Iberian Union, my man! Just be gentle and try to induce capitulation without conquering Lisbon. Killing all but one unit usually does the trick. Gift techs and maps and they're sure to found at least El Mina (Nikran currently) and maybe Ilheus/Porto Seguro. Also be aware the deadline is "by" 1650 so it can be achieved before 1600. I too am maybe too attached to historical behavior but there's merit to be found in the aspirational element of the game. A simple tweak to your head cannon can make pursuing alternate timelines palatable if not interesting. We can pretend say, in a given game Rodrigo Borgia fails in his bid for the Chair of St. Peter and no Tordesillas happens and thus Africa is fair game.
I'd insist you think about what's being asked for here: nerfing a wonder into the ground for the sake of a one-tile settlement. Map culture in general isn't yet working as intended so these inevitable fixes alone might solve your little problem.
I had a vague hunch that the implication of the UHV is to force vassalize Portugal to get access their resources... I'm hesitant to settle any Spanish cities in foreign stability zones, the core is so small and infertile.
You mean Madeira, right? It aint great but even on previous map getting the crabs wasn't a reasonable expectation anyway. Even the self-styled Portugal Guy (me!) doesn't think adding its sea area to the Indian Trade Route is justified either for historical or gameplay reasons (challenge=good). New UP and Thassalocracy have bolstered it a bit especially if settled during Renaissance and decent with a slave or two. Of course the Sugar needs to be accounted for as well.
#GitGud hehehehehe
I razed Bordeaux three times so Santander could get the clams and an extra grasslands tile, that gave me two mediocre cores cities plus Toledo. Jails + fortress + colonialism will have to carry the rest. Cordoba is the big problem, the Moors are so supercharged right now that you have to carry the war to Morocco and raze cities there too if you want any hope of keeping cultural control of anything south of Toledo. And now that Cordoba is inland you don't even have a good production city to build galleons with. Spain is just not in a good position right now, especially now that player's core doesn't expands in the Renaissance (it does for the AI though...).
Oh boy they found a suitable latitude for their future launchpad! #PolandCanIntoSpace
Glory to the Roman Empire!!!
I feel like civics mattered more for AI opinion in the industrial/global/digital age in 1.17.
So let's imagine a religion-kind mechanism?
I have vague memories of this, maybe my brain decided it was real? I'd love for an ideology system to be present in the game. Start with monarchism being the default, then liberalism comes along, then communism, then fascism... It would spice up diplomacy a lot more in the endgame, I think.
That's what I mean, they'd be rather perfect for ideological world congresses, something like
Yeah, vanilla Civ IV's UN function reeks of Fukuyama-esque "end of history" mindset. Free market secular liberal democracy is obviously the end state of all human civilization, regardless of their history, culture, or circumstances! Given the spirit of the 90s and early 2000s, I can understand why they were operating on this mindset, but 20 years of hindsight shows us that history is not at an end and neither is free market secular liberal democracy a guaranteed way of organizing a society.
