The Spice(s) must flow - Why a grouped spice system is the best option

[Bigsoulja9]

For that reason, these should be Pepper locations, and some mechanism should be introduced to reduce their production dramatically, or replace them at some point, to simulate the decline in their importance over the years, and to keep them from competing with Asian pepper long after trade shifted to favour the latter.

Reducing their production massively sounds like a ridiculous debuff to anyone who wants to play in Africa, simply to specifically simulate something of more relevance to European history. I understand the series is titled Europa Universalis, but I think most people would agree that something inorganic and forced to steamroll a particular narrative of history wouldn't be fun. Imagine wanting to play a "control the spices" campaign starting in India, and around 1523 your colonies in West Africa stop producing anything because of an event to simulate... Europeans demanding spice from India.

More realistically, I think if you really want to force demand for African peppers to decline (instead of it simply being that, for example, Asian peppers are more productive from the start and overwhelm the African share of imports once accessed directly -- or, African peppers suffer from higher local consumption, there being less to export to Asia), then the event should be in Europe to stimulate a decline in demand of spice goods sourced from Africa.

 

[FleetingRain]

snip

I hope you keep fighting the good fight on the Spices front (wars have been declared for less).

 

[LordThanatos]

Reducing their production massively sounds like a ridiculous debuff to anyone who wants to play in Africa, simply to specifically simulate something of more relevance to European history. I understand the series is titled Europa Universalis, but I think most people would agree that something inorganic and forced to steamroll a particular narrative of history wouldn't be fun. Imagine wanting to play a "control the spices" campaign starting in India, and around 1523 your colonies in West Africa stop producing anything because of an event to simulate... Europeans demanding spice from India.

More realistically, I think if you really want to force demand for African peppers to decline (instead of it simply being that, for example, Asian peppers are more productive from the start and overwhelm the African share of imports once accessed directly -- or, African peppers suffer from higher local consumption, there being less to export to Asia), then the event should be in Europe to stimulate a decline in demand of spice goods sourced from Africa.

Agreed. That was just a one possible solution, and I should have used one I liked more. If you look at the original post referenced below that, you'll see I make short mention of more European targeted reasons for the lowered importance:

Have an event about the European palate shifting and West African pepper falling out of favour, cutting down the number of locations, or allow European countries to ban trading in it, as I've read Portugal might have done. There are a ton of competing theories on why the spice stopped being as relevant, any one of them would model this dynamic far more accurately.

None of them are in-depth, but the point is that there are plenty of options to explore rather than using a bad spice setup in Africa just so that the Asian pepper trade isn't impacted. (The reason stated for the reason to put saffron in West Africa.)

 

[Paulatim]

Agreed. That was just a one possible solution, and I should have used one I liked more. If you look at the original post referenced below that, you'll see I make short mention of more European targeted reasons for the lowered importance:

None of them are in-depth, but the point is that there are plenty of options to explore rather than using a bad spice setup in Africa just so that the Asian pepper trade isn't impacted. (The reason stated for the reason to put saffron in West Africa.)

I think that if an African nation is able to massively produce pepper and use the closeness to europe for selling, so be it. No need for specific tweaks.

Besides, I think the devs decided not to give spices much attention, maybe a very nice mod would catch their attention for future dlcs or patches

 

[fraughtGYRE]

The issue is that there is no actual goods substitution, so to represent lower demand you have to nerf production somehow (targeting the producer). This is obviously counterintuitive because it's not representative of the real economics, but because we are limited by the game systems, nerfing production or trade in West Africa somehow will be the only way of representing the decline of melegueta pepper.

 

[Paulatim]

I will reiterate what is IMHO the best system for spice trade:

• 4 spices: Saffron, Pepper, Cinnamon, Cloves
• Saffron represents saffron. Mostly present from Iran to Spain, with kashmir and southern england as notable locations. Very high base value, supply and demand should mostly depend on middle east and Iran's situation.
• Pepper represents all the type of peppers including chili, grain of paradise and ginger. Generally trying to group the lower-value spices. Grain of paradise will be present in relatively difficult to develop areas, I think that if anybody is skilled enough to outproduce malabar and palembang, so be it. At the same time, chili pepper's introduction to the old world had a clear impact on pepper's trade. Medium-high base value, big change based on price based on supply is expected over the course of the game.
• Cinnamon represents the high-end spices, such as cinnamon and cardamom. Only present around sri lanka, india and some places in Asia, their value is high and subject mostly on local production improvements (supply is geographically bounded, but not very easy to monopolize).
• Cloves represent all the spices exclusive to the moluccas area. Extremely high price, geographically bound unless events spread them in specific locations. Price is expected to be mostly influenced by events (either spread or consumption patterns change), as monopoly is easily achievable.
• Medicaments can be used to represent herbs, mustard, liquorice, turmeric, kola nuts and other minor spices. Vanilla has always been consumed with cocoa until the end of the 1700s, so I think it can be abstracted away within the cocoa resource.