There's plenty of water to sustain cities IRL (Colorado River, Lake Tahoe, etc). There should be an idea in the exploration or expansion branch to be able to colonize and explore.
Why is the Great Basin considered a wasteland?
- Thread starter kmelt93
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Most of the habitable wasteland in this game is wasteland intentionally as those areas weren't really colonized in the time period. Those areas gets filled in during the Victoria 2 timeline.
The Midwestern US has no trees either.
I understand why it's uncolonizable, Jorlaan already explained it, but the lack of trees was not a reason.
Well, now you're sounding like one of those people who think that countries shouldn't be able to colonize Africa and Asia because they weren't colonized in the game's time period
.Personally, I never minded the Great Basin, but always found it odd that Connecticut and the northern half of what is now the state of Louisiana are not open to colonization.
Kinda seems silly basing it on what was colonised and what wasnt based purely on historical colonisation when all of colonisable america can be colonised by the mid 1600s if people wanted to other factors need to be considered.
other factors need to be considered.
You have some water on the fringes, but the vast majority of the Great Basin is inhospitable to any groups larger than hunter-gatherer bands. No reason for Europeans to go there, and little ability for them to even if they wanted.
I can see the justification for banning any colonization, but no exploration is beyond ridiculous. There were white men (Anglos, not just the Spanish and French) in the great basin as early as the 17th century.
It's a strategy game, not a simulation game is the way I've made sense of it for myself. France and Great Britain also had trade settlements through the uncolonizable parts of Canada well before 1820 from what I understand. I can understand wasteland like the Sahara and the Himalayas, sort of. Great Basin is certainly one area I agree should be open to colonization.
The Oregon trail being open is already rubbish, there is no need to add more to it.
The basic thing is being able to "explore" an area means the game engine treats the territory as having the following properties:
1. An army can march over it.
2. An army can camp in it.
3. A colonist can settle in it.
4. A settled population can support troop recruitment.
5. There is some good that can be economically traded from the region to the greater economic system.
So going down the line - in the EU time period can an army march through Great Basin? Well let's start with no and end with "hell no". There is minimal natural forage and precious little water, in 1846 Kearny had to go down the Gila and still had trouble making it to California. In spite of starting in Leavenworth (about equal latitude as San Francisco), the lack of forage and water meant he had to take his 200 men south hundreds of miles. When the Mormon pioneers actually went into the Great Basin, they did so with machine steel tools. Without the ability to use those to cut out trees, do rock work, and generally make the land hospitable for wagons, pretty much all the Mormons would have died.
So what about camping? Pretty much an army that stays in one place has to come up with enough calories to keep the men from deserting from starvation. The Great Basin cannot do this for regiment sized armies or larger. While there was game and limited vegetation, a regiment (going from Mormon game hauls) would exhaust any bivouac area in under a month (hence why the Mormons brought an average of 1000 lbs of flour for the initial families). In any event, we have an example of what staying in the Great Basin was like - it was called The Donner Party and it ended poorly.
Settling the Great Basin requires that the settlers be able to maintain shelter, food, and water. This is not possible for fixed settlements in any quantity without industrial era tools. Basically, without irrigation, and the terrain requires some nice steel & iron, you are going to have a crop failure in short order and everyone starves. The Great Basin also has a pretty low water table, even where you had springs, reliable water often too a lot of effort and skill to manage. Going in before 1820 is a recipe for mass death.
Could the Great Basin support soldier recruitment? Not really, no. The crop varieties that eventually led to a sustained agricultural surplus mostly didn't exist in the EU era. The native grasses weren't the best for grazing and even that would have had pretty bad troubles (as was seen earlier).
So how about trade? Absolutely not. The Mormon economy managed mostly selling goods to other settlers and the use of steam power for moving goods to final market. In the late EU period you could move about 100 pounds of goods over 100 miles for about a dollar overland. This puts a pretty hard cap on what can be traded. Wool, for instance, is much too heavy to trade overland by wagon. Long before you get to market the lack of roads (even into the 1860s) means you would eat up your entire profit margin before you could get the wool to a market. Historically the steamboat and the train broke this rule; they also allowed for crops that might spoil going overland. There is, of course, great mineral wealth in the Great Basin, but good luck mining any of that without industrial era explosives or tools.
In a nutshell, there were reasons why people settled frigid ass regions of Quebec instead of going to the Great Basin or even overland to Oregon. They weren't morons and it just isn't viable to settle through the Rockies until at least the 1830s. The Mormons needed infrastructure up the Missouri and steam power to move the supplies. Even with all that, they had significant deaths due to food and shelter concerns. Going into the Great Basin before all that is remotely possible means that you end up with an exponentially harder task.
The basic thing is being able to "explore" an area means the game engine treats the territory as having the following properties:
1. An army can march over it.
2. An army can camp in it.
3. A colonist can settle in it.
4. A settled population can support troop recruitment.
5. There is some good that can be economically traded from the region to the greater economic system.
So going down the line - in the EU time period can an army march through Great Basin? Well let's start with no and end with "hell no". There is minimal natural forage and precious little water, in 1846 Kearny had to go down the Gila and still had trouble making it to California. In spite of starting in Leavenworth (about equal latitude as San Francisco), the lack of forage and water meant he had to take his 200 men south hundreds of miles. When the Mormon pioneers actually went into the Great Basin, they did so with machine steel tools. Without the ability to use those to cut out trees, do rock work, and generally make the land hospitable for wagons, pretty much all the Mormons would have died.
So what about camping? Pretty much an army that stays in one place has to come up with enough calories to keep the men from deserting from starvation. The Great Basin cannot do this for regiment sized armies or larger. While there was game and limited vegetation, a regiment (going from Mormon game hauls) would exhaust any bivouac area in under a month (hence why the Mormons brought an average of 1000 lbs of flour for the initial families). In any event, we have an example of what staying in the Great Basin was like - it was called The Donner Party and it ended poorly.
Settling the Great Basin requires that the settlers be able to maintain shelter, food, and water. This is not possible for fixed settlements in any quantity without industrial era tools. Basically, without irrigation, and the terrain requires some nice steel & iron, you are going to have a crop failure in short order and everyone starves. The Great Basin also has a pretty low water table, even where you had springs, reliable water often too a lot of effort and skill to manage. Going in before 1820 is a recipe for mass death.
Could the Great Basin support soldier recruitment? Not really, no. The crop varieties that eventually led to a sustained agricultural surplus mostly didn't exist in the EU era. The native grasses weren't the best for grazing and even that would have had pretty bad troubles (as was seen earlier).
So how about trade? Absolutely not. The Mormon economy managed mostly selling goods to other settlers and the use of steam power for moving goods to final market. In the late EU period you could move about 100 pounds of goods over 100 miles for about a dollar overland. This puts a pretty hard cap on what can be traded. Wool, for instance, is much too heavy to trade overland by wagon. Long before you get to market the lack of roads (even into the 1860s) means you would eat up your entire profit margin before you could get the wool to a market. Historically the steamboat and the train broke this rule; they also allowed for crops that might spoil going overland. There is, of course, great mineral wealth in the Great Basin, but good luck mining any of that without industrial era explosives or tools.
In a nutshell, there were reasons why people settled frigid ass regions of Quebec instead of going to the Great Basin or even overland to Oregon. They weren't morons and it just isn't viable to settle through the Rockies until at least the 1830s. The Mormons needed infrastructure up the Missouri and steam power to move the supplies. Even with all that, they had significant deaths due to food and shelter concerns. Going into the Great Basin before all that is remotely possible means that you end up with an exponentially harder task.
a lot of these things are also true for places that can be colonised ingame, like siberia
Yes, the devs have been being inconsistent with what lands to include. Some of Siberia really wasn't colonizable. Now in the old world, you do have to recall that native grasses are a LOT better for sheep grazing (you've had thousands of years to breed sheep and "find" grass that works) and the water table in Siberia is actually pretty high. Thanks to several nicely placed rivers, lakes, etc. the amount of overland travel needed in Siberia is that long. Siberian, in general, actually gets more useful precipitation than the Great Plains, let alone the Great Basin.
Long and short of it - Siberia is more colonist hospitable than the Great Basin and a lot of the Great Plains.
The lack of trees is making my eyes bleed.
Oh and Jomini, there were people in the Great Basin during the EU era. What in the hell are you on about? The reason there was little movement of Americans into the region has nothing to do with it being "inhospitable" and everything to do with it being a long god damned way from Virginia.
Foul language removed - Seelmeister
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As it stands the Sahara is depicted with utter retardation. Besides from being fugly on the map, historically there were a few dozen routes to take through if from oasis to oasis, but no, the Dev's chose to arbitrarily depict one grossly ugly route.
Because then players can *choose* to invest in the province and eek a return out of it should they so wish. Isn't that a fundamental element of game design?