So instead of having wasteland, we should create an area that no outsiders can enter to faciliate the addition of tribes that can't leave.
That sounds like a worthy use of dev time.
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Wasteland, Eurocentrism, and a petition for an expansion focusing on Africa
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So instead of having wasteland, we should create an area that no outsiders can enter to faciliate the addition of tribes that can't leave.
That sounds like a worthy use of dev time.
But that's why we are discussing ways to frame this, because it *wasn't* impossible! It ends in 1821. Livingstone explored Africa in 1849. With the advancing technology of European superpowers at the time, and supply limit increases due to several techs, it should have been at least theoretically possible to get through the tough terrain of the region by the end date provided. It would only be possible for perhaps a dozen years before the end of the game, but you should at least be able to get a small army through. Hell, the final tech in the game is the Howitzer. We can afford to take this small thirty year liberty if the last military tech is a technology that wouldn't be in heavy use for another thirty years.
Also, this calls for a larger discussion about cannons and moving them around. It simply wasn't feasible in this era to get cannons anywhere that wasn't flat land, sparse vegetation, or gently hilly. Yet we can move them through the jungle :/
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I wouldn't mind if all of Africa became colonizable, albeit with significant penalties and obstacles for colonizers.
I view the situation in the same vein as the canals. The canals were nearly impossible to construct but could be accomplished with a huge amount of resources. African colonization should be treated the same.
I view the situation in the same vein as the canals. The canals were nearly impossible to construct but could be accomplished with a huge amount of resources. African colonization should be treated the same.
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Gameplay man. Gameplay.
Even if we stipulate that your assumptions are true, do we really need a region that's three times more boring to play than South America? I can hear the complaints now, "Paradox, why u so racist??? These African tribes can't go anywhere until 1802!" It's not enough to say that you want something. You must explain why it's a good idea.
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In that case, shut the region to anyone before reaching the tech level of at least the 1780s? Truly, this makes the region much more impactful. If the wasteland is opened in 1444, it will change the region profoundly, if it opens in 1800, there probably won't be much of a difference. Most of the issues discussed in the thread are about Congolese isolation and adding a few mountain kingdoms in there interior, how are those even remotely solved by opening the wasteland in 1800?
Livingstone explored Africa, he did not march an army through it. And neither did he do a military campaign there.
"Howitzers" can refer to quite a few different cannons, not a single type only used in the 19th century. (e.g. field howitzers in the 18th cent.)
Most Jungle provinces are not thickets through and through, and likely have feasible rivers and roads for transport.
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Well, the larger kingdoms probably would be worthy of inclusion - they're at the very least on par with the some of the tags in America and Siberia. Also - they did have meaningful interaction with the outside world. For one there was overland trade of goods such as copper, iron and salt between the larger inland states (like Luba and the Great Lakes Kingdoms) and those on the coast: http://www.beaconschool.org/~bfaithfu/Africa 1650 map.jpg (admittedly it's not the best map but it's the best I could find at short notice)
Regarding the AI, they are probably always going to do stupid things. They still like to colonise Siberia if they're able. In that case though the solution should surely be to improve the AI, not to discount features because it may not currently be able to cope with it. The AI couldn't figure out how to use the forts system initially either but it's been getting better at it with each patch.
Because playing as an African nation, particularly outside of West Africa, is currently fairly dull? Having some new tags to interact with would hopefully make the region a more interesting and dynamic place (as with the map improvements to the Americas). Doesn't the current system of blocking off large portions of the continet just limit your gameplay options to just conquering a couple of neighbours and then sitting there with almost nothing to do until the Europeans arrive?
That's not really what I was suggesting - I was saying it should be very difficult to mount a successful invasion across the continent, not impossible. It should become more viable once you're at the higher levels of tech. I'm just trying to think up ways of making more of Africa playable while avoiding problems like giant armies wandering round the continent at will or having an early Scramble for Africa every game.
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Again:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emin_Pasha_Relief_Expedition
That's what happened when a small, well-prepared army attempted to march through the Congo basin in the 1880s. It was a disaster - Emin Pasha more or less rescued Stanley, not the other way around.
Instead of saying things were "theoretically" possible, how about some solid examples? And no, Livingston doesn't count, as he hardly constitutes an army in and of himself...
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Trade alone is not meaningful interaction in the context of a war game. If there is no feasible way to attack them or a feasible way for them to respond, they are pointless.
How would trade translate into the game, anyway? A mere additional trade value in the surrounding notes?
Yes, the AI is always going to do stupid things, but that doesn't mean that one should make it harder for it. And, if crossing those provinces will always be a bad idea, they should simply not exist. Irrelevant options are not options at all.
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I had to "disagree" with the original poster. It's not that I wouldn't like to see African themed expansion, it's that first I'd like to see North, East and Central Asia themed expansions, then some more focused on Europe and general ones.
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That's great, but speculation based in loosely relevant facts is still speculation.
This is a ridiculous statement; cartography is absolutely not agnostic to European imperialism. And chemistry? Here again you are trying to frame your theorizing (as reasonable as it may be) as some kind of scientific fact. Just because you include a couple of factoids in your reasoning doesn't mean that your whole argument is factual.
I will concede that you have raised some good points in this thread. However, from a historian's perspective it's rather facile to reduce this complex calculus of variables to judgments so cut and dry. I'm simply cautioning not to project a greater sense of certainty than is warranted, as many amateur historians are wont to do.
And yet these regions have historically supported large populations as well as organized states. Therefore I am led to believe that you are exaggerating their unfavorable characteristics.
I'm not advocating for the ability to move from armies from the Great Rift valley into the heart of the Congo basin, so this is a bit of a misrepresentation.
And I don't believe that my proposal will particularly lead to them having an ahistorical motives for campaigning there.
You are entitled to your belief, but I remain skeptical that we have enough information to arrive at this conclusion.
I have already provided my rationale for why the current representation of Africa is inadequate in the OP.
Furthermore, I would characterize some of the counter-arguments raised in this thread as post-hoc rationalizations of the status quo, borne out of knee-jerk defensiveness to the notion that Africa is consistently neglected.
And I must disagree with you, because it is not fair or innovative that Africa gets this treatment of being placed at a lower priority than the rest of the world in every game.
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And this matters why? Northern Siberia had trade in Walrus ivory, should we colonize Spitsbergen then?
Frankly, given that Portugal made direct trade contact with Lunda in ... 1930 tells me that we might want not base too many European invasions on that map.
Pathing is not something that AIs just get "better" at. Exactly when has the AI gotten better at naval attrition pathing? Oh that's right the AI just cheats its way out. How about scorched earth? Oh yeah, the AI was so bad at that they tried hard coding it out of scorched earth provinces and then had to nerf the whole mechanism.
Again you are talking about creating major headaches for what? So that one area in the game that is strategically isolated becomes some ahistorical monstrosity just like every other blob of states.
And how would that change with historical PTI there? Every single kingdom you note there wasn't present at game start, let alone having trade routes and invasions. How do non-existent states make the game less boring? We may as well just given Africa vision of North Africa for West Africa starts and Arabia for the East.
So lets make the early scramble for Africa more lucrative, then nerf the AI so it isn't too easy, then kludge something together so the AI can be de-nerfed. Sounds like a plan.
The problem with Africa isn't insufficient states, it is limited sight and a giant snooze fest until you take exploration or get map reveals.
Right, the topo maps have imperialist mismeasurements of gradients.
Look, say you are a young marine in Afghanistan and you need to plan an incursion into a high altitude area with broken terrain. You need to pack enough MREs for the trek, but not so many that your load is too heavy for combat. How do you do know how many calories you need?
Well the answer is the USMC have some nice experience that has been codified. All I'm doing is applying those same concepts to marches in Africa. I'd bet my life on those numbers. I have.
As a marine, I'm telling you, marching that territory today would be hellish. And that is with things like reverse osmosis filtration, MREs, and hellishly better physiques (you know the whole high calorie diet during development).
Your beliefs and five dollars will maybe buy us some coffee. Large populations do not mean that these places are open to invasions, European settlement. Etc.
Oh, so you want to take the difficult way out? Your best shot out of the Great Rift valley is to the east, but that doesn't make West Africa less boring. Even there we are talking about terrible terrain
So lets add territory, then make the AI states act like morons so they don't expand there ... but then have to protect themselves from those vectors. You cannot have this both ways. If the territory is there the AI should make a cost benefit analysis. Whichever way that comes out, it will introduce ahistorical flank threats or ahistorical pressures to invade.
Every man can have his own opinions, he cannot have his own facts. What are the facts that support you? Anything other than some bogus idea that population density is worth the performance hit and AI troubles?
What are you talking about? Africa gets disproportionate work done it relative to the number of historical interactions it had. Yes there are some more places that get more work that did even less (e.g. most of the Great Plains natives) ... but the entire Lunda kingdom never even managed to find Portugal in the Victorian era. Getting Europe and Asia right are important so that everyone gets their history right. It is endlessly annoying that Europe doesn't typically flatten the Aztecs, Inca, and East American tribes. India should have a giant tension between which central Asian states, European allies, and independent states manage.
Africa did not have unified religious - military - trade axis that developed in Eurasia. Of course Eurasia should get more work - it had more things historically happen. The mechanics of EUIV are built around state vs state wars, foreign settlement and long distance trade, negotiated and generally endorsed peaces, and formal state to state diplomacy. Africa just doesn't have the depth of history for those types of interactions. Partly this is because the early crops domesticated in Africa just couldn't support the population density (sorghum, cassava, and yams all have worse calorie and nutritional density than wheat, maize, and rice). Partly this is because Europe and East Asia are awash in navigable rivers and Africa has exceedingly few outside of the Nile.
Africa is different and the internal dynamics that dominated most African polities just are not the stuff that EUIV is built around. No amount of carping is going to change the reality that Africa had a terrible geographic position for long range trade and invasions.
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So... What your saying is... they DID make it... and Stanley (very obviously) survived?
Well.
No proof then.
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A small group crosses the jungle, losing over half their number to attrition.. Truly an example proving that a viable army can cross it.
Of course, small groups prepared to take appalling losses can cross this wasteland. Doesn't mean it should be included in the game. Especially, if most of the game is set centuries before it would even become remotely feasible.
Africa needs some better gameplay, not the snore-fest. But that should not be addressed by adding provinces that make no sense and could not realistically be utilised.
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They made it after utilizing steam powered steel boat to lug enough calories up rivers that had previously been unavigable then headed out using foods that were not possible to procure in Africa even in 1880, and then barely manage to not die of the tropical diseases in mass.
Funnily enough the expedition, in the high Victorian era mind you, was such a rate event that it appears that a wide range of local diseases were brought into virgin territory by their cattle. Making the transit people are suggesting for armies in EUIV was literally done so rarely by the natives that cattle diseases were isolated in heavy cattle societies on both sides of the barriers. Even regular small scale trading is normally enough to prevent that from happening.
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I think the regions that need the most flavor are: india,indochina,indonesia,australia and oceania(including new zealand). They have a bunch of tags for those regions but none appear unless you play a later bookmark, and some can appear as sulu would(by event. I'd also like to see a few kingdoms and tribes in the philippines and perhaps a few more provinces in there too because the philippines are more populous than spain is today.
The reason I think those regions need more flavor than africa is because they were certainly more important in this time period and likely more fun to play as than songhai or the kongo ;P
The reason I think those regions need more flavor than africa is because they were certainly more important in this time period and likely more fun to play as than songhai or the kongo ;P
My points exactly (points ignored by some, apparently...)
Even with all the planning, and all the technology of the 1880s, Stanley barely made through the jungle, losing half of his men and leaving the other half basically starving and dependent on the aid of the very person they were trying to rescue! Stanley was lucky that his army was marching into a friendly area - most armies of course aren't going to have that convenience. Honestly, there's really no way that any sizable army could survive a march through the jungles of the Congo basin during the EU4 period.
There's a reasonable argument to be made to have the Great Lakes region added to the map, and even other potential areas in Africa. But there is no real case to have most of the Congo basin be anything more than wasteland in the game...
(Oooh look, post #5555, cool number...
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This continued harping on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition amazes me as the Expedition is, and has been for several pages, absolutely irrelevant to any proposal put forth for the development of Africa's interior. A few notes thereon:
The Expedition was, as has been broadly acknowledged in the thread, a dismal failure. However, it failed not because it is necessarily impossible to get from the Kongo region to the Great Lakes but because nearly every aspect of the Expedition was organized in the worst possible way, with the least possible foresight. The outcome was the predictable and unremarkable failure of a bunch of Europeans with limited knowledge of the geography of the continent they were attempting to traverse and supreme overconfidence in (1) their ability to get to their destination on a short timescale, using (2) their supposedly far advanced but in reality completely inappropriate technology.
By way of example, let's take a look at the route taken by the Expedition.
Note that the Expedition drove north, through the deepest part of the Congo Basin, following the river. This was done, presumably, so that the Europeans could (1) take the most cartographically "direct" route to Emin Pasha, and (2) make use of their steamboat for quick travel. It is also an act of incredible stupidity and hubris. The Expedition lost most of its men traveling through what is uncoincidentally the worst, least accommodating territory for concentrated military action in the entirety of Central Africa - territory that no one is now suggesting should be put in the game. The northern Congo River, in addition to being a deceptively poor means of travel, played host to precisely none of the African societies that people have suggested it is important for EU4 to include. To continue going back to the Expedition as if this poorly planned European misadventure is somehow relevant to the fate of the Luba or Lunda Kingdoms is a crow pecking at a limp and mildewed straw man.
Another factor contributing to the Expedition's fate is that it was, idiotically, expected to be self-sufficient in this distant and hostile territory. The Expedition is thus fundamentally different from the military action of a Central African kingdom with the territorial and economic base to assemble and implement supply trains. The lack of attention to how armies are supplied is, and has been since EU4's release, a source of profoundly ahistorical gameplay outcomes (almost uniformly in favor of Europe, which explains why so few people find the time to complain about it). Armies which are out of supply range and not looting territory suffer far too little attrition; even more absurdly, they are able to continuously reinforce their numbers, and as a result the AI is far too willing to send its armies on circuitous snipe hunts which would make no sense on the actual planet Earth.
This is not the situation in CK2 (with the admitted exception of Crusades, which the AI never really knows how to handle). So we know that it is not impossible or even particularly unlikely for a better situation to exist. Fixing EU4's problems with supply would probably remedy a great number of "problems with Africa" which are not in actuality unique to that continent.
This is one of two posts. The next will focus on the area which has been proposed for internal African development, namely the non-jungle areas of the southern Congo basin.
The Expedition was, as has been broadly acknowledged in the thread, a dismal failure. However, it failed not because it is necessarily impossible to get from the Kongo region to the Great Lakes but because nearly every aspect of the Expedition was organized in the worst possible way, with the least possible foresight. The outcome was the predictable and unremarkable failure of a bunch of Europeans with limited knowledge of the geography of the continent they were attempting to traverse and supreme overconfidence in (1) their ability to get to their destination on a short timescale, using (2) their supposedly far advanced but in reality completely inappropriate technology.
By way of example, let's take a look at the route taken by the Expedition.
Note that the Expedition drove north, through the deepest part of the Congo Basin, following the river. This was done, presumably, so that the Europeans could (1) take the most cartographically "direct" route to Emin Pasha, and (2) make use of their steamboat for quick travel. It is also an act of incredible stupidity and hubris. The Expedition lost most of its men traveling through what is uncoincidentally the worst, least accommodating territory for concentrated military action in the entirety of Central Africa - territory that no one is now suggesting should be put in the game. The northern Congo River, in addition to being a deceptively poor means of travel, played host to precisely none of the African societies that people have suggested it is important for EU4 to include. To continue going back to the Expedition as if this poorly planned European misadventure is somehow relevant to the fate of the Luba or Lunda Kingdoms is a crow pecking at a limp and mildewed straw man.
Another factor contributing to the Expedition's fate is that it was, idiotically, expected to be self-sufficient in this distant and hostile territory. The Expedition is thus fundamentally different from the military action of a Central African kingdom with the territorial and economic base to assemble and implement supply trains. The lack of attention to how armies are supplied is, and has been since EU4's release, a source of profoundly ahistorical gameplay outcomes (almost uniformly in favor of Europe, which explains why so few people find the time to complain about it). Armies which are out of supply range and not looting territory suffer far too little attrition; even more absurdly, they are able to continuously reinforce their numbers, and as a result the AI is far too willing to send its armies on circuitous snipe hunts which would make no sense on the actual planet Earth.
This is not the situation in CK2 (with the admitted exception of Crusades, which the AI never really knows how to handle). So we know that it is not impossible or even particularly unlikely for a better situation to exist. Fixing EU4's problems with supply would probably remedy a great number of "problems with Africa" which are not in actuality unique to that continent.
This is one of two posts. The next will focus on the area which has been proposed for internal African development, namely the non-jungle areas of the southern Congo basin.
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This is when I broke in this discussion; a small group of well prepared soldiers led by top explorers, od top 1 global empire, barely managed to cross the area which is currently wasteland and miraculously lose 'only' half of their men, and all of that happened in 1880s when technology level was incomparably higher than in 16th century, and you call it 'not a proof'? This is EXACT PROOF, THAT IT IS PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO CROSS CENTRAL AFRICA WITH SIGNIFICANT ARMY IN EU4 ERA.
Holy fuck, so they managed; after complete disaster and massacre despitr perfect preparation 60 years over eu4 timeframe. Let's open for free traversing all Africa from 1444. This is just ridiculous.
Why South and North Americas are open to exploration by Europeans? Because they were actually explored with smaller or bigger military forces in eu4 era, many times and with losses not above usual poor logistical level of an era. Hundred-men strong expeditions on not much more than medieval level were reaching Missisipi and Great Plains, Mesoamerican jungles, Andes and Atacama desert. In the first half of 1500s. And, more importantly, Amerindian tribes migrated across these areas freely. Muscovian forces were exploring super freezing Siberia since 16th century. In 18th century regular conquest od South Asia has started.
But for the entire eu4 era European control of Africa did not only failed to discover anything in the deep interior, they even didn't control 1/4 of 'reachable' areas and kingdoms. Why? Because, and every textbook says that clearly, African climate and diseases were devastating for any outside population. In 1600s few thousand men strong Portuguese force completely failed to conquer weakened, medieval tech Mutapa which is goddamn Manhattan in comparision with Central Africa - main reasons were environmental.
Oh sure, Stanley and Livingstone managed to explore Central Africa - well over eu4 era. Why are they so well known? Because what they did was insanely hard. In 1850s+. If this is not a definition of wasteland in eu4 terms we may colonise Antarctic as well because 'if they put enough clothes and brought coal to warm up they could do that'.
But these areas were almost impossible to traverse even for locals! Main clusters of population in Africs were: modern Nigeria and surroundings + river Niger and Mali,
Kongolese coast, Mutapa+Kilwa+Malawi, Horn of Africa and Great Lakes. There was almost no contact between muslim nations of Mali and Somalia, Kongolese and central kingdoms were almost entirely unknown by anyone, there were no migrations or trade routes going from Western Africa to Kongo, from Kongo to Mutapa or Ethiopia, from Lake Chad to Ethiopia; isolated clusters. Even Bantu grand migration (which needed hundreds of years) avoided central african jungles. Even modern Namibia, Botswana, north and central Dem Congo and CAR have ridiculously low population density (CAR - like 7 million, Nigeria - 170 million on barely bigger area). There were no Subsaharan armies coming from M'banza Kongo to Cameroon, from Buganda to well almost anywhere, from Mutapa to Rwanda etc.
Because these lands are wastelands in eu4 terms.
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Hell, when Moroccan few thousand musketeers plundered Songhai empire capital, they were forced to retreat from a combination of environmental attrition and chaos. Please note there were only 4000 sent from a country maintsining 100 000 strong army, because they knew bigger force is incapable of traversing Sahars in combat readiness. And these are 16th century forces of the most advanced African country at time, who consisted of experts on desert warfare (IIRC, a mix of Berbers and black people). And that happened in one of the most civilised parts of eu4 Africa... Where Europeans didn't even think about going, after barely managing to survive in coastal forts and feitorias.
I am a strong supporter of expanding western Kongo, Mutapa area, lake Malawi (Maravi kingdom actuslly engaged in politics vs Kilwa, Mutapa, Portugal) and Madagascar who had its own feudal era - because these areas were actually dynamic inside and possible to interact from the outside. Other than these, eu4 manages to capture the entire Subsaharan civilisation map besides Lake Victoria.
But to be honest, I am not sure now if adding Buganda, Bunyoro and Rwanda, primitive kingdoms we know almost nothing about, who all seem to be fairly stable and isolated for the entire time, with barely any contact with even closest civilisations and no contact with Europeans till late 19th century, makes sense.
Actual wastelands of Sierra Leona, Burkina Faso, CAR, Sahara except two-three caravan trade routes, Namibia, Botswana, and like 3/4 of Dem Congo, should remain wastelands as much as Greenland, Himalayas, Arabian desert, Australian interior, deep Papua, deep Amazon and 'Wyoming' (sorry im terible at us geography, you know whst Im talking about):
Because they were almost impossible to reach even by proffesional explorers of an era, and 100% impossible to reach by organised armed forces and regulsr trade.
By the way, I still think an addition of Siberian natives is idiotic and I removed them in my version: they bring nothing to the game, are unrealistic and mess with Siberian borders
I am a strong supporter of expanding western Kongo, Mutapa area, lake Malawi (Maravi kingdom actuslly engaged in politics vs Kilwa, Mutapa, Portugal) and Madagascar who had its own feudal era - because these areas were actually dynamic inside and possible to interact from the outside. Other than these, eu4 manages to capture the entire Subsaharan civilisation map besides Lake Victoria.
But to be honest, I am not sure now if adding Buganda, Bunyoro and Rwanda, primitive kingdoms we know almost nothing about, who all seem to be fairly stable and isolated for the entire time, with barely any contact with even closest civilisations and no contact with Europeans till late 19th century, makes sense.
Actual wastelands of Sierra Leona, Burkina Faso, CAR, Sahara except two-three caravan trade routes, Namibia, Botswana, and like 3/4 of Dem Congo, should remain wastelands as much as Greenland, Himalayas, Arabian desert, Australian interior, deep Papua, deep Amazon and 'Wyoming' (sorry im terible at us geography, you know whst Im talking about):
Because they were almost impossible to reach even by proffesional explorers of an era, and 100% impossible to reach by organised armed forces and regulsr trade.
By the way, I still think an addition of Siberian natives is idiotic and I removed them in my version: they bring nothing to the game, are unrealistic and mess with Siberian borders
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During EU4's timeframe the supposedly "wasteland" interior of Africa played host to a number of well-developed state societies. The ones under discussion here fall into two main groups: the highland kingdoms of the Great Lakes region, east of the Congo, and the kingdoms of the southern Congo Basin. Let's start with the latter.
The primary societies under consideration for tags in the southern Congo are the Luba and Lunda Kingdoms. These states had not yet developed by EU4's start date, but were in existence for most of the time period. They were located not in the impassable tropical jungle but in the grassy Upemba Depression and the highlands of the Katanga Plateau. They had, as I have already mentioned, absolutely no relation or relevance to the route taken by the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.
In the following map, you can see how the northern borders of the two Kingdoms basically stop where the tropical jungle starts - if not even African states wanted to touch that area, then to me it seems quite reasonable to leave it as wasteland, and I imagine that most of the other pro-African-expansion people would concur.
You can also see a third kingdom, Kuba, which was much smaller and more isolated than the other two. It would be fun to see it in game, but it's less important. From a gameplay perspective, Luba and Lunda would be the major tags in the southern Congo (and could have the distinction of being actual monarchies in government form), but several others representing surrounding chiefdoms could easily be included to give the player something to do prior to beginning colonial expansion. Similar proposals have been made for Madagascar, an area which like Africa's interior is sorely in need of development from Paradox.
As we move east we run into the Great Lakes kingdoms, which are probably rather better known to Paradox gamers than Luba and Lunda. The Kingdom of Buganda has the distinction of already having been in existence in 1444; Rwanda and Burundi, in addition to the other Ugandan kingdoms, would need to appear through events. The addition of these tags at later start dates would in and of itself be a great boost to gameplay, as such a late and isolated start would provide a vastly different and more challenging experience to players in comparison to 1444 Kongo. Not every playthrough needs to have world or even continental conquest as its objective.
As for a land connection between these more or less isolated regions and either side of Africa, why not? Empty provinces prevent contact until they're colonised. It remains to be shown that the two new routes added from the eastern Sahel have had any serious negative impact on gameplay, particularly in a way that's not attributable to EU4's virtually nonexistent supply mechanics.
So voila. Add some new tags, add a few empty colonisable routes, and ahistorical outcomes aren't forced but are entirely possible if the player would like them. Why people would get up in arms about this is beyond me.
This continues to be a straw man argument. I don't want to add the Expedition's route. I don't think anyone else wants to add the Expedition's route. That's the worst possible way to get from one side of Africa to the other. Instead, what has been proposed is a path skirting the jungle to the south and coming up the Great Rift Valley - a path which (1) includes historical state societies not currently represented in-game, and (2) happens to reflect the path taken not once but multiple times by different waves of migrating Bantu people. The Bantu people of Africa's east coast, as well as the Great Lakes, are descended from populations which migrated through Zambia; later, the Shona arrived in Zimbabwe by this exact route. I can demonstrate this at length if anyone is particularly skeptical.
The primary societies under consideration for tags in the southern Congo are the Luba and Lunda Kingdoms. These states had not yet developed by EU4's start date, but were in existence for most of the time period. They were located not in the impassable tropical jungle but in the grassy Upemba Depression and the highlands of the Katanga Plateau. They had, as I have already mentioned, absolutely no relation or relevance to the route taken by the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.
In the following map, you can see how the northern borders of the two Kingdoms basically stop where the tropical jungle starts - if not even African states wanted to touch that area, then to me it seems quite reasonable to leave it as wasteland, and I imagine that most of the other pro-African-expansion people would concur.
You can also see a third kingdom, Kuba, which was much smaller and more isolated than the other two. It would be fun to see it in game, but it's less important. From a gameplay perspective, Luba and Lunda would be the major tags in the southern Congo (and could have the distinction of being actual monarchies in government form), but several others representing surrounding chiefdoms could easily be included to give the player something to do prior to beginning colonial expansion. Similar proposals have been made for Madagascar, an area which like Africa's interior is sorely in need of development from Paradox.
As we move east we run into the Great Lakes kingdoms, which are probably rather better known to Paradox gamers than Luba and Lunda. The Kingdom of Buganda has the distinction of already having been in existence in 1444; Rwanda and Burundi, in addition to the other Ugandan kingdoms, would need to appear through events. The addition of these tags at later start dates would in and of itself be a great boost to gameplay, as such a late and isolated start would provide a vastly different and more challenging experience to players in comparison to 1444 Kongo. Not every playthrough needs to have world or even continental conquest as its objective.
As for a land connection between these more or less isolated regions and either side of Africa, why not? Empty provinces prevent contact until they're colonised. It remains to be shown that the two new routes added from the eastern Sahel have had any serious negative impact on gameplay, particularly in a way that's not attributable to EU4's virtually nonexistent supply mechanics.
So voila. Add some new tags, add a few empty colonisable routes, and ahistorical outcomes aren't forced but are entirely possible if the player would like them. Why people would get up in arms about this is beyond me.
This continues to be a straw man argument. I don't want to add the Expedition's route. I don't think anyone else wants to add the Expedition's route. That's the worst possible way to get from one side of Africa to the other. Instead, what has been proposed is a path skirting the jungle to the south and coming up the Great Rift Valley - a path which (1) includes historical state societies not currently represented in-game, and (2) happens to reflect the path taken not once but multiple times by different waves of migrating Bantu people. The Bantu people of Africa's east coast, as well as the Great Lakes, are descended from populations which migrated through Zambia; later, the Shona arrived in Zimbabwe by this exact route. I can demonstrate this at length if anyone is particularly skeptical.
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