EU4: El Dorado - Development Diary 1: Nahuatl, Exploration & Treaty of Tordesillas | Page 20

Freudia · Jan 24, 2015

Mikalos said:
its already ahistorical for westernization in this period to begin with for all but a few places, i dont see why its bad to actually make you work to reform your state religion that encouraged staying how you were

It's pretty fine. The main reason westernization exists in this game is so the world has some sort of means to fight back vs Europe, because logistics don't exist in this game. Whether it's ahistoric or not is irrelevant because it's a made-up solution to a made-up problem.

Incompetent · Jan 24, 2015

Mackus said:
If Aztec reform, will it change their techgroup? (something like CK2 converter "high american" perhaps?)
Will it be possible to get out of Doom mechanic by converting to different religion? (would make sense, missionaries arriving and preaching catholic/protestant faith should be alternate way out)

Looks like it will be the same as Native Council reform, i.e. a one-off 'catch up' tech boost, but you still have a bad tech group until you Westernise. (A country with Native Council government and Nahuatl religion would be interesting, if such a thing is possible!)

If you've stopped believing in the Nahua gods, I doubt you're going to be worried about their version of the apocalypse. It's not clear how easy it will be for Nahuatl states to convert, though.

Will expansion portray historical case of Aztec vassals like Tlaxcala throwing their lot in with the Spanish? If european power conquers Aztec, their vassals should become subjects of their colonial viceroyalty.

Tlaxcala had a special status, with guarantees from the Spanish crown directly, so maybe it should be modelled as a subject of Spain rather than a subject of New Spain.

DmUa · Jan 24, 2015

Mikalos said:
why shouldnt it be there?

its the same thing as ck2 and reforming the pagan religions, the cross and the moon are nire oersuassiuve than your disorganized pagan ass

- in CK you can convert to religion of cool people in order to bypass pagan restrictions, nahuatl nations on the other hand can only "REFORMORDIE111" because pagan conversions to coolest religion in the world are triggered by starting westernization, a thing that apparently cant be done by nahuatl practitioners unless they "REFORMORDIE111".

Freudia said:
It's not even straight reform or die. You can play just fine as an unreformed Nahuatl nation, provided you have enough vassals to stave off Doom. It's more just "you have this odd gameplay, and you can get bonuses, keep your flavor, and get to keep your religion for reforming it!"

It's a lot better executed than horde 'reform or die' approach, that's for sure.

- you cant westernize unless you reform your religion, considering massive new world penalties to tech its 100% purest "REFORMORDIE111".

Freudia · Jan 24, 2015

DmUa said:
- you cant westernize unless you reform your religion, considering massive new world penalties to tech its 100% purest "REFORMORDIE111".

As a nation in the New World, what saves you from the Old World is boat spam, not tech. The hard part is locking down the New World to ensure colonial nations don't form.

Also, you get unit upgrades as a nation in the New World, unlike the classical 'reform or die' 'example', hordes.

DmUa · Jan 24, 2015

Freudia said:
As a nation in the New World, what saves you from the Old World is boat spam, not tech. The hard part is locking down the New World to ensure colonial nations don't form.

Also, you get unit upgrades as a nation in the New World, unlike the classical 'reform or die' 'example', hordes.

- unit upgrades wont help you when you teching up 150% slower then aliens from the other side of the ocean, difference in tactics will just annihilate any of your fancy upgraded units.

Lemont Elwood · Jan 24, 2015

Even nations that are just slightly backwards will get trounced by small armies. EU4 could really do with some systems to help the weak. The thread "Combat proposal: a strategy for the weak" is full of great ideas.

Yeah, natives may not have won in history, but it would be nice if, from time to time, a large native country could overwhelm a small colony.

In fact, it'd be nice if the colonies did anything. Maybe this just happens in my games, but I see barely any diplomatic action in the New World.

Lemont Elwood · Jan 24, 2015

Maybe this system will also lead to very dynamic Mesoamericas.

Guthuk Gaming · Jan 24, 2015

Freudia said:
It's pretty fine. The main reason westernization exists in this game is so the world has some sort of means to fight back vs Europe, because logistics don't exist in this game. Whether it's ahistoric or not is irrelevant because it's a made-up solution to a made-up problem.

Not to mention it's only westernization in name. For most locations the button might as well be called "civilization." You're basically spending huge amounts of power and time and military might to build your country up so that in the future you can become strong. Doesn't sound like westernization, sounds like you're just adding civilization to your region. Obviously that doesn't sound very politically correct and a lot of regions already had civilization they just had a lack of technology.

TheAtreides84 · Jan 24, 2015

cleef said:
Why ? Why not make it more real and challenging and take attrition ?

Because of the annoying micromanagement it would entail. It's really too easy to forget about a little fleet, and there is so little strategy involved, that automating it is the good choice. I really like how Paradox is focusing on little quality of life things. They are often overlooked in strategy games, but could make the difference between a game feeling fun or a chore.

TheMeInTeam · Jan 24, 2015

Lemont Elwood said:
Maybe this system will also lead to very dynamic Mesoamericas.

Don't kid yourself, without a player there the AI is going to go nowhere ever, just lots of doom an independent nations with crappy rulers.

Not that such is significantly different from previous patches, mind you.

Lemont Elwood · Jan 24, 2015

I don't think it would be unreasonable to have regional limits on your soldiers. Like being unable to support more than a certain amount of troops in the broad "South Asia" area. Players shouldn't really be able to ferry the whole army of Great Britain to invade India. Of course, it would also be good if we had Colonial Nations in the rest of the world, but that ship had sailed a long time ago. Ultimately, though, I wish that our empires were more fragmented, albeit not to the level of Colonial Nations that you barely interact with. Not having subjects everywhere else, but having to administer separate regions of your empire as separate regions.

In response to TheMeInTeam, I just mean that you won't get one nation expanding at every others' expense so that, by the time your own ships roll up on Mexico's coast, it isn't just one or two major empires.

Westernization is VERY problematic in its current form, and it would be even worse if paired with a converter. Most of West Africa, in my current game, is Westernized, while Russia isn't. How did this happen? Well, Morocco westernized off of Spain, Timbuktu westernized off of Morocco, Mali westernized off of Timbuktu, and then Air got in on the deal. Now, AFRICA is nearly as technologically advanced as Europe. It seems that Paradox is now dedicated to simplifying their games, but I really wish EU5 would have a system where your technology is based not on cultural determinism, but on the actions you take, where even "backwards" regions can put up a fight, and where Westernization amounts to more than just a tech boost and is more involving than pressing a button. Victoria II's civilization process took a lot of tweaking, but it's PERFECT in it's current form.

Kazimierz IV · Jan 24, 2015

Lemont Elwood said:
I don't think it would be unreasonable to have regional limits on your soldiers. Like being unable to support more than a certain amount of troops in the broad "South Asia" area. Players shouldn't really be able to ferry the whole army of Great Britain to invade India. Of course, it would also be good if we had Colonial Nations in the rest of the world, but that ship had sailed a long time ago. Ultimately, though, I wish that our empires were more fragmented, albeit not to the level of Colonial Nations that you barely interact with. Not having subjects everywhere else, but having to administer separate regions of your empire as separate regions.

In response to TheMeInTeam, I just mean that you won't get one nation expanding at every others' expense so that, by the time your own ships roll up on Mexico's coast, it isn't just one or two major empires.

Westernization is VERY problematic in its current form, and it would be even worse if paired with a converter. Most of West Africa, in my current game, is Westernized, while Russia isn't. How did this happen? Well, Morocco westernized off of Spain, Timbuktu westernized off of Morocco, Mali westernized off of Timbuktu, and then Air got in on the deal. Now, AFRICA is nearly as technologically advanced as Europe. It seems that Paradox is now dedicated to simplifying their games, but I really wish EU5 would have a system where your technology is based not on cultural determinism, but on the actions you take, where even "backwards" regions can put up a fight, and where Westernization amounts to more than just a tech boost and is more involving than pressing a button. Victoria II's civilization process took a lot of tweaking, but it's PERFECT in it's current form.

Tell me about it. In most of my games India, Central Asian hordes, and even Chinese states also get in on the act (Ottomans>Persia>rest of Asia). Westernization should be extremely rare, as the only successful Westernization in EUIV's time frame was Russia.

ehecatzin · Jan 24, 2015

klopkr said:
I guess that makes sense but is it fitting for the whole of the game? There's several decades of the game at the start with no european contact. I imagine things were pretty different before.

Well mesoamericans invisioned 4 suns before the present one, each one with its own people and mini apocalypse, the idea is present on their mythology at least (the Aztecs just put a very bloody spin on it). As for historical mesoamerica, there are plenty of civilizations preceding the Post Classical ones, you could argue the story of the rise and fall of the Toltecs would be fresh on Aztec memory, the Zapotecs had a whole history of recuperating from the brink of annihilation, and the Mayans had many dinasties and whole regions that rose and fell.

I think that while the "doom" mechanic sounds cheesy at first, its a clever way of representing that danger of the whole civilization collapsing under its own weight, should a perfect storm happen.

edit: Also, the triple alliance came to be by crashing Atzcapotzalco, (which was a bit of a proto Aztec empire, and Nahuatl as well) funny enough, they were the rebel vassal back then.

ehecatzin · Jan 24, 2015

Incompetent said:
Tlaxcala had a special status, with guarantees from the Spanish crown directly, so maybe it should be modelled as a subject of Spain rather than a subject of New Spain.

You touch on something interesting, there's a lot of areas for flavour and event chains for Europeans conquering Mexico. The native armies under Spanish leadership were a factor for decades after the Aztec conquest, for conquering the rest of the mesoamerica and Aridoamerica all the way to the Pueblo, as well as being a component of colonization.

Hopefuly we get more events instead of just declaring war and taking out the natives.

EMT0 · Jan 24, 2015

This may not be related directly to this dev diary, but it does address a soon to be touched upon topic in the Inca and their religion(I guess it can be called Inti...?)

The Inca's state cult was essentially Emperor worship by equating the Emperor to being a descendant of the Sun God; but if we're looking for things to reform, and believe me, it needed to be reformed eventually even if the Inca successfully crush any invaders, is the practice of maintaining the mummies of the previous Emperors, whose extended families and the dedicated priesthood to the mummy/family acted as nobility in the Inca Empire. Every Emperor went conquering to obtain more wealth for their own inevitable tomb in a grand contest of intergenerational oneupmanship as well as to maintain the splendor of their ancestor's mummies and frankly, the Inca couldn't keep that up forever. Don't quote me on this but the resources the Inca dedicated to the mummies of their dead emperors ballooned as the Inca state grrew, taking up a disproportionate amount versus what they were in the time of the small Kingdom of Cusco, pre-Pachacuti. Eventually, an Emperor would have had to crush the practice of mummy worship or at least minimize it, or risk gridlock in the Inca state as places to conquer for wealth run out; the Inca really only had the North Andes and the Beni plains as a means of expansion in their traditional method of vassalization or conquest at the point that they fell.

Completely unrelated, but can we please give the Inca a means of expanding in territories they owned but are represented as uncolonized? Half the provinces represented as uncivilized were more organized than some of the tribal states in Africa that have tags.

VolitionNewlove · Jan 24, 2015

ehecatzin said:
I think in the case of the Aztecs its supposed to represent everything hitting the fan at the same time, (its not literally Angry Gods coming down with doom) multiple emperors dying, chaos, invading armies, disease, rebel vassals everywhere, yeah I think that counts as doom.

Sacrifices would exacerbate those problems, not improve them, especially in the case of diseases. At the very least, none of those problems can be improved by any of the in-game solutions to "Doom."

Furthermore, why should that take effect before the Spanish arrive? Particularly odd, as it's going to be the Spanish Arrival (or the arrival of any other Western Nation) in-game which is able to "cure" Doom in the first place.

Lastly, why would there need to be a mechanic for things like "multiple Emperors dying," "rebel vassals," or "invading armies" beyond what's already in the game?

ehecatzin said:
Historically, yeah you could argue that "doom" hit the Aztecs, and after loosing their emperor you got a o/o/o/ emperor with Cuitlahuac, and after he too dies of disease (and not presuing the Spaniards) you finally get Cuauhtemoc with good military stats but by then all your vassals are sieging your capital.

As for the question of whater they sacrificed their emperors, depending on your outlook on history, Moctezuma II was either killed by the Spaniards who didnt find him useful, or stoned by his own people after they got fed up of him collaborating with Cortez.

Even in the case of the Mexica killing Moctezuma II, he most definitely was not sacrificed, and it certainly wasn't to prevent "Doom." And in the case of Cuitlahuac, it's pretty hard to infer an event about him being sacrificed to prevent Doom mean "he died of disease."

hashinshin said:
Not to mention it's only westernization in name. For most locations the button might as well be called "civilization."

So you're saying that practically all of the world outside of Europe in the game's period was "Uncivilised?"

And why would only Western nations carry that ability to allow other nations "Civilise?"

Lemont Elwood · Jan 24, 2015

You're touchy, aren't you? Hashinshin's post wasn't saying that they were "uncivilized" in reality, but are uncivilized in the game, being that they fall so far behind in tech.

Thrake · Jan 24, 2015

I've been hoping for a long time for that Mesoamerican revamp, glad to see it's coming

Mackus · Jan 24, 2015

Golladan said:
There's no need to have 2 religions. When the Papacy is disabled you don't switch to a different Catholic religion. You stay the same religion, just without the papacy mechanics.

Uhm, what? This is exactly what i said.

reformation being global, you could have "disable_doom = yes" similar to "disable_papacy = yes" event command.

Doom is an interesting mechanic, it accurately portrays reasons why Aztek got a huge empire, and a lot of enemies. Its true that country might've collapsed due to lack of sacrifices, because people genuinely believed it would. They really were uncivilised, superstitious barbarians. Also, neighbours of Azteks might've taken lack of sacrifices as sign of them weakening, and jump on them. But there is one problem with the mechanic: no way to "weather the storm".
In CK2, when muslim get invaded due to high decadence, they can always fight back. Not here with Azteks.
I propose, that when doom reaches 100, rather than immediate collapse, you get an event with two options:
a) "Doom is upon us! Sacrifice our monarch!" normal effects: loss of vassals, reforms, ruler and heir
b) "Those priests are overreacting... execute them!" loss of all prestige, legitimacy, and stability.

Option b might seem a no brainer, but not necessarily. Flower war CB would allow Azteks to get more vassals easily. Unless you already got reforms you don't want to lose, option a is better most of time, easier to recover from.

Also, Azteks might get screwed by SSI in the converter... They got over 100 provinces, add those in europe. Unless doom gets disabled for them, they get collapse every year...

TheDarkMaster · Jan 24, 2015

Mackus said:
Also, Azteks might get screwed by SSI in the converter... They got over 100 provinces, add those in europe. Unless doom gets disabled for them, they get collapse every year...

They probably will start reformed. Otherwise, their empires would have to be split up into lots of vassals, since those are necessary for the doom/reform mechanics.

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