The Asian Empires Improved Grand Campaign

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Too bad

Damn, damn, damn. I would have thought it wouldn't have been too hard to change the graphics and simply duplicate the Sinic graphics. Too bad. I wince every time I look at the Indian style buildings and units. Its understandable for the Indianized SEA nations, but Dai Viet?

If not a CoT in Hoi An, then I would say SEA still needs a CoT in the area. Maybe Malacca? though Hoi An would come in a close second since it was such a popular port for both the East Asian nations as well as SEA and Europe. China should *definitely* get its own CoT though. I would argue for a seaport though at Hoi An (not simply a naval port).

Yes, I believe Japan at the time had a population base of, what?, 40 million? Dai Viet's population should also be comparable to this number. Large yearly income, offset by the inevitable rise in discontent and peasant uprisings. It would also solve the problem of supporting overly large armies, which I believe someone complained of in another thread (supporting huge numbers of Japanese troops). What's the game population like in Nippon in IGC? I haven't actually checked that out yet.

No, I think Champa was a Khmer empire (though I could be wrong). Champa wasn't entirely extinguished until 1720 under the Tay Son Dynasty (about the time when the capital was moved to Hue). Its just during the time of the game that the Viets are pressing Champa pretty hardcore.

It really is too bad about the limited ID tags, damn. The only real way to limit China's power without introducing artificial limits is to introduce its historical neighbors. It would also be far more enjoyable to play in Asia that way. As it is now, there's not really too much wheeling and dealing. It also just feels pretty wrong leaving out Corea and Tibet (and company). The entire Asian dynamic feels off kilter.

I also don't like the concept of tech restrictions. It smacks of Eurocentric chauvinism though granted this game is "Europa Universalis." The Asian civilizations were advanced, they simply didn't advance as quickly as Europe when they underwent the European Renaissance. Much like the ballyhooed myth that even though the Chinese invented gunpowder, all they did with it was play with firecrackers.

All I can think of is to start an IGC Asian Empires option like IGC and IGC1520 in order to incorporate a more fleshed out and dynamic Asia.

Ah well. Here's to wishing.

 

[ErrantOne]

* I too am unhappy with how Dai Viet never gets to complete the March to the South. GulFalco had a fix for this, which was to make Mekong a colony of Dai Viet and give Vietnam a bunch of colonists at the beginning of the game. I like it, and perhaps some random events can be added later giving Vietnam more colonists. But I don't agree with giving it colonial dynamism as we will see strange Vietnam colonies all over the place. *

Sixteenth, Dai Viet, to offset the increased income, should have constant rebellions. Not religious distress, like most East Asian countries Viet Nam had a civil religion, but lots and lots of peasant uprisings in the southern portion. Like, lots.

* I raised this in the original IGC thread, and the fix at the time seemed to be lowered stability. But IMHO I don't think it's enough. Perhaps the fix to this would be to introduce "Time of Troubles" like random events at the historical period for the rebellions in the south. Even better would be to add a revolter to Dai Viet, for the southern provinces with capital at Hue. But again, not enough tags...*

There are colonist events and rebellion events so both of these are quite doable. They would just need Hands off play testing for balance.

For event types see my post on historic/random events in EU.

I really like this thread, as SE Asia could use some tuning.

ErrantOne

PS Europa Universalis = Eurocentric chauvinism when it could be alot better off without it.

 

[ErrantOne]

perfect rebellion event (44) +5 revolt for 12months.

Colonist event is (17) +3 colonists.

Link to events list: http://www.geocities.com/errantone/EU_Events_table.htm

If you can give some suggestions for colonist dates and rebellions I might be able to setup these events for play testing (maybe over the weekend).

ErrantOne

 

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I think Au Lac can supply you with the proper dates for Tay Son, civil war, etc. I had them somewhere, but don't know where I put them.

One reason why the SEAsian nations don't have a COT I now realize after playing many games is that the European ones need them. Once HOL or POR (or SPA even) get a COT going, they rake in the dough. If you're HOL or POR, you really need it. In my last game as POR, I made enough money off Malacca to build seven refineries, five n.equip manufactories, three shipyards, advance to max tech levels, you get the idea. (China does have a COT, BTW.) I would support an SEAsian COT if we can get it to be like Flanders -- important at start but small after a century or so, to make way for the POR, HOL, SPA or ENG COTs.

The Chams are actually ethnically Malay -- their language is closer to Malay than it is to Khmer or Vietnamese -- though culturally they were heavily Khmer influenced. Interestingly, most Chams left in Cambodia these days are Muslims, wonder whether they followed the pattern of their distant Malay kin in Sumatra and Java (Hindu-Buddhist, then Islam).

Now if only I could find my Vietnamese-Cham-French dictionary, I could show you.

 

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The reason why the map don't reflect the real size of the extra european lands is that in the original boardgame it was on 2 different maps. One for europe and one for the rest of the world. It is the same reason why there is that permanent terra incognita place, it limits the european nations in there extention and don't let them get to far inland wich is quite unhistorical (especialy in africa tibet and amazone). It really limits the possibilitys of the asian nations when you play them but remember that this game is made for a gameplay on european point of view, it was not made to play with other nations than the 8th original ones.

On the other side i agree to say that the non-europeans nations are too week and that they should not be wasted away like they usually are, well at least in SE asia and india, north americans are another problem (they where not destroyed as easily as they are in the actual game).

Lets hope that this will be fixed if EU2 is coming one day

 

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The map is, unfortunately, hardcoded. As for the relative strengths of the European/Asiatic nations, I think the game does as good a job as can be expected.

The problem is that when the game opens e.g. 1492, most of the Asiatic powers could have rolled over Western Europe if they A) knew how to get there, or B) cared to do so. By the end of the time frame covered in the game, however, European economic and warmaking capability had scaled up so much that very small European armies were, in fact, defeating much larger contingents of indigenous troops. This can be seen dramatically in the various Britsh campaigns in the Indian subcontinent.

The game tries to reflect this by artifically retarding the technical and industrial development of the Asiatic nations. If we were to go in and, for example, put China in the latin technical group and give her some decent explorers, she'd dominate the globe. The game simply doesn't have the capability to reflect the political and social factors that kept the Chinese in China, so in order to make the situation work with its AI, it artificially cripples them.

Is it the right solution? Hard to say. If you want to play a hypothetical game like "what would happen if the Vietanamese had decided on a campaign of global domination in 1492 with me in charge?" Then you'll have to play with the scenario file pretty heavily, but you'll get ahistorical results if the AI ever plays Vietnam.

Anyway, I agree, they gimped the Asiatics, but I think they had to do so in order to make the game work with the AI in the state its in.

 

[InfernalMIKO]

I suspect China could have been a serious threat in 1492 but I'm not sure about the other nations. Japan had fairly recently been through the Onin War that had pretty much broken the power of the Ashikaga Shogunate. This led to the Senguko through most of the 1500's and finally the uinification of Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1615.

I'm all in favor of maybe adding a couple more countries though, I've played the game as Japan it while fun more countries would make it more interesting. Korea was a popular target in the late 1500's for Hideyoshi.:^) And apparently indenpendant still, since they fought side by side with their Chinese allies against two Japanese invasions.

I'm all in favor of a fleet being given to Japan to start, not only because it would make the first couple decades a little more interesting, but also because some of the clans did have fleets. There were three navel battles at least in the Sengoku, including a very early use of ironplated warships (just iron plates over wood, not real iron clads). The Wako (should be a straight line over the 'o' but I can't find how to do that:^) were also quite active and often provided ships for different clans. Many admirals were ex-pirates.

 

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SE asia was colonized a lot during the EU time. If we should add all empiers wich was at that time there wouldnt be any space for colonizing.
In order to make the game historical some histocrical things must be overseen. There is natives in the area wich symbolises samller empiers.