Why are native provinces in Africa so absurdly powerful?

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TK3600

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I mean it should be hard to travel around inner Africa in this time period, but due to supply issues and tropical diseases, not because of weird native mechanics.
Unless they are going to take the supply issues into account, I am OK with natives being OP.
 
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heliostellar

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Unless they are going to take the supply issues into account, I am OK with natives being OP.
If you want to play Undersupplied Army Simulator, CK3 is already the winner there. Pretty much any army of significant size melts away pretty quickly and wars are usually a rush to get enough warscore before you deplete all your levies.

Yes, I know about using MaA, but take a look at any major war especially in the Levant and its essentially a bloodbath solely because of attrition.

Bottomline: supply lines are not the solution until supply lines can be implemented by Paradox properly
 
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TheMeInTeam

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Out of interest how do they work?
You use hubs (or ports) as areas you have to run rails to (or ship overseas with convoys). Both routes can be intercepted, either directly by units or via bombing. Stuff that's out of supply gets huge penalties.

But in EU 4 period there wouldn't be rails in most cases, and long supply chains to home country wouldn't make sense. Using something approximating this would be a worse abstraction than the supply/attrition type setup we already have.
 
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bokorthedust

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Unless you can provide evidence that Malaria makes Africans fight very effectively, including against other Africans in the same place, what you stated was strange
Apparently sickle cell trait developed as an evolutionary weapon against malaria. However, if both parents carry the genetic trait, their offspring likely will be born with sickle cell disease. I can imagine people fighting better when even their blood cells can be used as a weapon.

sorry for the sh*tpost answer, couldn't help myself
 

fireandplague

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If you want to play Undersupplied Army Simulator, CK3 is already the winner there. Pretty much any army of significant size melts away pretty quickly and wars are usually a rush to get enough warscore before you deplete all your levies.

Yes, I know about using MaA, but take a look at any major war especially in the Levant and its essentially a bloodbath solely because of attrition.

Bottomline: supply lines are not the solution until supply lines can be implemented by Paradox properly
How is this an issue exactly? This is how wars worked in the medieval and early modern eras. Just look at the famous infographic of Napoleon's march to Russia and back: 500,000 losses, with 90%+ due to various attrition (starvation, cold, disease, desertion, etc) and very little in actual combat.
 
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heliostellar

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How is this an issue exactly? This is how wars worked in the medieval and early modern eras. Just look at the famous infographic of Napoleon's march to Russia and back: 500,000 losses, with 90%+ due to various attrition (starvation, cold, disease, desertion, etc) and very little in actual combat.

I'm not saying there is an issue. I'm pointing out how the abstraction works. OP is taking issue with the current mechanics.

I guess the issue I have with CK3 is that armies are like ice cubes on a hot stove. If you blink, they'll disappear... even in friendly territory a lot of the time...
 

TheMeInTeam

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Apparently sickle cell trait developed as an evolutionary weapon against malaria. However, if both parents carry the genetic trait, their offspring likely will be born with sickle cell disease. I can imagine people fighting better when even their blood cells can be used as a weapon.

sorry for the sh*tpost answer, couldn't help myself
Haha! But if both sides can blood bend their fluids into scythes, it should still be relatively even!

How is this an issue exactly? This is how wars worked in the medieval and early modern eras. Just look at the famous infographic of Napoleon's march to Russia and back: 500,000 losses, with 90%+ due to various attrition (starvation, cold, disease, desertion, etc) and very little in actual combat.
Isn't an issue per se', but pdox clearly didn't like a lot of attrition for EU 4, because damage from attrition has been nerfed like crazy since release. It was really player-favored when it was still high though, since we handled it way better than the AI.

I haven't played CK3 to get a feel for what that's like.
 

TK3600

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If you want to play Undersupplied Army Simulator, CK3 is already the winner there. Pretty much any army of significant size melts away pretty quickly and wars are usually a rush to get enough warscore before you deplete all your levies.

Yes, I know about using MaA, but take a look at any major war especially in the Levant and its essentially a bloodbath solely because of attrition.

Bottomline: supply lines are not the solution until supply lines can be implemented by Paradox properly
I am totally fine levant being supplied well from Europe. West African jungle on the other hand...
 

vaLor-

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Haven't engaged much with this thread, but I think that the majority of posters have missed the point: I don't have a problem with natives rising up in uncolonized provinces, and I know that these natives get relatively weaker over time.

The issue I have with the current game state is that the natives are much stronger than the African nations at the game start (especially the non-feudal ones) and for a long time after, owing to every uncolonized province in central africa having high bonuses to tactics and morale. Other posters in this thread have also highlighted that all natives are considered one entity and they gain army tradition over time which gives them even more bonuses. I did hear about this in the past as well, and I think it is also a problem, but it isn't the case here (the time in-game was 1445 in the screenshot).

The reason I mentioned in the OP that I lost 2000 troops to these natives compared to 850 from the nation of Busoga, was to highlight
that these natives deal 2.5x more casualties compared to the bordering nation of the province. The reason this was astounding to me and prompted me to make this post was the fact that I had a very strong army, with 112.5% discipline (strict ruler + discipline advisor + mwari cult) and 25% bonus morale (for reference, the starting morale as Buganda is 2.06, in the screenshot I had 2.5, owing to temporary army morale bonus mission, AT, prestige, and PP), and that I still wouldn't be able to beat a few provinces of natives. Of course, these numbers aren't perfect and they would likely be better tested in a calculator, but I doubt they'd be all that different, because the natives do have demonstrably better stats.

I disagree with the preposition that the imbalanced power of the natives compared to starting nations is intended, owing to the fact that gameplay surrounding uncolonized provinces is a complete mess, with AI nations shatter retreating all the way to Narnia through these provinces whenever you defeat them in battle, and the fact that supply lines in general are a non-feature of this game, making the argument that this of all places is where it ties in, a bizarre one.

Just so that this isn't just an essay, I decided to record a 1-minute video showcasing how gameplay looks in Africa, take a look ;D : https://files.catbox.moe/zbna73.mp4

And perhaps for a bit of comedic effect, this is the rest of the recording: https://files.catbox.moe/gevdz0.mp4
 
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Ivashanko

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Haven't engaged much with this thread, but I think that the majority of posters have missed the point: I don't have a problem with natives rising up in uncolonized provinces, and I know that these natives get relatively weaker over time.

The issue I have with the current game state is that the natives are much stronger than the African nations at the game start (especially the non-feudal ones) and for a long time after, owing to every uncolonized province in central africa having high bonuses to tactics and morale. Other posters in this thread have also highlighted that all natives are considered one entity and they gain army tradition over time which gives them even more bonuses. I did hear about this in the past as well, and I think it is also a problem, but it isn't the case here (the time in-game was 1445 in the screenshot).

The reason I mentioned in the OP that I lost 2000 troops to these natives compared to 850 from the nation of Busoga, was to highlight
that these natives deal 2.5x more casualties compared to the bordering nation of the province. The reason this was astounding to me and prompted me to make this post was the fact that I had a very strong army, with 112.5% discipline (strict ruler + discipline advisor + mwari cult) and 25% bonus morale (for reference, the starting morale as Buganda is 2.06, in the screenshot I had 2.5, owing to temporary army morale bonus mission, AT, prestige, and PP), and that I still wouldn't be able to beat a few provinces of natives. Of course, these numbers aren't perfect and they would likely be better tested in a calculator, but I doubt they'd be all that different, because the natives do have demonstrably better stats.

I disagree with the preposition that the imbalanced power of the natives compared to starting nations is intended, owing to the fact that gameplay surrounding uncolonized provinces is a complete mess, with AI nations shatter retreating all the way to Narnia through these provinces whenever you defeat them in battle, and the fact that supply lines in general are a non-feature of this game, making the argument that this of all places is where it ties in, a bizarre one.

Just so that this isn't just an essay, I decided to record a 1-minute video showcasing how gameplay looks in Africa, take a look ;D : https://files.catbox.moe/zbna73.mp4

And perhaps for a bit of comedic effect, this is the rest of the recording: https://files.catbox.moe/gevdz0.mp4

The entire native and colonisation mechanics in Paradox games is fundamentally unsound. Magna Mundi the Game had a proposed mechanics that sounded unwise, but one mechanic I really loved was the way it wanted to handle natives: it'd group them together by tribe and have them function as a provincial modifier that had to be dealt with long after the initial colony was established and developed. One could ally or war against them, and tribes had opinions on other tribes, so your actions against one would affect how you can deal with others.

But that's a tangent. My main point is that until the colonial mechanic is redone arguments based on history are based on rotten foundations.
 
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