Caribs

[Karlingid]

The Arawak and the Caribs as they exist in the game are fairly interesting. They're not Totemist and they're not Tupi, and they have events relating to each other specifically. These are the two peoples who settled the Caribbean islands in days past, and were the first groups encountered by Europeans that were native to the Americas since old Vinland.

I feel it fitting to make two suggestions about them:

1) Give Carib the Tupi units. Arawak currently uses it, and it is very fitting, as the tribes of the Amazon all share some rather similar dressing habits when it comes to warriors. The Caribs do it all just as much as the Arawak do, and it is inaccurate to portray the Caribs as Iroquoian warriors as the default units are intended to be.

2) Give Carib and Arawak exclusive access to the Caribbean. As it stands, the two tribes have a total FoW over the entirety of the Caribbean. This should not be, as they were the ones who colonized it to begin with, and they clearly had knowledge of the Caribbean. Carib even gets events and national ideas tied to the Island Caribs. There is no fear of Natives blocking out Europeans from the Caribbean, since colonization is long and expensive, and the tribes could not really afford it. Only the player really colonizes anything if the country is not from Europe, and there is no strait connecting the mainland to the Caribbean, so the AI would never actually block out Europeans from it.

It would be a nice touch for the players, who, if dedicated enough, could make small pushes into the Caribbean. One idea of mine, personally, would be to colonize to Cuba, abandon the mainland, migrate to the next province, and switch culture to Taino as the Arawak.

The additions of these two things, especially the unit sprites, will add just a bit of flare to the two tribes, which lose out on the number of unique and important events experienced by other South American tribes.

 

[Me_]

Those seem like both reasonable and simple suggestions. It's not like this would change the balance of the game, but would be a nice touch.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Yes, fixing the units and maps of the islands should definitely be doable

 

[TheMeInTeam]

IMO the Caribbean really shouldn't be hidden to Mesoamerica either, for gameplay purposes but also because it's not like people on the Yucatan peninsula weren't aware of it.

 

[Gratak]

Yes, fixing the units and maps of the islands should definitely be doable

How about allowing them to colonize it? Natives need colonization over sea again.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

How about allowing them to colonize it? Natives need colonization over sea again.

It's awkward to do that unless you reverse at least some of the nonsensical "no boats" change and give them transports. Otherwise you can get hosed by conquest or especially event rebels.

 

[Grand Historian]

How about allowing them to colonize it? Natives need colonization over sea again.

In all fairness, the Caribs did Colonize the Caribbean but never formed an Empire from it in the same way that Carthage or Rome did (granted, this shouldn't reflect on gameplay that much, but still).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In all fairness, the Caribs did Colonize the Caribbean but never formed an Empire from it in the same way that Carthage or Rome did (granted, this shouldn't reflect on gameplay that much, but still).

Very few nations in this period formed "empires like Rome". We could justify blocking anybody in Italy from using boats with that criteria .

That isn't fairness at all. The primitive ship nerf has been from the start a one-sided nonsensical knee-jerk reaction because developers didn't like the idea of natives using ships to beat Europeans. It never had serious gameplay basis (despite the developers claiming that's what matters), since these nations were never competitively viable. The same patch sequence simultaneously buffed Castile and nerfed new world, which from a gameplay perspective comes off as absurd given their states on any patch ever.

But by far the biggest problem with this patch "logic" is shredding ~100 years of gameplay from the new world and putting that into "waiting around" or otherwise doing minimal useful activity. Once you get to a certain level of ability there isn't much existential threat to playing new world, but there isn't much else either.

 

[Grand Historian]

Very few nations in this period formed "empires like Rome". We could justify blocking anybody in Italy from using boats with that criteria .

I didn't mean turning their neighboring sea into a lake; merely exerting authority over their colonies so they would actually be part of their empire. Hence why I used the Carthaginians as another example. The Carib colonization of the Caribbean more strongly represents what happened with the Greek Colonies in the Mediterranean (minus, obviously, the cannibalism).