Context: The “Civilized” mechanic in Victoria 2 won’t be coming back in 3. It was an arbitrary system which gave “uncivs” (countries that haven’t westernized) maluses and an inability to access the normal research “tree”.
Instead, the countries in question will be modeled after their actual circumstances that put them at a disadvantage to Western powers (agrarian society, decentralization, no infrastructure, poor literacy, etc). You know, a materialistic approach that’s in line with the rest of the game.
Also, white chuds won’t shut up about some capeshit that came out years ago and it’s hilarious.
The old system is ahistorical af, and hell it is trash for balance
They already did something similar in eu4 a while ago too. As a non-western nation you used to have to “westernize” to get cheaper technologies which was a brutal process that took at least 5% of your game, but they removed that for a more open system of institutions that spawn throughout the game that you have to “embrace” for the cheaper tech costs. Only two (renaissance and printing press) of the eight institutions are hardcoded to spawn in Europe which vastly improves the gameplay, especially outside of Europe where you are no longer essentially saying “if you are Chinese it will always be 30% harder for you to advance technologically”
Nice. The China thing would be especially funny given that it was about 80% harder for Europe to advance to their technology prior to what the 1600s?
Yeah a player controlled China is easily able to spawn most of the institutions. It makes it very fun for alternate history that is still realistic
From a gameplay perspective I liked the westernization mechanic though. I liked playing native american nations and the change to institutions made contact a lot less interesting because all you had to do to "westernize" after the addition of institutions was just look vaguely in the direction of a white person and suddenly you know how a printing press works. It was fun when you felt like your nation was going through massive internal social transformation and reform and it was just removed when they added institutions
Except it’s fundamentally flawed as a game mechanic because it implies the only way for your people to learn and adapt to a technology is to become like the west which is racist, untrue, and historically inaccurate
A game mechanic can be both fun and historically inaccurate though. Yeah it was racist but it added for a period of interesting gameplay
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