Even after 1.1 release, a Samoa campaign shows that so much is still wrong with the game

I like to challenge myself. Things such as a Ryukyu pirate republic WC in EU4. For EU5, I decided to try to do that as Samoa. It was so unplayable in 1.0 and remains the same after 1.1.

Now, I understand that almost nobody will do a Samoa campaign. But I think it serves well to demonstrate how many things are wrong with the game.

First of all, when you start, you are supposed to be a nation of seafarers. Yet you cannot construct ships. It takes probably 200 years to get to a state where you can build your first ship. Why? Because you need a wharf. And to build a wharf you for some reason need glass...

Not to mention a wharf can only be built in towns. The Samoans don't have any. Towns cost hundreds of gold to found. The Samoans get -0.07 gold per month to start with. After 40 years, you can reasonably build up to an income of 0.4 gold per month.

So, the only way to get a town is by hoping to get lucky on a promote urbanization parliament issue early on and trying over and over.

Let's backtrack a bit and talk about the whole gold making issue. At the start of the game, you cannot levy taxes, you need to research it first. Fair game. But for some reason, a nation of seafarers has 0% market access to the market which is on a bloody neighboring island.

And for some reason, 0% market access makes you be unable to levy any taxes on your population.

So, you decide to make your own market in your capital. But a market costs 25 gold. You start with about 18.

Not a big deal, you wait for a while, try to minimize your expenses, and hope to get lucky with events, maybe take a few loans.

BUT. Whenever you are not yet able to levy taxes on your populace, you have basically no control over your expenses aside from the slider which relates to buying food. So, you have a -0.02 ducats for 10 years (the time to research taxation, coming from diplomatic spending). There is no diplomatic spending slider. You have to pay for it no matter what. And over 10 years this drains your gold which you are trying to build up to the 25 with RNG events (while you wait for taxation to be researched so that building the market with loans even makes sense) and pisses you off.

Now let's talk Settling the Frontier. Settling the Frontier is a cabinet action with which you can settle new provinces. You send off a character and they take 10 years to settle the province.

I will gloss over the fact that if the character randomly dies to RNG during the process, for some reason the hundreds of pops that you've been sending to the zone just decide to pack up their bags and be like "welp, i guess that's it", interrupting the whole process and forcing you to start over, or if for some reason you get rebels in the province you are sending the pops from, the whole process is cancelled as well.

However what I can't just accept is the fact that the process of settling somehow makes the native populations suddenly incapable of picking apples from trees that are literally growing right next to them, and start going "please mommy Samoa, buy me food from the market that I have no access to".

Here's the deal. Samoa has about 40k pops to start with. I settle some of the provinces in Papua, which can have over 100k pops per. All of the pops were living just fine, hunting wild animals, picking berries or some shit.

Yet once I settle, unless I start buying food for them, which, guess what, I can't goddamn afford because im making pennies and because of the control mechanic, I really only have an economy of 8k people. How can I make any money if 8k people have to welfare support a province of 100k somewhere 4000 km away.

Anyway so I let tens of thousands of suddenly welfare-dependent tribsemen die.

By the time i've built up enough of an economy on the main Samoa island to actually create a market and some food RGO's in Papua, probably 80% of the population in my planned future capital has died off.

In fact, I let the provinces rebel on purpose, because the rebels build RGOs for me and maintain the population loss better while the provinces are under revolt. Since they are on a different island, they cannot reach me and the war times out.

"But why not just settle a new location later on which actually has the pops and move your capital there instead?", you may ask.

Well, let me remind you of the fact that I have to get a promote urbanization roll to get a town early on. I cannot do it later in the game. Why? Because the estates satisfaction is positively fucked. I did not yet mention that to actually be able to make any money, I need to lower cost of the court, stability, diplomatic spending, and food purchasing to 0. Why is that? Well that's because the cost scales off of your population or whatever, and I have 100k starving tribesmen on welfare which generate absolutely no income whatsoever. So I spend the first 100+ years with 0 legitimacy and negative stability, playing around various disasters, having absolutely disasterous estate satisfaction and the provinces in rebellion most of the time.

Promote urbanization is a burghers issue. You need it to get a town. But you start with 0% support, because, well, you don't have any burghers. Why? Because you don't have a town.

You could say to start settling later on, but you can only settle one province at a time and it takes 10 years with a chance to fail. If you don't start right away, you will never be able to expand and claim some of the better RGOs.

So anyway, let's say I have gotten lucky and been able to deal with that. I have a good economy after maybe 150 years, built some rgos on the Papua mainland, I have a market in both Samoa and Papua. Sounds like a good moment to finally move capital.

Wait.

Hang on a minute.

You need bloody books to move capitals? You telling me that those guys can't figure to get on a boat and sail from island A to island B without reading the Twilight Saga on the way?

Ok. Time to struggle for additional 100 years building random shit, all the while I get no income from said shit, because I have 0 control in the area. All just so I can move the capital.

Anyway maybe we managed to get past all that and even built up an army or something. Time to conquer.

Wait but how do we actually do that? The nation of seafarers has somehow not figured out how to actually explore the neighboring seas.

Well, there is an option to send an expedition I guess. But you telling me it literally costs 5000% of the nation's GDP to put some guys on a ship?

Anyway, the way you do it is you try to steal some maps from the nation "Kai". Wait, you can't. The nation is a vassal of Majapahit. So you just steal the maps from them, right?

A little problem amigo, you have not discovered Majapahit yet. So you are stuck again.

Well, I figured out a way to get unstuck. You declare war on the vassal and that reveals the overlord. Then you can spy and steal to your hearts content. Kinda weird, but ok.

Anyway, I spent 100+ hours and 80+ attempts trying to get a good run, until I finally got a decent one. Attacked one of the spice islands nations, having a bigger navy, and got absolutely schooled because well, institutions.

I'm not gonna even get started on getting institutions as Samoa.

This has been my Samoan descent to madness.

Thanks for reading. Paradox fix Samoa pls.