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

[TheMeInTeam]

The most important dynamics for the RotW is that European troops should win often with a low expenditure of resources (compared to a European campaign). The fact that this currently means shipping 50K overseas is less bad than the fact that the cannot do so with historical numbers (e.g. The Aztecs should fall to very minimal numbers, not the 10K or more Spain needs in game).

The historical situation allowing *easy* conquest of Aztec wouldn't work very well in the game with Borneo being 100% one nation or an Aztec that is literally the only remaining tag in Mesoamerica though. Picking up local mercenaries would be viable to an extent regardless, but not the same extent as having obviously hostile nations to each other in close proximity. From the perspective of playing as the native it just sucks right now. You get none of the politicking/pre-war contact/context, just a blind declaration out of nowhere from a nation you can't even contact.

You run into a real problem from a gameplay standpoint if you allow easy pickups of merc from distant nations. It would destroy the viability of the nations and still wouldn't resemble a plausible model most likely, especially in cases where we have no historical examples against which to compare (a truly united Mesoamerica for example, even culture converted in game terms etc).

Like how currently the Ottoman AI will invade over the Sahara to siege useless provinces in central Africa; I'd expect the AI to regularly murder itself trying to expand in the Great Lakes region. You might hard code the AI to avoid crossing those attritionary murder spots ... but then you open up a huge number of tactical exploits.

I find this doubtful, since territory in Africa changes hands so rarely after the early goings. The Europeans typically leave Kongo and Kanem Bornu untouched, and I've watched Portugal fail wars against Mutapa because the AI doesn't plan transports out well. Sure, the player could bait the Ottomans there, but as you already pointed out the Ottomans are perfectly willing to bleed out their manpower long before reaching that region anyway.

I'd like to see at least one more narrow corridor in Africa between West/East and a lot more vision for the sub-Saharan states in Africa (especially West Africa), mostly because of the limited diplomacy and constrained early game.

 

[LinusLinothorax]

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

The author of that text gives the same vague explanation you get from everyone who tries to explain "tribal": "A primitive society and at the same time political entity, which is linked together by ethnicity, biology, culture etc."

And this is exactly the reason why "tribal" is outdated/wrong: It is basicaly an other word for people, but it implies

A) primitivenes on this whole people (And this is the reason why it used mostly in African or also native American context, or did you ever heard calling modern Bavarians or Basques a "tribe"?)
B) that the whole people are politicaly bound to eachother, living in a primitive, pre-state political entity/organisation.

Imply A) is obviously of racist Vicorian origin, while B) is just totaly wrong. There are no tribal entities. If the people dont developed a state they lived either in nomadic clans or in more or less isolated villages, ruled by an elder/chief, but definetly not in a big, primitive entity linked by ethnicity.


Hope this explanation helps.

 

[mcmanusaur]

The AI is terrible at this though. These are literally some of the hardest types of problems to model when you have humans in the loop, with pure massively instantiated AI you are going to get crap solutions. Like how currently the Ottoman AI will invade over the Sahara to siege useless provinces in central Africa; I'd expect the AI to regularly murder itself trying to expand in the Great Lakes region. You might hard code the AI to avoid crossing those attritionary murder spots ... but then you open up a huge number of tactical exploits.

I'm not sure why you think giving this region decent treatment would be such an issue for the AI. It's not a case where corridors between wasteland are even necessary. Only the deepest parts of the Congo rainforest and the Kalahari desert need to remain wasteland. And no, "being 80% surrounded by wasteland gives a different experience" isn't a good reason to keep Africa how it is.

A large, large number fall outside of these cases. Most of French North America, for instance, was government directed settlement (on the forts & fur model) that went up the Mississippi & St. Lawrence and was centrally directed. Spanish settlement along the Brazos, Rio Grande, etc. was also centrally directed at times.

Dutch South Africa also settled into the interior with as much state direct as occurred from the coast.

And of course there is Australia which was a penal colony with direct crown control of where settlement was allowed to occur.

The truth is settlement was much less government directed than anything in EUIV, on the other hand, the resulting colonies were much less independent than any sort of colonial nation.

Colonial nations are by no means a perfect abstraction (I hated it when Paradox announced them), and I would love to see a brand new system for colonization, but it's not practical. Currently the game handles the cases you mention with colonial nations and that would stay the same, since my solution is built around existing mechanics.

 

[mcmanusaur]

Guys you know that every province has a loot bar, so why not reducing the supply limit world wide, making this the base supply limit but depending on the loot bar of the province (full, half or empty) your army is on, the supply limit is higher the fuller the loot bar is, and if you want to field a larger armies you can use more cavalry, which allows you to field even more troops but for an increasingly limited time (has cavalry reduces the loot bar quicker). Doesn't this represent period logistics more accurately?

This is a really interesting idea, and would encourage more maneuvering which is always a good thing. That said, I'm not sure whether the current siege dynamics would work with this system.

 

[BrokenSky]

The author of that text gives the same vague explanation you get from everyone who tries to explain "tribal": "A primitive society and at the same time political entity, which is linked together by ethnicity, biology, culture etc."

And this is exactly the reason why "tribal" is outdated/wrong: It is basicaly an other word for people, but it implies

A) primitivenes on this whole people (And this is the reason why it used mostly in African or also native American context, or did you ever heard calling modern Bavarians or Basques a "tribe"?)
B) that the whole people are politicaly bound to eachother, living in a primitive, pre-state political entity/organisation.

Imply A) is obviously of racist Vicorian origin, while B) is just totaly wrong. There are no tribal entities. If the people dont developed a state they lived either in nomadic clans or in more or less isolated villages, ruled by an elder/chief, but definetly not in a big, primitive entity linked by ethnicity.


Hope this explanation helps.

It's more like being linked by being one of a group of families of common decent to a shared ancestor, different from the shared ancestor of other local tribes.
E.g. The 12 tribes of Israel being descended from the 12 sons of that guy who was Joseph's dad I think?
The main reason modern people are not considered tribal is the interbreeding makes the distinction both nigh impossible and basically meaningless.
I think the Greek's had a word for something like this as a smaller group within a group though; oikos or something?
Basically within the Oikos you'd be kind of communist or family like in your sharing of resources, but you'd trade between different oikos-es. Yes that plural is completely wrong, I can't Greek.
I may be mistaken on this point however.

Wrt primitives, the implication is that once people start moving into Roman Style living (cities) the family group unit like tribe or Oikos gets mixed with others in the manner I have already mentioned as having happened, hence people who don't live in cities are A. Tribal and B. 'Primitive'.
wrt this being a Victorian idea, it's most likely at the latest a roman idea; stop being so [group mentality based on time period] against Victorians. What did Victorians ever do to you?

 

[LinusLinothorax]

It's more like being linked by being one of a group of families of common decent to a shared ancestor, different from the shared ancestor of other local tribes.
E.g. The 12 tribes of Israel being descended from the 12 sons of that guy who was Joseph's dad I think?

Dont know much about the whole Israelite thing, but what you are describing are not "tribes" but clans.

The main reason modern people are not considered tribal is the interbreeding makes the distinction both nigh impossible and basically meaningless.

Nah, the simple and sole reason people dont speak about tribes on specific people is because these are people are supposed to live in "civilized" states. You will never hear someone calling the modern Bavarians a tibe, nor the Basques nor the Han Chines. But you will hear them calling the Tuaregs a tribe, or the Dinka, or the Amazon Indians. Simply because they think these people are primitive. Thats why they get called "tribes".

Wrt primitives, the implication is that once people start moving into Roman Style living (cities) the family group unit like tribe or Oikos gets mixed with others in the manner I have already mentioned as having happened, hence people who don't live in cities are A. Tribal and B. 'Primitive'.

Many people who are supposed to be "tribal" (primitive) still lived in cities.

 

[Jomini]

So what you're saying is that having a fully depleted loot bar should reduce supply limit by a ton; maybe up to 80%? Because when loot bar is empty, the army has run out of supplies to loot. Having logistics trains would still be good IMO though; having a chain of occupied enemy and unoccupied owned provinces to the capital or the nearest fort (including unblocked sea tiles) should increase the rate of reinforcements from manpower. Not having these would make the better option resorting, as you mentioned, to locals (i.e. Mercenaries recruited in occupied provinces).

I thought this already occurred in that looting reduces supply.

Ideally, though most forts should fall before the loot bar empties if empty . Also Cavalry would need some rework as a siege well stocked with light cavalry had much greater area it could pillage to maintain sieges.

The historical situation allowing *easy* conquest of Aztec wouldn't work very well in the game with Borneo being 100% one nation or an Aztec that is literally the only remaining tag in Mesoamerica though. Picking up local mercenaries would be viable to an extent regardless, but not the same extent as having obviously hostile nations to each other in close proximity. From the perspective of playing as the native it just sucks right now. You get none of the politicking/pre-war contact/context, just a blind declaration out of nowhere from a nation you can't even contact.

I don't disagree, I have never suggested that the game actually have 200 men armies take over major empires ... I just don't want a wildly ahistorical logistics system that will tank the AI. Likewise I do not see how adding a bunch of remote province in interior Africa actually makes playing natives more enjoyable. Right now if you want to play an isolated African nation with your back against the wall you have Kongo.

Adding in the Great Lakes State and ahistorical avenues of attack just makes all these states play more and more like everything else.

You run into a real problem from a gameplay standpoint if you allow easy pickups of merc from distant nations. It would destroy the viability of the nations and still wouldn't resemble a plausible model most likely, especially in cases where we have no historical examples against which to compare (a truly united Mesoamerica for example, even culture converted in game terms etc).

Europeans won with mercs against much more powerful states than united Mesoamericans. Long term European defeats are pretty rare be it in China or elsewhere. I see no possible way that a state with deep draft oceanic transport, cannon, and mass horses is going to lose a long campaign there.

I find this doubtful, since territory in Africa changes hands so rarely after the early goings. The Europeans typically leave Kongo and Kanem Bornu untouched, and I've watched Portugal fail wars against Mutapa because the AI doesn't plan transports out well. Sure, the player could bait the Ottomans there, but as you already pointed out the Ottomans are perfectly willing to bleed out their manpower long before reaching that region anyway.

If the Ottomans cannot get military access to your homeland (because Poland and Austria hate them), they sometimes will march doom stacks through the Sunni corridors leaving the homeland open. This will not get better with more states.

I'd like to see at least one more narrow corridor in Africa between West/East and a lot more vision for the sub-Saharan states in Africa (especially West Africa), mostly because of the limited diplomacy and constrained early game.

But this is literally what makes these starts unique. You cannot just go conquest in the other direction or create stable front with a game-long ally. Some starts should be limited diplomacy and constrained it makes them different.

I'm not sure why you think giving this region decent treatment would be such an issue for the AI. It's not a case where corridors between wasteland are even necessary. Only the deepest parts of the Congo rainforest and the Kalahari desert need to remain wasteland. And no, "being 80% surrounded by wasteland gives a different experience" isn't a good reason to keep Africa how it is.

Being surrounded on all sides by land that did not afford large scale state army invasions was the Kongolese strategic situation. If you look at their historical troop arrangements, their fortifications, their wars ... it all is oriented toward the Atlantic. You will obliterate all this history. If you want more states because you like states more than historical accuracy, that's fine, but adding in the Great Lakes as an East-West vector is by far the biggest deviation from historical strategy and conditions you could make in Africa.

Colonial nations are by no means a perfect abstraction (I hated it when Paradox announced them), and I would love to see a brand new system for colonization, but it's not practical. Currently the game handles the cases you mention with colonial nations and that would stay the same, since my solution is built around existing mechanics.

We have many recorded instances of the central European state directing fortification of key locations (e.g. Detroit and Mackinac) which in turn became settlements.

I frankly do not see what either of the proposals here actually seeks to add to gameplay.

Ahistorically opening up the Great Lakes region gives us more nations which will be so terribly fun because .... reasons?
Ahistorically limiting colonization will make the game more fun because ... reasons?
Ahistorically having a logistic system that discourages oceanic transport is more fun because reasons??

The most important historical things to maintain are the strategic balances around the globe. The best feeling of history is looking at the situation and feeling some of the same pulls that historical leaders felt. Throwing a lot of that away is a lot to pay just so we can have a few prettier blobs of color or such things.

 

[Duarte]

This is a really interesting idea, and would encourage more maneuvering which is always a good thing. That said, I'm not sure whether the current siege dynamics would work with this system.

well at the start of the game were armies are smaller the attrition should not be that big of a problem, in the late game battles should matter more than sieges therefore attrition would again not be a big problem.

 

[BrokenSky]

Dont know much about the whole Israelite thing, but what you are describing are not "tribes" but clans.

Same thing, probably. I don't know what a clan is, but a tribe is like that which I described; like the Israelite tribes or Oikos-es.

Wrt the rest, we could have a long discussion about it, but frankly it isn't really important to the topic and I don't want to derail the thread.

Ahistorically limiting colonization will make the game more fun because ... reasons?

Because historically the entire world was not colonised by the mid 1700s, so the colonization is already ahistorical, and the objective of implementing limits is to make it more historical.

 

[Jomini]

Dont know much about the whole Israelite thing, but what you are describing are not "tribes" but clans.

The tribes of Israel are the descendants of Jacob (also named Israel) who settled in Palestine as recounted in the old testament of the Bible. They show up in Exodus as extended familial groupings working as an underclass that is settled in Egypt. They leave (the whole Moses/Red Sea thing) and then wander for 40+ years through the Sinai before conquering land on both sides of the Jordan river. They then settle the place with cities allotted to each tribe; these tribal identities are then maintained for over 1,000 years both during settlement and when tribes are relocated under the Assyrians and Babylonians. After the Jewish revolt, and the destruction of the Jewish temple, these identities slip away following the genocide and diaspora (though they had been under strong pressure following the reigns of the Hasmonean and Herodian lineages.

In the Christian world, the term tribe was used to positively refer to these groups and was the only useage of note for at least 1,000 years.

In a nutshell, English got its word tribe from the French who in turn got it from the Romans, however its meaning has always been derived from the Bible. In the languages of the Bible (Koine Greek and Hebrew) the concept in question is phyle (from which the word phylum derives) and it means any of the following: clan, tribe, or race. These three terms have remained ill defined in the eight centuries until today.

For a brief period tribe began to take on negative connotations with the colonial powers, but shortly thereafter you had all that "noble savage" junk that made it positive connotation. Such that it was used as form of nationalist bride in British Israelism (the idea that the British are the "lost 10 tribes" of Israel deported by the Assyrians).

Nowadays nobody has a good definition, but most Americans still go back to the Biblical source.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Europeans won with mercs against much more powerful states than united Mesoamericans. Long term European defeats are pretty rare be it in China or elsewhere. I see no possible way that a state with deep draft oceanic transport, cannon, and mass horses is going to lose a long campaign there.

Of course not, but those aren't modeled in the game, and having to handle more areas (due to a unified nation with minimal credible threats near it aside the invading nation) means at minimum extra boats and bodies abroad, increasingly difficult to justify if it leaves you exposed elsewhere or is too costly.

If the Ottomans cannot get military access to your homeland (because Poland and Austria hate them), they sometimes will march doom stacks through the Sunni corridors leaving the homeland open. This will not get better with more states.

Just checking to make sure I'm understanding correctly: you're referring to a case where a human player has land in Africa but is based in Europe, and the Ottomans can't get to Europe so they go to Africa? I mean I guess that could work against them, but so could dropping their armies piecemeal using transports and losing them all (you can for example wear AI Portugal down to ~6 regiments at home as they suicide their army piecemeal in Africa). Keeping the AI away from low-yield war score is probably the better draw to handle this scenario. Marching across the Sahara sucks, but so does shipping 10k from Borneo to England and getting insta-wiped. Moving to occupy overseas (to the nation owning it), fort-less territory is crap. I have owned land in Brazil with Mali and the AI will idiotically land there and siege it out, attaining barely any war score, taking attrition (quite a bit at the tropical 3% floor), and losing more war score to me because I have the war goal.

Ahistorically opening up the Great Lakes region gives us more nations which will be so terribly fun because .... reasons?

There are a number of starts in this game where your position is constrained in a way it's hard to envision as fun. Pre-West Africa vision Kongo is just such an example, you just sat there for 50 years or more. The issue with these positions is that their "uniqueness" winds up making it so the player has no options. No ally? More like no diplomacy left while you're waiting out truces and improving relations with vassals. While that wasteland and limited movement offer some potential tactical considerations, they don't manifest in practice because of the uncolonized provinces across the Sahara and terrible vision in West Africa. What's so unique then, you get to catch Iberians with a -2 landing penalty?

Great lakes region ideally would open some interchange between West/East Africa, but I could settle for West Africa simply being capable of seeing/reaching East Africa and vice versa, because it would make exploration rush have less incentive in East Africa and give West Africa a look at something other than "sit on Iberian colony for ticking war score then westernize and sit there more until your tech is viable to compete". Right now West Africa in particular is a real drag from 1480-1550, for the same reason Mesoamerica is...it's like there's a design goal of doing nothing there for ~1/8 of the game. At least with East Africa you have a route that doesn't require a blind no-CB just to leave the region, and can pick fights in Middle East, India, even SEA. West Africa can...no-CB Morocco, if you have conquered or are Timbuktu...which with the new coring rules carries virtually no practical utility.

 

[Krajzen]

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.

Europe is the most boring continent, I have seen 3589305 historical franchises reducing world history to the ignorant white_egypt - greece - rome - france/england/germany/italy/russia/usa scheme. I don't care hobbystically about any part of European history except maybe Balkans, I'm going to listen about Napoleon and all those boring known guys every week till my death anyway.

Now, on the other hand, history of South - East Asia and Persia are my favourites.


My last europa universalis games were:

sikh Punjab
sunni Uzbek->Bukhara
shinto Japan
theravada Lan Xang
shia Persia

and I had more fun with each one of these than with Sweden and France (though I have to admit, playing Poland was awesome, but so were Iroquis); the only european countries I'd like to play are Netherlands, or maybe Russia formed as Smolensk.

But I have more important priorities! Hindu Mysore, some pagan from Africa, Maya...

 

[Jomini]

Of course not, but those aren't modeled in the game, and having to handle more areas (due to a unified nation with minimal credible threats near it aside the invading nation) means at minimum extra boats and bodies abroad, increasingly difficult to justify if it leaves you exposed elsewhere or is too costly.

I'm not sure I understand your objection. Europe should win most conflicts with overseas empires cheaply without endangering their continental possessions. Adding in a logistic system in order to try to make such conquests less likely by eliminating the way in which the AI accomplishes this currently is counterproductive.

Just checking to make sure I'm understanding correctly: you're referring to a case where a human player has land in Africa but is based in Europe, and the Ottomans can't get to Europe so they go to Africa? I mean I guess that could work against them, but so could dropping their armies piecemeal using transports and losing them all (you can for example wear AI Portugal down to ~6 regiments at home as they suicide their army piecemeal in Africa). Keeping the AI away from low-yield war score is probably the better draw to handle this scenario. Marching across the Sahara sucks, but so does shipping 10k from Borneo to England and getting insta-wiped. Moving to occupy overseas (to the nation owning it), fort-less territory is crap. I have owned land in Brazil with Mali and the AI will idiotically land there and siege it out, attaining barely any war score, taking attrition (quite a bit at the tropical 3% floor), and losing more war score to me because I have the war goal.

The two obvious cases I've had are:
1. I declare on a Ottoman ally (naval invasion Tunsian Sicily - I had trashed Aragon during their war). They cannot reach me. Instead of fighting me at sea. They sent their armies down to my colonies in West Africa (I do not know which route they took). The attrition taken got them into a loan death spiral (literally, I never fought them). They imploded (bankrupcy I think) and then got eaten by Serbia, the White Sheep, Mamelukes, Poland, and Venice. Hyperconnectivity encourages such suicidal behavior by the AI.
2. I declared war on an AI ally of Ethiopia to take Socotra. Once I have that, I notice Ethiopia's armies are marching through West Africa. By the time they turn around I hold all of Ethiopia's defensible terrain.

So now we are talking about yet another ahistorical invasion route, that will have to have horrid attrition. It is like we just decide to nerf the African AIs more and more to make them less and less challenging.

There are a number of starts in this game where your position is constrained in a way it's hard to envision as fun.

So? If you don't find those states fun there are many, many other options.

Pre-West Africa vision Kongo is just such an example, you just sat there for 50 years or more. The issue with these positions is that their "uniqueness" winds up making it so the player has no options. No ally? More like no diplomacy left while you're waiting out truces and improving relations with vassals. While that wasteland and limited movement offer some potential tactical considerations, they don't manifest in practice because of the uncolonized provinces across the Sahara and terrible vision in West Africa. What's so unique then, you get to catch Iberians with a -2 landing penalty?

None of this has anything to do with an ahistorical route to East Africa. If Kongo is that boring give them earlier vision of west Africa. Or ideally make a mechanism so Adm 5/Exploration is not a required element of fun for such starts.

What is fun about Kongo is that you face a single vector of attack. That is bad in that you have few diplomatic options. However it also allows you to have a game allows you to truly have a single front colonial game.

Great lakes region ideally would open some interchange between West/East Africa, but I could settle for West Africa simply being capable of seeing/reaching East Africa and vice versa, because it would make exploration rush have less incentive in East Africa and give West Africa a look at something other than "sit on Iberian colony for ticking war score then westernize and sit there more until your tech is viable to compete". Right now West Africa in particular is a real drag from 1480-1550, for the same reason Mesoamerica is...it's like there's a design goal of doing nothing there for ~1/8 of the game. At least with East Africa you have a route that doesn't require a blind no-CB just to leave the region, and can pick fights in Middle East, India, even SEA. West Africa can...no-CB Morocco, if you have conquered or are Timbuktu...which with the new coring rules carries virtually no practical utility.

These are deeper problems than lack of partners. Game mechanics right now have MP bottlenecks that basically overwhelm most other factors. Adding a few more tags and making the map more connected will not solve those.

 

[LRDK]

The problem is that those regions would end up being painted with Spain, Great Britain, Portugal or France. Instead of the native kingdoms, which would be even more ahistorical. Unlike America which is expected to be painted by those colonizers.
Of course I would like more realism (and better Madagascar).

Maybe a HUGE malus to colonisation, warfare, attrition, and administration, as well as increased unrest in African provinces in Africa ruled over by a non African nation, unless the nations capital is in Africa and at least 2 provinces are of that culture, including the capital. African colonies should have Local cultures after completion and African nations should have a casus belly against non African capital colonisers, and a strong penalty for not declaring war if colonies exceed a certain size or go too far inland, and African nations using the anti colonial causus belli join the war as allies, while the colonisers allies are not called in (the Brits didn't have allied help against the Zulus, as it was considered a local skirmish rather than a large war)

 

[zsImmortal]

I'm not sure I understand your objection. Europe should win most conflicts with overseas empires cheaply without endangering their continental possessions. Adding in a logistic system in order to try to make such conquests less likely by eliminating the way in which the AI accomplishes this currently is counterproductive.

What empires are we talking about? Because other than native americans, there is no situation where Europeans won most conflicts with EMPIRES cheaply during this period. They lost against the Mughals, it took 3 wars against the Maratha empire, including a defeat/status quo ante bellum in the first one. And circumstances are much more relevant to the British advances in India than actual military superiority. The Ming defeated the Portuguese and the Dutch.

If, say, India was unified and strong in the game, there's no way the Europeans should waltz in and take it. It's purely nonsensical. But the game allows it regardless of circumstances.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

The author of that text gives the same vague explanation you get from everyone who tries to explain "tribal": "A primitive society and at the same time political entity, which is linked together by ethnicity, biology, culture etc."

And this is exactly the reason why "tribal" is outdated/wrong: It is basicaly an other word for people, but it implies

A) primitivenes on this whole people (And this is the reason why it used mostly in African or also native American context, or did you ever heard calling modern Bavarians or Basques a "tribe"?)
B) that the whole people are politicaly bound to eachother, living in a primitive, pre-state political entity/organisation.

Imply A) is obviously of racist Vicorian origin, while B) is just totaly wrong. There are no tribal entities. If the people dont developed a state they lived either in nomadic clans or in more or less isolated villages, ruled by an elder/chief, but definetly not in a big, primitive entity linked by ethnicity.


Hope this explanation helps.

Oh come on, she gives a firm definition for her use of "primitive", and it isn't used as a derogatory word. Just because it's sometimes misused doesn't mean that it's completely devoid of valid usage.

She goes on to discuss the complexities and failures of the use of tribal terminology in Africa, and she holds up Arabian kinship-based intra-ethnic political entities as something of an archetypal version of the concept of a tribe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not sure I understand your objection. Europe should win most conflicts with overseas empires cheaply without endangering their continental possessions. Adding in a logistic system in order to try to make such conquests less likely by eliminating the way in which the AI accomplishes this currently is counterproductive.

My objection is that if the game is to allow them to win that way, it should properly model why they could win that way, otherwise the end result will just be to make some starts markedly worse without improving gameplay.

So now we are talking about yet another ahistorical invasion route, that will have to have horrid attrition. It is like we just decide to nerf the African AIs more and more to make them less and less challenging.

The issue is that the AI is going there when going there isn't indicated by sensible play, or even by analysis of what targets to attack or siege will lead to war score.

So? If you don't find those states fun there are many, many other options.

That's beside the point. What always escapes me is that when I point out a given region of the world is prone to "doing nothing" for 1/10 to 1/8 of the entire game's time period, the response is "if you don't like doing nothing, then ignore the region" rather than analyzing why that region may or may not be prone to doing nothing. Am I really in a minority in believing that doing nothing is not fun gameplay on the basis that doing nothing is not gameplay?

Or, if the region *isn't* about doing nothing during these years, as a player what am I expected to be doing that's fun?

These are deeper problems than lack of partners. Game mechanics right now have MP bottlenecks that basically overwhelm most other factors. Adding a few more tags and making the map more connected will not solve those.

I don't like the monarch point bottlenecks either, but they're not the sole factor in play. India for example does not share a nigh-guaranteed 50-70 year window of doing very little, in large part because its situation is different.

What is fun about Kongo is that you face a single vector of attack. That is bad in that you have few diplomatic options. However it also allows you to have a game allows you to truly have a single front colonial game.

Yes, you have 1 vector of attack, but unless you forfeit that, you are going to do nothing until ADM 5, then even more nothing while westernizing, then even more nothing while waiting for colonies to grow, until you can reach the new world, where guess what? Now there are multiple vectors of attack, including farming up war score on your CNs and stabhitting you, if the AI were competent enough to bother, or in practice stalling you out.

Or, you can conquer into West Africa, at which point you're basically a West African nation with a 2nd or 3rd landing point for Europeans, which is still doable and at least occupies 1444-1500.

Basically, doing nothing isn't "unique gameplay", because doing nothing isn't gameplay :/. Numerous nations that have achievements share this "doing nothing for long stretches" theme, almost entirely due to the *combination* of MP bottleneck and lack of vision in 1444 limiting their options. These nations are, from worst to least bad for 1.13, 1. Mesoamerica 2. North America 3. Andean tech group 4. West Africa.

 

[ImperatorLJ]

Personally, I don't understand why Paradox has yet to add the moon Europa to the game.

I mean, Europa is in the name! And I'm very passionate about that moon.

 

[ImperatorLJ]

But in all seriousness, I hope that each DLC keeps updating base mechanics and expanding a new area of the map.

I don't think Africa should be top priority on that list, especially due to China not having something, but I hope we get there one day.

 

[Demetrios]

Great Lakes area and Madagascar need more love.

Definitely - I said as much in my post as well. However, posts like ours are getting a bit drowned out among all the other subjects popping up in this thread!