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I had made some suggestions as a Beta tester to more accurately model what happened in North America before and after European contact. The presence of "states" in and of themselves isn't the real problem. The problem is that massive, massive plagues were not implemented. Likewise, European trade sparked off wars of conquest and genocide among the North American tribes. As far as we can tell, Ohio was virtually depopulated as a result of the "Beaver Wars" in the late 1600s.
Likewise, these tribes were a real and credible threat to European presence in North America for a time. Then the epidemics hit, and that was all she wrote.
This kept happening until around 1800, when a Shawnee leader consented to have his family vaccinated against smallpox.
Likewise, these tribes were a real and credible threat to European presence in North America for a time. Then the epidemics hit, and that was all she wrote.
This kept happening until around 1800, when a Shawnee leader consented to have his family vaccinated against smallpox.
For what its worth, I agree with this view. When I play, I always edit them away when I play.
Btw. I edit away many native nations in ROTW also...
This IS EUROPA universalis after all...
Well then all the more better for you, but i don't see that happening here and would prob stop helping if that were the case.Originally posted by Dagfinn
For what its worth, I agree with this view. When I play, I always edit them away when I play.
Btw. I edit away many native nations in ROTW also...
This IS EUROPA universalis after all...
And there were nations outside europe that had the european respect (atleast until the english came)
NA tribes
While I'm no expert on either EU2 or North American natives, I would oppose removing all the NA tribes in game. I think everyone can agree that Lenape and Dakota should probably go by the wayside (in gameterms, anyway). Most people not advocating total removal of all tribes seems to agree that the Iroquois and Cherokee should stay.
That leaves the Huron, Shawnee, Creek & Navaho. I would group the first three together and say if one stays, they all should stay due to their various impacts on colonial development. Navaho seem like a good candidate for removal, but personally I would like to see them remain, at least as a revolter due to the events of 1680-92.
As an added note, I looked for an EEP thread for NA to see if there has been more discussion on this in the past, all I found was an AGC thread -- I see one in the EEP forum for NA & SA, but the discussion there seems to be focused on CA/SA. Has anyone added any events for the NA tribes in EEP? (Currently at work, can't check myself right now)
Good overview of European-tribal interaction and a map below:
European Impact on NA Indians
While I'm no expert on either EU2 or North American natives, I would oppose removing all the NA tribes in game. I think everyone can agree that Lenape and Dakota should probably go by the wayside (in gameterms, anyway). Most people not advocating total removal of all tribes seems to agree that the Iroquois and Cherokee should stay.
That leaves the Huron, Shawnee, Creek & Navaho. I would group the first three together and say if one stays, they all should stay due to their various impacts on colonial development. Navaho seem like a good candidate for removal, but personally I would like to see them remain, at least as a revolter due to the events of 1680-92.
As an added note, I looked for an EEP thread for NA to see if there has been more discussion on this in the past, all I found was an AGC thread -- I see one in the EEP forum for NA & SA, but the discussion there seems to be focused on CA/SA. Has anyone added any events for the NA tribes in EEP? (Currently at work, can't check myself right now)
Good overview of European-tribal interaction and a map below:
European Impact on NA Indians
To split hairs....
I think what's important is two things:
- the actual effect of the natives on colonization. This is nicely reflected in the province having 'natives, aggression x'. The 'nations', as organized, do not impact colonization in the same way that natives do, and in fact can easily be used as cheats: they stimey the ai, and they make it easy for a player to get insta-cities. Colonization just didn't work this way, with the possible exception of the Aztec and the Inca (who pretty much rolled over anyway). And in any event, if you keep them they need big, big plague events which currently aren't in the game.
- the fun factor. It's rather obvious people either like playing the native nations, or like the cheat of getting instant American empires through easy conquests. Nothing wrong with either of these things if that's what rings your bell.
I don't think the historical consideration of whether or not these were actual nations is relevant. What is relevant is how, using the Paradox definition of 'nation', they affect gameplay. That is, if you leave them in do the nations bollix European colonization? If you take them out do you get a more historical result? In my own tests I've answered that with a big, consistent 'yes - European colonization works much better without the nations. Leaving the nations in screws things up for the computer.
So I removed them and life is good. The AI colonizes much better, it's more often involved in big ol' Indian massacres (which could also reflect the plague brought to the region by settlers), and I can't cheat by conquering the natives and getting lots of good, already-populated provinces. There is much rejoicing.
I'm thinking there might actually be a way to solve this, although I haven't tried it myself. The question is: can you assign natives to a province *and override these values with whatever is in the nation's file*? That is, can I assign natives to all the Huron provinces and have these be ignored if the Huron are actually in play?
If so, you could change province.csv to add in natives to the provinces, then make an option on the install executable to 'remove all American nations'. If the player picks the option the nation files wouldn't be specified in the primary .inc file, and the native values would be used because they're no longer suppressed by the now-absent nation.
It's just a thought. But if it did work then everyone would be satisfied because they could choose for themselves, at install, what they want to use during play. As is, anyone who simply wants to use natives and not nations has to make the changes himself, and I can tell you from experience here it's a real pain in the ass.
Max
I think what's important is two things:
- the actual effect of the natives on colonization. This is nicely reflected in the province having 'natives, aggression x'. The 'nations', as organized, do not impact colonization in the same way that natives do, and in fact can easily be used as cheats: they stimey the ai, and they make it easy for a player to get insta-cities. Colonization just didn't work this way, with the possible exception of the Aztec and the Inca (who pretty much rolled over anyway). And in any event, if you keep them they need big, big plague events which currently aren't in the game.
- the fun factor. It's rather obvious people either like playing the native nations, or like the cheat of getting instant American empires through easy conquests. Nothing wrong with either of these things if that's what rings your bell.
I don't think the historical consideration of whether or not these were actual nations is relevant. What is relevant is how, using the Paradox definition of 'nation', they affect gameplay. That is, if you leave them in do the nations bollix European colonization? If you take them out do you get a more historical result? In my own tests I've answered that with a big, consistent 'yes - European colonization works much better without the nations. Leaving the nations in screws things up for the computer.
So I removed them and life is good. The AI colonizes much better, it's more often involved in big ol' Indian massacres (which could also reflect the plague brought to the region by settlers), and I can't cheat by conquering the natives and getting lots of good, already-populated provinces. There is much rejoicing.
I'm thinking there might actually be a way to solve this, although I haven't tried it myself. The question is: can you assign natives to a province *and override these values with whatever is in the nation's file*? That is, can I assign natives to all the Huron provinces and have these be ignored if the Huron are actually in play?
If so, you could change province.csv to add in natives to the provinces, then make an option on the install executable to 'remove all American nations'. If the player picks the option the nation files wouldn't be specified in the primary .inc file, and the native values would be used because they're no longer suppressed by the now-absent nation.
It's just a thought. But if it did work then everyone would be satisfied because they could choose for themselves, at install, what they want to use during play. As is, anyone who simply wants to use natives and not nations has to make the changes himself, and I can tell you from experience here it's a real pain in the ass.
Max
One of the main points of scratching the native Americans is getting more free tags, though. And since tags are becoming a very limited ressource, the questions if they were actual nations and deserve inclusion is extremely relevant - if they're kept in optionally, we won't have the tags and therefore have won few. In my opinion an accurate representation of the areas relevant to the game (Europe, Asia, North Africa and to a lesser extent West Africa, East Africa and Central America, that is) and the inclusion of as many historical nations in these areas as possible are much more important than some American tribes.
And btw, if we want to make AGCEEP a mod for MP, as well, these "cheats" in North America are something that needs to be taken care of since these easy annexations are a major unbalancing factor in MP games.
And btw, if we want to make AGCEEP a mod for MP, as well, these "cheats" in North America are something that needs to be taken care of since these easy annexations are a major unbalancing factor in MP games.
I'm not so sure. To me the question of 'actual nations' is simply a relative thing. It's a good guideline about which countries to get rid of.
I don't think the discussion should really be about relative value of tags, but how they affect outcomes. As such I still think that max raises some interesting ideas that need to be considered. Other than allowing for people to play natives, they aren't particularly useful gameplay wise. But ultimately I'm too conservative to atually advocate his position.
edit: by which I mean we shouldn't lose sight of the big picture just because it might be nice to free up some tags.
I don't think the discussion should really be about relative value of tags, but how they affect outcomes. As such I still think that max raises some interesting ideas that need to be considered. Other than allowing for people to play natives, they aren't particularly useful gameplay wise. But ultimately I'm too conservative to atually advocate his position.
edit: by which I mean we shouldn't lose sight of the big picture just because it might be nice to free up some tags.
This could be done, it just wouldn't be as easy as you suggested. Natives in provinces are not supressed by a nation being there. You'd have to create different versions of the files to used with an options command, but it is do-able.
On Topic
This same debate raged on in the merger forum. There's quite a bit of overlap between the two projects (in more ways than a hundred). My question is whether or not EEP is going to to get stringed along on the merger's move.
Reading through this thread, I can see there is not quite a real clear consensus. Perhaps I am mistaken though. In the merger thread, there were many implementable ideas for the NA-tribes that would virtually eliminate many of the -ve gameplay issues. For the benifit of some further discussion, I'll present them briefly.
There are three major factors that influence an AIs colonization patterns and rates of success.
1) The AI file, which includes definitions for specific regions and areas to colonize, number of colonies to create, probabilities of success for establishing colonies next to foreign neighbours or 'self' colonies.
2) The province native aggression values.
3) The rate of exploration
It is likely that the incredibly historical colonial outcomes reported in this thread involving the removal of all NA-nations, have largely been a function of certan combinations of the 3 major factors I have mentioned above. The important fact to note is that these factors have very little to do with NA-nations' presence or absense. I will return to the significance of this later on.
The only gameplay issue that is raised that actually involves the NA-nations was the instant empire concern.
Two broad classes of events have been suggested as solutions to this issue in this very thread and are analagous to suggestions brought up in the merger forum.
1)disease events; smallpox, influenza, common cold, etc.
2)dispersion events; survivors dispersed further inland, re-absorbed by neighbouring tribes.
The important fact to note is that these factors resolve the instant empire problems by devastating the populations, slashing tax values, reducing manpower values etc. in recently conquered NA-nation provinces.
With the current AI settings and provincial native settings, the colonizing AI stands little to no chance against a human player on the continent. If you take away the NA-nations, then you are leaving the continent open for human player hegemony. The AI, as it would stand in this scnenatio, simply could not compete with a human players effort. It is important to note that the human players' colonzing efforts and effects in NA is something that cannot be evaluated in a hand's off game and brings a certain amount of weight to the frist 3 major factors I outlined in the beginning when taking that form of evidence into consideration.
*By 'AI', I am including the efforts put forth not only by rival european colonizers, but the NA-nations as well. The term 'colonizing AI' is a reference to European AI only.
In the face of such changes that I have briefly outlined above, when combined with a subsequent re-modelling of NA-nations, we are merely left with really only one valid reason for removal, which is the economizing of tags. However, I am of the opinion that the NA continent should remain playable. What the NA continent has lacked throughout EU2s existence is serious NA-nation mod - a mod, I should mention, that is currently in the works. A mod which will give the NA-nations a reason to be played other than sheer curiosity. As has already been mentioned, EEP was designed to give ROTW a chance at playability, and it is something which I feel at least some of the NA-nations deserve.
EDIT: I think I'll leave myself out of the decision process for this though. I do not want to be seen as advancing any kind of agenda!
I won't hesitate to throw in a historical comment or two, or to clarify on any of my points, however, if such an oppurtunity arises
This same debate raged on in the merger forum. There's quite a bit of overlap between the two projects (in more ways than a hundred). My question is whether or not EEP is going to to get stringed along on the merger's move.
Reading through this thread, I can see there is not quite a real clear consensus. Perhaps I am mistaken though. In the merger thread, there were many implementable ideas for the NA-tribes that would virtually eliminate many of the -ve gameplay issues. For the benifit of some further discussion, I'll present them briefly.
There are three major factors that influence an AIs colonization patterns and rates of success.
1) The AI file, which includes definitions for specific regions and areas to colonize, number of colonies to create, probabilities of success for establishing colonies next to foreign neighbours or 'self' colonies.
2) The province native aggression values.
3) The rate of exploration
It is likely that the incredibly historical colonial outcomes reported in this thread involving the removal of all NA-nations, have largely been a function of certan combinations of the 3 major factors I have mentioned above. The important fact to note is that these factors have very little to do with NA-nations' presence or absense. I will return to the significance of this later on.
The only gameplay issue that is raised that actually involves the NA-nations was the instant empire concern.
Two broad classes of events have been suggested as solutions to this issue in this very thread and are analagous to suggestions brought up in the merger forum.
1)disease events; smallpox, influenza, common cold, etc.
2)dispersion events; survivors dispersed further inland, re-absorbed by neighbouring tribes.
The important fact to note is that these factors resolve the instant empire problems by devastating the populations, slashing tax values, reducing manpower values etc. in recently conquered NA-nation provinces.
With the current AI settings and provincial native settings, the colonizing AI stands little to no chance against a human player on the continent. If you take away the NA-nations, then you are leaving the continent open for human player hegemony. The AI, as it would stand in this scnenatio, simply could not compete with a human players effort. It is important to note that the human players' colonzing efforts and effects in NA is something that cannot be evaluated in a hand's off game and brings a certain amount of weight to the frist 3 major factors I outlined in the beginning when taking that form of evidence into consideration.
*By 'AI', I am including the efforts put forth not only by rival european colonizers, but the NA-nations as well. The term 'colonizing AI' is a reference to European AI only.
In the face of such changes that I have briefly outlined above, when combined with a subsequent re-modelling of NA-nations, we are merely left with really only one valid reason for removal, which is the economizing of tags. However, I am of the opinion that the NA continent should remain playable. What the NA continent has lacked throughout EU2s existence is serious NA-nation mod - a mod, I should mention, that is currently in the works. A mod which will give the NA-nations a reason to be played other than sheer curiosity. As has already been mentioned, EEP was designed to give ROTW a chance at playability, and it is something which I feel at least some of the NA-nations deserve.
EDIT: I think I'll leave myself out of the decision process for this though. I do not want to be seen as advancing any kind of agenda!
I won't hesitate to throw in a historical comment or two, or to clarify on any of my points, however, if such an oppurtunity arises
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As I understand it we're closing out the EEP, so this discusion would be better for the merger thread.
However, I will raise one (and only one) objection to your points, most of which I think make sense. Reducing taxvalues, manpower etc. doesn't really solve the instant empire issue. The cost of (say) 500d in sending colonists, and 7 (or 10) colonists is much higher than the cost needed to run a sucessful war to take out one of the native countries. Reducing the benifits changes the balance to a good degree, but the cost side is radically different.
However, I will raise one (and only one) objection to your points, most of which I think make sense. Reducing taxvalues, manpower etc. doesn't really solve the instant empire issue. The cost of (say) 500d in sending colonists, and 7 (or 10) colonists is much higher than the cost needed to run a sucessful war to take out one of the native countries. Reducing the benifits changes the balance to a good degree, but the cost side is radically different.
I am not so sure that the cost differential is as great as is often alleged. You still need to purchase an army, transport and either suffer attrition very heavily or suffer provincial unrest from war exhaustion. In the former, recruiting costs would increase as you're looking for a quick resolution that involved numerous assaults. Taking a more prolonged and, intially less costly approach that involved seiges, however, subjects the player to the -ve effects of war exhaustion.
In truth, it is hard to argue on any solid ground about directionality of cost differentials between simply having to colonize, and simply having to annex, because both forms of costs involve many variables that fluctuate during the course of the game. With that in mind however, the cost of simply colonizing can be reduced in some countries relative to others simply via their instrinsic AI file settings. Some of these settings, such as the bonuses for establishing colonies, have remained largely untouched since EU2s conception.
*using the term 'directionality of cost differentials', I refer to the question of the magnitude of the cost, but also to whether or not it more or less expensive to either annex a nation, or colonize their provinces.
Colonizing costs become seriously deflated once conquistadors or even regular army units are introduced into the colonial candidate province. Again, costs for colonzing become deflated once an establishment has already been made as it becomes easier to colonize the neighbouring provinces. Periods of deflation futher reduce the costs of colinzing. These just being a small handful of the variables that influece the colonizing costs.
If someone can tell me which key commands or sequence thereof that takes the 'snapshot' of your EU2 screen, then I will present a NA setup that involves every tag that is currently in the EU2 1.42, except the Navajo. I am ashamed to admit I cannot remember and have lost the manual
The reason I chose to eliminate the Navajo in my own setup, was because they offer little by means of player playability as they are too remote (much as the Dakota were) to effectively contribute to an (IMO) interesting dynamic in the NA continent. The NA-nations have been trimmed to historical size, in my setup, and it is important to note that this further reduces the currently drastically negative instant empire issue.
EDIT: I have a suspicion that it involves one of the 'F' commands...
The merger, to my knowledge, has declared the NA tags are free. So they have been removed from the merger. For this reason I had asked:
I maintain that I don't want to become entrenched into any kind of battle for saving them in the EEP, but for me, I'd like to know which NA-tags would remain in the EEP as it would be nice to know that the potential is still there for playability and improvement in a near future.
By closing out the EEP, to carify, do you mean to say that there will be no new additions to the EEP ever?
As soon as the merger comes into play, the EEP will no longer be necessary to maintain. Thats the whole idea behind a merger.
Future of EEP?
'Bug fixes only' is a pretty stagnant future for EEP. I had assumed that the EEP would continue right along, once the merger was complete, with its philosphical ways. Free at that point to continue to evolve as a seperate and unique entity.
Knowing that some EEPers are consumed with the merger project, where have all the brains gone? Is this a case of lack of dedication to the EEP? Time contraints on present members?
I can understand an indiviuals choice of commitment to the merger, but I cannot understand an utter collapse in innovation for the EEP project. Surely there are others who will carry the torch for EEP. It is after all, a gloriously amazing one. The torch of all torches *wiping a tear from his eye*
EDIT:
'Bug fixes only' is a pretty stagnant future for EEP. I had assumed that the EEP would continue right along, once the merger was complete, with its philosphical ways. Free at that point to continue to evolve as a seperate and unique entity.
Knowing that some EEPers are consumed with the merger project, where have all the brains gone? Is this a case of lack of dedication to the EEP? Time contraints on present members?
I can understand an indiviuals choice of commitment to the merger, but I cannot understand an utter collapse in innovation for the EEP project. Surely there are others who will carry the torch for EEP. It is after all, a gloriously amazing one. The torch of all torches *wiping a tear from his eye*
EDIT:
this seems to confirm the 'lack of time/effort' reason. The Committe members (most now High Council members on the merger I notice) don't forsee themselves as having any interest after the merger is complete with the EEP anymore?
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The whole point of the merger is to 're-combined' the talent that was divided upon the AGC-EEP split. Once merged, what use would there be to have the EEP remain as an outside project, since all that it is, has become part of a larger project?
So its not really a time issue (for all) but more of an issue, that there'd be no point to a merger if we wanted to keep the EEP going.
So its not really a time issue (for all) but more of an issue, that there'd be no point to a merger if we wanted to keep the EEP going.
I miss these crucial discussions everytime! I will bet that alot of these topics were discussed before summer even...
I can very much understand the advantages of re-combining the talent pool between the two projects. So I have no qualm at all there.
EDIT: But, equally as important, there are undoubtably ppl, who are not involved in the merger, who enjoy EEP and want to make further contributions to the EEP as it stands in 1.4.2, thus continuing in the tradition of the EEP itself.
I don't see how leaving the EEP open as a future choice for ppl detracts from the validity of the merger at all. The AGC is a huge bundle of talent in itself and more than justifies a merger with EEP. Which is good, I mean, how can you go wrong with a decision like that?
The merger also represents, however, a situation where 2 'open-ended' projects become one 'more closed than they were before' project.
To use an analogy from microbiology...the concept of cellular plasticity, specifically a stem cell. It is better for an organism for a cell to replicate in it's most 'unspecialized' form, before one of them subsequently specializes, than to replicate after specialiation has already occured.
The broader point pertaining to adaptability.
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Unfortunately you weren't around when all this was discussed. The idea behind the merger is to shut down both the EEP and AGC so that everyone can work on one user mod. As it did before the AGC wa split off. We (the commitee) did discuss pros and cons for a while, but everyone felt this was better.
mnorrefeldt and myself are not on the high council. That's two out of five.
But we were all planning to stop work on the EEP from the time we took the decision to merge the projects.
There is only so much that can get done, and having more eyes looking at proposals is the best way to ensure we get the best mod possible.
mnorrefeldt and myself are not on the high council. That's two out of five.
But we were all planning to stop work on the EEP from the time we took the decision to merge the projects.
There is only so much that can get done, and having more eyes looking at proposals is the best way to ensure we get the best mod possible.
Right.
I understand the neccessity for talent and manpower with the merger, don't get me wrong, I am in agreance with that. But it's as if a group of people were to be working on some massive project, and then, once it's finished, assuming that everyone working on the project is just going to be sitting back and retiring and t the age of like, 35.
In other words, full steam ahead with the merger, but after a time, it won't need the resources it needs now, it just won't. To assume that the merger is 'the mod to end all mods' is lol kinda funny. It'll be amazing, don't get me wrong, but I mean to say is that I think ppl will still go on modding and sharing and integrating mods as long as they still enjoy playing the game.
I understand the neccessity for talent and manpower with the merger, don't get me wrong, I am in agreance with that. But it's as if a group of people were to be working on some massive project, and then, once it's finished, assuming that everyone working on the project is just going to be sitting back and retiring and t the age of like, 35.
In other words, full steam ahead with the merger, but after a time, it won't need the resources it needs now, it just won't. To assume that the merger is 'the mod to end all mods' is lol kinda funny. It'll be amazing, don't get me wrong, but I mean to say is that I think ppl will still go on modding and sharing and integrating mods as long as they still enjoy playing the game.