I am curious; will there be a sufficient amount of detail in the map and politics for the American Civil War to be played historically? Or will that depend on later modding perhaps?
The United States
- Thread starter Tancrisism
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If theres one thing that really, really should be taken from VIP its the implementation of the US.
It's possible I misunderstand you - do you mean that the US should not be included? I'm not sure why this would be, since the country did play an interesting, if generally quiet and always opportunistic, role in the world politics of the 19th century.
The Civil War would be a very rich, challenging, and costly war to the country as it was in actual history, and would play a great role in such an immense game.
No, no, of cvourse the US has to be in, but in VIP it was much more historical, i.e. the US mainly consisted of the Coasts and only some of the midwest at the start of the game. But in vanilla Vicky the US at the start of the game was basically the same as it is nowadays, which is totally innacurate.
Ah, true, I see what you mean.
The difficult thing is that unless some sort of state function is included in the game, you can't really accurately portray the US. For instance, certain areas were considered territories that soon became states, and then there is the problem of Texas - a province of Mexico, then a Republic, then annexed into the US and leading to war. But overall, yes, the expansion westward had only just begun in 1835.
The difficult thing is that unless some sort of state function is included in the game, you can't really accurately portray the US. For instance, certain areas were considered territories that soon became states, and then there is the problem of Texas - a province of Mexico, then a Republic, then annexed into the US and leading to war. But overall, yes, the expansion westward had only just begun in 1835.
VIP went too far with the organisation of tribes into entirely ahistorical states, though. I hope there is a happy compromise.
I think that a way it was done in VIP was quite ok, these "countries" weren't real - they were always puppets of USA etc.
best solution IMHO would be to borrow from EU3 the tribal confederacy/tribal autocracy etc levels of government as a government type so that these areas can be properly depicted as having systems of governance and not just tabula rasa regions waiting for the arrival of "civilization" to provide them with "governance" for their societies.
So would you see them as being tiny one-province city-state sort of entities scattered around the map, with those types of governments? For instance the Cherokee in Georgia, who only recently were forcefully moved in the game time (1930).
Really it began right away, even before the US government was created. Just FYI. Here's a map of expansion during the start of the game. http://lib.utexas.edu/maps/united_states/exploration_1820.jpg
1830 was the Indian Removal Act, the forcible removal occurs within Vicky's timeframe, 1838.
Probably more along the lines of something similar to what is in VIP now but with less strong government than currently in Vicky1 to reflect what is a looser form of political organization. And with the greater moddability in this engine, smaller territories would be more likely than the current VIP setup, which is in part due to hardcoded limits on numbers of nations in game. Though in the end I expect this is something a mod would have to do, not the base game.
But at this point would have to wait until the game is released and see how things work before really being able to say how best to reflect small-scale traditionalist societies in game.
I don't know if you've seen it but HttT seems to have some reference to a system where one must strengthen one's controls over provinces you already own... now if there are going to be degrees of control, maybe the NA provinces can appear as states but ones over which the NAs have only weak control?
the ability of American capitalist POPs in game to build railways in the Dakotas in the 1840s almost immediately after you negotiated control of tradeposts with the British is problematic. What Western powers might have agreed to on paper in their diplomatic exchanges, the reality is that on the ground most of what is now the United States west of the Mississippi did not come under effective direct control of the US government until after the Civil War, and Native American peoples really were the ones "in charge" on the ground until their resistance was broken and the survivors of the various Indian Wars were shunted off to the reservations.
Much the same with Africa - the Treaty of Berlin created a system for European powers to lay claim to lands, but it would take a good twenty-five years for the Colonial regimes to establish full control of the continent once the ink dried in Berlin in 1886. The colonial regimes didn't just walk in and set up shop the first year after Berlin was signed, they had to first establish their claims to authority over the peoples of Africa first, an often exceedingly violent process that really did not stabilize until the first decade of the 20th century.
the question in the end is what is the best way to illustrate the process of establishing control, in both the case of US expansion (imperialism one could argue) westward to the Pacific or the erection of colonial regimes in Africa and other parts of the non-Western world. V1, I would argue, did not address this issue very well at all, hence why the VIP mod developed the way it did regarding these issues. We'll see what V2 does on this question, though my guess is that, for my interpretation of the process at least, personal modding post-release will still be something to undertake and then offer to the player community later.
Out of curiosity, why did you put civilization in quotes? By most definitions, they were not civilized. The Aztecs and Mayans were, though.
But having the entire West owned by wholly ahistoric organised tribal nations is problematic too.
Vic had a problem with railroad building that I hope #2 will fix. If you had the resources, there was no reason not to build max-level railroads everywhere, even in areas without a significant settled population. The AI did just this. If the sequel introduces maintenance costs for infrastructure and some representation of supply and demand this growth should happen organically and a US that attempts to railroad the West in the 1840s should risk outright failure at worst and a money sink lasting decades at best.
the structures of their societies evolved based upon on the internal needs and desires of the people who lived in them. Whether one can call that civilization or not is a topic for separate debate. What I was referring to was instead the whole idea that the Western introduction of "civilization," as in Western models of social, political, economic and cultural structures, being by default an improvement in the lives of these peoples in and of itself. That is why I put the term civilization in quotations. It was in reference to the Western conceptualization and the arrogance of superiority implicit in the 19th century understanding of the term that resulted in the use of quotation marks, not a statement on the native societies own internal elaboration of such structures before the establishment of Western domination over their societies.
Oh I dunno, a mod with the American west parcelled among the various native peoples who actually controlled the lands de facto on the ground in 1836 and with whom the player of the USA would need to negotiate treaties regarding land use and handle the various conflicts that arose when those treaties were not honored would be a fun challenge I think. One definitely for a user-made mod though, not the base game.
Something between that level of interaction and the tabula rasa we have in Vicky 1 is what I'd like to see in the commercial release, but how best to reflect that with game mechanics is another question that at this time I don't have an easy answer for currently.
OK, I guess we won't go too into it and take this off topic, but by most definitions of civilization, they were not civilized. As I said before, though, the Aztec, Mayan, Chimu, Inca, etc. etc. were most definitely civilized.
Everyone who speaks Greek is civilised, every one else is a barbarian (because when they talk they just go 'bar bar bar'). End of discussion.
As for the US ingame, I think only a PC game starting with the Revoloution, and focused specificaly on the US political structure and situation etc etc could evr really provide a realistic outcome. In game, an EU/ Rome style colonisation would probably be good enough, though one would need to ensure that it is hard for anyone else to take it first, even though many did or had claims (Mexico, British/Canadian claims etc.)
Maybe a pop migration rule which allows pops to move themselves into the area, establish themselves then fire an event to become a part of the union?
What ever the case, something needs to prevent the rapid colonization of the entire US, and also one which maybe allows the player to persue a Jeffersonian America.
But as I said at the beggining, modeling the 19th C USA will never be an easy task.