Spain and colonial nations at later dates

[arcticpulse]

I tested this with huge colonial powers like France, Great Britain and Spain. It seems even though I completely lower the colonial, military and naval maintenance, the yearly loss is still very significant (from around -900 to -300). I am wondering how useful colonies are if this is the case. It seems minting is the only way to keep the finances in the green. Even so, I'll bet inflation will destroy the country sooner or not later. The colonial powers at later dates even have most if not all of the infrastructure at home and some in their colonies. It it even mitigating the costs much? Why would one even want colonies if this is the case? It seems like a lot of work for no gain.

[DanubianCossak]

I think the problem with this is that whoever worked on provincial histories (the files that determines who owns what and when as you scroll through time) did so without complete understanding on how colonizing province actually works - or in other words if population is bellow 1000, you pay for it a sum thats not very large, but if multiplied 50X can become quite a problem.

So when you select a colonizing power in later dates, very often these countries start owning colonies very deep inland without adjacent provinces rising above 1000 people, which is impossible to do via game mechanics. For example, some time ago i worked on some history entries for France. As i loaded Rev.France (irrc) in 1799. i skimmed over Northern America and Canada only to see that half of the British owned colonies in Canada (going as 5-6 provinces deep inland) were still colonies under development, which i think could really screw up British economy in these scenarios.

[ind2bc]

No player would or even could do this as you need a city to colonize inland which wasn't the case in the original EU3 which is why i believe this occurs because i doubt that they updated it

edit: Also in reality there was hardly any provinces with over 1000 colonists in them at that time inland and in order to show that the country owns them they have to give some population because you can't model just claiming territory in EU which i think that you need a SOI for unclaimed territory or something like that to show you have a staked interest in this place or claim it

[joshau-k]

I think the problem with this is that whoever worked on provincial histories (the files that determines who owns what and when as you scroll through time) did so without complete understanding on how colonizing province actually works - or in other words if population is bellow 1000, you pay for it a sum thats not very large, but if multiplied 50X can become quite a problem.

That's because when the history files were made colonization worked differently. In the original game there was no colonial maintenance and colonies grew at the same rate as normal provinces (i.e. very slowly), so you had to send colonists 10 times to get the province to city size which was way too much micro-management.

[kings4]

TO be honest most money thats made on colonias in real life is the monoply on certian trade items. thats what in particularr is good about colonies. since i build via high trade.

[glennandre22]

it cost very much at the beginning but later the colonies can determind who is the strongest country in the world... later in the game it gives much manpower and cash (in total) so its worth it but if you cant afford to it do 1-3 at a time, and if you have money and colonist to spend use them to get the provinces faster done