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

[Jomini]

So, short of simulating caloric density or haplotypes in the game, how would you model Africa's supply limits in a better manner?

For EUV, I would build the engine around rivers and not provinces, you would literally path along rivers and open litoral coast whenever possible. Moving orthogonal to rivers would be possible only with either high attrition (with a much stronger AI than EUIV) or high cost (with a stronger AI than EUIV). I would make the attrition/coast scale inversely with the proportion of cavalry (as was historical). I might even make certain overland routes accessible only to all cavalry armies.


For EUIV, the best option is to limit open provinces to those that meet one of three criteria:
1. Agricultural density. Places that lacked readily lootable farms and towns would be excluded. This includes all the land here adjacent to the coastal provinces.
2. Borders/contains navigable rivers. This would allow movement up and down the Missouri, but not along it. This would likely exclude both the interior Congo and the Zambezi from fulfilling the criteria.
3. Had an historical campaign through the area. This would keep in some oddball places, like the interior approach through the Sahara to Timbuktu, but again none of this would apply here.

For the open provinces in EUIV, assuming the AI can handle it, I would greatly reduce marching times for following (major) rivers and increase it for moving orthogonal to them; this would require a much better river display on the map. Stretching the AI further, well maybe I would scale movement speeds off the rivers down with more cavalry and up with more artillery (and decreasing the artillery penalty as mil tech advances if we wanted to go fully historical).

This would result in the game having deeper tradeoffs and would require closing off places in the RotW that are currently open, so I expect this will be DOA.

 

[Zelius]

haplotypes in the game

I hope not; that just means genetic variants, Jomini just means the populations did not interbreed suggesting little/no contact.

 

[Solaxe]

You know, game is called "EUROPA Universalis"...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That's also something quickly caught up in.

But anyhow, at start of game, I was surprised when the African tribal states had gunboats and engaged me in naval battles. You show me the historical counterpart for that.

50-100 years is not "quick" (50 for nations that westernize before 1520 or are rich Muslim tech countries, 100 for hell holes like Aztec westernizing 1550 or later). The game isn't 400 years long, so 1/8 to 1/4 of the game should not be considered "quick".

 

[anomanderus]

if attrition, supplies, and disease were made semi-historical most of the broken gamey tactics in this game would end right there. Back in these times moving supplies was a difficult task especially in areas with few roads. May be we should simulate road levels so supply trains can be simulated and if they get cut off the offender only has so many days worth of supplies till they starve or run out of artilery rounds. Africa would have no roads so getting supplies through would massacre any invading armies while the natives can live off the land. Simlate foreign disease spread and even if a native win the wars they might lose to the plague.

I'd like this.

 

[Chronicler]

50-100 years is not "quick" (50 for nations that westernize before 1520 or are rich Muslim tech countries, 100 for hell holes like Aztec westernizing 1550 or later). The game isn't 400 years long, so 1/8 to 1/4 of the game should not be considered "quick".

Ehh, I'm at states like Mali within the first decades....or what you mean? They didn't have gunboats ever.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Ehh, I'm at states like Mali within the first decades....or what you mean? They didn't have gunboats ever.

I am talking about the time it takes to catch up after westernization, in both tech and somewhat in ideas.

Even if you grow fast, declare war on Portugal and take Sierra Leone in 1st opportunity, and westernize ASAP you're still going to finish ~1500, bit later if unlucky with AI colonization times. Doing THAT, it's possible to catch up before 1600.

As Aztec there's no way in ****. If you finish westernizing 1570-1590, you're not going to catch up in tech/ideas until nearly 1690. That's an enormous percentage of the game. You can win wars in that timeframe, but the need to pick up tech/ideas makes inefficient expansion unattractive. The end result is waiting.

Talking about "historicity" in a game with coalitions against minors, 100% war score cap, and colonial range shorter than where you can support 20000 soldiers is the kind of joke not worth indulging in.

 

[joe9594]

Talking about "historicity" in a game with coalitions against minors, 100% war score cap, and colonial range shorter than where you can support 20000 soldiers is the kind of joke not worth indulging in.

To be fair the game being historical is not about mechanics being historical, its about outcomes being historical. While those things are ahistorical themselves they all aid the creation of historically plausible situations and historical relevant strategic choices for the player.

 

[Iki_balam]

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...

...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? ...

...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?

No

Look how stupid the Rajas of India were for CK2. This game, in your own words, is not intended to perfectly represent Africa or the Americas. Please stop demanding your ideas are the best for a functional, balanced and focused game. They are not.

 

[Demetrios]

No

Look how stupid the Rajas of India were for CK2. This game, in your own words, is not intended to perfectly represent Africa or the Americas. Please stop demanding your ideas are the best for a functional, balanced and focused game. They are not.

You do know that Mare Nostrum will significantly expand the map in sub-Saharan Africa, right? It might not be a full expansion focused on the area, but it's fairly close to what the OP suggested in what you quoted...

 

[LinusLinothorax]

No

Look how stupid the Rajas of India were for CK2. This game, in your own words, is not intended to perfectly represent Africa or the Americas..

True. Right now, EU is only designed to represent European states accurate. Meanwhile, ROTW play exaclty like European nations, just in shitty, thanks to their European techtrees and the researchspeed-penalty they have.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be fair the game being historical is not about mechanics being historical, its about outcomes being historical. While those things are ahistorical themselves they all aid the creation of historically plausible situations and historical relevant strategic choices for the player.

No, hindsight bias is not "fair".

"Historical outcomes" relied on "historical causes". It is the mechanics that need to be historical, and if they are not then your *rational* choices are to either accept that the game isn't historical or to alter the mechanics to behavior more historically. Bum nonsense mechanics that kind of make the borders look like history but not really are the worst of both worlds; you don't get an accurate representation of period strategies and you have wonky/broken mechanics from a gameplay standpoint that hinder utilization of any strategy, historical or otherwise.

Meanwhile, ROTW play exaclty like European nations, just in shitty, thanks to their European techtrees and the researchspeed-penalty they have.

This is a good point. ROTW countries are simply constrained to more waiting for no meaningful reason. Once upon a time, pdox yanked the -1 and -2 penalties/month to help with the "here, have some waiting rather than playing" syndrome. Since then, they have been systematically adding it back, with the new corruption mechanic apparently intended to take that a step further still.

 

[Chronicler]

I am talking about the time it takes to catch up after westernization, in both tech and somewhat in ideas.

Even if you grow fast, declare war on Portugal and take Sierra Leone in 1st opportunity, and westernize ASAP you're still going to finish ~1500, bit later if unlucky with AI colonization times. Doing THAT, it's possible to catch up before 1600.

As Aztec there's no way in ****. If you finish westernizing 1570-1590, you're not going to catch up in tech/ideas until nearly 1690. That's an enormous percentage of the game. You can win wars in that timeframe, but the need to pick up tech/ideas makes inefficient expansion unattractive. The end result is waiting.

Talking about "historicity" in a game with coalitions against minors, 100% war score cap, and colonial range shorter than where you can support 20000 soldiers is the kind of joke not worth indulging in.

Well, now you are using a debate technique which is just lame.

Just because I think that these states shouldn't be able to westernize at all, due to them never doing so historically, or even now in some ways, then I must be in support of 20k stacks etc? I think there are probably many issues with the game as it is. Just because I say one thing doesn't mean I think (as you assume) another.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Just because I think that these states shouldn't be able to westernize at all, due to them never doing so historically, or even now in some ways, then I must be in support of 20k stacks etc? I think there are probably many issues with the game as it is. Just because I say one thing doesn't mean I think (as you assume) another.

Lame debate technique? Back at you I'm afraid.

In order to rationally advocate a change, there most be some reasoning for change, some criteria which allows you to believe that a change is useful. Absent any criteria, we could arbitrarily say that monarch point income should be tripled, or that stacks should never retreat, or that full annexation should always be possible and the impact of overextension reduced. We could advocate the game pauses every 10 seconds no matter game speed or circumstance, etc.

There are a sea of possible changes, many of them inane (as per the pausing one above). So, what causes a person to single out one change over another change as desirable? Why does a change to westernization carry more merit than infinite monarch points or built-in game crashes?

There are quite a few reasons you can choose, criteria you could select that would make the game better. However, the simple usage of "what happened in history" is not only inadequate criteria. It is *pathetically inadequate* criteria, the reason being that if you were to apply this standard consistently, a large portion of the game's core, basic mechanics wouldn't hold up. To apply that standard as your only stated reasoning *and* still be rational in doing so, you necessarily advocate completely changing core gameplay outright. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you advocate those things are historical, as opposed to concluding flagrant self-inconsistency or a dubious agenda.

However, most proponents of nerfing westernization or blocking it aren't applying their standards consistently or rationally. Those that are citing history rationally would list it alongside a wide range of sweeping changes to the tech picture as a whole alongside many core mechanics. There is a smaller portion of the community that dislikes westernization for gameplay reasons (me included), namely that it's a shallow decision strategically, yet one whose conclusion leads to more waiting without adding anything interesting. I could totally get behind reworking a mechanic so that less of the world is "playing Europe but with more waiting on arbitrarily assigned resource points".

I can't get behind irrational history arguments that rely on hindsight bias. "it didn't happen in history" is a terrible argument in any game scenario that does not align with history, the kind that is cancerous to decent design, including design of historical mechanics. A west Africa with relatively amicable relations with Europe and no Moroccan invasion would indisputably look different from what we saw in history, and you have no idea to what extent. Nobody has any idea to what extent...yet magically, you say these nations shouldn't be capable of westernizing.

If you say that west African nations shouldn't be able to westernize because it didn't happen historically, you *must*, absolutely must, also advocate that every merchant republic in the game be conquered by 1821, and that they suffer severe penalties for example. If you aren't willing to take that step, your position on West Africa is demonstrably irrational/biased, beyond a matter of opinion and should be changed. You have no demonstrated zero criteria to distinguish between the two. If you're holding back on criteria, go ahead and give us something that actually differentiates the mechanic you criticize from mechanics you accept.

 

[Chronicler]

Lame debate technique? Back at you I'm afraid.

In order to rationally advocate a change, there most be some reasoning for change, some criteria which allows you to believe that a change is useful. Absent any criteria, we could arbitrarily say that monarch point income should be tripled, or that stacks should never retreat, or that full annexation should always be possible and the impact of overextension reduced. We could advocate the game pauses every 10 seconds no matter game speed or circumstance, etc.

There are a sea of possible changes, many of them inane (as per the pausing one above). So, what causes a person to single out one change over another change as desirable? Why does a change to westernization carry more merit than infinite monarch points or built-in game crashes?

There are quite a few reasons you can choose, criteria you could select that would make the game better. However, the simple usage of "what happened in history" is not only inadequate criteria. It is *pathetically inadequate* criteria, the reason being that if you were to apply this standard consistently, a large portion of the game's core, basic mechanics wouldn't hold up. To apply that standard as your only stated reasoning *and* still be rational in doing so, you necessarily advocate completely changing core gameplay outright. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt in assuming that you advocate those things are historical, as opposed to concluding flagrant self-inconsistency or a dubious agenda.

However, most proponents of nerfing westernization or blocking it aren't applying their standards consistently or rationally. Those that are citing history rationally would list it alongside a wide range of sweeping changes to the tech picture as a whole alongside many core mechanics. There is a smaller portion of the community that dislikes westernization for gameplay reasons (me included), namely that it's a shallow decision strategically, yet one whose conclusion leads to more waiting without adding anything interesting. I could totally get behind reworking a mechanic so that less of the world is "playing Europe but with more waiting on arbitrarily assigned resource points".

I can't get behind irrational history arguments that rely on hindsight bias. "it didn't happen in history" is a terrible argument in any game scenario that does not align with history, the kind that is cancerous to decent design, including design of historical mechanics. A west Africa with relatively amicable relations with Europe and no Moroccan invasion would indisputably look different from what we saw in history, and you have no idea to what extent. Nobody has any idea to what extent...yet magically, you say these nations shouldn't be capable of westernizing.

If you say that west African nations shouldn't be able to westernize because it didn't happen historically, you *must*, absolutely must, also advocate that every merchant republic in the game be conquered by 1821, and that they suffer severe penalties for example. If you aren't willing to take that step, your position on West Africa is demonstrably irrational/biased, beyond a matter of opinion and should be changed. You have no demonstrated zero criteria to distinguish between the two. If you're holding back on criteria, go ahead and give us something that actually differentiates the mechanic you criticize from mechanics you accept.

You are just trying to deflect now because you know you were laming out previously trying to put words in my mouth, obviously I have to stay on topic in this thread.

When it comes to Merchant Republics sure, I would have nothing against the historical reason for why these republics failed and disappeared, one of the main reasons ofc was the New World and trade around the Horn of Africa. So once that happens in game maybe there should be some kind of malus for these merchant republics?

I also have a second criteria, and that was that even today these states or the descendants in these states don't manufacture the things we produce in the west, sub-saharan African economies mostly consist of two things, the sale of raw materials and foreign aid, not so of manufacturing.

But anyhow, I did write that at start of game the western African states have gunships, which they did not have historically, so at that point in time, those ships should not exists, even if the game is a "new course on history".

And I have had a thousand debates on this, if the game really is a new take on history, then the Iberian Wedding should not exist, Austria should not get PU missions on Bohemia and Hungary (that had a Jagiellon king that randomly died in the Battle of Mohacs), etc etc.

 

[gaius valerius]

Then make Africa have higher attrition rates for non-African nations and make interior African provinces harder to colonize.

The Scramble for Africa didn't occur in 1880 because Europe was too busy to conquer Africa. It occurred when it did because advances in medicine, logistics, and warfare made it possible for Europeans to move armies into the African interior.

If a European army tries to march through Africa, it's going to get a nice, warm helping of malaria, something the game doesn't simulate.

The answer isn't to have as few provinces in Africa as possible. It's to simulate attrition in a way that discourages African expansion.

Mods like Meiou have already tackled this by simply making colonisation of any African territory except a few outposts (signifying the historical fortified trade-posts) locked by tech-level untill the 1800's.

Could the base-game not follow that train of thought? The idea is that it represents the dangers posed by the natural conditions which simply made it impossible for the Europeans to make much headway untill the end-game (and of course being somewhat more liberal here to allow it to actualy happen, given that otherwise we're outside the base EU timeframe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You are just trying to deflect now because you know you were laming out previously trying to put words in my mouth, obviously I have to stay on topic in this thread.

I gave you the most benefit of the doubt that I could, given what you said. I am not the one deflecting .

When it comes to Merchant Republics sure, I would have nothing against the historical reason for why these republics failed and disappeared, one of the main reasons ofc was the New World and trade around the Horn of Africa. So once that happens in game maybe there should be some kind of malus for these merchant republics?

Then why do you have something against the historical reason West African nations didn't westernize, versus the game situations that allow it being different from history?

I also have a second criteria, and that was that even today these states or the descendants in these states don't manufacture the things we produce in the west, sub-saharan African economies mostly consist of two things, the sale of raw materials and foreign aid, not so of manufacturing.

So, your first criteria is whether it happened historically, and your second criteria is also whether it happened historically?

But anyhow, I did write that at start of game the western African states have gunships, which they did not have historically, so at that point in time, those ships should not exists, even if the game is a "new course on history".

If you want African nations that have boats at the start of the game to not have boats at the start of the game, that is reasonable. Though of course Muscovy should then be *much* weaker (and at war with Kazan) and which nations have or do not have cores needs to be cleaned up a ton. We're not in disagreement that the 1444 board should look like history though.

And I have had a thousand debates on this, if the game really is a new take on history, then the Iberian Wedding should not exist, Austria should not get PU missions on Bohemia and Hungary (that had a Jagiellon king that randomly died in the Battle of Mohacs), etc etc.

1000 is hyperbolic. I don't even have 1000 debates on it and I have over 5x your post count. That said, what you say is correct. These railroad non-dynamic non-historic events need to not happen, unless there is a mechanic whereby they can potentially happen between other nations as well. The treatment of the Timurids is patently absurd too, all of flavor.bur could reasonably be thrown out, etc. It's ridiculous that NED and only NED gets to appear out of nowhere with phantom cores and the nation that held the territory has to fight a similar war to Spain even if they have wildly different circumstances.

I will hold consistent with my position in saying that these things don't belong in the game either, unless the circumstances that allowed them historically are mirrored.

 

[yerm]

First and foremost, the inflated tech cost without inflated MP gain results in ROTW spending more of their expansion-limiting resource and having less to use for actual expansion. This is easily solved by changing the % cost penalty to a % time penalty - a ROTW nation buys their techs for the same price that Europeans do, but X years later based on tech group. Side benefit is it curbs a lot of the ability to go wildly ahead on mil tech relative to neighbors and roflstomp them, but alternatively it also hinders the ability to go wildly even on mil tech relative to Europe and avoid said roflstomping.

Westernization is too strong, but it's too strong because being non-western is too weak. Whether it's my last paragraph or another idea, SOMETHING needs to change here, and the "historical" change would be to curve the falloff so that nonwestern penalties escalate as the game progresses rather than always being a flat % suckiness. In essence the game currently plays where ROTW quickly falls behind, westernizes around mid game while absurdly weaker, then catches up by the end. Historically nonsense.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

That will mean one of two things:

1. The time penalties are so severe that all ROTW nations will never be able to keep up to date on MIL tech, and will always be curbstomped by any European power.
2. At least for MIL tech, ROTW nations will still consistently spend way more per tech than Europeans.

I'd rather we do away with tech groups, and make tech rates much more dynamic. It should be possible to modernize our military without drastically changing how our country is administered (this isn't industrial-era warfare we're talking about).

 

[LinusLinothorax]

That will mean one of two things:

1. The time penalties are so severe that all ROTW nations will never be able to keep up to date on MIL tech, and will always be curbstomped by any European power.
2. At least for MIL tech, ROTW nations will still consistently spend way more per tech than Europeans.

I'd rather we do away with tech groups, and make tech rates much more dynamic. It should be possible to modernize our military without drastically changing how our country is administered (this isn't industrial-era warfare we're talking about).

The modernization of Rotw armies should be protrayed in these stages:

1) Import of guns
This is the first stage for achieving a more modern army, and most historical kingdoms sticked to that stage. The export of guns into Africa and Asia was one of the most important processes in economic (Guns were required to maintain the African slave trade) and political history (Imported guns often played a decisive role in wars, like for example the Ethiopian-Adalese war, where Ahmed Gran almost conquered Ethiopia because of his guns).

2) Irregular local production
Societies start to engine their own first guns. They were often inferior compared to European ones, and also the natives often lacked gunpowder

3) Local mass production
The kingdoms have their own big manufactories for guns.