I just hope they overhaul colonization somewhat in order to limit grossly a-historical scenarios; maybe have some kind of penalty to colonisation based on region and tech group?
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Wasteland, Eurocentrism, and a petition for an expansion focusing on Africa
- Thread starter mcmanusaur
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I would also add something including the capital location and possibly accepted cultures. If I have conquered/developed enough that Bambara becomes an accepted culture, it should help me in colonization since we would likely be drawing from their population since they have better resistance to disease.
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Because you don't know about it, doesn't mean nobody does. African history is an academic discipline by itself, for obvious reasons it's not taught in high school over here (Europe), but the documentation is rich. And FYI there were many real kingdoms and empire in the interior of Africa during this time period (as real as, say, the 1470s "centralized" France with dozens of vassals/bishoprics/etc.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...1477-en.svg/2000px-Map_France_1477-en.svg.png
Have you ever heard about the kingdom of Rwanda? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Rwanda I guess not. Or the Songhai, Mali empire?
Spain and Portugal impacted world history by claiming an entire continent - the rest of Europe, not so much. The conquest of Africa and Asia were late in the 19th.
The idea of a "nation"(= the people) was first officialized during the French Revolution (late 18th). I really believe you overestimate the degree of centralization of European states back then.
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I don't really know much about this subject but are there any other examples of these kind of states? The area of Mali and Songhai has been in the game since it was released and is not relevant to a discussion of this part of Africa. Also how big actually was the kingdom of Rwanda because if it existed in any area similar to modern Rwanda it isn't really big enough to justify adding a whole new region.
Once again not really disagreeing with you just wondering how many of these centralized states there actually were and how large they were.
Both the Mali and Songhai empires were rather close to the coast though, or closer to the Europeans.
You also forgot Britain and France, and Russia also massively expanded into Siberia and colonized. Whether that has a large effect on the world I'm not sure, but it was a monumental change to the geo-political situation of northern Asia.
I said comparison to the interior of Africa Europe was quite centralized. Having vassals, different layers of administration, the clergy, while ruling over a rather decent chunk of land is very centralized compared to the tribes within Africa that barely meet what EU4 requires to get a tag.
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Rwanda, Burundi were kingdoms. Really tiny, but the soil there is so fertile (volcanic) that it has always been a very densely populated area. 456 inhabitants/km2 as of today, despite the tragic events in the 1990s. The are many others : Bunyoro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunyoro, Buganda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buganda , among others.
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That wikipedia page has one literally one paragraph specifically about 1444-1821 Rwanda. With no citation. First source is apparently from a creation-myth. Do you have anything better?
Ah, England, France and the Netherlands. So forgotten, so alone.
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By comparison to other states of the time, they're not at all relevant. Too small, and too remote. Remote is a big deal...if they don't have any association with other areas, they're not really important to the game itself. Just how it goes.
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I'm not denying that, but it happened in the last half of the 18th Century. And for the most part, much later. Except some juicy sugar islands in the Caribbean, fur trading posts in Canada and slave trading posts on the coast of Africa.
Who plays 18th Century EUIV?
Portugal and the NL were real players though, that's true.
And I tell you again : calling "tribes" what happened to be real kingdoms is ridiculous.
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General History of Africa - Volume V - Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century http://www.unesco.org/new/en/social...from-the-sixteenth-to-the-eighteenth-century/
(You can download the book for free there)
The chapter starting at page 50 is a good reading.
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Great, thanks. My browser failed after trying to load the 20th page, so won't read it until I get home. Pleasantly surprised such a text is freely available online.
Just go read Jomini's arguments from earlier, half the new tags, at least, have a very touchy basis at best, and ALL of them between Kongo and the Swahili coast had no practical way to interact with the coastal states at state-to-state levels.
And there are gameplay reasons aside from history to worry about this - Africa just becomes more like the rest of the world in gameplay. Instead of being more chokepoint-y, it's now more similar to the rest of the blobby world.
And there are gameplay reasons aside from history to worry about this - Africa just becomes more like the rest of the world in gameplay. Instead of being more chokepoint-y, it's now more similar to the rest of the blobby world.
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When will Paradox realize that what EU4 needs is more chokepoints? /s
Mountain passes and strait crossings are the only legitimate kinds of chokepoints.
Mountain passes and strait crossings are the only legitimate kinds of chokepoints.
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Or like, you know, narrow habitable coastal stretches between the ocean and impassable jungle/mountainous terrain.
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The biggest problem with this is it would just end up with a bunch of OPM that are euro style nation states which makes it unhistorical and uninteresting. Current events show that this has not mixed well with the natives and their focus on tribal societies and ethnic tensions.I know that this topic is brought up every few months on a semi-regular basis, but I think it's important and Paradox has yet to address it.
This is EU4's map as it currently exists:
Notice anything, aside from how far the map has come since previous installments of EU? Well, let me phrase that question in a different way- do you notice any areas of the world that seem to be lagging behind in the fidelity of their representation? Try matching it up to this set of historical population density maps:
At least half of sub-Saharan Africa remains wasteland, and as the above maps demonstrate there was historically a significant population in these areas (specifically around the African Great Lakes region). Sure, the Congo Basin contains a vast tropical rainforest, and the Namib/ Kalahari Deserts comprise a large portion of modern Namibia and Botswana, but that accounts for roughly a third of the wasteland in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yes, I know "tropical disease" and "it has Europa in the name" and that the "Scramble for Africa" didn't truly begin until the 1880's, but still. Just because the Europeans didn't happen to colonize and conquer these regions until later doesn't mean that they were completely cut off from any contact with outside civilization until then. Even by simply looking at the terrain map in-game you can sort of tell there's some funny business re: what is and isn't wasteland.
It's not as if these regions weren't populated. Quite to the contrary of what I've heard some people on this forum argue, this article indicates that the lowest point for Africa's population relative to the global population occurred at the turn of the 20th century, long after the game's current end date. Neither is it a case of there not being any states or empires for the game to represent in the African Great Lakes region, which is currently little more than a giant chunk of wasteland.
The game's simplistic notion of "Westernization" and Eurocentric trade setup are bad enough, but fine. The game is first and foremost about European imperialists and their exploits. It's somewhat unlikely that we'll get a radical overhaul of those mechanics at this point in the game's lifecycle anyway. But does Africa really deserve this lax of a treatment compared to, say, the Americas, which are full of empty provinces as well as an assortment of OPMs that hardly fit the game's criteria for being counted as states? The only other continent with such a high fraction of wasteland is Australia, which incidentally also has a "black" indigenous population.
Do I have reason to believe that Paradox are a bunch of racists? No. But do I think that representing Africa at such a low level of fidelity relative to the rest of the world is a case of unacceptable negligence? Absolutely. If you don't want to add a bunch of new tags for all the Great Lakes kingdoms, then that's fine. But at the very least, put some non-wasteland provinces there to recognize that these regions were populated and productive areas.
For the next expansion, what about something focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and fleshing out that part of the map? Has Paradox ever released an expansion pack focusing specifically on Africa (as they have for other regions in the past) for any of their games? I sure haven't been able to find record of any such expansion, so I'm guessing the answer is no. Can we all agree that's a bit slack?
One method I can think of is to make uncolonizable territory which European countries cannot directly conquer but then can have influence in by dealing with the tribes in the provinces.
Their also needs to be massive attrition penalties to non African countries operating in the territory and a vastly increase development cost and a custom government for the African tribes.
Playing as these tribes could involved trying to develop to the point they move from tribal society into an actual country that can make the territory ccolonizable/conquerable.
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(Cutting and pasting from the main DD thread, but it's relevant here as well)
I've seen this (the worry that European states will now blob through Africa) brought up numerous times, but the question occurs to me - are we really currently seeing AI European powers going after native states much at all in the entire world? Usually when people post late-game maps that aren't WC attempts, the ones I've seen appear to have the European powers at most nibbling on non-European states. With so many colonizable provinces out there, they seem to focus more on colonizing other than outright conquest. I'm sure there are exceptions, but from what I'm seeing it's not happening all that often.
EDIT - looking over at the maps the "Post Your Empire" thread, other than where the player decisively intervenes on the continent, Africa is almost always dominated by native powers, with the Europeans rarely going beyond the coast.
I've seen this (the worry that European states will now blob through Africa) brought up numerous times, but the question occurs to me - are we really currently seeing AI European powers going after native states much at all in the entire world? Usually when people post late-game maps that aren't WC attempts, the ones I've seen appear to have the European powers at most nibbling on non-European states. With so many colonizable provinces out there, they seem to focus more on colonizing other than outright conquest. I'm sure there are exceptions, but from what I'm seeing it's not happening all that often.
EDIT - looking over at the maps the "Post Your Empire" thread, other than where the player decisively intervenes on the continent, Africa is almost always dominated by native powers, with the Europeans rarely going beyond the coast.
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^Looks great if you ask me. Perhaps it's best for this thread to be closed, and that those who strongly object to Paradox's decision should create a fresh thread.
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