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

[mcmanusaur]

Perhaps you should play M&T? They are all about the better map and historical reality. Also, Africa can be pretty interesting.

M&T is a bit heavy for my tastes. If it was just the modified map plus whatever other changes were necessary to maintain balance it would be fine, but there's too much scripted stuff going on in the background for me to try to figure out.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I think that in order of how ahistorically suckish they are the regions would be:
Americas (At least asia has strong china and india, america has nothing)
Asia (The far east didn't fall behind the euros until the industrial revolution, yet here most of the far east is behind by tech 4....)
Africa (for the reasons explained in the OP)
I support any expansion bringing the ROTW closer to their historical power, after all the EU4 timeframe coincides with the rise of europe, it was definitely now dominant in 1444.

I agree that East Asia could be ramped up tech-wise in the initial stages. But Paradox has already done at least two expansions focusing on the Americas and they hardly have much wasteland left, so I'm not sure by what measure they would be the poorest represented region.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Africa!

The major problem is that with so less lands, and so many big wastelands, probably we will see great bunch of lands colored with a single nation, probably portugal. Agree that something near great lakes and madagascar can be cool, but only a couple of things, actually africa should be used only for naval bases and trade posts.

 

[Tacticus101]

What would this actually add to the game? It would require a significant change to the mechanics in order to stop the Europeans just conquering the new rich areas, but a full rework is too far without far reaching consequences. West and North Africa are already fine, so they are unlikely to receive many changes, so the main thrust will be the great lakes/inland areas. Those inland areas will need mechanics to simulate their isolation, to stop them just blobbing all over Africa and keeping things historical. So the end result is that Europe, America and Asia all see little improvement, the only significant additional flavour you will actually see is if you are playing one of the new African nations...which will be very underplayed.

 

[Guardian54]

You dont really mean survive paradoxs system. You mean be able to world conquer effectively. A human player would have no problem surviving as china for the entire game without westernising. What you want is to have the western tech so you can conquer all of asia. Apparently the idea that such a reasonable aim would require gamey tactics is shocking to you.

Ottomans doesn't need Westernization the way China needs it, which means Otomans can vassalize Indian and Chinese states, while China won't be able to after Westernizing. Ottomans also gets a massive coring cost NI and a colossal +3 heathen tolerance. China gets... what, exactly, that stands out?

If anything, Ming should be, by FAR, the easiest nation to WC with one westernized circa 1560-1580. It isn't, Otomans is the easiest. Why?

 

[yerm]

Changes to fundamental game mechanics should not be done on some arbitrary basis to railroad the direction. If you want to stop the scramble for Africa from happening in the 16th century, design the game properly, and have it apply universally - if Euros aren't, Ottomans shouldn't either, not even Sahel empires, and same should apply to places like the NA interior and east Asia.

The BEST solution isn't to punish players for deviating from history, it's to encourage optimal play to follow what was historically an optimal route. Perhaps something rather simple - remove the distant overseas cost reductions for non-coastal provinces, and do not allow non-coastal trade company provinces, and shaft the value of distant overseas non-trade-company provinces. The NA interior will get colonized, because of CNs though. The African interior should go ignored while coastal TC provinces are still claimed. You even take a swing at distant overseas core creation abuse on the side.

 

[BrokenSky]

I think what they really need to add is some kind of colonization difficulty rating for different provinces, sort of like in Victoria 2, so that it is always more profitable for Europeans to colonize somewhere else. Of course, that then leads to WC problems and other things. Maybe a different colonization system for Africa, like CNs for America and trade companies (which would become Asia only) where you instead just make small trade posts along the coast and trade with local kingdoms for slaves and things, with no real reason to expand inland?

Also, how would the inland nations interact with the rest of the world? If they are literally completely separate, they probably shouldn't really be bothered with, as they would just be their own thing. Was there any outside contact at the time, at least indirectly through coastal kingdoms?

This was discussed in another post a while back about trade. I suggested then (and am gonna repeat myself here) that instead of colonies (except in a few colonizable regions, mostly islands) you get trade posts. Trade posts require permission from the local, are set up in a province that the locals own. It gives increased trade power and goods produced in the province(s) it's set up in, as well as tech adjacency to the European power it's with (you get neighbor bonus from them), and gives the European power money based on the production in the province, trade power in the node (with bonus merchant if 50% of the power is held etc) fleet basing and acts as a core for colonizing round Africa. If the province is lost in war, the trade post is lost. In this system protectorate-ing a nation would lose it's diplo-slot requirement and building a trade post wouldn't need one, or else expansion would give +1 diplo-slot instead of CB vs Africans or something?

The idea is you protectorate a nation and build one or more trade post with them in a symbiotic relationship which gets you a lot of extra money and trade-power and them a little extra money, tech cost reduction and a European Protectorate.

 

[Imgran]

Ottomans doesn't need Westernization the way China needs it, which means Otomans can vassalize Indian and Chinese states, while China won't be able to after Westernizing. Ottomans also gets a massive coring cost NI and a colossal +3 heathen tolerance. China gets... what, exactly, that stands out?

If anything, Ming should be, by FAR, the easiest nation to WC with one westernized circa 1560-1580. It isn't, Otomans is the easiest. Why?

Ottomans should reasonably be one of the easiest too.

If it's that important to you to go east into Africa as China, that option should exist, simply spend a lot of precious Chinese mana on being a colonizer, and send troops over, taking huge attrition the whole time, to wipe out the natives. I do think the distance-from-fort attrition should be in the game, it would be a good shortcut to get a supply lines mechanic into the game.

 

[Aries666]

The difference in wasteland between Africa and the Americas is definitely strange, and says something about Paradox's priorities.

I'd like to see an expansion that reduces the amount of wasteland, but also brings in a more sophisticated system for making places easy/hard to colonise. You can see the absurdity when places are easy to colonise by 1600 in EU4, but in Victoria 2 they need several mid-19th century innovations for anyone to even begin colonising them. I don't think absolute bans on colonising areas are the way to go, but some places need to be orders of magnitude slower and more costly to colonise than others, and their needs to be some dependence on the country doing the colonising (so that 'advanced' Europeans can't colonise their way into the heart of Africa at a faster pace than 'primitive' local states can fill up the land).

I have been saying this for some time, additionally I think colonisation should be slowed down across the board. By 1821 the whole world has been colonised if it was slowed down sufficiently that this became improbable then the AI would have to make decisions that would likely result in it not colonising in strange places because there would be better places. Something like this could then help protect African nations including any new central African states from excessive hostility.

 

[zsImmortal]

Can they fix the Sub-Saharan unit models?

And yes, Africa needs more attention.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Between higher coring costs, increased attrition for European tech groups, and decreased growth/settler chance for colonies, as you guys mention, I think you could already come up with something that sufficiently disincentivizes European nations from colonizing inner Africa.

Europe taking more than 1-2 provinces past ivory coast is *extremely rare*, right now, in EU IV. I don't think adding tags/kingdoms to interior Africa is going to have a material impact on European AI conquering there. Even Kongo typically makes it to the end w/o player intervention, Mali usually does unless killed by African AI, Songhai virtually always survives (as opposed to being conquered by Morocco).

I believe fears of ahistorical heavy AI conquest into central Africa are overblown. If that were really an issue, we'd see conquests past Benin rather than most of West Africa just sitting there all game, irrelevant regardless of whether it westernizes because there's no way an AI there fields a significant navy and/or bothers to chain military access long distances.

West Africa would be a lot more fun to play if it weren't view-locked so horrifically badly for no reason whatsoever too.

 

[Yeekim]

While you're at it, give more flavor for Coptic

 

[IIWW]

I know this one solve just the "african could fight europeans" problem, not the colonization part, but:
>decrease tech malus for SS tech group
>Increase early-mid african units pips
>take out their ships (the ship system is really pain. It was the sphere where Europeans had the biggest advantage over the rest of the world and which helped them tremendously, and in EU4 it seems like they were just more innovative).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I know this one solve just the "african could fight europeans" problem, not the colonization part, but:
>decrease tech malus for SS tech group
>Increase early-mid african units pips
>take out their ships (the ship system is really pain. It was the sphere where Europeans had the biggest advantage over the rest of the world and which helped them tremendously, and in EU4 it seems like they were just more innovative).

Sub-Saharan has some of the better early-pip spreads on the map. I will vehemently downvote even MORE nations losing their ships. The asinine removal of ships w/o a true compensating factor slowed down new world play tremendously, to no benefit for anybody. If you want to stick sub-Saharan at 3/3/3 they'll compete better but I'm not seeing much evidence that it's necessary; Portugal/Spain conquering past Jolof or Benin is unusual, and they even lose that stuff back to rebels sometimes. North Africa is more likely to be and stay conquered in EU IV than Mali or especially Songhai.

In player hands, winning wars vs Europeans as West African is a chore but doable. In ai vs ai scenarios, it's rare for either side to bother. It's not perfect but it's a decent abstraction, only really breaking down when you see idiocy like England/Portugal/Castile/Aragon all shipping troops to Mali. From the perspective of an African player, by far the most vexing annoyance is the AI's tendency to land at Benin and Jolof based on difficult-to-manipulate criteria, though there are workarounds.

 

[valentin4]

There should be an entire different gameplay for Africa and the natives americans and in Oceania to make it interesting. Disable the tech system for those countries (central africa didn't know the wheel in mid 19th century...) and make it appear through a new westernization system, somewhat like Japan did.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I have been saying this for some time, additionally I think colonisation should be slowed down across the board. By 1821 the whole world has been colonised if it was slowed down sufficiently that this became improbable then the AI would have to make decisions that would likely result in it not colonising in strange places because there would be better places. Something like this could then help protect African nations including any new central African states from excessive hostility.

In line with this, there should definitely be more emphasis on establishing lucrative colonies over many colonies. Quality over quantity, compared to now where it's a race to grab up the most land because it's all of relatively equal value.

 

[Outrider]

In line with this, there should definitely be more emphasis on establishing lucrative colonies over many colonies. Quality over quantity, compared to now where it's a race to grab up the most land because it's all of relatively equal value.

Colonies are absolutely not of equal value. In the Americas, you have some very wealthy territory in the Caribbean and everything else is dirt poor. Asia tends to have much richer provinces, but comes with harsher territory and longer colonist travel times. All else being equal a pure-colonizer can have many poor american colonies or fewer richer Asian colonies.

 

[LinusLinothorax]

Paradox has even a hard time implementing fleshed out and authentic gameplay mechanism for non-Europeans. Right now they still play like Europeans, just in shitty (Same tech-tree, just a much lower researching rate). There will never be a dlc which will make non-Europeans justice, dont even want to talk about African kingdoms.

I for one would love migratory African tribes like the Bantu. I'd definitely prefer them over Siberian tribes, at least.

The Bantu are not a "tribe", or are Indo-Europeans now a tribe aswell?

 

[mcmanusaur]

Colonies are absolutely not of equal value. In the Americas, you have some very wealthy territory in the Caribbean and everything else is dirt poor. Asia tends to have much richer provinces, but comes with harsher territory and longer colonist travel times. All else being equal a pure-colonizer can have many poor american colonies or fewer richer Asian colonies.

I mean within a particular region. Obviously on a global scale there are more and less advantageous places to colonize, as should be the case. However within individual colonial regions, for example in the Americas, most provinces are equally viable.

In the Americas that is fine because settler colonialism was more common, but in other regions like there should be more emphasis on exploitation colonialism, which is less about occupying huge territories and more about controlling key points. I don't know too much about trade company mechanics, but I would imagine they probably operate along similar lines. I don't like unnecessarily rigid restrictions, but perhaps an easy solution would be to force trade company colonies in some regions (most of Africa and Asia) and colonial nations in other regions (the Americas, Siberia, South Africa, and Australia/New Zealand), at least until a certain tech level.

 

[Closet Skeleton]

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.

That map is anachronos. Its just a ton of states from random points of history.