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[ibot66]

Lolcats, I do agree that you could probably make a system which better replicated how technology spreads. However, it would be complicated and take a significant amount of time to code, time which paradox likely doesn't have. However, the current system, with perhaps the restrictions on natives power points being restricted aside, as historically they did make many complicated sites, works fairly well. Asia tends to adopt firearms and cannons en masse in the mid 1500s, and the Aztecs do tech up to level three, which is on par with European technology at the start of the game.

[Chaoswizkid]

I think the situation can be summed up as:

People are upset that the mechanics are bugged, that they can be unfun or that they aren't being historically fair, and that there isn't enough opportunity to really take history into their own hands and have an appropriately ahistoric game.

because part of the fun of the Paradox games is obviously having history turning out different, and in the regard of the Asian countries, there are inherent limiters that people don't like.

What I think needs to happen is that there needs to be a way for the player to "Westernize" their country by their own means, and I say "Westernize" because that would be the parallel mechanic rather than the proposed fix having much to do with the West. First I want to address this though:

There's nothing about European culture that makes it inherently vastly superior at technological development: just look at what China was like during Europe's middle ages. It's pretty obvious that whatever the root cause of technological development in this time period is, it isn't anything inherent to a group of people.

There kind of is, and it's inherent to a group (or groups) of people, but not due to anything stupid like race. The issue is that the countries that were previously technologically superior either fell apart, lost all of their influence, adopted isolationist policies, stopped scientific investment or etc. The cultural and geopolitical climate of Europe during the time period of the EU games was ripe for Europe to steamroll technologically. The cultural and geopolitical climate for the Middle East and Asia were the exact opposite. There was a lot of infighting, a lot of civil war (yeah, there were a lot of wars in Europe, but they seemed to be very diplomatically dealt with), and lots of isolationist policies. That's why China lost all of its technological superiority. I mean, they had reusable paper flamethrowers during the reign of Genghis Khan, not to mention all of the other neat stuff with rocketry and gunpowder. The Koreans also had very neat stuff with gunpowder. Japan didn't because they were also isolationist and kind of busy with constant civil war. So it's not just happenstance that they are technologically inferior by 14-whatever-the-game-starts-at.

However, it's totally agreeable that the player should be able to contradict history. Westernization is one method, but I think that for everyone to be happy there should be another. The alternative method would require a lot of investment and a lot of work so that it can compete with the viability of Westernization so it's not just a completely useless mechanic. Essentially, the idea is that there need to be national missions/decisions that pave the road to technological revolution and allow a non-Western-tech-group to be able to match up to the West. This will require conscious effort on the part of the nation, so that's where the national missions and decisions would come in. Monetary investment, monarch points investment in changing how things are done non-technologically (so it makes a bit of sense investing monarch points when they could just go straight into tech), trade domination (perhaps), encouraging other nearby countries to have non-isolationist policies, good relations (or more frequent, non-civil wars as war is the mother of invention), etc. It should be done in such a way that not all of them need to be accomplished, just a majority, so that it doesn't somehow become impossible, just always pretty difficult. There will also be appropriate consequences, like higher revolt chance in random coastal provinces for countries that adopt non-isolationist policies and other relevant things. Things that have some (or complete) historical support, so it's not just more BS limitations. The benefit to vanilla Westernization, then, is that you don't need to go through all this, you just let another country do it for you, basically. The benefit of this version is that you also don't need to wait for Westernization and you feel like you're really getting something done.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Perhaps the game needs to reintroduce the centralisation/decentralisation slider or perhaps a administrative/dynastic slider. Something that shows that you've been actively trying to reform your government into something more progressive. It could be like a mini-westernisation game but which would apply to every country.

Hell if you make it a dynamic thing with events changing it every so often it could become another monarch point sink and add a little bit more depth to the game. It could however just turn out like another glorified stability slider.

[Chaoswizkid]

Actually, for what I had in my post, maybe just turn all of that stuff into the actual tech modifiers. Like, the reason why the countries in the Chinese techgroup have penalties are something that players can observe and work to reduce. -30% for isolationist policies, -10% for recent civil war or recent domestic tensions (duration), etc. That'd also affect the Western countries, the other countries would just start out with the appropriate penalties that historically limited their tech.

That would be an absolute nightmare for Paradox to deal with if it's not something that's part of releasing the game, though. That'd definitely be a mod.

I actually wish I knew how to mod, now. I really like that solution.

[MoLAoS]

Personally I don't feel like it would be much work to add an alternative to westernizing, its just, every single mechanic in every game is built on being historical. The resources in each area, the borders and the nations in general, all of that. Why should tech be special? That's why mods exist.

In any case, the main problem with adding a new tech system is probably the GUI. Its not really designed to be easily changeable in my opinion. I haven't seen the source or anything, but games with such specific GUI features have never been easily modded in my experience. Under the hood you could just add some floats into the nation class and bam, new tech system.

I do object to having a totally ahistorical tech system in vanilla, but making it easy to mod in a new one is totally okay and would be amazing for alternate history mods.

[Shooer]

I think one of the reasons people want to westernize is not specifically for the tech advantage but so they get the stronger western unit types.

Getting tech faster would be awesome, but the actually inherent problem is that tech groups just end up being out classed.

I will say I HATE the negative to power growth and will gladly see that modded out.  Just because I'm not western at the start doesn't mean I should be ham-stringed by not being able to build buildings, do more diplomatic deals, or be able to recruit fewer generals.  I'll take slower tech growth, a slower unit growth curve but I hate having all my other advancements slowed further (with them being slowed by the tech growth already).

[MoLAoS]

Once I get done with my Ireland game I shall pick a nice asian or eastern european nation and see if I can do well in spite of the tech differences.

I still have a few hundred years to go for my Ireland WC though.

[mainiac]

Westernization seems a bit dodgy in how it actually plays out.  You need to fall behind technologically for starters, which makes sense from one point of view but is quite silly from another.  But once you westernize, you are basically crippling your country for fifteen to twenty years.  You will not do any technological advancement until the westernization process is complete.  And that seems to make little sense to me.  The iconic example of westernization is Peter the Great and he neither crippled Russia, nor stopped it's technological advances.  Quite the opposite, Russia aggressively expanded and eagerly adopted new technologies during his westernization reforms.

I feel like something simpler but more straightforward would have been more appropriate.  To start to westernize, you need to make a big upfront payment of all three kinds of monarch points.  This price is reduced by the stuff that lets you westernize, being behind in tech, western neighbors, high stability.  Then the westernization process continues for a long time, with you having to keep making monarch point payments and face annoying, but not crippling events about resistance.  So westernization would be way easier if you do it the right way but completely possible to do at any time if you can pony up the monarch points.

[MoLAoS]

Westernization seems a bit dodgy in how it actually plays out.  You need to fall behind technologically for starters, which makes sense from one point of view but is quite silly from another.  But once you westernize, you are basically crippling your country for fifteen to twenty years.  You will not do any technological advancement until the westernization process is complete.  And that seems to make little sense to me.  The iconic example of westernization is Peter the Great and he neither crippled Russia, nor stopped it's technological advances.  Quite the opposite, Russia aggressively expanded and eagerly adopted new technologies during his westernization reforms.

I feel like something simpler but more straightforward would have been more appropriate.  To start to westernize, you need to make a big upfront payment of all three kinds of monarch points.  This price is reduced by the stuff that lets you westernize, being behind in tech, western neighbors, high stability.  Then the westernization process continues for a long time, with you having to keep making monarch point payments and face annoying, but not crippling events about resistance.  So westernization would be way easier if you do it the right way but completely possible to do at any time if you can pony up the monarch points.

I haven't actually westernized. I assumed it went Peter the Great style with maybe some monarch point losses. 15-20 years makes sense for asian nations though, but not much sense for Russia. Especially since EE nations are eastern tech which isn't as far behind Western as asian is.

[Eagle_eye]

Westernization drops your stability to -3, gets rid of all stored power points, and causes nasty events. It's pretty harsh, to say the least.

[Vel]

Personally I think it's sort of arbitrarily harsh. I can see that high of a penalty for New World or Asian countries -- but -3 for EE or Muslim seems excessive. It's not like they're *that* far removed from European tech. Heck, the Muslims had even better advances, and EE was about equal with Western Europe, a couple hundred years before.. I'm pretty sure they could adapt without falling into anarchy.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I'm rather angry right now. Was playing the Cherokee trying to do the No Trail of Tears achievement.

It's extremely dull as 99% of your time will be spent doing nothing at all. Managed to rush to admin level 4 by vassaling the neighbouring states and diplo-annexing them so I'd get free cores. My first choice of national idea was Expansion but I was meant to go for Quest for the New World instead and pushed the wrong button. Started the colonial process and got pretty far north a little bit past the  Illinois. Lucky for me France had collapsed in the game and GB was rocked by major revolts including a free Ireland.
I thought all would go well and Portugal will start up a colony next to me so I can start to westernise. Instead the fuckers declared colonial conquest against me. I wasn't too worried since I thought I could just pay them off. Never got to find out if I could or not. Crashes every month after that point.

So one of the most tedious, laborious waste of time I have ever endured is now all for nothing. 

[MrWiggles]

Personally I think it's sort of arbitrarily harsh. I can see that high of a penalty for New World or Asian countries -- but -3 for EE or Muslim seems excessive. It's not like they're *that* far removed from European tech. Heck, the Muslims had even better advances, and EE was about equal with Western Europe, a couple hundred years before.. I'm pretty sure they could adapt without falling into anarchy.

During that time period, they became horribly xenophobic, and lost a lot of trade flowing their their area, losing their pluralism and what pluralism they had, they feared and rejected it.

When the Middle East was the leading force in math, and science it was also the leading force in pluralism in terms of scientific progress, political and cultural.   

Even during these years of intense rivalry and fighting for Europe, there was a lot of shared knowledge and a lot of pluralism. Lots of trade of trade, and lots of travel and traveling got faster and safer.

Westernization, is just an abstracted measures that promote the better exchange of ideas and their implementation, either purposefully or incidentally.


Uh.... like a random example. War Manuals were pretty major thing for EU during this period. Warmasters would print these manuals, that showed the construction and use of siege weapons, and best practices for fielding infantry, and it served much of an advertisement for their skills, so they can get hired as higher ranking officers in armies afield as it propagating knowledge.

Whereas with the middle east, they for practical purposes, banned books. Especially foreign books.

[ank]

So, England.... you wanted the Orkney Islands?
Ok, that's cool, I'll just be taking the rest of Britain then!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[MoLAoS]

I'm rather angry right now. Was playing the Cherokee trying to do the No Trail of Tears achievement.

It's extremely dull as 99% of your time will be spent doing nothing at all. Managed to rush to admin level 4 by vassaling the neighbouring states and diplo-annexing them so I'd get free cores. My first choice of national idea was Expansion but I was meant to go for Quest for the New World instead and pushed the wrong button. Started the colonial process and got pretty far north a little bit past the  Illinois. Lucky for me France had collapsed in the game and GB was rocked by major revolts including a free Ireland.
I thought all would go well and Portugal will start up a colony next to me so I can start to westernise. Instead the fuckers declared colonial conquest against me. I wasn't too worried since I thought I could just pay them off. Never got to find out if I could or not. Crashes every month after that point.

So one of the most tedious, laborious waste of time I have ever endured is now all for nothing.

The only crashes I get are when I fuck with stuff in the console. The Windows7 version is crazily stable. Although honestly, if you hit own 199191 when you meant to get just 191, how hard is it to have a bounds check that just cancels that command...