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I think the objection is that either: 1) the starting unrecognized status is hard-coded, in a game where the trend has been moving away from hardcoding and towards dynamic outcomes or 2) it is dynamically generated at start, and if so how because there doesn’t seem to be an obvious mechanism for it Personally I’m fine with hardcoding the start condition. There’s no point in trying to simulate all of history before game start.
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Feb 2, 2022 15:44
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Yeah something like that. I think what I'm wondering is: If the unrecognized nations are hardcoded at game start, could you end up in a weird situation where the GP list is populated by unrecognized powers? Or, if the unrecognized nations are determined by dynamic rules and as a function of which nations are on the GP list, could you end up with weird situations where the recognized/unrecognized distribution "flips" as the GP list changes? It'll be interesting to see what their solution is. e: actually I bet it'll be something like this: Jabor posted:It certainly sounds like it could happen pretty organically, as various asian nations are first recognized by the existing great powers, and then supplant them. which is cool, but it would also be cool if Asia could come to dominate the GP list just by doing its own thing and without caring at all about European recognition. fuf fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 16:02
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fuf posted:Yeah something like that. quote:Or, if the unrecognized nations are determined by dynamic rules and as a function of which nations are on the GP list, could you end up with weird situations where the recognized/unrecognized distribution "flips" as the GP list changes?
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Feb 2, 2022 16:12
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fuf posted:If the unrecognized nations are hardcoded at game start, could you end up in a weird situation where the GP list is populated by unrecognized powers? One thing to understand, I think, is that "Great Power" is a diplomatic status. And one that only matters to other great powers. It has no research or industrial buff, only diplomatic repercussions. You can have a weird world where Europe is a weak backwater and all the action is in Asia, and have the great power list be populated by Europeans and all the Asians be Unrecognized... and that would still make some sense. Because it represents the fact that the European great powers do not respect the (in this case much more powerful) Asian powers, and don't care about what happens there. This situation would rapidly change if the weak European powers encounter or get messed with by the Asian powers, but it would represent something coherent at game start. You could think of the list as merely the "Great Powers of Europe" to start, and that definition gets expanded as regions interact. In short, the Great Power list, as a concept, is arbitrary to start with. So there's no problem with it not being dynamically simulated at the start of a game. (To say nothing of the fact that the developers are probably not putting a ton of effort into smoothing out all the edge cases in a dynamic start, considering no such start is going to be available without extensive modding, and whoever's doing the modding can manually fix the issue in that case.)
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Feb 2, 2022 16:16
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fuf posted:Or, if the unrecognized nations are determined by dynamic rules and as a function of which nations are on the GP list, could you end up with weird situations where the recognized/unrecognized distribution "flips" as the GP list changes? You probably can't go from recognized to unrecognized.
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Feb 2, 2022 16:24
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Staltran posted:You probably can't go from recognized to unrecognized. Might be fun to mod in some wargoal where you humiliate a country so hard the rest of the world stops respecting them. Just beat up a declining power so hard that all of Europe starts tearing them apart like vultures.
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Feb 2, 2022 16:35
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Diplomatic status "Sick Man of Europe" when?
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Feb 2, 2022 16:43
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Takanago posted:Might be fun to mod in some wargoal where you humiliate a country so hard the rest of the world stops respecting them. Just beat up a declining power so hard that all of Europe starts tearing them apart like vultures. Ah, the Polish experience.
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Feb 2, 2022 16:54
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Eiba posted:You can have a weird world where Europe is a weak backwater and all the action is in Asia, and have the great power list be populated by Europeans and all the Asians be Unrecognized... and that would still make some sense. Because it represents the fact that the European great powers do not respect the (in this case much more powerful) Asian powers, and don't care about what happens there. This situation would rapidly change if the weak European powers encounter or get messed with by the Asian powers, but it would represent something coherent at game start. You could think of the list as merely the "Great Powers of Europe" to start, and that definition gets expanded as regions interact. If this is the case then it really is just straight up Eurocentrism, which I am pretty sure they are keen to avoid. There is a kind of "accidental" Eurocentrism that is an obvious consequence of the historical starting conditions of the game and which means the GP list will start off dominated by European powers. But if the game evolves and Europe is a weak backwater and all the power is in Asia, and the GP list is still dominated by European powers, as you are suggesting, then that just means the game is constitutively told from a European perspective. I really hope that's not the case. In the situation you are describing I think the GP list should be dominated by Asian powers (and also, tbh, that this shouldn't require them to first be "given" recognition by the European powers). Eiba posted:In short, the Great Power list, as a concept, is arbitrary to start with. Maybe if the GP list was just one Europe-focused mechanic among many, like how EU4 has its multiple little regional mechanics, then this would make sense, but it seems like a pretty central part of the game whichever nation you are playing. Like it isn't just a quaint fascination of the old European powers, it really does determine your diplomatic and political options. I think conceptually it's in a weird halfway place where it's borrowed from the imperialist European "Great Game" language and mindset that the game draws on thematically, but then mechanically it really is the basis for the application of power in the game. It feels a bit like "oh, we're just using this old way of framing global power in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, but also by the way we're assuming it's actually true". fuf fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 17:04
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Friend Commuter posted:No, because unrecognised powers can't be great powers. They cap out at Unrecognised Major Power, which is below the lowest-rank GPs, and GPs are drawn from the Recognised countries only. Also, in a bizarro world where unrecognized countries overtake Europe, those unrecognized countries are probably going to become recognized just as a natural consequence of their power and make the whole problem moot. Like, I get the objection that it feels arbitrary, it my response is that’s kinda the point. Recognition models something that is itself arbitrary - racial chauvinism. Trying to tie it to a tangible standard would actually defeat the purpose. If you want objectivity, that’s what the power score is.
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Feb 2, 2022 17:05
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Does the recognized vs unrecognized distinction really make sense? It seems like you could get invaded if either 1. you weren't strong enough to stop it 2. a great power didn't feel threatened by you doing it Nobody cared enough to do anything when Poland got carved up or the British put the Boers in concentration camps or the US took Spain's colonies or Prussia took French provinces etc. On the other hand everybody ganged up on the Russia to protect the Ottomans so being non-Western/Christian/White didn't mean you could always be invaded at will if the great powers felt threatened by it. Why not just base it on relative power and spheres of influence?
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Feb 2, 2022 17:21
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Fray posted:Exactly, because again, this mechanism isn’t supposed to represent any tangible merits of the country in question. Calculating that stuff is what the normal power score for. The mechanic is literally meant to represent arbitrary racism on the part of European Great Powers, so yeah.
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Feb 2, 2022 17:52
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Does nation rank count for anything game mechanics-wise anymore? In Victoria 2 your ranking mattered a lot because it put you higher on the list to purchase goods on the world market.
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Feb 2, 2022 17:55
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fuf posted:If this is the case then it really is just straight up Eurocentrism, which I am pretty sure they are keen to avoid.
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Feb 2, 2022 17:55
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Does the recognized vs unrecognized distinction really make sense? It seems like you could get invaded if either I think the Boer war is actually an excellent example of the mechanic because European opinion did care a whole lot about it - solely because it was happening to people Recognized as civilized. In game terms, Britain gained far more Infamy than from similar or worse actions against all sorts of other people. The Polish partitions, too, had a disproportionately larger reaction than similar territorial plays elsewhere. If you want to know why the partitions didn’t start a war, that’s easy: because three out of five of the major European powers directly benefited and the other two were either at war or expecting war with each other. Britain and France couldn’t viably stop those Diplomatic Plays, but they were still plenty pissed. Just cause a Diplo Play succeeds that doesn’t mean it wasn’t highly Infamous, in game terms.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:15
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Wiz posted:The mechanic is literally meant to represent arbitrary racism on the part of European Great Powers, so yeah. Which is fine for a videogame, who cares, but this does get cause and effect mixed up. The British didn't intervene in China because they were racist, they intervened because they could and it would benefit them, and then they used racism to justify why they could and how it was actually good to do so. These post-hoc racial justifications eventually led to trouble for the Russians in Japan and the Italians in Ethiopia.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:18
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Does the recognized vs unrecognized distinction really make sense? It seems like you could get invaded if either Fray posted:I think the Boer war is actually an excellent example of the mechanic because European opinion did care a whole lot about it - solely because it was happening to people Recognized as civilized. In game terms, Britain gained far more Infamy than from similar or worse actions against all sorts of other people. Which brings me to the issue of unrecognizing a state. Can you imagine a scenario where a European state is made unrecognized, specifically by other European states? Like, if a liberal revolution creates an early Germany, and that Germany is just a mess of revolutions and counter-revolutions for 40 years. Would the rest of Europe really not decide at some point that maybe Germany isn't really viable, and maybe it's fine to carve it up to excise this tumor of anarchy in the heart of Europe? kw0134 posted:They'll likely do it the way the Japanese did it; industrializing and then beating up a European power. Might makes right, and if in this scenario Europe falls behind or Qing China gets its act together, then winning a few wars against the British makes the matter moot. If a nation has the power you say it does, then it's only a matter of time until it gets to demonstrate it and force the issue. Basically, it only sort of becomes an issue if the European AI stops trying to do imperialism everywhere, which seems unlikely?
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Feb 2, 2022 18:32
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:Which is fine for a videogame, who cares, but this does get cause and effect mixed up. That sounds exactly like what the mechanic is supposed to represent.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:32
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fuf posted:If this is the case then it really is just straight up Eurocentrism, which I am pretty sure they are keen to avoid. It's a diplomatic status. "Great powers" are the countries that other "great powers" care about. There is no way to make a dynamic objective system to simulate that because it is not a objective measurement. Why was China not considered a "great power" in real life? Nothing objective. They were enormously powerful. This game is trying to simulate why that is, and I think depicting it as an arbitrary thing that Europeans thought about themselves is a pretty good way of doing that. The game does not suggest that China isn't enormously powerful, just that the Europeans didn't let them into their club.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I feel like if Europe is a weak backwater, and all the power is in Asia, then those Asian powers have already beaten up the Europeans. Like, an Indian power is not gonna be a contender for the GP list without beating up the British in the first place. Not because India doesn't have enough wealth in the parts not yet taken, but because the British would attempt to prevent that rise/tried to grab that wealth. The same realistically goes for the rest too, where if this Indian power managed to kick Europeans out of India they would just try grabbing Indochina, where the local power would again kick their rear end for the above scenario to take place.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:36
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The mechanic is arbitrary and unfair (because that's the point)
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Feb 2, 2022 18:48
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Fray posted:That sounds exactly like what the mechanic is supposed to represent. No, the mechanic takes European racism as metaphysical fact which other countries must overcome through force of arms (and possibly some other alternate method?) in order to interact on the world stage. Which again, whatever, this is a simulation which has to take shortcuts but I understand the dissonance that this is one of those taken. Eiba posted:So, wait, depicting chauvinism is chauvinistic? What are you on about? There was an objective reason China was not considered a great power - they were unable to materially stand up to European powers, primarily Britain, for technological and organizational reasons. Much of this was entirely due to naval technology. The First and Second Opium wars relied on the British (and French) ability to land almost anywhere on the Qing coastline or along many of their rivers, because Qing shipbuilding just could not stand up in battle against the British navy. The Qing won land battles against the French in the Sino-French war, but were unable to beat them navally or extend power into Vietnam. European powers were able to colonize and control other peoples because they had technological, logistical, and organizational advantages, not the magical power of racism.
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Feb 2, 2022 18:57
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Eiba posted:So, wait, depicting chauvinism is chauvinistic? What are you on about? I think a lot of it comes down to power projection - ie, navies. European naval technology was simply better and only their neighbors like the Ottomans really tried to keep up during this period. When Japan's modernized, European-style navy kicked the dogshit out of Russia's, that was considered unthinkable in the same way the defeat of the British expeditionary force into Afghanistan was not. What I'm saying is Boat-on-Sea is Potency.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:00
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Looking back through the dev diaries, I noticed the terminology around Unrecognized Powers has changed a bit. Originally Dev Diary 18: Rank and Prestige mentioned two ranks for unrecognized powers: Unrecognized Power and Unrecognized Minor Power. In the screenshot that spawned the discussion, Qing is listed as an Unrecognized Major Power which could potentially drop to an Unrecognized Regional Power. So it looks like we're seeing more hierarchy among non-European powers than before.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:11
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It feels a bit strange to say that the game hardcoding recognized/unrecognized status in setup is bad because, like, it's setup, supposed to be an accurate depiction of the world at the time. Why is China an unrecognized power at game start? Because the Europeans didn't recognize it. Could there be an alternate setup in which China is a recognize power? Of course, but that's a game rule or a mod because it's an alternate setup.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:16
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:No, the mechanic takes European racism as metaphysical fact which other countries must overcome through force of arms (and possibly some other alternate method?) in order to interact on the world stage. Which again, whatever, this is a simulation which has to take shortcuts but I understand the dissonance that this is one of those taken. ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:European powers were able to colonize and control other peoples because they had technological, logistical, and organizational advantages, not the magical power of racism.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:20
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:No, the mechanic takes European racism as metaphysical fact which other countries must overcome through force of arms (and possibly some other alternate method?) in order to interact on the world stage. Which again, whatever, this is a simulation which has to take shortcuts but I understand the dissonance that this is one of those taken. quote:There was an objective reason China was not considered a great power - they were unable to materially stand up to European powers, primarily Britain, for technological and organizational reasons. Much of this was entirely due to naval technology. The First and Second Opium wars relied on the British (and French) ability to land almost anywhere on the Qing coastline or along many of their rivers, because Qing shipbuilding just could not stand up in battle against the British navy. The Qing won land battles against the French in the Sino-French war, but were unable to beat them navally or extend power into Vietnam. There was a systemic racism in international diplomacy. It wasn't insurmountable (see Japan), but it was something that some countries had to overcome and others did not. That is what "unrecognized" represents in Victoria 3.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:20
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Being unrecognized could have some tangible diplomatic benefits, an unrecognized power could probably get away with a lot more aggressive expansion because they're not considered real threats. I could see players wanting to avoid recognition for as long as possible to consolidate territory.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:48
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:European powers were able to colonize and control other peoples because they had technological, logistical, and organizational advantages, not the magical power of racism.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:56
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Wiz posted:The mechanic is literally meant to represent arbitrary racism on the part of European Great Powers, so yeah. Eiba posted:So, wait, depicting chauvinism is chauvinistic? What are you on about? Ok, so the whole GP mechanic is explicitly meant to be modelling a racist illusion? But isn't it also one of the main goals as a player to become a GP? I guess this is what I mean about it feeling a bit like a conceptual halfway house (to me, at the moment). On the one hand it's "there's this particular racist structure that governs a lot of global diplomacy that you're going to have to take account of on your way to success". On the other hand it's like "success is measured by whether you can become part of this structure". I think a lot of it hinges on the actual gameplay implications of being a Great Power. If being a Great Power strictly relates to a small set of diplomatic actions with other Great Powers, then yeah, you're just modelling arbitrary European racism and who they were willing to deal with and grant agency to. But if there's going to be examples of "you cannot do x because you are not a Great Power", where x has nothing particularly to do with how the other Great Powers view you, then that's something very different. Like if there's some kind of diplomatic treaty or trade arrangement or whatever between China and Japan that is impossible to enact because neither of them is a GP, then that's not just representing the existence of a racist worldview, it's also representing the truth of that racist worldview. It's saying that those nations really are incapable of acting in certain ways or engaging in their own sophisticated regional politics because they don't meet the criteria established by a racist worldview. Hopefully I'm wrong about that and GP status is only relevant to a small set of inter-GP interactions.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:22
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fuf posted:But if there's going to be examples of "you cannot do x because you are not a Great Power", where x has nothing particularly to do with how the other Great Powers view you, then that's something very different.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:28
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Breh
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Feb 2, 2022 20:29
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I regret to inform you that being one of the major powers of the Victorian era means having to engage in monstrous chauvinistic actions to be considered one of the top dogs
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Feb 2, 2022 20:31
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There's definitely like, it's a really good thing to discuss this. It was maddening back in the EU2 and EU3 days of wanting to play China or Japan and while Japan got some kind of exception most people who played the game at the time in multiplayer had internalized a eurocentric view such that it was just natural that playing a "rest of the world" nation should in fact mean you accept not being a credible or competitive nation the entire game. And these attitudes only really shifted because Paradox, for reasons I still wonder about, decided to make the game more fair and balanced for those nations. From Westernization processes and different advantageous early game Pips in EU3 that gave an actual ingame means to get onto a even playing field, albeit one that was often too late to matter but it existed and really superb players could even the playing field by mid 1550's with some exploiting. To the current system of institutions which while biased to favour Europe don't consign the rotw to doom and has been the fairest its ever been. I'm hopeful that with Immortal Philosopher God-Kings at the helm it shouldn't be difficult to turn things for RotW nations that are on the other end of the decline curve when the game starts and that it'll be more intuitive, more fair, and more interesting than its ever been. So talking about China, it's a weird situation where I think as far at least as the British were concerned, the Qing were definitely recognized; but the Qing didn't return the favour and this is to oversimplify, led to the Opium wars which is what led to European Imperialism violating China. I think it would make more sense if they started recognized, like "Recognized Major Power", they might not be a European Great Power but the Victorian Euro-centricism hadn't taken root yet; and then they should drop in rank due to a myriad combination of circumstances; this would also better model the Ottoman's being the sickman of europe.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:34
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Fray posted:I think the Boer war is actually an excellent example of the mechanic because European opinion did care a whole lot about it - solely because it was happening to people Recognized as civilized. In game terms, Britain gained far more Infamy than from similar or worse actions against all sorts of other people. The might have fussed a bit over the Boers but they didn't do anything. The US straight up annexed half of Mexico (by area) which I assume is recognized and nobody did anything. The Germans got called Huns because of the Kaiser's rhetoric about China and Italy was sanctioned over Ethiopia, both of which are unrecognized. For Poland, of course everyone should care more about things close to them but that has nothing to do with recognition. Britain was pissed when the Russians got involved in Afghanistan too, I doubt Afghanistan is going to be recognized though. If they're going to make the un/recognized an important part of diplomacy, what are some historical examples of this having major diplomatic consequences? I don't think writing an angry letter is enough because small consequences like that wouldn't justify adding such a major mechanic. It's not even literally true that these states were unrecognized because they regularly conducted diplomacy with the European powers.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:16
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Perhaps Respected and Unrespected or something similar might get the point across better. There seems to be an awful lot of confusion from people assuming it means the regular definition of recognised country, which to be fair is understandable.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:18
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It seems like the systems that already exist within EU around Aggressive Expansion cover the situation where powers care more about wars and annexations against nearby/co-religionist/co-ethnicity countries.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:25
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Paradox should just bite the bullet and go with period appropriate terms like enlightened, civilized, half civilized, barbarous, and savage. And then have those terms be country dependent, so a Qing player sees the Brits as barbarous. This way the Qing and Korea can do whatever diplomacy they like, and get real offended when the Brits come in and gently caress everything up, while no European really gives a poo poo.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:33
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OctaviusBeaver posted:The US straight up annexed half of Mexico (by area) which I assume is recognized and nobody did anything. Aiui this is covered by strategic interests. If none of the great powers have an interest in the region you won't gain (much?) infamy with them. The "by area" caveat also matters now because the amount of infamy you get depends on population and industry.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:03
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The portion of Mexico the us annexed was barely settled by Mexico.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:10
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