EU4: El Dorado - Development Diary 1: Nahuatl, Exploration & Treaty of Tordesillas | Page 14

BFTeixeira · Jan 22, 2015

Mikalos said:
do i have to post the maps that show the treat line and then the maps with the modern borders on it again?

the vast majpority of brazil is located west of the treaty

Yeah, because at the time they computers, satelittes, and GPS, to know with infinite precision where they were and where the line is set. Have you ever seen a european map from the XV century?

Dr. B · Jan 22, 2015

So if you cant avoid the DOOM counter, all hell breaks loose. You sacrifice the king, the heir, the priests undo all your reforms, chaos and fear spreads throughout the lands as terrified citizens pray for protection, all to appease the angry gods. Ok.

But if you still after all this still have negative stability, high WE, maybe bankruptcy, no new sacrifices and see a comet in say, one years time, then the world does actually end in a rain of hellfire as the gods purge the world?

net.split · Jan 22, 2015

Portugal broke the treaty. Spain was aware. Presumably there was a relations penalty, but Spain wasn't in a place to be able to do anything about it. So they didn't.

Exactly as can happen in the game.

It's not binding. Nations can take the risk of violating the pope's edicts. And I hope the AI will do this from time to time! I'd love to see Catholic France get a huge relations malus with other Catholics as a result (they're unlikely to be the first colonizers in most areas) and wind up with even fewer reliable allies.

josh127 · Jan 22, 2015

Dr. B said:
So if you cant avoid the DOOM counter, all hell breaks loose.

Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

wilcoxchar · Jan 22, 2015

These features sound great! My only complaint is that getting a papl bull for a colonial region shouldn't be automatic, and should cost papl influence.

penco · Jan 22, 2015

Mikalos said:
I want buffs to iff its low doom

you arent giving any, you're just complaining that we have to manage doom at all and that it wont let you just ahistorically take over everybody in the area

You could make that same argument for literally 90% of nations in the game. Pick any non-Great Power. Does Ulm collapse if it conquers too much just because of some arbitrary religious belief?

This game is an historical sandbox. Who cares if the Aztec ahistorically unite the region? Why should they be the only group who have gods come in and smite them for it?

penco · Jan 22, 2015

josh127 said:
Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling. Forty years of darkness, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

That's why this mechanic is so silly. Because if IRL the Aztecs didn't do enough blood sacrifice, maybe some peasants would be pissed at the ruler and think he's bad, but otherwise nothing would happen! It's not like the Nahuatl gods are real.

They might as well introduce an event for Christian nations where Jesus swoops in and establishes the Millennial Kingdom. That's about how historical this thing is.

Saintlukas · Jan 22, 2015

penco said:
It's not like the Nahuatl gods are real

Someone's gonna get sacrificed for this!

FelOnyx · Jan 22, 2015

penco said:
That's why this mechanic is so silly. Because if IRL the Aztecs didn't do enough blood sacrifice, maybe some peasants would be pissed at the ruler and think he's bad, but otherwise nothing would happen! It's not like the Nahuatl gods are real.

They might as well introduce an event for Christian nations where Jesus swoops in and establishes the Millennial Kingdom. That's about how historical this thing is.

Obviously not, but that's not what this represents. The Aztec gods aren't coming down to smite you, but your nobles and other elites freak out and think they might, so they sacrifice you.

Mikalos · Jan 22, 2015

penco said:
You could make that same argument for literally 90% of nations in the game. Pick any non-Great Power. Does Ulm collapse if it conquers too much just because of some arbitrary religious belief?

This game is an historical sandbox. Who cares if the Aztec ahistorically unite the region? Why should they be the only group who have gods come in and smite them for it?

"Arbitrary religious beleif" you mean the core feature of the aztec religion? youre right, why have a pope for catholicism, its just an arbitrary part of the religion

TheMeInTeam · Jan 22, 2015

penco said:
You could make that same argument for literally 90% of nations in the game. Pick any non-Great Power. Does Ulm collapse if it conquers too much just because of some arbitrary religious belief?

This game is an historical sandbox. Who cares if the Aztec ahistorically unite the region? Why should they be the only group who have gods come in and smite them for it?

It's a lot more interesting to consider whether the costs are worth the benefits. 10% morale, -2 unrest aren't bad baselines. Wiz said that you keep the reforms when you westernize, this is unlike native councils and provides the faith a substantial advantage. The symbols also lead me to believe that in the beta you have reforms impacting discipline, war exhaustion, and the stated colonist as well. Depending on what you can see, the combination of the post-reform benefits and the tech boost on reform might make Aztec more viable than previously, depending on how it's balanced.

For example, they didn't say how much doom you lose per kill/occupation. To illustrate why that matters, imagine every battle you win removing an extreme 20 doom. At that point, sitting on 5 OPM vassals and reform spamming them into wars to instantly remove the doom would be a cakewalk, with significant benefits conferred far beyond anything we got from animist, with a coinciding easier westernization due to not flopping like a fish into 0% unity.

I'm not saying it'll break down that way obviously, but the information we have is too incomplete to make judgments on it. Due to the reforms, the religion is not all penalties (as was alluded earlier) at all. A colonist you get to keep even post-doom (something Wiz confirmed) is pretty significant in this region. The big questions are "what does Aztec see at the start"...how realistic is it to actually get that western border in a reasonable timeframe? Will the circumstances force you to still rush ADM 4? Does Mesoamerican tech group still cost the same at baseline? We don't know any of that, and it has a drastic impact on the viability of the starting position.

Christopholes · Jan 22, 2015

...
Sure, and converting to Protestentism and excommunicated ruler should have no penalties either and Zealot rebels should just be disabled then.

bbqftw · Jan 22, 2015

Saintlukas said:
Someone's gonna get sacrificed for this!

This DLC can be sold on the premise of throwing Enrique IV into a woodchipper alone

Christopholes · Jan 22, 2015

bbqftw said:
This DLC can be sold on the premise of throwing Enrique IV into a woodchipper alone

War of the Roses... Flower Wars...
I have a cunning plan.

bbqftw · Jan 22, 2015

@Wiz

After you fully reform, will you still be allowed to sacrifice your vassal leaders for fun?

DominusNovus · Jan 22, 2015

This might seem like a dumb question, but I just want to make sure: When you have a Papal Grant on a particular colonial region, that will apply to your Colonial Nations as well, correct? It'd be quite a disappointment if your colony were facing the same penalties as competing Catholic nations...

Cèsar de Quart · Jan 22, 2015

celethiel said:
The Inca aren't MesoAmerican, they're South American. And while they, and other south American peoples did sacrifice people, the system of Doom and gloom was not the same. It was more of an honor Sort of thing there. So they should not be included in this Religion on that basis by it's self.

What I'd like to know is if the Maya will also be practicing this so called religion or will they be practicing another one... a worse one considering Nahuatl wasn't their language, and seems to be named after the Aztecs.... perhaps a heresy... although I am sure the Maya would consider the Aztec Religion a heresy since it's younger.

The Doom system takes off with a good idea, but it takes it to an extreme fantasy effect. I know it's supposed to model unrest and peril in the mind of the Mechica population, and it can be fun to play, but it's so far off reality, so abstract in its concept, that at the minimum information you have about Mesoamerican culture and religion, it will throw you off the game completely.

If they wanted to model a good system to represent Mesoamerican society and religion, they should have gone with:

- Indirect rule and vassal kings. The Aztecs, like other American state systems, had a political empire of vassal kings (indirect rule) that gave tributes and soldiers to the Triple Alliance in the Mexico valley. Take control of a neighbouring state and decide: keep their king, install one of your own family members, or rule the land directly at great cost.

- Prestige as a source of power: When the Spaniards showed that the Aztecs were weak against them (or that Moctezuma was the most indecisive monarch in a long time), many of the Aztec Empire provinces simply stopped sending tributes. Since their rule was indirect, and their army was not permanent, they relied on the threat of military action. The Spanish in play made many tributary kings both greedy for independence or afraid of crossing the Spaniards. Loose too much prestige and your vassals might start to secede.

- Respect the Line of Tollan. To the Aztecs, Tollan is the mythical ancestor of their people, and all the monarchies tried to link themselves with the one that was considered direct descendant of Tollan. I think it was Cholula, but I'm not sure.

- All roads lead to Cholula. The Mesoamerican Rome; archaeologists have discovered a vast network of ways and roads leading to Cholula. Being overlord of Cholula and respecting their royal family is key to religious control of the Valley and the lands of the Aztec-Maya religious system, which is not the same, but quite similar in many aspects.

- Rewrite History! Tlacaelel and his brother, King Izcoatl burned down the old books and re-wrote Aztec history. This allowed their rule to be more solid, but also made research and insight on the past more difficult. Moctezuma recalled having tried to investigate if fair-skinned men had arrived to America's shore before, but found out that there were no records, the books had been burned and the inscriptions destroyed. Maybe loss of tech power or monarch points?

- Abolish the Triple Alliance: In this Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan ruled, theorically, in accordance. At some point, Tenochtitlan took over the government of Tlacopan and installed a puppet ruler of the royal family of Tenochtitlan, and by that time the Tenochca faction was by far the most powerful within the Triple Alliance, making the kings of Texcoco and Tlacopan virtually subsidiaries to that of Tenochtitlan. I'd like to see federation-like systems that helped replicate the Triple Alliance system into other situations, and their dissolution, after one of their factions gains a lot of power, into a single, centralised entity. HRE style.

- The Battle (or competition) of the Gods. Or more precisely, of the Priesthoods. Like other pantheons, the Aztecs considered all gods possible and plausible. Many Aztecs converted to Christianity only to adore Mary and Tezcatlipoca at the same time, or associate Mary with Queltzalepetl, sister of Quetzalcoatl, and Christ or St Thomas with Quetzalcoatl itself. Anyway, the different priesthoods in the Mesoamerican world were always eager to extend the influence of their patron god further and further, higher and higher. Similar to the way Marduk went from patron god of the Babylonians that became, after Babylon's dominance over Mesopotamia, one of the region's patron gods, so did the patron god of Tenochtitlan, Huitzilopochtli. If you could choose which priesthood to support and promote their increase of wealth and influence, which festivals should it preside, etc etc, it could give out a nice theme for Mesoamerican religious world and struggle.

Now, DOOM.

More than a Doom counter, I'd have preferred something more akin to Mesoamerican thinking: calendar. According to the Moctezuma Codex, very 50 years or so, the caledar was "bound", the flames were lit off from the temples and the hearth in every house and palace, to be renewed, and complex rituals were to be carried out if the Tlaotani wanted the world to keep going. I don't remember the specifics, but the Binding of the Years, or New Flame Ceremony, was a rather close and constant endtimes scenario. I would have preferred that every X number of years, several rituals, festivities and other perks had to be made, and a certain amount of prestige and piety spent, in order to pass correctly to the next cicle.

There's a long description of the ceremonies in its Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Fire_ceremony

Promanco · Jan 22, 2015

Doom strikes me as a high risk, high reward deal. If you are skilled and manage to reform you have by far the most powerful religious bonuses in the game 10% morale an -2 unrest are not bad on their own but add the 5 reform bonuses which you get to keep after you finish reformation and you have a powerhouse on the making the free 80% advancement is also quite outstanding and puts you in fighting range of the europeans right of the bat.
However if you mismanage your Doom and you do not get reforms pass you can be sure that you will descend into chaos and your hard earn empire will collapse at your feet.
I do not understand why people is talking as if this is a nerf, in AI hands the natives will be eradicated so this changes nothing, oh but in player hands the possibility of those extremely good PERMANENT bonuses is totally worth the effort to survive the apocalypse.

ehecatzin · Jan 22, 2015

Mikalos said:
People complain that there isnt an aztec religion, then complain when you get one and it actually acts like the religion was.

again, if the religion isnt going to demand of me that i sacrifice enenmies to stave off the end of the world, while punishing me for not doing so, why not just give them the religion of unicornism?

if we arent going to have religions that actually act like the religion we have, why should they even be in the game?

If Paradox had just added the new religions and added sacrifice and some bonus I would have been really dissapointed TBH, by their preview of the Nahuatl, its clear they are using the reform mechanic to showcase the evolution of the classical native civilizations not just the religous aspect. Since the founding of Tenochtitlan the Aztecs were on a path to becoming more Toltec and centralized, and it showed in their religion as well, by the time of their latest conquests the flower wars (and its massive sacrifices) were used more as a political intimidation tool rather than just a religious belief.

Thats why I think the reforms sounds so interesting, yes you start on a path set by Tlacaelel, of conquering everybody and intimidate them with sacrifices, but if you manage to grow big enough you can play with "what if's" that were already on course when the Spanish showed up.

Something Paradox hasnt mentioned, that may be mod material, is that the Aztec archenemies, the Tlaxcallans, werent a kingdom, they were in fact a confederation that worked similar to a republic, with senate and all, it could be interesting if at least they started with a diferent government type.

Cèsar de Quart · Jan 22, 2015

ehecatzin said:
If Paradox had just added the new religions and added sacrifice and some bonus I would have been really dissapointed TBH, by their preview of the Nahuatl, its clear they are using the reform mechanic to showcase the evolution of the classical native civilizations not just the religous aspect. Since the founding of Tenochtitlan the Aztecs were on a path to becoming more Toltec and centralized, and it showed in their religion as well, by the time of their latest conquests the flower wars (and its massive sacrifices) were used more as a political intimidation tool rather than just a religious belief.

Precisely, although there was a component of faith in it too. Human sacrifices were also done privately, as a major form of bloodletting. The same way Aztecs would cut themselves and spray blood on newly built structures, presents or even food (something Spaniards were keen on noting), they would sacrifice captives as major thanksgiving or pray preparation, no public needed.

But for the purposes of the game, yes, major, grand ritual sacrifices were mostly a political show, I agree.

Thats why I think the reforms sounds so interesting, yes you start on a path set by Tlacaelel, of conquering everybody and intimidate them with sacrifices, but if you manage to grow big enough you can play with "what if's" that were already on course when the Spanish showed up.

Something Paradox hasnt mentioned, that may be mod material, is that the Aztec archenemies, the Tlaxcallans, werent a kingdom, they were in fact a confederation that worked similar to a republic, with senate and all, it could be interesting if at least they started with a diferent government type.

If only...

Still, I think that most American cultures or religions should have a "no annexation" attached. Only confederations, alliances or vassalizations. I don't think direct conquest without vassal kings had ever been done in America before the Europeans arrived. The Cahokia hegemony system in the Mississipi valley relied on a network of subsidiary chiefdoms and the Triple Alliance had its myriad of vassal tributary kings. I don't know about the Inca empire, but it would surprise me if they didn't have a more or less decentralised rule base.

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