Westernization is too easy and has too little effect in 1.8

[unmerged(652342)]

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

- never saw this. And majority of my EU4 play hours are from 1.1-1.5.

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.

- Genoa are typically get eaten by Crimea extremely fast. And after this here comes the Trashcovy.
As for the automatic westernization of Russia, in what version they removed it? I remember that PDX advertised Russia's automatic westernization as a part of its DHE, but did it even make it to release? Because i frankly cant remember westernized Russia too, i saw Ottoman attempts at westernization many times (all unsuccessful), but not Russia.

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

- i dont see how such small bonuses that can be acquired only under specific circumstances could help AI nation with 175% tech speed and no upgradeable troops.

 

[Osman Pasha]

Westernization shouldn't even be that difficult...

 

[Huanglukuzhu]

I'm highly in favor of a system like this. The advantage of Western would be that going from Medieval to Renaissance to Enlightenment would be easier for them, than going to enlightened would be for other groups.

It has been done by a EU3 mod.

 

[Ultrix Prime]

Westernization(somehow it feels like it should be called modernization rather than westernization) as it currently stands is pretty much a waste of time. The only thing I got out of it as far as I could see was slightly faster tech progression and that was about it. So it's basically a lot of hassle for no reward.

The reward is called math. A muslim tech westernizing breaks even and then shows a 40% ROI after 3 1/3d levels in each of the 3 technologies. Thus doing it early on saves 240 MP per tech per level thereafter for a gross savings of 720 MPs across the board. Multiply that by the overall average number of levels after the 3 1/3d levels it essentially requires to return the investment and you have many *thousands* of MPs that now can be invested in ideas, buildings, coring, annexing vassals, etc.

This is a game of *math* - the next time you think something isn't worthwhile, take the time to do the math and re-evaluate. Irrespective your skill level, it is hard to overcome the difference in ROI for MPs for westernization over the length of the game *unless* you wait until very very late at which point the ROI is no longer there.

Math wins, opinion fails in both life and EU4 as well.

 

[Ame]

Anybody who has won as Byzantines at any point needs to ask themselves "can the ai win battles as easily as we can" if the answer is no then AI Europe does need buffs even if you are arguing it is ahistorical.

What is more Europe's advantages aren't myths.

 

[Freudia]

Anybody who has won as Byzantines at any point needs to ask themselves "can the ai win battles as easily as we can" if the answer is no then AI Europe does need buffs even if you are arguing it is ahistorical.

What is more Europe's advantages aren't myths.

Time to buff Europe to ridiculous levels because the AI can never fight a war as optimized as a player can.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The reward is called math. A muslim tech westernizing breaks even and then shows a 40% ROI after 3 1/3d levels in each of the 3 technologies. Thus doing it early on saves 240 MP per tech per level thereafter for a gross savings of 720 MPs across the board. Multiply that by the overall average number of levels after the 3 1/3d levels it essentially requires to return the investment and you have many *thousands* of MPs that now can be invested in ideas, buildings, coring, annexing vassals, etc.

This is a game of *math* - the next time you think something isn't worthwhile, take the time to do the math and re-evaluate. Irrespective your skill level, it is hard to overcome the difference in ROI for MPs for westernization over the length of the game *unless* you wait until very very late at which point the ROI is no longer there.

Math wins, opinion fails in both life and EU4 as well.

Of course, if we're on the topic of math, the amount of time it takes an investment to "pay back" is baby stuff, so while you're right to push #'s it might be best to do a legit analysis including opportunity cost.

Of course, 1.8 greatly reduced that and westernization has become a stronger deal than ever before, so even fringe cases lean towards westernizing now as separate considerations that were difficult to weight (vassal feeding, time spent westernizing that could be spent doing conquest in the crucial early game snowball phase) are now simply practical mid-westernization, reducing their cost impact.

Anybody who has won as Byzantines at any point needs to ask themselves "can the ai win battles as easily as we can" if the answer is no then AI Europe does need buffs even if you are arguing it is ahistorical.

The most typical complaint about westernization comes from some weak sauce player in Europe who can't stand from an "immersion" standpoint the idea that someone in India might wear the funny hat too. The really saucy ones actually think this makes conquest in Asia difficult.

What is more Europe's advantages aren't myths.

What's more is that canned statements that don't even quantify said advantages are junk.

 

[Ame]

Time to buff Europe to ridiculous levels because the AI can never fight a war as optimized as a player can.

It already is; I'm not the one asking to nerf Europe to prevent it from doing it's historical conquests.

It is harder as a non-western and harder as non-euro that is the point. If you aren't ready to face Europe as an underdog yet play as Europe; if you are then what is the problem?

 

[clockworkBabbag]

It already is; I'm not the one asking to nerf Europe to prevent it from doing it's historical conquests.

It is harder as a non-western and harder as non-euro that is the point. If you aren't ready to face Europe as an underdog yet play as Europe; if you are then what is the problem?

Serious question: why, exactly, do you want the game to railroad you into historical outcomes? The game itself is inherently ahistorical from the moment you hit unpause. Why is it a good thing for the game to have Europe just win every time, with no possible recourse for the ROTW aside from westernizing, simply because Europe happened to dominate the world historically?

 

[Freudia]

It already is; I'm not the one asking to nerf Europe to prevent it from doing it's historical conquests.

It is harder as a non-western and harder as non-euro that is the point. If you aren't ready to face Europe as an underdog yet play as Europe; if you are then what is the problem?

No, see, here's the thing: Europe ahistorically dunks RotW well before its historical dates. It's one thing for Europe to do its historical conquests, but it's something else entirely for them to do it earlier than their historical counterparts. This is partly due to game mechanics specifically designed to hinder RotW (hordes getting no unit upgrades, for example), and partly due to the lack of a dynamic tech system that allows Europe to start pulling ahead around 1650, rather than be ahead right at day 1.

The westernization that exists in the game is an ahistoric bandaid that addresses an ahistoric problem.

 

[BritNavFan]

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".

Fair enough.

The most typical complaint about westernization comes from some weak sauce player in Europe who can't stand from an "immersion" standpoint the idea that someone in India might wear the funny hat too. The really saucy ones actually think this makes conquest in Asia difficult.

This, on the other hand, is just an ad hominem attack.

 

[LastSalian]

The reward is called math. A muslim tech westernizing breaks even and then shows a 40% ROI after 3 1/3d levels in each of the 3 technologies. Thus doing it early on saves 240 MP per tech per level thereafter for a gross savings of 720 MPs across the board. Multiply that by the overall average number of levels after the 3 1/3d levels it essentially requires to return the investment and you have many *thousands* of MPs that now can be invested in ideas, buildings, coring, annexing vassals, etc.

This is a game of *math* - the next time you think something isn't worthwhile, take the time to do the math and re-evaluate. Irrespective your skill level, it is hard to overcome the difference in ROI for MPs for westernization over the length of the game *unless* you wait until very very late at which point the ROI is no longer there.

Math wins, opinion fails in both life and EU4 as well.

Honest advise: run both westernized and non-westernized campaigns and compare. Then come here and speak about your findings.

Same as in life: experimenting wins, hypothesize fails, usually, because you are very prone to miss one or more variables.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Fair enough.

This, on the other hand, is just an ad hominem attack.

I admit I don't always take the high road when things start getting ridiculous, though I should do better about it. Seeing the same logically inconsistent assertions that don't reflect the reality...and by that I mean both actual history but also what actually occurs in-game...gets old. That ad hominem is indeed just a retaliation for the "challenge" assertion earlier in the thread, not that such is a good reason for it I suppose.

Honest advise: run both westernized and non-westernized campaigns and compare. Then come here and speak about your findings.

Same as in life: experimenting wins, hypothesize fails, usually, because you are very prone to miss one or more variables.

It changes patch to patch and one must execute both optimally or you wind up convoluting the experiment. It's harder than it seems.

 

[frolix42]

First of all, westernization should be renamed to modernization not to allow people to argue on whether or not and when westerns were better than Ming, for example.

I think that this is a step too far in the direction of politically correct language. EU4's purpose is to simulate this time period, albeit imperfectly, beginning with the Renaissance, European technological advancement began to outpace that of the "ROTW" culminating with the virtual dominance of Europeans power in the 19th century. The game should acknowledge the fact that European nations were more advanced technologically from 1450 - 1950, and hope players understand this has nothing to do with which people were "better".

similarly to other decisions and events, after completing westernization, you should get a 10% tech cost reduction for 20 years.

There is already a boost from "Neighbor bonus", I don't think this is necessary.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I think that this is a step too far in the direction of politically correct language. EU4's purpose is to simulate this time period, albeit imperfectly, beginning with the Renaissance, European technological advancement began to outpace that of the "ROTW" culminating with the virtual dominance of Europeans power in the 19th century. The game should acknowledge the fact that European nations were more advanced technologically from 1450 - 1950, and hope players understand this has nothing to do with which people were "better".

No, Europe was on par with the Muslim world and China from around 1500 until around 1600-1650. That's when Europe started pulling ahead, and by 1700 they had taken their place of dominance. Most of Europe should actually be behind in tech from the Muslim world and China at the start of the game. They're still suffering from the effects of the Black Death, as well as the Dark Ages. The fall of Byzantium was very much a turning point for most of Europe, combined with the effects of Venice and Genoa trading freely with the Muslim World.

 

[Bragi]

I think that this is a step too far in the direction of politically correct language. EU4's purpose is to simulate this time period, albeit imperfectly, beginning with the Renaissance, European technological advancement began to outpace that of the "ROTW" culminating with the virtual dominance of Europeans power in the 19th century. The game should acknowledge the fact that European nations were more advanced technologically from 1450 - 1950, and hope players understand this has nothing to do with which people were "better".

No, Europe was on par with the Muslim world and China from around 1500 until around 1600-1650. That's when Europe started pulling ahead, and by 1700 they had taken their place of dominance. Most of Europe should actually be behind in tech from the Muslim world and China at the start of the game. They're still suffering from the effects of the Black Death, as well as the Dark Ages. The fall of Byzantium was very much a turning point for most of Europe, combined with the effects of Venice and Genoa trading freely with the Muslim World.

One of the biggest dividers could indeed be the misinterpretation of "westernizing". This concept does not necessarily state that the "West" is superior in every way, but it rather refers to some specific historically evidenced examples, where a society or the ruling elite saw it fit to culturally and technically lean on the western society. Because this, in the timespan of the game (though rather late), was done with countries like France in mind, located in Western Europe, it's called "westernizing".
Etymologically, it's not important if there were or were not a cultural or technical superiority. The game mechanic westernization just refers to that phenomena which could be observed in the history of this timeframe.

 

[yerm]

One of the biggest problems I see is that "Westernizing" isn't looked at as it literally is worded. Historically, as everyone is very quick to point out, Western Europe was not at the forefront of the world in technological advancement or even government and organization, until well after game start. In 1444 they should be behind, and not until the 17th century should they pull ahead... in the general concept of technology.

Technology in the game is hardly just raw knowledge. It's application. The idea of "westernizing" in a historical sense had two different meanings; one was the stereotypical Peter the Great taxing beards and trying to shift culture. The other is easy to see all over the nerfed horde complaints where they cite example after example after example of these ROTW people using "western" military tactics. The former, changing some non-western country to function like a western one, is certainly something we'd all think should be very rare and very difficult. The latter, which is just adopting the advances in use and application for technology that this thread has beaten to death the point that most of the world already had, and changing strategies to what Europe was doing (without changing to western culture or government) is an entirely different westernizing. Calling it westernizing/westernization is hardly racist; that's EXACTLY what is going on.

The problem here is that everything was rolled into one, a tech group. If they separated out technological advancement and innovations, similar to how ideas are split off, that could perhaps address it - you would need to have tech researched as one purchase, and then the advantages of it (tactics, CW, unit upgrades, etc) unlocked separately, allowing indian/Asian countries to closer-to-realistically keep up with tech just fine, but have a difficult time applying it. Westernizing would likewise need two functions - one to pull a Russia and adopt the whole culture and feel of Europe, and one to pull a most-of-the-east and just adopt Western firearm use and the like. The former should overhaul you to western and be a nightmare to do, but the latter should be simpler and just give you western unit groups.

The point though is to realize that so long as everything - technology, innovation, application, and traditions - are all spun into a single category called technology, it's going to be thoroughly impossible to make it perfect when you have countries that are current (even ahead) in some parts and way behind on others.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On whether it's worth it from a cost savings standpoint:



In another thread I'm having trouble finding now, someone had westernized early. He had the same military tech, 2 more DIP tech, and 1 less ADM tech with much less territory (he had virtually nothing in the Arabian peninsula or East of it, and no more in Europe/nothing significant in Mali area over what is shown here).

This is why anecdotal comparisons between playthroughs are weak, but also why using "pay back on MP" is baby stuff. Westernization would probably have prevented me winning the race to Mamluks (gaining that land and denying it to Ottomans) which had a cascading impact on the development of the two empires; despite being western, the other guy came up with LESS monarch points across the playthrough somehow, being barely ahead in technology while having spent much less on territory acquisition.

Of course, in that patch once you were big enough you'd only get 1 point/category while westernizing and 10 revolt risk, pretty well killing it. Now in 1.8 you only get 5 unrest and cap at 5/category rather than 1/category with far more manageable rebels...AND if you set up a vassal or two you can easily transfer occupations for cost-deferred territorial acquisition (deferred until after you westernize), something that just wasn't nearly as feasible previously.

 

[frolix42]

Ming had already started stagnating by 1444. For those who are amazed that Nomad Tech is superior to China's tech at the start of the should read up on the Tumu Crisis of 1449.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumu_Crisis

 

[SacredDatura]

Uh, no, the Tumu Crisis was very much a fluke. It was also pretty much the high point of the Oirats. The impression I get is that it was caused more by incompetent leadership on the part of the Chinese rather than any systemic stagnation, which is what the tech maluses represent.