Wasteland, Eurocentrism, and a petition for an expansion focusing on Africa

[Jomini]

Of course it doesn't accord with the evidence from the 14th and 15th centuries - as I've said multiple times now, there were no states in the southern Congo in the 14th and 15th centuries. What I'm arguing is that they did exist for the last couple hundred years of the EU4 period and are worthy of inclusion. Address this on its own merit instead of reaching for data from before the states existed (the above) and after they collapsed (Morrison's account) to argue that they somehow did not exist in the interim.

Try supplying some real data of your own. In spite of being a major supplier of slaves throughout the EUIV period, no large scale slave raids ever occurred from Kongo into either Luba or Lunda in recorded history. Nor does the oral history, such as I know about, make any mention of such raids.

Historically we have examples of raiding parties in central Africa covering hundreds of miles and dedicated slave trading networks that went for thousands of miles. Somehow in spite of Kongo being an active slaving state in the 17th and 18th centuries, they never raided Luba or Lunda, unlike every other people group near Kongo. And also unlike the slaving states of Western and Eastern Africa they somehow never thought to go plunder the giant stash of potential slaves.

It is an awfully odd thing to say that there should be a large settled agricultural kingdom nearby Kongo, that it is perfectly reasonable for Kongo (or Europeans or East Africans) to march in and take over the place ... but historically not even slavers with one of the more extreme technological advantages never even tried.

As for the Chokwe, they represent an example of a "proximal" group overrunning a "distal" one only by the most narrow definition of those terms. The Chokwe lived directly adjacent to the Lunda and had been vassals of the Lunda state; they were "proximal" only in the relative sense of being slightly closer to the coast and ultimately to the firearms trade.

Thank you for confirming that they meet the precise definition of proximal for the gun trade. This is exactly what happened with places like Dahomey, Oyo, etc. it is what it means to be proximal.

The Chokwe uprising has no resemblance to a hypothetical invasion of Luba and Lunda by Kongo, which would have had to deal with greatly increased distance (some several hundred miles) and more difficult intervening terrain - factors which act as force multipliers for any defending army. Thus the question of Kongo invading Luba and Lunda is not simply a matter of those states' existence or nonexistence in the EU4 period; it is a matter of economic necessity and return on investment. Slaves did not become scarce enough and thus valuable enough to justify raiding the southern Congo until after the EU4 period.

Bullocks. Go read your west African history, slaving raids easily went several hundred miles because the demand for slaves was high throughout the EUIV period. After the EUIV period, actually, the demand for slaves dropped. Revolutionary France emancipated its slaves, Haiti declared independence from France, many of the Spanish colonies abolished slavery on independence, Britain banned the slave trade, and the US banned the transatlantic slave trade 20 years after signing the constitution. Yes Brazil, the Ottoman Empire and some of Spain continued in the slave trade, but the price for African slaves dropped dramatically when so many major players left the market.

I will grant that the route between the western and southern Congo seems to have been difficult enough to prevent contact, particularly armed excursions. However, this is a separate question from the question of whether the historical Luba and Lunda are "stately" enough to potentially justify inclusion in EU4.

Who gives a rat's ass about "stately" enough? A number of the hordes lacked many of the basic features of "states" at the start of the game. Most of the western North American tribes and all of the Siberian clan councils lack most of the attributes of states. Sure lack state functions should be a measure of if land gets a tag or is just colonizeable ... but that is not the main issue with opening this area up.

What should count for being added in EUIV is how much a prospective tag interacted with the neighbors and the wider world. Luba and Lunda had exceedingly little such interaction. This lack of interaction protected them handily from slave raiding but also means that it is most fair to the AI not to have them put in and then kludged up to avoid wildly ahistorical outcomes.


Opening up territory to settlement and conquest means that you can not only roll an army (at least several thousand) through said territory, but that you can also support it. We can have endless debates about what counts enough to have states, and Pdox has certainly been massively inconsistent about that. The title of the thread is about removing wasteland and most posters for doing that say it should be done to improve gameplay in Africa. I do not see how a bunch of mid-late game countries will help the situation that comes from boredom in 1444-1550.

A connection here could be a good place to implement one of those overland straits I believe I mentioned much, much earlier in the thread, if Paradox ever decides to use that technique in vanilla.



It's true, but having the suggested three-tier system would help to delay this from happening. In my games, Portugal frequently skips colonising Brazil entirely and heads straight for the Cape, which is nonsensical from a historical perspective.

The real trouble is the concept of colonization range. Historically, distance on the water basically was irrelevant for administration. Sending a colonial governor to Cape was not much easier than sending one to Malacca. In reality, Brazil was settled over Cape because it was more lucrative - sugar, gold, tobacco, and some other extractive commodities give much higher short term revenues than establishing a typical agricultural settlement. Portugal needs to make it to the Spice islands and it unfortunately means that getting colonial range via Cape is extremely important.

 

[gdj]

I've been reading this thread and the suggestion doesn't seem to make much sense for the issue it's ment to be fixing.

Issue: central Africa is wasteland and it's boring for the existing factions there.

Solution add factions that they don't have a link to? You have to wait to explore to find the factions nearby to fight so how is hiding more going to work? If you start them knowing each other which doesn't seem likely, wouldn't it just be easier to have them start with more vision of their local area? Would be quicker, easier and doesn't lead to the scramble for Africa in the 1600-1700s.

Just seems their historic interaction could be covered with trade events for nations bordering the wasteland.

Of course another area skipped gamewise if they did add new areas inside it would need to be a new start trade node else you have central nations able to siphon off trade from the far east.

Yes, trade would be affected too, another thing that "moves" in EU4.

No matter whether a new node would be added or not, these states would inevitably contribute to the world wide trade network, even if they just "sit and do nothing". And since they did contribute nothing until at least the Victorian era, adding these states would per definiton be ahistorical from day 1.

 

[3ishop]

Yes, trade would be affected too, another thing that "moves" in EU4.

No matter whether a new node would be added or not, these states would inevitably contribute to the world wide trade network, even if they just "sit and do nothing". And since they did contribute nothing until at least the Victorian era, adding these states would per definiton be ahistorical from day 1.

Why I suggested an inland node. They'd also not be able to see the coastal nodes.

 

[gdj]

Why I suggested an inland node. They'd also not be able to see the coastal nodes.

OK, but the trade would still flow somewhere, wouldnt it? Also, they would be able to see the other nodes eventually, even if they dont see them on day 1.

 

[3ishop]

Yeah it's a start node, anything they didn't take themselves would flow out to the coasts.

 

[gdj]

OK, this means that someone would partially profit via trade from the production in inland Africa. Which in turn implies that trade contacts, be it state sponsored or private, existed between these states and the coastal states. Which in turn is ahistorical.

Yes, you are right by stating that an inland start node would make trade affects smaller, but it would not eliminate them entirely.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I have also repeatedly stated in my posts that an Angola-Katanga-Zambia corridor is something that can be reasonably be discussed, as opposed to adding territory to the map in the main part of the Congo basin.

If you look at my map carefully, the trans-African route that I included should fall just outside the Congo Basin proper, a bit to the south within the area you're talking about. At least, that's what I was going for, but I drew up the map fairly quickly.

 

[mcmanusaur]

Kongo was a slaving state, any non-Kongolese peoples (and even a lot of Kongolese peoples) were slaved heavily to sell them to Portugal. The only way that slaving states with a major technological advantage historically did not go enslave the neighbors was if either:
1. They couldn't get to the neighbors.
2. They couldn't overwhelm the neighbors.
3. The neighbors didn't exist.

This is a vast oversimplification. The most parsimonious explanation for why Kongolese slavers didn't make the trek all the way to the Great Lakes region (or even just to Lunda/Luba) for slaves is simply that they didn't need to go that far. As the map in my OP shows, for the most part the whole region between Kongo and the Great Lakes was heavily populated. In fact there's little evidence to indicate that Kongo had depleted those more proximate sources of slaves. Rather, there was a societal collapse because slavers began to capture citizens of Kongo proper, which was much more economical as they didn't have to be transported as far. In short, the notion that Kongo not taking slaves from the Lunda/Luba/Great Lakes region proves that the territory in between was impassable is silly. All it shows is that there was no economic incentive to do so.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

Well, the new Horde razing could potentially play into a better Slavery system. Really, it could represent the West African side of slavery already, since they mostly bought "technology" (Western weapons and finery) with the profits. However, I could also see a way for the Monarch Points to be distributed among Trade Companies and then granted to appropriate Colonial Nations (so they can build up their Base Production).

It REALLY bothers me that there's no proper Atlantic slave trade mechanic when that was one of the greatest migrations in world history.

 

[Jomini]

This is a vast oversimplification. The most parsimonious explanation for why Kongolese slavers didn't make the trek all the way to the Great Lakes region (or even just to Lunda/Luba) for slaves is simply that they didn't need to go that far. As the map in my OP shows, for the most part the whole region between Kongo and the Great Lakes was heavily populated. In fact there's little evidence to indicate that Kongo had depleted those more proximate sources of slaves. Rather, there was a societal collapse because slavers began to capture citizens of Kongo proper, which was much more economical as they didn't have to be transported as far. In short, the notion that Kongo not taking slaves from the Lunda/Luba/Great Lakes region proves that the territory in between was impassable is silly. All it shows is that there was no economic incentive to do so.

Lol. So you found a simulation of population density based on 1700 - 2000 data, we are supposed to accept that as gospel fact. In order to defend a miraculous situation, unknown in the annals of world history we are further supposed to accept that there was easy transit (such that an army of say 5K could manage the trek) between the historically documented dense population of the coasts and the interior.

However, in spite of being surrounded on all sides by slaving regimes, somehow this easy transit never materialized in the way of conquest or large scale slave raids because it was too far away and too plentiful of slave societies existed closer to hand.

The earliest slave trade anywhere nearby the region was the old Muslim slave trade, like the later slave trade it was dominated by coastal states (in this case Somaliland) against the interior (the Ethiopian highlands). Before the EU period, the Omani based slave network was already going two and three times the straight line distance inland to raid areas with lower population densities (and better weapons) than in the Great Lakes region. Eventually the Ethiopian highland began to be insufficient to supply the demand for slaves in Arabia and India, so trade shifted south during the early EU period. This resulted in raids from the coast, yet we still have no reported large scale incursions to the rift valley or any of the other areas where these easily reached population centers are alleged to have existed. Instead when the Swahili hinterlands began to prove insufficient, the traders began setting out not to the large population centers in the interior, but to places like Juba and Madagascar. In either case, they are going further afield against better armed people. I mean you literally had slave raids going from modern day Djibouti to modern Juba or from Malindi to the Madagascarine highlands. Were the these slave traders particularly dumb?

Now let us turn to Kongo. You tell us a tale of plentiful areas to raid that never ran low except when it did, it lead to societal collapse. This is most strange. The Kongolese state did fracture in this period ... but the result was a civil war in which slaves were currency of greatest import (literally paying for the guns to win the war). Somehow with masses of musket armed troops, agriculturists nearby, nobody ever thought to try what Ashanti, Oyo, Dahomey, Crimea, etc. all managed to do.

We have records from slave raids in the area going two and three times the straight line distance. We have no recorded crash in slave in prices and when Kongo fractured, the rapacity of its slave trade against the non-Kongolese increased.

Face it, you cannot substantiate your claims that somehow the modern topographic measurements that say these transits would be difficult and impossible for large scale maneuvers. Instead we must magically think that every slaving society south of the equator was too stupid to even try large scale slave raids against peoples who archeology tells us were poorly armed by coastal standards.

Do you have a single shread of evidence that anything other tenuous trade contacts ever linked these areas to the coastal regions?

 

[quoms]

Lol. So you found a simulation of population density based on 1700 - 2000 data, we are supposed to accept that as gospel fact. In order to defend a miraculous situation, unknown in the annals of world history we are further supposed to accept that there was easy transit (such that an army of say 5K could manage the trek) between the historically documented dense population of the coasts and the interior.

We haven't been arguing that transit was easy. In fact, I've stated the opposite repeatedly. The main claim here is that the transit was too difficult to make slave raiding a reasonable economic prospect - no idea where you're getting this "easy transit" thing from.

The earliest slave trade anywhere nearby the region was the old Muslim slave trade, like the later slave trade it was dominated by coastal states (in this case Somaliland) against the interior (the Ethiopian highlands). Before the EU period, the Omani based slave network was already going two and three times the straight line distance inland to raid areas with lower population densities (and better weapons) than in the Great Lakes region. Eventually the Ethiopian highland began to be insufficient to supply the demand for slaves in Arabia and India, so trade shifted south during the early EU period. This resulted in raids from the coast, yet we still have no reported large scale incursions to the rift valley or any of the other areas where these easily reached population centers are alleged to have existed. Instead when the Swahili hinterlands began to prove insufficient, the traders began setting out not to the large population centers in the interior, but to places like Juba and Madagascar. In either case, they are going further afield against better armed people. I mean you literally had slave raids going from modern day Djibouti to modern Juba or from Malindi to the Madagascarine highlands. Were the these slave traders particularly dumb?

The only thing these examples demonstrate is the fallacy of your bizarre insistence on "straight-line distances." These slave traders went to sources which were further away but didn't require difficult treks over high mountains or through dense tropical jungle, i.e. which were more accessible and thus more economically viable. Making a more difficult journey simply because it looks shorter on a map is the Henry Morton Stanley school of travel.

I have said nothing about "straight-line distances," I have never alleged that the states in Africa's interior were "easily reached," and in fact I have emphasised the relative inaccessibility of these places as opposed to glossing over it. Relative inaccessibility is something EU4 is more than capable of modeling appropriately - after all, the new routes from the Sahel hardly obligate Ethiopia to invade Kanem Bornu.

Again this seems as if you have not even been paying attention to the basic points of the pro-expansion argument.

Face it, you cannot substantiate your claims that somehow the modern topographic measurements that say these transits would be difficult and impossible for large scale maneuvers. Instead we must magically think that every slaving society south of the equator was too stupid to even try large scale slave raids against peoples who archeology tells us were poorly armed by coastal standards.

Do you have a single shread of evidence that anything other tenuous trade contacts ever linked these areas to the coastal regions?

I don't think anyone does have that evidence. Luckily, no one's made the assertion here that anything except tenuous trade contacts historically existed - that's something you came up with yourself and have mysteriously ascribed to those who favor map expansion.

Where our opinions primarily diverge is that you believe that because large-scale contact did not occur, it could not conceivably have occurred. I disagree; I think there are distinct reasons why Kongo failed to raid into the southern Congo, chief among which is the inaccessibility of the terrain, such that their sending expeditions in that direction would have been a remarkably poor decision from a short-term economic perspective. However, players in EU4 have the option to make such poor decisions and frequently do. That's part of the fun of playing the game.

EU4's map can and should be set up so that contact between Africa's coasts and its interior rarely, if ever, occurs, unless it is initiated by the player. Here the expansion of West Africa is again instructive - it's provided a huge boost to gameplay for players who want to play ROTW countries and has greatly expanded the historicity of EU4, with minimal negative consequences. In the case that European or Ottoman doomstacks are marching across the African desert, that's due to broken game mechanics which fail to accurately simulate the supply and movement of armies - something which can and should be fixed on its own terms rather than blaming Africa for it.

If we truly subscribed to the logic that just because something did not occur historically means it cannot possibly have occurred, I wonder why we would be playing this game at all. Presumably we could watch a time-lapse video of historical state borders on Wikipedia or YouTube and it would be as fun and rewarding as a game of EU4.

 

[fetusthebard]

Yes they are in the Congo basin. The Katanga region as a whole is. And, thus, they would be in the excepted Angola-Katanga-Zambia corridor I keep saying is reasonable to discuss (granted, Luba was only partially within Katanga, but that's enough to include it; Lunda, by being within all three of Angola, Katanga, and Zambia, of course is nicely centrally located in the excepted region). The main part of the Congo basin, the area where Stanley transversed - basically everything to the north of the the states you mentioned - cannot, on the other hand, be reasonably be portrayed as explorable during this period.

Who is saying this? Give me a name of someone who suggested all of the Congo basin should be colonizable. Give me the name of a person that thinks there should be a route through the Congo basin (barring the states already mentioned living there). Where did you even create this strawman from? Maybe I'm just missing something from five pages back, but I don't remember anyone wanting a way through the basin.

Like, you're on our side. You want these states included. So why do you always bring up that the Congo basin is impassable? Yeah, we know the North was. But the South was most certainly not. No one here wants a passage North.

 

[Chieron]

I don't think anyone does have that evidence. Luckily, no one's made the assertion here that anything except tenuous trade contacts historically existed - that's something you came up with yourself and have mysteriously ascribed to those who favor map expansion.

Without anything more than tenous contacts, there is no basis to include these areas. If there were no military expeditions of any size into that area, it's reasonable that the cause is lack of viable routes and/or viable terrain. Why should it be anything else than wasteland?
Things that did not happen historically did so for a reason. Especially, if they theoretically could have been profitable (like slave raids to Lower Congo/Great Lakes). If the reason lies in geography, no amount of alt-history will make that event happen.

Before interior Africa is expanded, the attrition and supply model should be improved, THEN there is something on which to model accessibility. Otherwise, the current state of accessible/inaccessible must suffice. And the interior in this area is strictly on the inaccessible side of that divide, thus wasteland.

 

[Jomini]

We haven't been arguing that transit was easy. In fact, I've stated the opposite repeatedly. The main claim here is that the transit was too difficult to make slave raiding a reasonable economic prospect - no idea where you're getting this "easy transit" thing from.

Because any transit too difficult to make large scale slave trading economical is too difficult to make warfare possible.

Think about this. In the slave trade you go out, you beat what defenses they have, and then you move the captives to the coast where you exchange them in one of the most lucrative trades in the world. Your spoils of war move themselves, all you have to provide is calories.

Now suppose instead you want to take the place over. Well we begin in like fashion. You go out and beat what defenses they have, except long term conquest requires that you bring enough soldiers not just to overwhelm a given city or region, but to withstand whatever counterattack they might muster. So already warfare is harder. Now you beat back the counterattack. You own the place. We will skip all the hell that is pacification and integration (you know what stopped Morocco, Portugal, and many other such powers in this era). Instead you just need to get the taxes out. Hmm, problem. How do you get the taxes back to the king? Well you need to move goods long distances over averse terrain. The easiest thing to send (and was commonly sent in Africa) is ... slaves.

Incorporating these areas will take orders of magnitude more population and trade goods transiting these areas of difficult terrain than large scale slaving ever would. If you cannot slave in an economical fashion, there is no way you are going to manage territorial integrity.

The only thing these examples demonstrate is the fallacy of your bizarre insistence on "straight-line distances."

Um seriously? You folk are the ones who are talking about how close these places are, how it must be possible. I specifically have said that any approach is too difficult for armies of the era (African or otherwise) to transit. Then you guys tell me that it was too far away for slaving. What am I supposed to do? Develop telepathy and read your mind as to how in hell these places are supposed to be too far away to economically slave ... but close enough to conquer.

These slave traders went to sources which were further away but didn't require difficult treks over high mountains or through dense tropical jungle, i.e. which were more accessible and thus more economically viable. Making a more difficult journey simply because it looks shorter on a map is the Henry Morton Stanley school of travel.

Have you even read the thread yet? I explicitly talked about water courses, cartography, and topography. The fact is that these areas were not "too far" away, the terrain was too inhospitable to support large scale slaving ... or conquest ... or settlement.

I have said nothing about "straight-line distances," I have never alleged that the states in Africa's interior were "easily reached," and in fact I have emphasised the relative inaccessibility of these places as opposed to glossing over it. Relative inaccessibility is something EU4 is more than capable of modeling appropriately - after all, the new routes from the Sahel hardly obligate Ethiopia to invade Kanem Bornu.

1. That route is already BS. There is no way in hell anything except an all mounted, light force (likely limited to a few K) is making that transit. Preferably you'd do it heavy on camels.
2. I already have that exact route messing up my games. I'm playing in Eastern Africa. I declare war on Portugal. Does Portugal sail an invasion force to my coast and attack? No it landed in some West African state marched through the desert. And then gets locked up my ahistorical defenses against that invasion route, and sits on high attrition and burns through half its national manpower like a moron.
3. What does any of this add to the game? Suppose by some miracle that we ignore history, logistics, and AI programming. You get a new route that is "relatively inaccessible" to use your magical phrase. What actually happens? Southern Africa becomes a less geographically distinct place and becomes like West Africa or India.

Again this seems as if you have not even been paying attention to the basic points of the pro-expansion argument.

Again, it seems like you are rudely interjecting yourself into my replies to another poster and demanding that I had crafted them to you. Go ahead, state your case in simple enumerated form. Cite some bloody evidence.

I don't think anyone does have that evidence. Luckily, no one's made the assertion here that anything except tenuous trade contacts historically existed - that's something you came up with yourself and have mysteriously ascribed to those who favor map expansion.

You think large scale contact is possible in light of the fact that:
1. It did not happen in recorded history.
2. In spite of being surrounded by slaving societies with strong motives to raid the place that did not happen either.
3. Genetic haplotyping suggest that the area was isolated during this time as well.
4. We have zero cases of east - west or west - east epidemic spread recorded in the time frame.

When slavers, genes, and germs aren't mixing; people cannot.

Where our opinions primarily diverge is that you believe that because large-scale contact did not occur, it could not conceivably have occurred.

I disagree; I think there are distinct reasons why Kongo failed to raid into the southern Congo, chief among which is the inaccessibility of the terrain, such that their sending expeditions on that direction would have been a remarkably poor decision from a short-term economic perspective. However, players in EU4 have the option to make such poor decisions and frequently do. That's part of the fun of playing the game.

So shall we open Antarctica to settlement? Or maybe we ought to allow the player to found their own religions. Or maybe the player should, I dunno, be able to conquest land past their "coring range" or decide to split up realms into multiple PU states.

The fact of the matter is, you are wrong. This isn't just economics. If a god-king sent an army to go on conquest it would cease to exist. The watercourses did not support enough agriculture and the cutting implements needed to hack passage for thousands of men don't exist until the 1840s.

EU4's map can and should be set up so that contact between Africa's coasts and its interior rarely, if ever, occurs, unless it is initiated by the player. Here the expansion of West Africa is again instructive - it's provided a huge boost to gameplay for players who want to play ROTW countries and has greatly expanded the historicity of EU4, with minimal negative consequences. In the case that European or Ottoman doomstacks are marching across the African desert, that's due to broken game mechanics which fail to accurately simulate the supply and movement of armies - something which can and should be fixed on its own terms rather than blaming Africa for it.

Oh gods, not another guy ignorant of period logistics. Supply has jack all to do with this, that is one of the least relevant concerns. I already actively hate the giant corridors of doom that mean the AIs pathing ability goes to hell. I actively dislike having the AI nerfed and you want to do more nerfing.

If we truly subscribed to the logic that just because something did not occur historically means it cannot possibly have occurred, I wonder why we would be playing this game at all. Presumably we could watch a time-lapse video of historical state borders on Wikipedia or YouTube and it would be as fun and rewarding as a game of EU4.

The difference between you and I is that I like plausible, historical mechanisms. You have offered precisely zero evidence that even the most determined, despot leader might actually conquer these territories. Instead you keep pretending that because some imperialist map exist, it has to be in the game and historical plausibility and game play balance can go hang.

 

[mcmanusaur]

@Jomini

For what it's worth, I generally find your contributions to these forums to be relatively compelling, but at times your ostentatious- and occasionally imperious- style of argumentation can suggest a somewhat excessive preoccupation with intellectual one-upmanship and projecting the veneer of expertise (neither of which are uncommon on history forums of course), which are at odds with productive discussion.

You have already made your point of view quite clear. So what is your goal in this thread? It seems to me that you are ultimately seeking an admission that you were objectively right all along. Furthermore, it appears that in order to obtain that you're willing to resort to (1) taking a facile, scientistic approach to a complex subject, (2) generally affecting an unwarranted sense of historical certainty, and (3) even simply exaggerating my arguments ad absurdum.

To be honest, I think that you've contributed as much as you can to this thread. With that in mind, I'm not really interested in continuing this debate with you. I'm not going to convince you that these areas and peoples should be represented in EU4 and you're not going to convince me that they shouldn't. That's partially due to the fact that we have different notions of what priorities EU4 should have at this stage in its trajectory (for you the fact that we happen to have little record of contact with the outside world is sufficient justification for EU4 to disregard this region's stories, and for me it is not).

I will give you the credit of admitting that, judging by the voting over the last few pages, more people seem to find merit in your point of view. However, there will always be eager demand for apologia as soon as someone breaches this sort of topic, and unfortunately the net result is often that Africa gets disproportionately neglected in the long run. I would still like to see a statement from Paradox regarding how they plan to address the Eurocentric focus of their games (or, at least, of all their major franchises) moving forward, and whether they plan to give Africa more attention in any future games.

 

[generalolaf]

Is it maybe worth pursuing the idea of adding the Great Lakes states but not a corridor through to the Congo basin? How was the accessibility between the Great Lakes and the Swahili coast?

 

[Xeorm]

Is it maybe worth pursuing the idea of adding the Great Lakes states but not a corridor through to the Congo basin? How was the accessibility between the Great Lakes and the Swahili coast?

Pretty much nonexistent.

 

[Jomini]

@Jomini

For what it's worth, I generally find your contributions to these forums to be relatively compelling, but at times your ostentatious- and occasionally imperious- style of argumentation can suggest a somewhat excessive preoccupation with intellectual one-upmanship and projecting the veneer of expertise (neither of which are uncommon on history forums of course), which are at odds with productive discussion.

Right, so I should just say "well I think", "but you think" and "let's sing kumbaya".

You made a proposal, let's do X for reasons Y. I have given it a full critique, you have consistently ignored the fact that what you suggest:
1. Has active detriment to those of us who like strategically diverse starts rather than having everything but an endless mush of barely distinguishable tags.
2. Actively hurts performance and the AI.
3. Makes the game depart, heavily, for historical plausibility.

You have already made your point of view quite clear. So what is your goal in this thread? It seems to me that you are ultimately seeking an admission that you were objectively right all along. Furthermore, it appears that in order to obtain that you're willing to resort to (1) taking a facile, scientistic approach to a complex subject, (2) generally affecting an unwarranted sense of historical certainty, and (3) even simply exaggerating my arguments ad absurdum.

No, I'm engaging in a hobby, I enjoy discussing history and I make no apologies for applying rigor in my hobbies. I tell you, marching a period army to the destinations you suggest would kill them all. This is not idle speculation. These are skills I was required to master because people's lives depended on them. I'm willing to be proven wrong by something of substance, but I am quite literally qualified to write the book on thus stuff.

To be honest, I think that you've contributed as much as you can to this thread. With that in mind, I'm not really interested in continuing this debate with you. I'm not going to convince you that these areas and peoples should be represented in EU4 and you're not going to convince me that they shouldn't. That's partially due to the fact that we have different notions of what priorities EU4 should have at this stage in its trajectory (for you the fact that we happen to have little record of contact with the outside world is sufficient justification for EU4 to disregard this region's stories, and for me it is not).

Lack of contact, topography, disease burden, economic networks ... I know such facts have no chance against your romantic attachment to the evil ethnocentric bias of all society, but I have hope for the community writ large. I like to think of it as a fun form of public service and education.

I will give you the credit of admitting that, judging by the voting over the last few pages, more people seem to find merit in your point of view. However, there will always be eager demand for apologia as soon as someone breaches this sort of topic, and unfortunately the net result is often that Africa gets disproportionately neglected in the long run. I would still like to see a statement from Paradox regarding how they plan to address the Eurocentric focus of their games (or, at least, of all their major franchises) moving forward, and whether they plan to give Africa more attention in any future games.

Actual history had a Eurocentric focus. Seriously. If you build a country - country interaction network the central most nodes are all going to be European since 1470 (and if we count the OE as European that goes back towards 1420 or so). Europe went to the RotW, managed to avoid the worst of imperial stagnation and had been ahead of the RotW by some measures since at least 1000 CE. There are many reasons for this: the Native Americans are all doomed to die to deadly pathogens with sustained contact, Africa was gifted with far fewer navigable rivers and much denser forests, Asia was too close to the horde interior and had regions devoid of internal, limited geographic barriers.

If you get Europe wrong, you end up with the Aztecs not having their nemesis show up in a timely fashion. If you get Europe wrong, the gunpowder states of Africa do not get their tech boosts and economic investment. If you get Europe wrong, the Islamic lands do not settle into a tense stand off between rival states representing rival branches of Islam while the previously secure flank is challenged from the sea. And on and on it goes. If we get Africa "wrong", well maybe Portugal finds states that are a bit too large when they get there. Or the slave trade underperforms.

In any event, I do want to know, what is the Eurocentric focus of Sengoku?

 

[mcmanusaur]

I am quite literally qualified to write the book on thus stuff.

... I know such facts have no chance against your romantic attachment to the evil ethnocentric bias of all society, but I have hope for the community writ large. I like to think of it as a fun form of public service and education.

Thank you for illustrating my point. Perhaps there are other places for you to further that "public service".

Actual history had a Eurocentric focus.

No, Eurocentrism is a choice. Thankfully pretty much all real historians recognize this fact, as I learned during the course of obtaining my history degree, but of course this belief is still quite widespread nevertheless. That is of course not to deny that certain circumstances benefited Europeans at the ROTW's expense. But why must every strategy game replicate a Eurocentric perspective? Paradox's games implicitly constitute- intentionally or otherwise- a part of that larger trend. My question to Paradox is simple- do they wish for their games to contribute to that broader pattern, or not?

In any event, I do want to know, what is the Eurocentric focus of Sengoku?

You fail to note that I specified Paradox's "major franchises".

 

[FrigidSoul]

After reading the discussion i still dont see a viable reason why these new states should be included. Waht exactly should this contribute to gameplay?

Also, we should consider that armies are not the only things that "move" in EU4. For example, it does not matter for diplomats whether these areas are unreachable, as Jomini says, or just "difficult to reach" as the "pro-adding" faction postulates. Diplomats in EU4 could still reach this interior states and make alliances, marriages or even protectorates. Thus, anyone who allies such an interior state would have a virtually unconquerable ally that affects warscore, relative strenght of alliance modifiers etc., all of it unbalancing and ultimately unnecessary.

So, please, no addition of states that were for all intents and purposes no active entities of the political and economic map of this timeframe..

That is the point in a nutshell. We can wax lyrical about the beautiful cultures of isolated areas til we're blue in the face; if they can't interact militarily, then at best they're a waste to add, and at worst they represent a burden to game play, as you describe. People who play these tags will eventually want to conquer, and people who play other tags will eventually want to conquer them in turn. Like it or not, that's EU4. It isn't a historical simulator or a social justice engine. It's a board/arcade-style war game.

When a people or a nation isn't included, it doesn't mean "they're genetically inferior; we shall ritually cleanse them from our pixel universe!" It means, "they weren't capable of interacting in the only way that matters in our heavily simplified war game."