania (30.33, 47)

1720’s – Iraq (30, 38), Mutapa (29, 28), Yemen (gone), Tunis (29.33, 24)

1730’s – Mamluks (gone), Yarkand (30, 25), Perm (31, 48), Multan (28.66, 31), Mali (gone), Macina (gone)

1740's – Bahmanis (29.66, 30)

1760's – Gazikumukh (28.33, 24)

1780’s - Majapahit (28.33, 32)

1790’s – Baluchistan (27, 29), Tidore (28.66, 31), Japan (20.33, 29)

1810’s – Pasai (25, 30), Ming (27.66, 42)

It's obvious that most of these states lag behind in ideas as well as tech. The average tech among them is 28.81 or let's say 29 ... making them 30 years behind the best in Europe. I think it's fair to point out however that most of the world hadn't reached European level technology by 1850....

Ideas are the only technological diffrentiatior of any meaning, and they still don't explain why Central Asian tribes have access to western level cannons or why Songhai can build textile factories in its provinces.

 

[Denkt]

Well each tech you research without western tech group means wasted monarch points (however some techs may pay you back in forms of idea groups and such.)

To look how much better western tech group is: Let say we advance a technology each 13 years no matter what tech group we have. A single monarch points per month would give us 12*13=156 monarch points over 13 years.

A technology have a base cost of 600, 25% of 600 are 150. That mean each 25% penalty is like having -1 to your monarch point generation if you try to keep up in the tech race.

For Indian nations that mean -2 monarch point generation per month if you try to keep up in tech.

Even tought westernization is super expansive for something that some countries get for free, it is a so good deal to do it early (westernization lose value for each tech you get).

The strength of the western tech group make western nations much stronger then rest of the world nations so if something needs a nerf it is western tech group.

 

[itsuart]

Never though, but I do miss "old good days" (actually very bad) of 1.1(2?) when westernization was based on stab and generated a ton of all kinds of rogues. And your ROTW units were crap. That time there was a real question is westernization is worth the effort. Now westernization costs nothing. You just do it because you can. Or don't do it if you are of Muslim/Eastern or even (some times) China tech.

 

[Denkt]

Westernization cost nothing only if you start as a western tech nation. Otherwise it cost more monarch point then it would take to core starting England.

 

[itsuart]

Compared to old ways it now costs nothing and as such doesn't feel as major decision at all. Who cares about mana? As long as you are on par on mil tactics with your neighbours you are OK.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Westernization cost nothing only if you start as a western tech nation. Otherwise it cost more monarch point then it would take to core starting England.

The nations that can use "western focus" do pay somewhat of a premium, but it's paltry compared to standard westernization, only requiring you tech to ADM 10 basically with no stabhit or point drain other than those techs you too.

So Poland and sometimes Russia or Ottomans, nations that least need this nonsense, do get an almost-freebie, though in most cases for the AI it's just Poland.

 

[Axe99]

The strength of the western tech group make western nations much stronger then rest of the world nations so if something needs a nerf it is western tech group.

This thread is about the spread of westernisation, rather than whether it's a good/bad thing, tech groups and all that - there are links to other threads on westernisation and whether it's good/bad in the OP .

The nations that can use "western focus" do pay somewhat of a premium, but it's paltry compared to standard westernization, only requiring you tech to ADM 10 basically with no stabhit or point drain other than those techs you too.

So Poland and sometimes Russia or Ottomans, nations that least need this nonsense, do get an almost-freebie, though in most cases for the AI it's just Poland.

Hungary also gets the decision, although I can't recall seeing the AI ever use it. The decision is definitely far, far better than standard westernisation, particularly as pre-westernisation it's likely you'd tech to at least ADM 7 (I think) for the first two idea groups.

Ran another test overnight, and got a couple backlog to put in - a bit buggered now though, will get out the screenies a bit later today. Cheers for the right-up @Afinati , I like the way you summarised the countries, tech and ideas, might copy if that's alright .

 

[Afinati]

Cheers for the right-up @Afinati , I like the way you summarised the countries, tech and ideas, might copy if that's alright .

Definitely.

 

[Axe99]

Got the trick Josh127 passed on, so have decided to post up those results (as with that, I can provide similar results as Afiniti, more or less, although without the artistic painted map ) - will do one a night until I get to ten, then put together a summary of what we've found so far, how does that sound?

List below is nations by date westernised (I was checking at 25-year intervals) and final tech/ideas, where the first three X's in "X-X-X / X" are the three techs, and the last is ideas. Test finishes in 1799 (the last debug save, the autosaves don't seem to be in the same game, unless I'm missing something. Benchmark advanced European nation (strongest European power, noting it's 1799, not 1815, so won't be as teched-up as 1815) is traditional powerhouse France, at 30-30-30 / 56. I've got saves at each point of the below if anyone questions anything (and I do make mistakes, so if something looks really odd then deffo mention it).

1549 - Tunis (gone)

1574 - Bonoman (27-30-30 / 42)

1599 - Russia (30-28-30 / 39), Kabylia (gone), Mahican (26-27-30 / 32)

1624 - Morocco (29-29-30 / 42), Susquehannock (gone)

1649 - Mali (28-27-30 / 38), Timbuktu (27-28-30 / 34), Creek (gone), Choctaw (gone)

1674 - Ottomans (27-29-30 / 38), Crimea (28-29-30 / 40), Shirvan (30-30-30 / 44), Cherokee (gone), Powhatan (gone), Ojibwe (26-26-29 / 12)

1699 - Bukhara (27-29-29 / 31), Yarkand (24-28-30 / 18), Korchin (28-30-29 / 31), Jenne (gone), Hausa (gone), Qara Qoyunlu (gone), Pasai (28-27-30 / 38)

1724 - Medri Bahri (28-26-29 / 34), Makuria (25-29-30 / 28), Fox (24-26-28 / 10), Ternate (27-26-29 / 32), Majapahit (19-28-29 / 28)

1749 - Yan (27-29-29 / 29), Baluchistan (gone), Haasa (24-30-28 / 24), Arapaho (24-25-26 / 10), Kiowa (26-25-28 / 20)

1774 - Jin (24-28-23 / 30), Kutai (23-25-29 / 30), Darfur (25-26-29 / 31), Kaffa (25-28-30 /32), Navajo (26-23-25 / 15), Comanche (27-26-25 / 21)

1799 - Shoshone (19-21-21 / 11), Persia (22-24-30 / 31), Bahmanis (19-23-24 / 30)

Summary pic - green (and a lot of non-green) is western:

Oddity - never seen this before, England (in Ireland, except for Northern Ireland) and Great Britain in the rest of Britain!

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Thoughts on tests so far (not categorical - will add to these each test):

The three main avenues for westernisation are through Persia/Ottos, via Russia (or Muscovy) spreading it south of Siberia, and through European colonisation. That said, some nations with access to western borders for centuries (in this test, for example, Oyo and Air bordered Timbuktu for 150 years without westernising, while Mutapa shared a western border for at least 75 and decided they'd stay Indian) decided against it. Bahmanis, for example, sometimes westernises quickly after getting the potential, and other times doesn't bother for over a century or longer. This random factor seems to be the main thing holding back westernisation, and the level of westernisation can vary substantially depending on how effective these three avenues are, and how 'willing' nations with the opportunity to westernise are to take it up. If key nations (Persia, Ottomans and Bahmanis in particular) are slow, then the process is slow, and if it happens fairly quickly, then you can end up with most of India, China and South-East Asia westernised by game end. If it happens slowly, you can have India China, and South-east Asia not westernise at all. On balance, the result seems to be somewhere in-between.

As for whether late westernisers can be competitive, Yan (westernised in 1749) was very close in tech, and even Jin (1774) only really lagged in admin. Even Comanche, that westernised in the fifty years before the end of the test, is pretty close by 1799). It's really only those nations that westernised within 24 years of 1799 that were still struggling to catch up.

All of the 'westernising' nations were behind France in terms of ideas, but then so was everyone else and some of the late westernisers do reasonably in terms of ideas. Shirvan (44) was above Portugal (43 - the lowest in the 'I started western' countries still around) and only just below the Commonwealth (45). Pasai, westernising in 1699, gets close to 'started western' levels with 38, but no-one westernising after 1699 gets close.

 

[bbqftw]

Never though, but I do miss "old good days" (actually very bad) of 1.1(2?) when westernization was based on stab and generated a ton of all kinds of rogues. And your ROTW units were crap. That time there was a real question is westernization is worth the effort. Now westernization costs nothing. You just do it because you can. Or don't do it if you are of Muslim/Eastern or even (some times) China tech.

that's pretty impressive wrong statements per sentence ratio you got going on

(yeah, westernization was a real question in those times when you got -1/-2 points per month for being in an indian or lower techgroup)