So it's a mostly passive system but it is also all these things. Every trade node in the world moves some of its profit upstream (you can use merchants to direct or extract it). The end point of all trade is, eventually, Europe.
It doesn't break non-European counties, but you can't avoid it either.
It doesn't break non-European counties, but you can't avoid it either.
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There’s this one county in the south where if you check the dynasty the family (although mostly dead now) has a lineage spanning centuries back. And you can bring it back if you try hard enough…
Ok sometimes I start in Korea and sack Kyoto.
The systems are built to mimic actual historical outcomes, which limits the degree of ahistorical things you can do
So even if you somehow join all of the Americas into a superpower before Europe shows up, you still get colonial economics