Europa Universalis 4 Thread 2: Comet Sighted!

[Frog Dragon]

That "watching other countries" may have been why I could manage Kathiawar reasonably well. I was kind of forced to try to find a diplomatic solution to the "angry neighboring Gujarat" problem rather than simply raising an army and having at it. My tactic wound up being "sic Vijayanagar on them" for a good chunk of the early game until I was strong enough to prosecute wars on my own. Of course, the Vijayanagar alliance became a problem in itself when I kept dragged into Vijayanagar vs Big Orange Blob Orissa fights. But that tactic of "have big friend" worked for me well into the 17th century.

On a complete sidenote, does anyone know of a mod that revises the trade system to do something other than funnel all the wealth into western Europe? While I understand that EUIV is intended to be rigged in favor of the historical colonial powers, the end-trade nodes of Europe seem like a very contrived and ahistorical way of accomplishing this. It doesn't seem feasible to do things like channel wealth to Manchuria if you manage to become a massive, colonial Manchu empire, which seems backwards. Wealth did not funnel itself to Europe because it "naturally" does so, it did so because colonial European states consciously acted to gain control of greater slices of the pie. This should be possible for anyone who is strong enough.

TL;DR: Trade offends my history nerd sensibilities.

[Leecros]

Burgundy is certainly the more difficult of the two, being penned in by the HRE to the east and France to the west, but is very doable.

My solution when i got stuck in a coalition against France and Austria as Burgundy was to make buddy-buddy with Castille and Denmark and go and invade England. It worked quite well.

Also, as a bit advice, the biggest difference between a player who does OK and one who does very well is that the new player watches what's going on in their country, while an advanced player watches what's going on in other countries. It's the difference between managing your country (which after a few games you should be able to do without much thought), and managing the larger geo-political game, knowing who's weak, who's strong, who you should ally, who you should attack, watching for signs of weakness to prey on or danger to avoid.

This is actually a recent realization to me. Since i'm playing with a couple of friends. They both come from EU3, but one is quite a lot less skilled than the other. I found that i was the one informing him of events in europe that he should be paying attention to(I'm the Mughal Empire and he's the Ottomans) and I was the one telling him when his armies were being attacked when he was invading other people and other such things.

On a complete sidenote, does anyone know of a mod that revises the trade system to do something other than funnel all the wealth into western Europe? While I understand that EUIV is intended to be rigged in favor of the historical colonial powers, the end-trade nodes of Europe seem like a very contrived and ahistorical way of accomplishing this. It doesn't seem feasible to do things like channel wealth to Manchuria if you manage to become a massive, colonial Manchu empire, which seems backwards. Wealth did not funnel itself to Europe because it "naturally" does so, it did so because colonial European states consciously acted to gain control of greater slices of the pie. This should be possible for anyone who is strong enough.

Well, not a perfect solution, you could just take the Trade Ideas and cut trade off from Europe. It's pretty easy to do when you control the land around the node.

[Closet_Skeleton]

TL;DR: Trade offends my history nerd sensibilities.

That's not the way EUIV is supposed to be representing things.

You can make all the money you want off trade as an Asian power, you can't make European trade go to Asia because Europe doesn't have much to export to Asia (the main exception being weapons). Asian goods flow to Europe not because Europe was historically powerful but because Europe was historically an importer and Asia was historically an exporter (well, techically Europeans exported their money but made more back because Asian goods were cheap). The person at the end of the supply chain always decides the final prices. Despite the direction, Asian Trade doesn't naturally flow to Europe in EUIV, if you let the AI just play by itself then all that happens is Kongo gets loads of free money.

The problem is that they redesigned the trade system that way and then refused to redesign the production and technology system to make sense with it.

You still make money selling your goods, that's what production income is for, trade income represents import duties, tariffs and stuff you get for transporting goods, it doesn't represent the actual price of the goods, but the profits made by the difference between selling and buying prices. You do make money off Europe, because their provinces increase demand which drives up your production income. Asian goods are cheap in Asia and expensive in Europe, that's why trade can flow to Europe and make European trading powers rich, there's nothing that's cheap in Europe and expensive in Asia, that's why Spain had to use American tobacco and silver and later on Britain had to use Indian Opium, everything Europe traded in return for Asian goods was pretty much equal in price in Europe and Asia, therefore Europe got more profit. Being able to reverse the trade system with a ahistorically powerful asian power makes no sense as such a power would still be exporting to Europe, at best you could cut out the middle men or enforce export duties (like by building a ton of light ships to keep money from leeching out). Raising prices in Asia would reduce European profits in favour of you since there's a limit to how much Europeans can hike prices and still sell stuff, which is pretty much what the trade power mini-game represents, your ability to set prices.

If you want to stop Europe getting rich off exports from your colonies you can just collect trade in the Americas. That's what European powers are better off doing anyway most of the time.

The one missing historical part of the trade system is Philippines -> Andes

Sadly, you can't mod the trade system much. It has to be the way it is because any potential loop immediately crashes the game.

[Terraoblivion]

You can't sell SEA spices in China and Japan either, who actually did want those like everybody else did. Also, the Japanese are hardcoded to never wanting Chinese stuff, which seems kinda odd as well. I mean, yes, Europe didn't make anything anybody wanted to buy, but that doesn't mean there was a neat hierarchy of stuff people wanted to buy with Asia at the top and distance from Asia making it worth less and less. Also, internal Asia trade goes all weird like this too.

[Frog Dragon]

Sounds like I didn't grok the trade profits system as well as I thought I did. I guess that does make a little more sense. The trade production thing is particularly opaque

Another thing you can't do is export goods via the indian ocean as a Swahili state with any efficiency (which they did quite a bit), but making that happen would probably have to cause looping, and the swahili did get bombarded into submission by portuguese trader fleets pretty shortly after the start date.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Another thing you can't do is export goods via the indian ocean as a Swahili state with any efficiency (which they did quite a bit), but making that happen would probably have to cause looping, and the swahili did get bombarded into submission by portuguese trader fleets pretty shortly after the start date.

You can profit off indian trade fine as a Swahili state. The AI does it all the time, stopping the Swahili from getting the larger share of the profit I'm drawing out of asia is half the effort when I'm playing a European power.

You can't sell SEA spices in China and Japan either, who actually did want those like everybody else did.

Also, internal Asia trade goes all weird like this too.

Internal asian trade doesn't work at all, but its not that you can't sell spices to things higher up in the supply chain because the trade system doesn't represent selling goods at all.

Japan and China not wanting certain goods is part of a broken supply and demand system that makes Tobacco worthless and is getting axed completely at the end of the month any way.

Its not the best system and its really abstract, but at least it represents one aspect of the time period, unlike EU3 where landlocked OPM Frankfurt can make more money off asian trade than anyone else once they research the trade range just by moving a slider in the right direction, taking 2 ideas and spamming merchants.

[Frog Dragon]

You can profit off indian trade fine as a Swahili state. The AI does it all the time, stopping the Swahili from getting the larger share of the profit I'm drawing out of asia is half the effort when I'm playing a European power.

That's not what I said.

The trade flow direction represents the flow of goods, does it not? What I meant was that modeling the flow of trade from the Swahili states with the trade node system would require one of those nifty arrows to go towards other regions around the Indian Ocean. It's not that Swahili can't profit, it's that they were major exporters historically.

[Closet_Skeleton]

That's not what I said.

The trade flow direction represents the flow of goods, does it not? What I meant was that modeling the flow of trade from the Swahili states with the trade node system would require one of those nifty arrows to go towards other regions around the Indian Ocean. It's not that Swahili can't profit, it's that they were major exporters historically.

Everyone is an exporter and an importer, that's why its called trade. What's important is who ends up making the bigger profit when everything has gone through a chain of deals.

The trade direction can't represent the flow of goods, that makes no sense. Swahili states don't make any money off their exports to India and Indonesia because all that money gets spent on buying goods to import back to Africa. Africa still gets some production income from their slaves and ivory so its not like they only get profit from Indian trade.

Also remember that merchants aren't actually represented. Private enterprises make money for private individuals, states just get some of that via taxes, duties and tariffs. EUIV confused that issue a lot though when it decoupled income from research but kept EU3's income types that didn't entirely represent state wealth.

[Frog Dragon]

Determining whether the Swahili states actually wound up importing as much or more as they exported would probably require some rather detailed study. Unless you actually do know, in which I salute your incredibly specific knowledge of East-African trade history.

But I digress, trade still confuses me. So basically, a trade arrow just means that a region from which the arrow originates from sells more stuff to the region the arrow goes than they buy from the region the arrow goes to?

[tonberrian]

Okay. In game, each trade node has 4 basic sets of ducats. What is incoming, what is outgoing, what is produced in the node, and what stays in the node. Each line on the trade map with represents a route, arrows the direction. The money produced in the node comes from all the provinces therein, based on goods produced and prices thereof (which currently depends on supply and demand, but won't at the end of the month). This is added to any ducats incoming from any other nodes, and then, based on the trade power pie chart, this total is divided up among nations collecting in that node and nations trying to bring it forward.

As an easy example, I believe the California node has no incoming trade - it's a beginning node, iirc. So say you are the only trade power in California - your capital is in the Americas, so no colonial nation there, and no-one is paying enough attention to send ships there. Your trade capital is there too, so you're automatically collecting all that trade. You basically double your production income in the provinces in that node, except instead of multiplying by production efficiency, you use trade efficiency.

This is not a good way to make money off of trade.

Oh no, Great Britain has decided to send a bunch of light ships to the area! They now control half the trade power in the node, and they are forcing half the ducats that would normally go to you to instead go downstream to Mexico! You control some of the trade power in Mexico as well, but not nearly as much - it's much more contested. You control a third, Great Brittain controls a third, and the Aztecs control a third. The Aztecs are collecting in the node - they take a third of all the trade money produced in the node plus whatever Great Britain is siphoning off from California and add that to their pool of money. You think you're okay - you control all of the Panama trade too, and like a third of the total outgoing trade should go there, right? Because there's three trade routes out of Mexico?

WRONG! Great Britain has a merchant there, and you don't! With no merchants present, it would be true that a third of the outgoing trade would go along each outgoing trade route. But with merchants present, the trade is divided up based on only the power percentage of the nations with merchants there. So since you don't have a merchant there, and Great Britain is the only one controlling outgoing trade, they control all the outgoing trade, sending it to the Carribean, where you have no presence. So you send your merchant there, but accidently pick to collect trade there. Your trade power goes drastically down - now you only control a sixth of the trade power in the node, while GB and Aztecs each control 5/12. This is because if you use your merchant to collect in a node other than the one with your trading capital, you suffer a 50% penalty to trade power in that node. Luckily, you can just click to change him to transfer trade power. But you still aren't seeing any increase in Panama! If you check the trade map mode, you'll see that your merchant is instead diverting trade to Nippon! This example is exaggerated, but the computer automatically assigns what direction your merchant diverts trade down, which might not be your best choice. Additionally, each merchant directing trade down a certain path increases the value of the trade going down that path by a certain percentage, meaning that what leaves California to go to Mexico could be less than what arrives in Mexico from California.

So finally, after years of purging the Christians and securing your place in Europe, you control the Sevilla node. Sevilla, and a few others in Europe, are the end lines for trade routes. Nations can't force trade out of those nodes to go somewhere else, which generally means they accrue a bunch of value from all the previous legs - though not as much as it used to be. You've still got your trading capital in California, because that's where your capital capital is. And you've got a merchant collecting in Sevilla, because you controll all the trade there - no one challenges you. You can choose to move your trading capital into the Sevilla node, where you'll collect that trade automatically, and the California trade ducats will instead move into the system, hopefully being increased a bunch along the way by merchants. You can also choose to collect in Sevilla with a merchant - this adds on an additional 10% to trade income in that node, which might be a lot... but it still might be more money to collect trade elsewhere. Everything is going smoothly... until Great Britain strikes again! This time, they've sent a whole bunch of privateers to Sevilla! Privateers use their trade power to collect for the Pirate nation, taking a significant chunk out of your profit for the node. Great Britain also profits off this - they get half the money the Privateers collect. Currently, the only way to deal with this is by declaring war on them, but this too changes at the end of the month.

You can also choose to embargo a nation. This gives a relations hit and a cb against you to them, and decreases their trade power in nodes based on how much trade power you have in those nodes - if you have no trade power in a node, theirs is unaffected. Unfortunately, if you haven't set them as your rival, you also lose some of your trade power, which generally makes it not worth it to embargo them. They would lose the causus belli if they chose to embargo you back, and you don't get a causus belli in return. Additionally, using privateers and embargoing nations that are your rivals gains you Power Projection. Also, if you control above a certain percentage of a trade good (not produce, control the trade thereof through trade power) you get a bonus, based on the goods. If you produce the most of a certain good, all provinces you control that produce that good produce more of that good. Both of these bonuses can be tracked on the ledger, under Trade -> Strategic Goods.

This is all what the trade routes do in game. Generally, they follow historical trade routes. The desire for certain goods is a very complicated beast known as supply and demand, which you can effect in some minute (or possibly more than minute) ways, but again is phasing out at the end of the month for a more event based approach.

[Closet_Skeleton]

But I digress, trade still confuses me. So basically, a trade arrow just means that a region from which the arrow originates from sells more stuff to the region the arrow goes than they buy from the region the arrow goes to?

Mechanics wise it means what Tonberrian says. Thematically it just means that the guy down arrow has a theoretical higher profit potential (the money made won't be the same as the volume of imports/exports), but if the guy upstream has more trade power and or efficiency that might not actually be how it works out.

[Frog Dragon]

On a completely different tack, anyone have war advice for Glorious Mother Russia?

I decided to give Muscovy another bash, and this time I managed to annex Novgorod pretty early without getting coalitioned out of existence like last time. Then, I focused on vassalizing/diploannexing nearby minor states. Then I set my sights on removing kebab. Golden Horde basically got rolled by Crimea and Kazan, and I rolled Kazan shortly afterwards. However, I kept a wide berth of Lithuania.

This may have turned out to be a mistake. While I did have free reign to stomp on hordes while not being tangled up in Europe, this also meant that I was not checking Lithuania's power, and they kind of... blobbed. And attacked me. And then Sweden attacked me. And despite scorching, it seems like they just get so much more oomph out of their troops that my stacks simply cannot feasibly compete. I'm not even that much behind Lithuania in military tech (typically around 1 level), but their generals seem to be better, and in general their armies just overpower mine for some reason I am not exactly sure about. So while I've expanded east and south at the expense of the hordes, I've been pushed back in Europe. Moskva is actually a border province right now. Kola, Karelia, and Kexholm are all Swedish, and a bunch of western provinces are in Lithuania's hands.

I figure I have to do about this or I'm just going to get rolled eventually (it's still hard for them to really push, but I lose every war). How do I go about this? What can a late 17th century Russia do to deal with Blobthuania? What can I do to increase the performance of my troops? I'm still in a position where my military can just keep bouncing back (glorious mother Russia has infinite manpower), but well, every defeat erodes that. I was also significantly bogged down by being forced to release Perm and then diplovassalize them again. Still haven't annexed them back.

I looked into central European politics, and it seems like Lithuania's enemies are mostly the same as mine. I can't exactly enlist Sweden or Ottomans to my aid in dealing with them. I managed to ally Poland (who is also allied with Lithuania), but I'm not sure if that will be enough to stop them from going for me again. And that alliance still won't help me in the actual war. The way diplomacy is going, it seems like I'll somehow have to muster the strength to take out Lithuania on my own.

TL;DR: Playing Russia, Lithuania and Sweden problems.

[tonberrian]

Woo, successfully westernized Cherokee! Missed out on the Carribean, but I blocked Europe out of everything but Canada on the continent. Year is 1580.

[Eldan]

So, after getting stuck in the South Sea for 50 years (I got Hawaii and Samoa, at least), I finally got the colonial range to go to the Aleutes, which have been taunting me since the beginning. Japanese California, here I come! And I'm almost done with the Conquest of Korea, too. Got the Penninsula and connected it to Japanese Kamchatka, but they still control a good part of former Ming, which will be mine soon. Then on down the coast to Shun and Zhou and Lan Xang.

Good thing the Manchu dropped out early. I don't think anyone will reunite China at any point soon.

[Frog Dragon]

Also, here's a screenshot about my current situation.

Spoiler: Sorry about the border gore.

Show

Also, the year was earlier than I remembered. Looks like it's only 1644. My next move would be to attack Nogai and Bukhara. They're in coalition against me, but no-one else is. And being kebab hordes, both are technologically and militarily inferior to me by a far margin. I'll probably just annex Nogai and if I'm lucky, Manchu will take a large enough bite out of Bukhara that it will be possible for me to force-vassalize them. Then I'd feed them that enclave in the middle and eventually annex them. This should let me core everything. The big problem I have in Asia right now is that after numerous frankly bizarre wars, not all of my territory can be cored. Annexing Perm (again. Stupid Swedes.) is also on the to-do list.

Other details: Crimea is a rump state. After an ill-advised attack on me, I ate a good chunk of their territory. This left them weakened against the Lithuanians later, and they also took a bite. Looking at the map, my best hope might be waiting for Lithuania to wind up in a tangle with Ottomans and then striking them in the north. I can reconquer my stuff and maybe release Livonian Order or something similar. Unfortunately I seem to have sawed my own foot in my war against Crimea. Forcing them to annul treaties with Ottomans (thinking I could come back for more) has given Lithuania free reign to expand at their expense with no fear of serious opposition.

I really need to get Lithuania under control.

[Guancyto]

Hot damn, are those honest-to-god Spanish Netherlands?

[OrcusMcP]

Hot damn, are those honest-to-god Spanish Netherlands?

Looks like Spain inherited Burgundy!

[Frog Dragon]

That they are. Spain seems to be pretty hardcore in this one. Thankfully I'm not in competition with them. Is Spanish Netherlands that unusual though? This is the second game where I've gotten anywhere so I don't know how things usually develop.

Also, from what I hear France usually blobs more. Also, I'm pretty sure large chunks of Burgundy were Austrian at one point. Not sure what happened there. Was busy with kebab.

Edit: Also looks like I misinterpreted the map. Back in the game, it seems like the occupied areas of Bukhara are not occupied by Manchu, but by peasants.

[Guancyto]

Yeah, one of the events that can happen (if the player isn't Burgundy) is that Burgundy gets split up and its territories divided. The mechanics of who gets what are kind of complicated, but usually how it works out is that France takes a bit of it and the Holy Roman Emperor (usually Austria) gets the lion's share.

The Spanish Netherlands (which, as you'll be able to see if you page through the start dates, were a thing for a really long time) basically never form.

As far as I can tell, yeah, now that I look at it, in this particular game Spain got everything - not even France took any, and they pretty much always make sure they get their share!

[Terraoblivion]

Not just that, France has somehow failed to take Brittany or Provence. How did that happen? That's about as unusual as Russia failing to eat northern China by 1700.

[Closet_Skeleton]

There's a chain basically.

If the Emperor has a certain number of provinces (8 if not Austria, 6 if Austria), the Emperor gets the low countries and Franche-comte.
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Otherwise a neighbouring HRE state with 3 provinces a royal marriage with burgundy gets them (usually the Palatinate if anyone).
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Otherwise any state with 3 provinces and a royal marriage with burgundy gets them.
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Spain or Castille gets them if they have a royal marriage. This section is basically pointless unless Castile has less than three provinces, so despite being on this list Castille really has no advantage over any other country and is incredibly unlikely to get the netherlands.
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The Emperor if he's really small and Burgundy has no royal marriages with anyone with more than 2 provinces
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If somehow the Empire has been dissolved and Burgundy has no royal marriages with anyone over 3 provinces, then a random neighbour can get them.

So for Spain to get the Netherlands as per history, The Emperor has to be a tiny country like Baden and Burgundy has to have a marriage with Castille but not with any neighbouring HRE state. In a multiplayer game, players can refuse to inherit any burgundian provinces which would let people further down the chain get a chance but that sounds very unlikely.

As far as I can tell, yeah, now that I look at it, in this particular game Spain got everything - not even France took any, and they pretty much always make sure they get their share!

They probably got a regular PU and integrated Burgundy with diplo-power. France can refuse to take provinces but the AI has a 100% chance of not doing so.

[AgentPaper]

Most likely, Burgundy never got split up and Spain simply inherited it.

It would be nice to see an event happen to transfer the Netherlands to Spain, if for no other reason than that it would make it more likely that the Netherlands itself forms, since they usually have no chance of beating Austria when they revolt.

[Frog Dragon]

Spoiler: Border gore removed!

Show

I DoWed Nogai and predictably Bukhara joined the war, as per coalition. Then Delhi and Chagatai joined out of alliance. Then freaking Brunei joined because they were apparently the defenders of the Sunni faith. So the war wound up as me and Perm (my vassal) against Nogai, Bukhara, Delhi, Chagatai, and Brunei.

Out of those, Delhi was the only state with any real power. And even they were handily outmatched by Mother Russia's technologically superior forces. Five on one, and the one won.

So I annexed Nogai and took a chunk out of Bukhara. This gave me pretty bad overextension, so to deal with that I formed Kazakh as a vassal. This also dealt with a brewing nationalist problem (I believe I was up to 40% monthly Kazakh nationalist revolt chance when I did it). Pleasantly enough, Kazakh formed as an Orthodox state so they've also been converting the provinces so I don't have to.

I then diploannexed Perm. The coalition against me grew somewhat. I believe Crimea, Delhi, and Baluchistan are in it now. I probably won't go for any of them yet, because DoWing anyone coalitioned with Crimea has a risk of drawing in Ottomans. That's a fight I might win, but they're not actually a direct threat to me and I might need them against Lithuania.

Also, is westernization worth it as Russia? Looks like I could try going for it now, but I'm not sure. As I understand, I still wouldn't get Western units?

[OrcusMcP]

Also, is westernization worth it as Russia? Looks like I could try going for it now, but I'm not sure. As I understand, I still wouldn't get Western units?

I've never played Russia, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but the answer is "probably not worth it". For The Ottoman and Eastern tech groups, especially now that units don't come with westernization, it's not an automatically good move. The penalty from your tech group is not so large to keep you far behind Western countries. Plus, I think Russia has some "Peter the Great" events where you can get bonuses to tech if you aren't Western and are behind in tech with a good leader after a certain date.

Now, if one of your major rivals in Europe(Sweden or Lithuania by the looks of it) gets way ahead of you, or the Ottomans westernize, then that is a different story, and then it might be worth it to westernize just to make sure you don't get outclassed.

Don't forget that if you westernize, you will allow all those Muslim/Nomad/Indian/Chinese countries a chance to westernize off your back.

[Frog Dragon]

My problem is that they kind of are outclassing me, though not to catastrophic levels. Defense should by now be manageable with liberal scorching and a numerical advantage, but actually winning an offensive war is not in the cards. Sweden seems to be basically impossible right now, and Lithuania would only be doable if I managed to catch them in a 2-front war in such a situation that they couldn't just sic their military alliances on me.

My other plan is to just keep beating on kebabs until I am so ridiculously big that I can just send hundreds of thousands of men at Lithuania and Sweden until their very last soldier falls. He may fall surrounded by the corpses of 30 Russians, but they will have lost all the same. That's the Russian way.

[OrcusMcP]

My problem is that they kind of are outclassing me, though not to catastrophic levels.

Is their tech lead consistently 2-3 mil-techs? And growing? Then yeah, it might be time to westernize, but finish your next couple wars in central asia first. You don't want to westernize, beat on Sweden & Lithuania and then look back east to find a Westernized Bukhara or Delhi in your way.

[Frog Dragon]

Well, Bukhara has recently gotted mired in a rather nasty war with a strong Manchu, so I doubt they're going to be a problem. The last war resulted in them losing 5 provinces. I will probably go after them again though. Cutting Delhi down to size is also on the agenda, and eventually I'll have to take care of Manchu as well.

Looking at the techs, I am right now 20 Admin, 15 Diplo, 18 Mil. Sweden is 20 Admin, 21 Diplo, 20 Mil. Lithuania is 19 Admin, 20 Diplo, 19 Mil. Does this warrant westernization?

My poor diplo is probably a result of extensive vassal wrangling and Russification in non-Tartar and non-Russian provinces.

[Guancyto]

If I remember right, failing to Westernize as Russia can get you the Time of Troubles events, which are fifty shades of bad juju for your Grey Menace. Only happens if your Stability is -2 or worse, though, and only between 1550 and 1650.

As Poland or the like, or if you're conscientious about your stability/avoiding Peasant's Wars as Russia, there's no reason to bother.

[Leecros]

If I remember right, failing to Westernize as Russia can get you the Time of Troubles events, which are fifty shades of bad juju for your Grey Menace. Only happens if your Stability is -2 or worse, though, and only between 1550 and 1650.

Time of trouble has nothing to do with Westernization.

[Guancyto]

You sure? I could swear it's related somehow.

Or maybe there's another event (1700s-ish?) that pops up if you haven't Westernized that's bad juju?

I could swear there's something, otherwise when I played Russia I rushed to Westernize for nothing.