I'm humbled by your game play. Just caught up on this AAR and can't wait for more!!! Well done!
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1516-1526: Peace at Last
Here's an illustration of that neighbour bonus I was talking about earlier.
My ally Castille declares war on Tunisia. Despite the fact that Tunisia isn't allied with anyone, due to guarantees, spheres of influence, and defender of the faith, the whole Muslim world gets up in arms. In vanilla EUIII, all you really had to worry about were alliances. The whole diplomatic system is far, far better now!
It's good to be the pope!
You drive a hard bargain sultan, but I'll take it.
I get the mission to discover Sao Tome. I take a wild guess and suppose it's right where my map happens to be pointing in this screenshot.
Woohoo! I was right. Fancy that.
I take another wild guess about the location of Diego Garcia.
Missionaries have now been sent to every pagan province AND every Protestant/Reformed province!
Right again!
With a core on Tenassarim, I can colonize Mauritius. It's not a great colony compared to my holdings in North America, but the naval supply might come in handy in the future.
I also consider colonizing St. Helena off the western Africa coast, but decide that by the time it would become relevant (i.e. 50 years from now, when I get a core), my naval tech will probably give sufficient range that my ships will stay supplied the whole way from Cape Verde to Mauritius without a waypoint in-between.
Here's an illustration of that neighbour bonus I was talking about earlier.
My ally Castille declares war on Tunisia. Despite the fact that Tunisia isn't allied with anyone, due to guarantees, spheres of influence, and defender of the faith, the whole Muslim world gets up in arms. In vanilla EUIII, all you really had to worry about were alliances. The whole diplomatic system is far, far better now!
It's good to be the pope!
You drive a hard bargain sultan, but I'll take it.
I get the mission to discover Sao Tome. I take a wild guess and suppose it's right where my map happens to be pointing in this screenshot.
Woohoo! I was right. Fancy that.
I take another wild guess about the location of Diego Garcia.
Missionaries have now been sent to every pagan province AND every Protestant/Reformed province!
Right again!
With a core on Tenassarim, I can colonize Mauritius. It's not a great colony compared to my holdings in North America, but the naval supply might come in handy in the future.
I also consider colonizing St. Helena off the western Africa coast, but decide that by the time it would become relevant (i.e. 50 years from now, when I get a core), my naval tech will probably give sufficient range that my ships will stay supplied the whole way from Cape Verde to Mauritius without a waypoint in-between.
I usually take Cape Verde - Fernando Po - South Africa - Mauritius, but at least one of them could easily be dropped off...
This is nice for you. Now when your ships arrive on the indian ocean, you'll have a friendly port there already. 
Awesome AAR!
I have never thought of discovering new CoTs that way.
Good luck, I'll be lurking.
I have never thought of discovering new CoTs that way.
Good luck, I'll be lurking.
Trading at CoTs
I just tried a similar (without the colonizing) strategy with Switzerland (sending my explorers on b-lines to get to the CoTs but it isn't working. I can't seem to trade in any of them. Some of them are open to me, some closed, but even after opening the trade centre I still can't send merchants. Do I need to send boats to their coast (can I not trade over land?).
I just tried a similar (without the colonizing) strategy with Switzerland (sending my explorers on b-lines to get to the CoTs but it isn't working. I can't seem to trade in any of them. Some of them are open to me, some closed, but even after opening the trade centre I still can't send merchants. Do I need to send boats to their coast (can I not trade over land?).
you can't trade in CoT's in another continent if your capital isn't linked to the sea
1526-1532: Traders No More
Though the noble continent of North America is protected from foreign powers, South America is terribly vulnerable. There is one solution: more colonists!
40 per month on colonial maintenance is quite a bit. Those 10 colonists from discovering Sao Tome and Diego Garcia really bumped this up--it was only 26.4 in 1508. Now that I have Colonial Ventures (2 colonists per year instead of 1), this is only going to get worse. Colonizing is definitely not for the faint of heart in HT3!
I love me some narrowmindedness! The faster those colonies grow, the cheaper they end up being.
With so many provinces, Connacht is quickly developing a lock on the Holy See.
Only Irish Catholics here!
Time to get that inflation under control. Goodbye my traders!
Because I'm abandoning trade, I can take over the Huron. (I'll take a -15% compete chance hit for possessing a non-core CoT at Ontario.)
I choose the Reconquest cassus belli, because I got a core on Mohawk from an event. The tooltip says that this CB will give me 0% for "full annexation." In point of fact though, that only applies to non-pagans, where I could only annex if Mohawk alone was left. With the Reconquest CB, I only got 0% infamy for annexing Mohawk--all the other provinces gave me normal infamy. This is why my infamy is 7.1 now. I should have done the "Colonial Conquest" cb and only got 1.6 infamy.
It's not that big of deal though. A big reason behind switching away from trading was so that I wouldn't have to worry about infamy much anymore.
Nice event!
You perspicacious readers will notice that I've dropped the now worthless "Shrewd Commerce Practices" in favor of the new "Land of Opportunity" (LO, +20% colonial growth).
At first glance, land of opportunity doesn't seem that great. But when you run the numbers, a far different story emerges: normally my colonies grow at 70 population per year. With LO, they grow at 90 population per year. That means that it takes 12.8 years (900/70) for a colony to grow to a city without LO and 10 years (900/90) for a colony to grow to a city with LO.
Each colony costs almost 30 ducats per year. So since this NI "saves" three years of growth, it will save me 90 ducats per new colony. And since I get 2 new colonies a year, this NI will save me 180 ducats per year.
By contrast, that 5% increase in income from Bureaucracy would only give me about 48.06 ducats per year (80.1 per month tax income * 12 months * 0.05).
(To get the true value, I really should take into account end of year tax income, but at this point, with so few cores, that year-end tax income is negligible.
Also, remember the fact that the "income" from the Land of Opportunity NI is essentially inflation free. To pay for the colonies with Bureaucracy, I would have to mint and thus incur inflation.)
The other nations don't waste any time in taking away Connacht's trade.
Oooo. There are other benefits to taking Land of Opportunity apparently!
In the future, if playing a small nation with limited income, I might take Land of Opportunity over Colonial Ventures.
Another thing to consider: Land of Opportunity becomes much more powerful the slower your colonies grow. Let's say going narrowminded is unfeasible--maybe the need to get westernization or just the desire for cheap tech. Without heavy narrowmindedness, let's say colonial growth is only 50 per year without LO. Then the difference between colonial growth without LO and with LO would be 5 years (18 versus 13). That means you would save 150 ducats per colonist sent per year with LO!
(Remember all these numbers are based on my nearly 50% inflation--adjust for your own nation accordingly.)
Though the noble continent of North America is protected from foreign powers, South America is terribly vulnerable. There is one solution: more colonists!
40 per month on colonial maintenance is quite a bit. Those 10 colonists from discovering Sao Tome and Diego Garcia really bumped this up--it was only 26.4 in 1508. Now that I have Colonial Ventures (2 colonists per year instead of 1), this is only going to get worse. Colonizing is definitely not for the faint of heart in HT3!
I love me some narrowmindedness! The faster those colonies grow, the cheaper they end up being.
With so many provinces, Connacht is quickly developing a lock on the Holy See.
Only Irish Catholics here!
Time to get that inflation under control. Goodbye my traders!
Because I'm abandoning trade, I can take over the Huron. (I'll take a -15% compete chance hit for possessing a non-core CoT at Ontario.)
I choose the Reconquest cassus belli, because I got a core on Mohawk from an event. The tooltip says that this CB will give me 0% for "full annexation." In point of fact though, that only applies to non-pagans, where I could only annex if Mohawk alone was left. With the Reconquest CB, I only got 0% infamy for annexing Mohawk--all the other provinces gave me normal infamy. This is why my infamy is 7.1 now. I should have done the "Colonial Conquest" cb and only got 1.6 infamy.
It's not that big of deal though. A big reason behind switching away from trading was so that I wouldn't have to worry about infamy much anymore.
Nice event!
You perspicacious readers will notice that I've dropped the now worthless "Shrewd Commerce Practices" in favor of the new "Land of Opportunity" (LO, +20% colonial growth).
At first glance, land of opportunity doesn't seem that great. But when you run the numbers, a far different story emerges: normally my colonies grow at 70 population per year. With LO, they grow at 90 population per year. That means that it takes 12.8 years (900/70) for a colony to grow to a city without LO and 10 years (900/90) for a colony to grow to a city with LO.
Each colony costs almost 30 ducats per year. So since this NI "saves" three years of growth, it will save me 90 ducats per new colony. And since I get 2 new colonies a year, this NI will save me 180 ducats per year.
By contrast, that 5% increase in income from Bureaucracy would only give me about 48.06 ducats per year (80.1 per month tax income * 12 months * 0.05).
(To get the true value, I really should take into account end of year tax income, but at this point, with so few cores, that year-end tax income is negligible.
Also, remember the fact that the "income" from the Land of Opportunity NI is essentially inflation free. To pay for the colonies with Bureaucracy, I would have to mint and thus incur inflation.)
The other nations don't waste any time in taking away Connacht's trade.
Oooo. There are other benefits to taking Land of Opportunity apparently!
In the future, if playing a small nation with limited income, I might take Land of Opportunity over Colonial Ventures.
Another thing to consider: Land of Opportunity becomes much more powerful the slower your colonies grow. Let's say going narrowminded is unfeasible--maybe the need to get westernization or just the desire for cheap tech. Without heavy narrowmindedness, let's say colonial growth is only 50 per year without LO. Then the difference between colonial growth without LO and with LO would be 5 years (18 versus 13). That means you would save 150 ducats per colonist sent per year with LO!
(Remember all these numbers are based on my nearly 50% inflation--adjust for your own nation accordingly.)
Now you've moved to a more anti-inflationary focus are you making any progress in reducing existing inflation or have you just stopped gaining any more?
so the plan of this AAR is to get a base in America and then strike at the rest of the world, or is the WC in the title just there to tract audiences?
Very interesting analysis on the Land Of Opportunity. Maybe I'll use it some day...
Unless there was a change in HTTT in this event, then colonial ventures can fire this event too.
No change, I've had it firing from Colonial Ventures before as GB, still usually targets sea provinces aswell grr
A really inspiring piece of writing with unconventional methods. Keep it up and take revenge on the Brits.
I checked the event files, and you guys are right about that "Colonial Company Founded" event being tied to "Colonial Ventures" instead of "Land of Opportunity." The event was added in Napoleon's Ambition, which is why I've never seen it before. I mistakenly assumed it was tied to the new NI from HT3.
Consider the wisdom of the wiki on the issue of whether to choose Land of Opportunity or Colonial Ventures:
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/National_ideas
Luckily, Connacht is filthy rich!
Think of that extra colonist from Colonial Ventures as providing 50 "free" population per year (100 from the CV NI versus the 50 you would get for growth from the colonial maintenance slider). Now, think of Land of Opportunity as 20 free population per year per colony. Since the costs of a year colonial maintenance and sending a colonist are essentially the same (20 base ducats), we can compare these two values directly. Let x be the number of colonies. LoO is > efficient when 20 * x > 50. Thus, 2.5 colonies.
Here's the upshot and rule of thumb: it's more efficient to use LoO when you are planning on having more than 2.5 colonies at a time. When you are planning on having less than 2.5 colonies at a time, it's more efficient to use Colonial Ventures.
Another thing in LoO's favor: LoO is guaranteed growth, and there is always a chance the colonist from CV will fail, potentially sparking a native uprising.
Appendix:
@rapidem: I agree that it would be nice (not to mention more historical) if colonial ventures targeted empty provinces adjacent to established provinces, rather than just random empty provinces in range. I think it would be an easy thing to mod or patch by changing just one line in the "eu3\events\ideaevents.txt" file.
Here's the code for the "Colonial Company Founded" event:
(Code source: your_eu3_directory\events\ideaevents.txt)
I'm not great at knowing exactly what the code is doing, but I think that if you change that random_empty_neighbor_province to empty_adjacent_province in the second to last line of code, then the colonial ventures event would colonize adjacent provinces right?
If you only had island colonies, would this event not fire because you would had no adjacent empty provinces?
Also, since this is a province event, does this mean that the more empty adjacent provinces you have, the more likely this event will fire?
Consider the wisdom of the wiki on the issue of whether to choose Land of Opportunity or Colonial Ventures:
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/National_ideas
Luckily, Connacht is filthy rich!
Think of that extra colonist from Colonial Ventures as providing 50 "free" population per year (100 from the CV NI versus the 50 you would get for growth from the colonial maintenance slider). Now, think of Land of Opportunity as 20 free population per year per colony. Since the costs of a year colonial maintenance and sending a colonist are essentially the same (20 base ducats), we can compare these two values directly. Let x be the number of colonies. LoO is > efficient when 20 * x > 50. Thus, 2.5 colonies.
Here's the upshot and rule of thumb: it's more efficient to use LoO when you are planning on having more than 2.5 colonies at a time. When you are planning on having less than 2.5 colonies at a time, it's more efficient to use Colonial Ventures.
Another thing in LoO's favor: LoO is guaranteed growth, and there is always a chance the colonist from CV will fail, potentially sparking a native uprising.
Appendix:
@rapidem: I agree that it would be nice (not to mention more historical) if colonial ventures targeted empty provinces adjacent to established provinces, rather than just random empty provinces in range. I think it would be an easy thing to mod or patch by changing just one line in the "eu3\events\ideaevents.txt" file.
Here's the code for the "Colonial Company Founded" event:
Code:
province_event = {
id = 6138
trigger = {
owner = { idea = colonial_ventures }
has_empty_adjacent_province = yes
}
mean_time_to_happen = {
months = 5000
modifier = {
factor = 0.95
owner = { war = no }
}
}
title = "EVTNAME6138"
desc = "EVTDESC6138"
option = {
name = "EVTOPTA6138"
random_empty_neighbor_province = {
create_colony = 2
}
}
}(Code source: your_eu3_directory\events\ideaevents.txt)
I'm not great at knowing exactly what the code is doing, but I think that if you change that random_empty_neighbor_province to empty_adjacent_province in the second to last line of code, then the colonial ventures event would colonize adjacent provinces right?
If you only had island colonies, would this event not fire because you would had no adjacent empty provinces?
Also, since this is a province event, does this mean that the more empty adjacent provinces you have, the more likely this event will fire?
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