What's a working strategy for NA Natives?

[Howdoesthiswork]

Hello,

new to this forum but not to the game, I'd say that I have a good grasp on the general mechanics. It turned into a longer post, but please bear with me.

I remember the days when the AI was struggling with supporting its colonies. Well, nowadays they have about 60-80% of their land forces overseas, which is completey nonsensical. In some of my earlier games playing a european power I fought England and France and they had maybe 10-20k troops left in their home territory. The Netherlands literally abandoned (not having a single regiment) their country and moved to some African provinces they got a bit earlier. At this stage the game almost plays like an alternate reality version, hardly any strategic decision by the AI would make sense in the real world.

So this got boring fast and I wanted to try something different and tried to play as a North American Native, the Pequot to be exact, knowing full well that I probably would run into trouble because of the mentioned AI behaviour. From what I heard you can make this work if you choose an OPM and beeline to the NE coast, then take both colonist ideas and go all out on it. I gave this method three honest tries before giving up, with my last attempt being a flawless play up to defeat in my opinion. Still I had zero chance as soon as I was bordering above mentioned nations.

Problem is, you have to border or you'll fall back further and further with tech. So I did that when I had colonized a good portion of Colonial Canada, that was around 1580. I read that you get some free techs when you reform your government (depending on the development of the neighboring nation). That did not happen, all it did was remove the huge penalties. So I was still about 17 techs (4 military) behind Great Britain. Consequently they declared 1 year later. They instantly had around 40k troops (having 70k total, see above) at the border, with me having 35. That was the best possible at the time, considering that all your native buildings disappear and you get hit by a large deficit, so expanding your army even more at this point is no option. Wouldn't have mattered anyway, cause just 20k of their guys easily beat my 35k guys on 2 occasions (with their 4/5 general while I had pretty much nothing because of no prior wars), completely draining my recruit reserve. Mercs were no option because of money constraints and they woudn't have fared any better, cause they are on the same (low) tech level.

So with the weird current state of the game, is there any way to make a Native playthrough work on Ironman? I seriously tried to min-max everything in my last attempt, I was expanding as much as I possibly could have ( most of the time colonizing 5 provinces simultaneously). I think I couldn't have done this any more efficient, but one stack of 20 british guys undid all that in no time. At this point it feels Paradox just wants the New World as a backdrop for the european powers, the Native nations don't have a chance of wining a single battle there if the mother nations decide to join, unless they maybe outnumber them by 4:1. Which will never happen because of the AI's obsession of putting troops anywhere but in their own country. Any Native vet has some OP winning strats to share here?

Thanks for reading through all of this

 

[Shadoon4]

You gain 80% of the tech of your neighbor upon reforming so typically you’re gonna still be behind, this is a good example of saving up some extra monarch points before hitting the button so you can gain a couple extra techs on top and be closer.

Also in general once you’ve hit tech 5 admin and maybe techs 2 or 3 in mil and dip you stop investing, instead spend the extra monarch points on developing this keeps your economy right side up when you reform and lose all your buildings.

Another point (at least in past patches don’t know about the most recent one) is that colonial nations don’t call in their overlords when declared on by a native, USE THIS WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.

Combining these tactics and you should be able to control North America by 1600

 

[Howdoesthiswork]

Thanks for the fast response. 80% sounds like a lot, but I'm not entirely convinced that it worked like that in my game. Great Britain and their colonies were at MilTech 11 when I conceded defeat, I was at 7. But after the switch of government I bought 2 techs right away with tech points I gathered up (as you proposed). So I was actually at MilTech 5 after the reform, 80% of 11 would have been 8 or 9 (depending on the rounding). In total GB had 44 techs, I had 27, that's after investing every monarch point I had after the reform. 80% of that should have been 35 techs.

So I really don't think it worked like that in my game, might be a bug, might be that it's not 80% anymore. Did you do a recent game? You're right about declaring war on a colonial nation though, but it's really no big help either cause the mother nation usually colonizes right next to them.So the minute you attack their vassal, they percieve you as a threat and declare shortly after. That's how my second attempt ended. I really don't see how you could control NA by 1600, the current AI behavior where they place stacks of doom overseas doesn't permit that imo. Cause you'd have to compete with several european great powers at once, not just Great Britain.

 

[EmagDrolBot]

If you're not against a bit of cheese, take exploration and colonize west over the Pacific. Slap down some colonies in Taiwan, then become a tributary of Ming. Be warned that this now means you can no longer attack CNs without calling in the overlord, but it should mean AI won't attack you unless they're stronger than Ming.

I'd also recommend migrating down to Mexico and taking one of their religions by event, then doing those reforms instead of the NA native ones. They don't waste thousands of MP and give far stronger bonuses at the end that you get to keep post reform.

 

[rinehime]

If you're not against a bit of cheese, take exploration and colonize west over the Pacific.

IIRC, prior to reforming their government, New World Natives don't have colonial range across more than 1 sea tile and can't build boats.

 

[Bouchart]

IIRC, prior to reforming their government, New World Natives don't have colonial range across more than 1 sea tile and can't build boats.

I believe it's possible to colonize west Alaska and from there east Siberia, but I'm not certain.

 

[Peachrocks]

I believe it's possible to colonize west Alaska and from there east Siberia, but I'm not certain.

No it's not. Not pre reform anyway. You cannot colonise across water period as a 'primitive'. You can migrate but only to provinces within the same naval region I think and even if this was possible you wouldn't want to do it.

Really playing in the Americas (north or south) requires a lot of luck. South less so because Portugal and Castile are more likely to colonise there but I've played a lot of Inca and sometimes it's as late as 1550s before they arrive, other times it's before 1490s. The earlier the Europeans arrive the better but you have no control over this and can't build boats or anything to meet the Europeans first if they screw around in Africa or the Caribbean. The region is in dire need of a rework or at the very least the AI should have an extremely heavy bias to colonize the Americas in a timely fashion.

Also the later they arrive the more behind you will be in tech. I'm not sure of the exact math behind this, but I know for sure that the distance is bigger. If you really want to take matters into your own hands outside of Ironman, create a western custom nation and place them out of the way but still easily within reach of your colonies. You will need to develop for Institutions that you'd otherwise get for free and you will be behind in tech even if you give the custom nation 6/6/6 rulers but in some cases this can be significantly faster and more importantly lets you actually play the game. Still that's not much help for you, cus you seem to be playing Ironman. All I can say is that matters are not entirely in your hands.

 

[Howdoesthiswork]

Thanks for all the input so far, the point about needing to have luck on your side seems to be true. I started another run that at first seemed to go well and then quickly fell apart because of poor placement of colonies. Still not giving up hope though, there must be a way to make this work semi-reliably.

Another thing I forgot to mention and this might be embarrassing to admit: So far I haven't found a way to get a "conquer province" claim apart from that seemingly rare event (happened 2 times in all 4 attempts combined). Is there any way as a Native to manufacture a claim on other Native nations? Maybe that's what's holding me back, cause prior to reform I'm 100% dependant on colonists for expansion. Which is a very slow process, especially in the beginning, even with taking every possible +growth option available.

 

[SaucyBaron]

Pretty much every time I've tried playing natives it ends up being like 1650 before I see a single white man, due to some ridiculous PU shenanigans where everyone becomes a subject of everyone else.

 

[Ironside121]

Crying generally works well for me. I've achieved consistent results with every native nation I've played.

Defeat.

 

[EmagDrolBot]

IIRC, prior to reforming their government, New World Natives don't have colonial range across more than 1 sea tile and can't build boats.

Yeah, I meant post reform. Usually you have a while between reforming (1 province of a colonizer nearby) and the colonizer DoWing you (usually only once they have a CN at least)

 

[atwix]

is there any way to make a Native playthrough work on Ironman?

don't colonize, migrate to mexico, don't take any native ideas except travois, eat mexico, become Nahuatl after taking temple province (by event), develop all gold mines, take exploration and colonize south or north towards estuary of rio grande, and europe guys usually spawn there in 1560-80.

read my haida AAR in signature or here:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-wc-on-very-hard-mode-aar-no-exploits.978014/

or watch the caddo strat video here:

if you know what you are doing, you will never lose versus Europeans, unless they bring in a stack like 50k at once (unlikely).

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

Don't bother until they let Natives keep their bonuses after reforming