Changes to Unifications & Breakaways for the Americas
Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 11:49 pm
I feel like currently there isn't much variety to nation-building in the Americas aside from the USNA and SAU, so lets change that.
First of all, I think the USNA should be shrunken down to just NAFTA - the USA, Mexico, and Canada. This'll make more sense in a bit, but I feel like it lines up with gameplay as expanding the USA too much often isn't a good idea due to it being a military beatstick, and don't worry, there will still be pathways to larger unifications with it!
Mexico is one of the only 4-CP nations that doesn't really get any growth opportunities beyond its base, which limits it a lot. I propose giving it the ability to unify with the rest of Central America, and eventually to lead a Latin American Confederation consisting of all Spanish-speaking nations in the New World. It also could get a project for a "Reconquista" if End of America is researched. And yes, this means that with some shenanigans, you could get basically all of North and South America into the USNA for you map painters
I'd also change the Dominion of America, as right now Greater Dominion is frankly useless as its just a worse USNA, so instead, I gave it claims on most of the Caribbean and Central American, in line with some civil-war era goals I remember seeing in my history textbook. This also gives you another pathway to potentially making a big USNA, and gives the DoA a purpose.
Finally, I have one more option of a North American superstate, based off of the Association of Caribbean States. With all these additions, there's now multiple ways to unify North America, rather than eating up everything into the USNA.
As for South America, Brazil is the other kinda useless 4-CP nation, It has decent stats, but the only unification it can do is go into the SAU, which makes one of its main perks, its decent democracy score, irrelevant. Instead, I propose it could form a MERCOSUR based nation which while not as far-reaching as the SAU could still be useful in its own right.
All of these ideas are inline with my belief that ideally, as the AI improves, super-mega states become a bit less viable and instead of having like five nations total (Caliphate/UAL/AU, PAC, India, EU, USNA, and SAU), we can have a larger variety of smaller but still relevant nation states (Indonesia, South-East Asia, Republic of Southern Cross, Nigeria, Bantu Free State, EAF, Nordic Federation, and the like)
I also have some ideas for a couple additional breakaway states as well.
First of all, Hawaii is more populous than Alaska (and arguably maybe a little more relevant overall, but idk), but regardless, it gets shoved into the Pacific States while Alaska gets its own breakaway, so I think Hawaii should also get its own breakaway nation instead.
Western Canada and Sao Paulo are just two independence movements that I've come across online that I think could be interesting to have in game, and British Columbia as well also has the additional functionality in a post-US TI game of letting whoever owns Cascadia make British Columbia revolt and then unify rather than having to either go to war with or own Canada.
French Guiana technically doesn't really need to be a separate nation as its pretty minor, but as its home to the main spaceport of the EU, i think it adds some interesting counterplay as you could force it to breakway to deprive the EU of its main source of boost.
Finally, I just added a few additional breakaway states for End of America so that if you really want to you can just fully get rid of America. It always bugged me that Denver and Chicago don't have their own breakaways even though they do end up being culturally different from New York (the only other region that isn't claimed by a breakaway by default) It also adds an interesting dynamic as you could have three different factions (one with OG America, one with New American Union, and one with the Dominion) all fighting over Washington and by extension control of whatever other OG US territories still remain.
First of all, I think the USNA should be shrunken down to just NAFTA - the USA, Mexico, and Canada. This'll make more sense in a bit, but I feel like it lines up with gameplay as expanding the USA too much often isn't a good idea due to it being a military beatstick, and don't worry, there will still be pathways to larger unifications with it!
Mexico is one of the only 4-CP nations that doesn't really get any growth opportunities beyond its base, which limits it a lot. I propose giving it the ability to unify with the rest of Central America, and eventually to lead a Latin American Confederation consisting of all Spanish-speaking nations in the New World. It also could get a project for a "Reconquista" if End of America is researched. And yes, this means that with some shenanigans, you could get basically all of North and South America into the USNA for you map painters
I'd also change the Dominion of America, as right now Greater Dominion is frankly useless as its just a worse USNA, so instead, I gave it claims on most of the Caribbean and Central American, in line with some civil-war era goals I remember seeing in my history textbook. This also gives you another pathway to potentially making a big USNA, and gives the DoA a purpose.
Finally, I have one more option of a North American superstate, based off of the Association of Caribbean States. With all these additions, there's now multiple ways to unify North America, rather than eating up everything into the USNA.
As for South America, Brazil is the other kinda useless 4-CP nation, It has decent stats, but the only unification it can do is go into the SAU, which makes one of its main perks, its decent democracy score, irrelevant. Instead, I propose it could form a MERCOSUR based nation which while not as far-reaching as the SAU could still be useful in its own right.
All of these ideas are inline with my belief that ideally, as the AI improves, super-mega states become a bit less viable and instead of having like five nations total (Caliphate/UAL/AU, PAC, India, EU, USNA, and SAU), we can have a larger variety of smaller but still relevant nation states (Indonesia, South-East Asia, Republic of Southern Cross, Nigeria, Bantu Free State, EAF, Nordic Federation, and the like)
I also have some ideas for a couple additional breakaway states as well.
First of all, Hawaii is more populous than Alaska (and arguably maybe a little more relevant overall, but idk), but regardless, it gets shoved into the Pacific States while Alaska gets its own breakaway, so I think Hawaii should also get its own breakaway nation instead.
Western Canada and Sao Paulo are just two independence movements that I've come across online that I think could be interesting to have in game, and British Columbia as well also has the additional functionality in a post-US TI game of letting whoever owns Cascadia make British Columbia revolt and then unify rather than having to either go to war with or own Canada.
French Guiana technically doesn't really need to be a separate nation as its pretty minor, but as its home to the main spaceport of the EU, i think it adds some interesting counterplay as you could force it to breakway to deprive the EU of its main source of boost.
Finally, I just added a few additional breakaway states for End of America so that if you really want to you can just fully get rid of America. It always bugged me that Denver and Chicago don't have their own breakaways even though they do end up being culturally different from New York (the only other region that isn't claimed by a breakaway by default) It also adds an interesting dynamic as you could have three different factions (one with OG America, one with New American Union, and one with the Dominion) all fighting over Washington and by extension control of whatever other OG US territories still remain.