I think each great power should have their own unique ai it’s really annoying seeing Austria colonise Africa and leave the Ottoman borders as the same since 1836
I mean, in terms of diplomacy, America should not be colonization Africa etc.? Not only is it immersion breaking, but it also greatly upsets the balance of power, since there is now one non-European colonizer competiting for land... USA should not be doing that unless it is on an ahistorical path (like monarchist USA or something)
Of course, would be nicer if the base game can correct that
I think, much like with every time something like this comes up, the solution would be improvements in the simulation and not carving out specific behaviors for AI. Some of this requires the tiniest bit of extra historical curiosity; why
didn't the USA create any African colonies (aside from Liberia)? The answer is not "because the universe a priori requires the USA to not create any African colonies."
Arguably, the reasons are both political (left out of the simulation right now for foreign policy, so that's an ask) and material. Materially, by the time the USA was ready and able to maintain overseas colonies, a period kicked off by the Spanish-American war, the Scramble for Africa was mostly concluded and there was nowhere
to take that wouldn't have resulted in impugning on another nation's sphere of influence; this is why the USA's primary colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific had to be wrested by force from the Spanish in the aforementioned war, with the tacit allowance of other GPs, especially the UK. This was itself something of a diplomatic coup and a real turning point for US-UK relations (which, again, will have to wait for the SoI expansion to really be modeled at all).
Another thing at issue for the US "not being ready" not being modeled is the notion that the game presents no real difference in setting up infrastructure and governing structures for settlers on the great plains and establishing colonial rule over hundreds of thousands of people thousands of miles away, aside from having to click in a slightly different place when an uprising pops up. In reality, that's a huge difference in logistical needs and capabilities; the game would actually need to model supply for that though so...
To summarize, to stop the USA from colonizing Africa we would need one or more of:
- a model of your people expressing opinions about foreign policy
- a model of war that has significant, noticeable consequences from the US civil war (that happens and makes sense) that would prevent them from affording colonization
- a model of colonization that makes it more difficult/expensive depending on where the colony is
- a diplomatic model for the mechanics of the Berlin Conference (beyond endless infamy-generating event spam, ugh) that leaves a historical USA out
And honestly the most important thing is that this doesn't
prevent the USA from colonizing Africa; it merely makes it so that the USA
only colonizes Africa in a world where that.. actually would kind of make sense. A USA that peacefully abolished slavery might have wealthy industrialists in Congress insisting that the light of Democracy needed to be brought into Darkest Africa. A muscular, militarily successful USA that successfully put down the rebellion more quickly might find it easier to sit down at the Berlin Conference and carve out its own sphere for resources/prestige than pick a fight with Spain decades later. That's why we play these games, right?
Mods can't do any of that, AI modifications can't do that. At best they can create a potemkin world that "looks kinda right" and breaks into utter nonsense once anything pushes the clockwork of exploitable AI out of order, bumbling along doing what it's "supposed to" in a world radically different than the one those decisions made sense in. This is called "the HoI4 model."
So the short answer is, game's not done and weird stuff will happen. Will it ever be done? Who knows. I'd rather keep whining at the devs to see if they'll finish it in a way that makes sense than try whine at modders for the impossible.
