Forgive my ignorance. I don't really know that much about Africa. Including African tribes certainly would help me learn more about them!
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Wasteland, Eurocentrism, and a petition for an expansion focusing on Africa
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It is anachronous, but pretty much all the states that it includes in central and east Africa existed during EU4's timeline.
In my opinion Africa is treated as only the jump to Americas and players often easy conquer these lands in free time.
That means Africa is absolutely no challenge for Europe.
I read here good ideas as:
-increasing Attrision for enemies
-Giving military ideas for african countries
-plaque events
-increasing core cost
I think the problem is also that colonising is too easy for Europe. It is not rare to see Portugal/Spain having 4 or 5 colonies.
Increasing cost of each another colony and decreasing global settler increase would also help.
That means Africa is absolutely no challenge for Europe.
I read here good ideas as:
-increasing Attrision for enemies
-Giving military ideas for african countries
-plaque events
-increasing core cost
I think the problem is also that colonising is too easy for Europe. It is not rare to see Portugal/Spain having 4 or 5 colonies.
Increasing cost of each another colony and decreasing global settler increase would also help.
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Historically the lake kingdoms had exceedingly little contact with the outside world. In EUIV a province does not just mean people lived there - it means that the land is sufficiently viable to have an army march through.
Sure lake Victoria supported a nice population, but outside of the rare Arab trade caravan, there were no military incursions into the area nor out of the area of which I am aware. This is remarkedly uncommon - we literally had more invasions across the Sahara (which gives Morocco its path south) than through the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
EUIV should keep the topography interesting and historical. There were reasons, very difficult to model, that interior Africa was not just inhospitable to Europeans, but also to Arabs and non-interior Africans. A lot of the connections on the map were simple trade routes at best, but in EUIV they become paved highways for conquest for the players.
The AI, on the other hand, will often try to use one of these long snaking corridors and burn huge amounts of manpower for minimal effort - the Ottomans get MA from Morocco and try to attack central Africa rather than defending Anatolia. Coring cost, attrition, etc. are all just kludges that will give the human a larger advantage.
Ideally, the game would be updated to reflect real geographic concerns - i.e. rivers and mountains would be vastly more important than adjacency. But until EUIV gives rivers their due (they were after all the single biggest drivers of strategy in the era), we need more wasteland, not less. One of the best things to happen to Africa was adding in some historical impassable terrain so it was no longer just a giant blob encircling the continent, much like every other area.
Sure lake Victoria supported a nice population, but outside of the rare Arab trade caravan, there were no military incursions into the area nor out of the area of which I am aware. This is remarkedly uncommon - we literally had more invasions across the Sahara (which gives Morocco its path south) than through the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
EUIV should keep the topography interesting and historical. There were reasons, very difficult to model, that interior Africa was not just inhospitable to Europeans, but also to Arabs and non-interior Africans. A lot of the connections on the map were simple trade routes at best, but in EUIV they become paved highways for conquest for the players.
The AI, on the other hand, will often try to use one of these long snaking corridors and burn huge amounts of manpower for minimal effort - the Ottomans get MA from Morocco and try to attack central Africa rather than defending Anatolia. Coring cost, attrition, etc. are all just kludges that will give the human a larger advantage.
Ideally, the game would be updated to reflect real geographic concerns - i.e. rivers and mountains would be vastly more important than adjacency. But until EUIV gives rivers their due (they were after all the single biggest drivers of strategy in the era), we need more wasteland, not less. One of the best things to happen to Africa was adding in some historical impassable terrain so it was no longer just a giant blob encircling the continent, much like every other area.
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We're talking about a game whereby you can slap down 50000 dudes in Kentucky and march almost straight west to the Pacific (with a mild detour hugging mountains lol) with little more attrition than you'd see marching along the coast of India or Sweden.
There is definitely inconsistency in the representation of Africa here :/.
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What about a mechanism where you can leave a colonist in a "fully colonized" territory you own to slowly increase the development?
I have consistently opposed the spread of ever greater ranges of land that make no historical sense to move across for this very reason. Yes Kentucky should be able to support a huge number of soldiers once settled by an agrarian society with either maize or wheat. You can then follow a lot of nice rivers pretty far west. However, it really is the steel (not iron) plow that opens up the prairies to this sort of manpower fluctuation. Being able to move north or south off the riverine network, yeah that has nothing realistic about it.My ideal North American map would wasteland all passes over the Rockies, most of the Great plains (except for lands along the Mississippi river basin), and have a few impassable provinces to break up the Applachians (with some more coding, some of these would fall as technology/development improved). Of course I'd also make some hard barriers in the Alps, add more to the Himalayas and lock out some of the islands that lacked enough fresh water to support armies.
As bad as the above are, they are better than opening the Great Lakes Region. Part of the charm of EUIV is that different states have not just different ideas, governments, and religions ... but that they experience geography. A Kongo run, with only one direction for expansion or East Africa with easily defended land borders & a wide open coast feel different and play different. Every time we add a kludgework of provinces we run into a lack of geographic uniqueness as everything ends up becoming a densely connected grid of provinces with no chokepoints until you can afford to play in the big leagues. I like Africa having unique connectedness so it is not just Asia with different religious flavor & a worse tech penalty.
Historically, you could have managed the march with maybe 10,000 going to New Orleans -> Texas coast -> Rio Grande -> Gila -> California. At game start there might be just enough food to manage it (the population would die off heavily once contact occurs) a certainly once you get the place settled with wheat and corn it was certainly doable.
It is very annoying that in an era that where campaigns were defined by positional geography, the map obliterates all of it. It is my hope that EU V eventually gets around to using rivers in something close to an historical fashion.
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At least Africa has tons of agressive natives, worst thing is it is possible to discover every province in South America with 2000 men force. I actually did it and I was 16th century Iroquis back then. I mean, okay I know conquistadors travelled from Colombia to Peru but they
a) Suffered heavy losses (eventually they all died killed by diseases or fighting between themselves, of course that's different thing)
b) Weren't able to conquer Mapuche natives due to Chilean deserts (actually, Spanish lost big scale open war against Lautaro)
c) Not to even mention open pampas of Argentina and gigantic jungles occupying huge part of the continent.
As for the thread, Subsaharan Africa already gets more attention than 99% games
(Western and Eastern Africa are awesomely depicted) but it needs some adjustments.a) Kongo Basin is, as you can see on the population map, way not enough represented. There were few more kingdoms in this area and total population of at least 1 million people, as well as few big cities (M'banza Kongo).
b) Great Lakes area also had significant population density and feudal kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro, Rwanda, Maravi etc.
c) Mutapa is horribly weak and horribly undetailed; there were few more political entities in this area as well as considerable pop density allowing these people on defense against Portuguese incursions. It should go at least few colonzed/uncolonized provinces deeper in the wasteland, especially on north.
d) Madagascar is ridiculous. It had feudal era since European medieval times, numerous kingdoms of various nations and trade connections with Kilwa/Indian Ocean, it was independent until 19th century and it is an island bigger than Britain yet in game it has three provinces... There should be like 10 provinces here and at least 3-4 tags.
e) Zulu could be added though southern Africa generally was very, very sparsely populated and had almost no political history.
Afterwards, the only adjustments world map really should see:
a) Some more provinces in Europe, mainly Ireland
b) Few more provinces and tags in South East Asia which was pretty developed area, more than most of Africa; there are many useless tags in-game for SEA which activate late or never
c) Few Filipino tribes which, guess what, had kingdoms in eu4 era and before it
d) Removal of Siberian Clans... Okay maybe that's just me (though when I founded thread about that, surprisingly many people agreed) but I think they are not only ridiculous/unrealistic/undeserving but boring, pointless and without any flavor. And they can't even have any flavour because these four tribes, depicted by generous eu4 as political states on tech level of Japan, IRL had all together population of like 20 - 30 000 hunter - gatherers. Including them is ridiculous when there are no native states of Oceania (there were few actual kingdoms here, such as Fiji Tonga or Hawaii), aforementioned Philippines and of course southern half of Africa.
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I don't think they want EU IV to be that kind of tactical game. The way battles are abstracted, the way artillery marches like infantry, "monarch points", these things and crap like "colonial range" push the game way off course of realistic historical considerations. In that vein, the idea that it's impossible for West Africa to send an army to East Africa at game start, when England could make a serous foray into Kazan, is just bizarre.
You're asking for consistency in a different direction, which is reasonable too, but it doesn't appear to be the direction PI has interest in going. I would like some consistency of any sort first, among other basic gameplay issues.
You're asking for consistency in a different direction, which is reasonable too, but it doesn't appear to be the direction PI has interest in going. I would like some consistency of any sort first, among other basic gameplay issues.
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There are no tribes in Africa and in general, only kingdoms or peoples living in stateless societies.
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There were definitely tribes in Africa at this time. There were also tribes in both Americas, in Asia, and even in Europe. There is nothing wrong with tribes or being descended from a tribal society; please don't drag the whole Africa=tribe=racism argument into here, pretty pretty please.
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I like the idea of more provinces in Africa, but the issue for me is that they will all be Catholic and with one variant of an Iberian culture, instead of being merely provinces in an empire with their own religion and culture.
Making ideas unlock later doesn't stop Portugal and Castile from colonising everything, it merely postpones it, Great Britain is too weak, France never fully commits itself to colonising, and Spain has naval dominance for pretty much the entire game post-1550.
The solution should be changing the mechanics for colonising outside the Americas and small islands, and limiting the ability of the Iberians to colonise. The Treaty Of Tordesillas just means that once one of them has a colonial nation, no other Catholic nation will colonise there, so France will not get a colonial nation, further inhibiting it, and GB will not, if it remains Catholic. This means that the Catholic nation will simply colonise Africa's coast, owning the vast majority by the time it is 1600. This means that the African nations westernise very early, and Northern European nations struggle, leading to a Iberian dominated Africa, Spice Islands, Australia, and North/South America.
Making ideas unlock later doesn't stop Portugal and Castile from colonising everything, it merely postpones it, Great Britain is too weak, France never fully commits itself to colonising, and Spain has naval dominance for pretty much the entire game post-1550.
The solution should be changing the mechanics for colonising outside the Americas and small islands, and limiting the ability of the Iberians to colonise. The Treaty Of Tordesillas just means that once one of them has a colonial nation, no other Catholic nation will colonise there, so France will not get a colonial nation, further inhibiting it, and GB will not, if it remains Catholic. This means that the Catholic nation will simply colonise Africa's coast, owning the vast majority by the time it is 1600. This means that the African nations westernise very early, and Northern European nations struggle, leading to a Iberian dominated Africa, Spice Islands, Australia, and North/South America.
The term "tribe" is a fantasy construct invented by Victorian Europeans with which they tried to link ethnicities with pre-state political entities.
West Africa is ok, but on East Africa they left out tons of tags and fucked up the one or other political boundaries.As for the thread, Subsaharan Africa already gets more attention than 99% games
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If by Victorian Europeans you mean the Romans, and by pre-state political entities you mean pre-Caesar voting establishments, then yes, what you say might somehow be true! Or, perhaps you mean the more modern and English-speaking use of the word, which includes its most common application being... the very highly regarded ancient Israelites.
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When somebody calls me 'Eurocentric' I take it as a compliment. Europe is awesome, it's the most important continent in history and deserves all the credit it gets.
Africa? I don't care about it. I want Paradox to focus on Europe, because I live in Europe and I like almost everything about Europe. In fact, please flesh out the European contries even more.
So this would be a 'no'-vote.
Africa? I don't care about it. I want Paradox to focus on Europe, because I live in Europe and I like almost everything about Europe. In fact, please flesh out the European contries even more.
So this would be a 'no'-vote.
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Already had this discussions before, so i will just post this link: http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-19-spring-2001/feature/trouble-tribe
and give you the conclusion that "tribe" is a fantasy construct which is used to describe (appareantly) primitive people which dont founded a advanced political entity yet but rather still live in more or less isolated villages. There are no tribes, only people. If you think i am wrong just give me a supposed "tribe" by name (Btw. your Israelites are a people aswell, divided into sub-people just like the Celts and Germans).
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Is the current colonial system an EU4 feature or a relic from EU3? Because honestly it doesn't actually represent colonialism all that well. Colonialsim wasn't about holding land or provinces the growth of colonies into actual provinces should be more organic over decades or even centuries (During which they should still generate wealth through trade and so on).
The current system is more like some kind of semi imperialism.
The current system is more like some kind of semi imperialism.
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Aye, if you had some kind of 'life rating'-lite system, where instead of being a hard cap and a rush, it meant that colonising lower life rating provinces was far slower with more negative events. This way, you could feasibly have the whole world as provinces, but the really low liferating provinces are crazy hard to colonise, so only feasible for nations sinking a lot of effort into it. That way it becomes both more sandbox but less 'everything that can be colonised is colonised by the early 1700s'.
It could go hand-in-hand with a better tech system, where development of medicine actually counted for something, and possibly a population system as well.
I'm not sure about this, I think it's unclear exactly which way they want to swing EU4. Things like the arbitrariness of overextension and the way coring works don't really serve the Risk-with-more-detail approach to EU4, nor do they really serve the more plausibly historic gameplay approach either. My take on PDS at the moment is that they're a bit torn between two different approaches to designing the game, and are trying to dance between them. They definitely haven't out-and-out said what they're shooting at (that I can recall, by all means correct me if wrong
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Tribe is a perfectly valid word in the right circumstances. It's frequent misuse in African contexts is no reason to discard it entirely.
https://www.hs.ias.edu/files/Crone_Articles/Crone_Tribe_and_State.pdf
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I really think that instead of simply increasing attrition, there should be harshly decreased reinforcement unless connected to an owned core fort.
what's it like being this boring?
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