Westernization is too easy and has too little effect in 1.8

[Eh up me duck]

It is absurd to compare what happens in-game to historical examples (which improved tech when they westernized) and only single out one unrealistic mechanic in a sea of them, and only when you don't like it.

Can you name another mechanic that only happened a single time throughout the entire time period?

You know what else is absurd? The notion that a RotW blob with as many resources as a standard European nation is fixed to tech at a worse rate. Even something nonsensical like Ming kicking England out of the British Isles still leaves Ming teching slower than England, even if England only owns some island out in the ocean somewhere.

Well this is a game based in history, so those two things are in no way equally absurd. A Western European nation becoming a world-power is infinitely more plausible than China becoming a world-power because the first one actually happened.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Can you name another mechanic that only happened a single time throughout the entire time period?

I'll do you one better. I'll name mechanics that never happened a single time.

1. Coalitions of 5+ members including great powers against nations with <4 provinces.
2. 15 year truces that would massively destabilize a nation to break.
3. Colonization being impossible where supplying 20000 troops is practical, even trivial.
4. Carpet conversion of religion across entire regions inside a century, with no loss to human capitol or technological progress.
5. Rebellions 2-4 times larger than the largest army a peaceful nation with the territory could possibly field, revolting for years w/o foreign support.
6. War score limitations (war score actively blocks historic peace deals in fact).
7. China starts behind Europe in tech, heck China starts behind hordes in tech.
8. 50 regiments of infantry and artillery in India in 1550, shipped straight from Europe, and nobody in Europe massacres the idiot who did it.
9. Artillery moving at the same speed as infantry with no logistic consideration on how you're moving heavy pieces whatsoever.
10. Annexing vassals reduces the rate at which one can improve his navy.

Even Wiz said straight up that he's not going to take selective history arguments seriously, and there's a good reason for that. You're essentially arguing against the viability of nations on the grounds of history in a game that actively diverges from history and has a longstanding patch history of making the game less realistic rather than more so in the name of gameplay. It's logically inconsistent and fails to hold up as a credible basis for hammering westernization.

Now, can you come up with a good gameplay reason it needs to be nerfed? The nations that need to westernize already start with such a disadvantage that no nation that does it is guaranteed to match, let alone outperform history. This is also the pre-industrial revolution timeframe where technological differences were less pronounced, so being "western" in the sense of 1700 is not the same thing as 1890.

Well this is a game based in history, so those two things are in no way equally absurd. A Western European nation becoming a world-power is infinitely more plausible than China becoming a world-power because the first one actually happened.

The ignorance is painful. Qing lasted this entire period, and the only European nation that fought it on land in a serious way lost (Russia), mostly due to supply issues with transporting troops to the eastern front before railroads were commonplace. Of course, in the game you can transport hundreds of thousands of troops across Siberia and if you micro them a bit, you can do so w/o attrition...and THAT's somehow okay while Qing westernizing to be competitive in such an ahistoric environment somehow isn't.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering though, given the nature of your first question. Only by covering your eyes can you possibly conclude that this game's basis in history is anything but extremely loose with large liberties taken.

 

[unmerged(652342)]

I'll do you one better. I'll name mechanics that never happened a single time.

1. Coalitions of 5+ members including great powers against nations with <4 provinces.
2. 15 year truces that would massively destabilize a nation to break.
3. Colonization being impossible where supplying 20000 troops is practical, even trivial.
4. Carpet conversion of religion across entire regions inside a century, with no loss to human capitol or technological progress.
5. Rebellions 2-4 times larger than the largest army a peaceful nation with the territory could possibly field, revolting for years w/o foreign support.
6. War score limitations (war score actively blocks historic peace deals in fact).
7. China starts behind Europe in tech, heck China starts behind hordes in tech.
8. 50 regiments of infantry and artillery in India in 1550, shipped straight from Europe, and nobody in Europe massacres the idiot who did it.
9. Artillery moving at the same speed as infantry with no logistic consideration on how you're moving heavy pieces whatsoever.
10. Annexing vassals reduces the rate at which one can improve his navy.

- just off the top of my head:
11. inflation accumulating only via some random happenings and government loans.
12. ancient oligarchic merchant republics being superior form of government than more modern constitutional ones.

1. Coalitions of 5+ members including great powers against nations with <4 provinces.

- could be abstracted like just temporary alliance against common enemy and not just historical grand coalitions.

2. 15 year truces that would massively destabilize a nation to break.

- just a game balance thing, how otherwise you could prevent rapid truce breaking expansion in the lands of already beaten enemy? Its unrealistic but i dont know how this could be balanced otherwise.

9. Artillery moving at the same speed as infantry with no logistic consideration on how you're moving heavy pieces whatsoever.

- ingame army speed is abstracted as speed of supply wagons, thats why cavalry are not moving faster than infantry and artillery too.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- just off the top of my head:
11. inflation accumulating only via some random happenings and government loans.
12. ancient oligarchic merchant republics being superior form of government than more modern constitutional ones.

- could be abstracted like just temporary alliance against common enemy and not just historical grand coalitions.

- just a game balance thing, how otherwise you could prevent rapid truce breaking expansion in the lands of already beaten enemy? Its unrealistic but i dont know how this could be balanced otherwise.


- ingame army speed is abstracted as speed of supply wagons, thats why cavalry are not moving faster than infantry and artillery too.

My whole point is that westernizing is an abstraction and that it is inane to single it out in a game full of heavy abstraction unless you have a strong gameplay reason to do so...which people who decry westernization seem to mysteriously lack.

 

[Freudia]

- just a game balance thing, how otherwise you could prevent rapid truce breaking expansion in the lands of already beaten enemy? Its unrealistic but i dont know how this could be balanced otherwise.

Did you play back when the truce timer was 5 years? The new truce timers does nothing to discourage trucebreaking; if anything, it actually encourages it, especially in the hands of certain fringe nations with an incredibly small amount of targets.

Besides, why should a nation who gets slammed be expected to recover in time for the next war? You're giving a bogus advantage to the loser.

 

[unmerged(652342)]

My whole point is that westernizing is an abstraction and that it is inane to single it out in a game full of heavy abstraction unless you have a strong gameplay reason to do so...which people who decry westernization seem to mysteriously lack.

- its a terrible abstraction, i pointed out less terrible abstractions from your list. BTW instead of arguing with that guy you could just read his signature.

Did you play back when the truce timer was 5 years? The new truce timers does nothing to discourage trucebreaking; if anything, it actually encourages it, especially in the hands of certain fringe nations with an incredibly small amount of targets.

- i never played any PDX game.

Besides, why should a nation who gets slammed be expected to recover in time for the next war? You're giving a bogus advantage to the loser.

- i dont know, game balance maybe?

 

[Freudia]

- i dont know, game balance maybe?

The notion that the game can be balanced with the disparity of starts is kind of a farce. It's also an unnecessary protection shield for large nations that small nations do not get, as they can just be outright annexed. Annexed nations don't have truces.

Anyways that's a discussion for a different thread.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- its a terrible abstraction, i pointed out less terrible abstractions from your list. BTW instead of arguing with that guy you could just read his signature.

They are both wildly ahistorical abstractions. Saying one is less terrible than the other carries no plausible weight, in fact we've yet to see substantive reasoning that such abstractions are necessarily bad.

It does get old that people keep comparing in-game westernization to something that Russia or Japan did though. People doing that really need to put down the pretend unicorns. Russia and Japan, when they westernized, gained technology. They didn't stagnate technology for a decade or two, then finish exactly where they started only with the ability to catch up over another 5-10 decades. The gameplay "tech group" switch is some kind of implication of innovated processes, but it is not representative of the westernizations of Russia or Japan because the reward from it is overtly different.

If you count tech catch up time, westernization is a 20-30 year process if you do it in the 1400's, a 50-60 year process if you do it early 1500's, and a 80+ year process if you do it later, as you still have to buy (discounted) techs and come up with the points for ideas. As a nation like Sunda, when I westernized in the 1520's I was not current on admin or diplomatic tech with ideas until well into the 1600's, whereas a western nation with a similar expansion curve would have been current the entire time. That's a big advantage as it stands, plenty of disparity between a western nation and one that westernizes. Of course, most of the players in this thread complaining about westernization have never actually attempted a solid playthrough with countries that try it and are talking out of their backside without actual knowledge of the mechanic they're complaining about. Most of them, when pressed, are utterly incapable of actually coming up with a cost analysis for westernization, are unaware of the methodology, and are either hot and bothered by the aesthetics of one silly hat vs another or worse want conquest of Asia to be even more of a laughingstock in terms of ease than it already is. There are a few that just want hardcore realism in all aspects and as such have a respectable, non-selective history opinion, but vanilla isn't the place to discuss that as it doesn't even make a passing attempt at it.

 

[unmerged(652342)]

The notion that the game can be balanced with the disparity of starts is kind of a farce.

- OFC thats why PDX constantly nerfing/buffing/re-balancing everything in the game. And OFC this game community thinks same, thats why all those nerf Moskovy(aka trashkovy(c)TheMeInTeam)/buff hordes and "Nation-X - OP" threads shows up constantly.

It's also an unnecessary protection shield for large nations that small nations do not get, as they can just be outright annexed. Annexed nations don't have truces.

- too bad for them!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- OFC thats why PDX constantly nerfing/buffing/re-balancing everything in the game. And OFC this game community thinks same, thats why all those nerf Moskovy(aka trashkovy(c)TheMeInTeam)/buff hordes and "Nation-X - OP" threads shows up constantly.
- too bad for them!

The proper spelling is Trashcovy. The flag is a garbage can, and the NIs have been tweaked also .

Rather than calling for horde buffs, the question all along is why they needed to be nerfed double digit times. Apparently in 1.8 they had to be nerfed again, but this go around poor Trashcovy took it on the chin too, with lucky Poland tossing boosted generals onto a large number of bodies and the reworked rebels and religious leagues taking AI Russia on non-stop pain train rides. Although at least it's super easy for Russia to westernize again, not that such reflects history in their case either.

 

[unmerged(652342)]

They are both wildly ahistorical abstractions. Saying one is less terrible than the other carries no plausible weight, in fact we've yet to see substantive reasoning that such abstractions are necessarily bad.

- ufff, nope, "westernization" (and also all other MP related stuff like tech groups and... MP itself) is completely different level of abstraction both from historical/realistic POW and in "terribleness" in comparison to things like ingame "little" coalitions( ie just temporary alliances against common foe), truce breaking=destabilization (ie game balance thing to give a defeated nation chance to recover) and army speed (which in reality is not that big of a scratch because army is indeed moving at a speed of its supply wagons).
Things like army speed/little coalitions/truce break destabilization could be explained either like a game balance mechanics or as a very good abstraction of reality. On the other hand all MP related things are just pure magical BS that does not have any real explanation other than - western europeans are 100% smart, eastern european are 15% more stupid than western europeans, turks are 20% more stupid than western europeans, arabs/iranians - 40% more stupid than western europeans and native americans are just idiots whose only purpose in life is to be conquered by WHITE MAN; Or monarchs personally advancing tech in the country and if the monarch is bad he will still advance tech in the same rate but will not improve infrastructure... Because we all know that infrastructure have zero influence on a nation in real world... New tactics would be invented in cowshed, new ship design could be invented in fisher tent and new architecture principles could be invented in barn.

The proper spelling is Trashcovy. The flag is a garbage can, and the NIs have been tweaked also .

-
If I took his statement seriously, it would be a heavy insult to his intelligence and I wouldn't want to do that. I'd rather assume he was kidding as that seems more sensible and it's better to give people the benefit of the doubt.(c)TheMeInTeam

Rather than calling for horde buffs, the question all along is why they needed to be nerfed double digit times. Apparently in 1.8 they had to be nerfed again, but this go around poor Trashcovy took it on the chin too, with lucky Poland tossing boosted generals onto a large number of bodies and the reworked rebels and religious leagues taking AI Russia on non-stop pain train rides. Although at least it's super easy for Russia to westernize again, not that such reflects history in their case either.

- AI hordes were nerfed only once - in AoW with introduction of permanent 25% LA. Player controlled hordes "nerfs" does not matter at all, for obvious reasons.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- ufff, nope, "westernization" (and also all other MP related stuff like tech groups and... MP itself) is completely different level of abstraction both from historical/realistic POW and in "terribleness" in comparison to things like ingame "little" coalitions( ie just temporary alliances against common foe), truce breaking=destabilization (ie game balance thing to give a defeated nation chance to recover) and army speed (which in reality is not that big of a scratch because army is indeed moving at a speed of its supply wagons).

"Ufff, nope".

Westernization is there for game balance. Specifically, its design is to make ROTW *potentially* viable. It is no less plausible than a fully occupied nation refusing peace of any kind whatsoever (even white peace) "because coalition" or massive destabilization from copying historical war timelines.

Things like army speed/little coalitions/truce break destabilization could be explained either like a game balance mechanics or as a very good abstraction of reality. On the other hand all MP related things are just pure magical BS that does not have any real explanation other than - western europeans are 100% smart, eastern european are 15% more stupid than western europeans, turks are 20% more stupid than western europeans, arabs/iranians - 40% more stupid than western europeans and native americans are just idiots whose only purpose in life is to be conquered by WHITE MAN; Or monarchs personally advancing tech in the country and if the monarch is bad he will still advance tech in the same rate but will not improve infrastructure

Oh. I see. I believe I have been taking the wrong approach what you've been posting here all along ^_^. I'm not going to say the monarch point model is a good one, because it isn't. Westernization is just something that makes the flawed framework a bit more workable.

If I took his statement seriously, it would be a heavy insult to his intelligence and I wouldn't want to do that. I'd rather assume he was kidding as that seems more sensible and it's better to give people the benefit of the doubt.(c)TheMeInTeam

It would be terrible indeed to take me seriously wrt the Muscovy hate . Assuming I'm kidding is the accurate assumption.

- AI hordes were nerfed only once - in AoW with introduction of permanent 25% LA. Player controlled hordes "nerfs" does not matter at all, for obvious reasons.

That's actually not true. The following nerfs are all applicable to the AI:

- LA floor
- Lengthened house of peace timer (even the AI got good rulers from it, arguably even more often as it wars less)
- Inability to westernize while in horde government (this was a HEAVY AI nerf, as it only rarely meets the requirements to reform, whereas before it didn't have to do so)
- Removal of sacking event (AI got this also).
- Requirement of reform to form nations like Mughals and Qing (which the AI did on somewhat rare occasions, but it did happen).
- Split culture groups causes more instability

The AI doesn't really use foreign cores for example, but more nerfs than not hit the AI too.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

They are both wildly ahistorical abstractions. Saying one is less terrible than the other carries no plausible weight, in fact we've yet to see substantive reasoning that such abstractions are necessarily bad.

It does get old that people keep comparing in-game westernization to something that Russia or Japan did though. People doing that really need to put down the pretend unicorns. Russia and Japan, when they westernized, gained technology. They didn't stagnate technology for a decade or two, then finish exactly where they started only with the ability to catch up over another 5-10 decades. The gameplay "tech group" switch is some kind of implication of innovated processes, but it is not representative of the westernizations of Russia or Japan because the reward from it is overtly different.

If you count tech catch up time, westernization is a 20-30 year process if you do it in the 1400's, a 50-60 year process if you do it early 1500's, and a 80+ year process if you do it later, as you still have to buy (discounted) techs and come up with the points for ideas. As a nation like Sunda, when I westernized in the 1520's I was not current on admin or diplomatic tech with ideas until well into the 1600's, whereas a western nation with a similar expansion curve would have been current the entire time. That's a big advantage as it stands, plenty of disparity between a western nation and one that westernizes. Of course, most of the players in this thread complaining about westernization have never actually attempted a solid playthrough with countries that try it and are talking out of their backside without actual knowledge of the mechanic they're complaining about. Most of them, when pressed, are utterly incapable of actually coming up with a cost analysis for westernization, are unaware of the methodology, and are either hot and bothered by the aesthetics of one silly hat vs another or worse want conquest of Asia to be even more of a laughingstock in terms of ease than it already is. There are a few that just want hardcore realism in all aspects and as such have a respectable, non-selective history opinion, but vanilla isn't the place to discuss that as it doesn't even make a passing attempt at it.

Yes, the lack of an instant tech boost for finishing Westernization is part of the reason I started this thread in the first place. Adapting your society to use Western technology and ideals should bring your tech up significantly when you do it (as is what happened when Japan and Russia did so historically). Heck, it might make a fair bit of sense for tech levels to unlock for free as you progress through Westernization, to represent the societal reforms happening. Rather then just having everything suddenly finish at the same time, with everyone being perfectly happy with the result.

 

[BritNavFan]

Now, can you come up with a good gameplay reason it needs to be nerfed?

I don't know whether it needs to be nerfed, per se, but the game could certainly be made a considerably better by rethinking it. Partly because it's boring, partly because it doesn't always do what it's advertised as doing (supposedly you're trading temporary unrest for technological advancement, but you don't necessarily get either), partly because it can be (and often is) really gamey, partly because the language used doesn't remotely correspond with what happened in real life. (I think "Qing will be able to hold off European countries like Russia without 'Westernizing'" would be better than "Qing can easily 'Westernize' in order to make it able to hold off European countries").

The way it is right now, North American nations (for an example that I've played since the latest DLC) play like European countries with fewer options (but an immense amount of room to colonize without opposition). That's not a very interesting game.

But you're apparently desperate to defend a boring game mechanic, and your logic seems to be "it's what's currently in the game so it's the best system possible", so, whatever.

 

[BritNavFan]

Cultural westernisation was rare. Off the top of my head, only Russia actually adopted any programme of trying to emulate western society during the game era. Following the EUIV period a number of different countries did, with the most prominent examples being Japan and Turkey.

You don't think the emergence of Sikhism counts? It seems to me that they were trying to combine the best of Hinduism, Islam, and European culture.

Military westernisation though was frequently attempted in the EUIV period all around the world.

 

[Fishman786]

You don't think the emergence of Sikhism counts? It seems to me that they were trying to combine the best of Hinduism, Islam, and European culture.

Not sure what you mean by 'European culture'. Guru Nanak Dev ji possibly went to Europe (apparently the Vatican confirmed it or something) but there's very little written about that part of his life. The Guru Granth Sahib contains references to a number of European countries, for instance Byzantium (in the past tense) and France, but doesn't speak extensively about Christianity.

Also it's something of a misconception that Sikhism is a combination of Hinduism and Islam. There are similarities to both, but there are also a lot of similarities with, say, Buddhism or Christianity. Really Sikhism looks like different things to different people.


Anyway, Sikhism appeared long before 'westernisation' became a phenomenon, and it appeared in a region of India which had little contact with Europe (Panjab was the last part of the Subcontinent to be conquered by Britain, remaining an independent kingdom until the 1840s).

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I was thinking about a way to potentially fix one part of the problem with Westernization as it currently is in game:

1) The first time a nation hits 25% Westernization, they get an event for, "Modernizing the army" which gives 2 (or more, depending on tech disparity) free military tech levels and a modifier for reduced military tech cost based on the nation's tech group.
2) The first time a nation hits 50% Westernization, they get an event for, "Modernizing the navy" with a similar effect to above, but for diplo.
3) "Modernizing the government" at 75%, same as above for admin.
4) Finishing Westernization gives a free tech in all categories, and removes all the above modifiers.
5) Failing to Westernize completely, or cancelling it, leaves you with the modernization modifiers intact, basically halving the tech group penalties in those categories anyway, allowing for a partial Westernization.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't know whether it needs to be nerfed, per se, but the game could certainly be made a considerably better by rethinking it. Partly because it's boring, partly because it doesn't always do what it's advertised as doing (supposedly you're trading temporary unrest for technological advancement, but you don't necessarily get either), partly because it can be (and often is) really gamey, partly because the language used doesn't remotely correspond with what happened in real life. (I think "Qing will be able to hold off European countries like Russia without 'Westernizing'" would be better than "Qing can easily 'Westernize' in order to make it able to hold off European countries").

The way it is right now, North American nations (for an example that I've played since the latest DLC) play like European countries with fewer options (but an immense amount of room to colonize without opposition). That's not a very interesting game.

But you're apparently desperate to defend a boring game mechanic, and your logic seems to be "it's what's currently in the game so it's the best system possible", so, whatever.

To be clear, I'm down for a complete rework of the monarch point system and area disparity, but not in the nature of the oft-asserted "nations shouldn't be able to westernize because history even though the in-game version looks nothing like history, similar to other mechanics in the game".

 

[unmerged(652342)]

"Ufff, nope".

Westernization is there for game balance. Specifically, its design is to make ROTW *potentially* viable. It is no less plausible than a fully occupied nation refusing peace of any kind whatsoever (even white peace) "because coalition" or massive destabilization from copying historical war timelines.

- i dont see how current "westernization" mechanic makes non-western nations viable. Current westernization system penalizes them and not even closely resembles real life historical country modernization. MM mod made far better work in representing country modernization than EU 3/4.

Oh. I see. I believe I have been taking the wrong approach what you've been posting here all along ^_^. I'm not going to say the monarch point model is a good one, because it isn't. Westernization is just something that makes the flawed framework a bit more workable.

- but still terribad, far more terribad than coalitions, army speed and truce breaking.

That's actually not true. The following nerfs are all applicable to the AI:

- LA floor
- Lengthened house of peace timer (even the AI got good rulers from it, arguably even more often as it wars less)
- Inability to westernize while in horde government (this was a HEAVY AI nerf, as it only rarely meets the requirements to reform, whereas before it didn't have to do so)

- prior to first "westernization" rebalance i never saw any AI nation in the game successfully westernizing. And considering that AI hordes closest european neighbor is your beloved Trashocovy, their chances at westernization was closer to zero anyway.

- Removal of sacking event (AI got this also).

- 1 legitimacy, 2 prestige and -0.25 war exhaustion after successful siege would hardly help AI horde nations. But i personally mourn those events because of flavor reasons.

- Requirement of reform to form nations like Mughals and Qing (which the AI did on somewhat rare occasions, but it did happen).
- Split culture groups causes more instability

- never in my 602 EU4 hours i saw AI horde forming Mughals or Quing. Manchus were always conquered either by Korea or Japan and Timmies either imploded or just sit around doing nothing.
As for the culture split, putting almost all hordes in one group was wrong too and it actually nerfs your beloved Trashcoovy too, because it can no loger tolerate tartars.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

- but still terribad, far more terribad than coalitions, army speed and truce breaking.

Debatable, though other than army speed 1.8 improved some of those at least.

- prior to first "westernization" rebalance i never saw any AI nation in the game successfully westernizing. And considering that AI hordes closest european neighbor is your beloved Trashocovy, their chances at westernization was closer to zero anyway.

I've seen AI form Mughals and Qing multiple times pre-1.7, although I've played this game a little too much.

However, the closest European neighbor to a horde that is western is Genoa, and it begins bordering a horde. Keep in mind that originally Russia had an event or mission or some such to westernize it too.

- 1 legitimacy, 2 prestige and -0.25 war exhaustion after successful siege would hardly help AI horde nations. But i personally mourn those events because of flavor reasons.

All of those things would help, significantly. Maybe not these days after they ate all the other nerfs but back then sure.