Changes to colonial regions/colonization, making it more like trade zones.

[tman144]

My suggestion is to make colonial regions work more like trade zones. The purpose of these changes are to:
1) Eliminate the awkward transition from newly colonized provinces going from complete control of the mother country to changing into a colonial nation after 5 provinces. One, I feel like this is backwards. Early colonization in the new world was much more hands off. Usually the mother country didn't care what was going on in the colonies until they were large, and didn't micromanage exactly where and when a new colony would be formed. Two, it feels rater hodgepodge since the first 5 provinces you colonize use the EU3 system, then you get this whole new way of colonizing using colonial nations after they form. I feel colonial nations should form from the first province colonized.

2) Eliminate the rather tedious and boring way of having to repeatedly send colonists after new provinces are finished. Now that there are way more provinces in the new world, it's kind of a pain to spend time away from warring in Europe to pick new spots to colonize when 9 out of 10 times I just want to pick the highest BT province next to a province I've already colonized. Plus, having to micromanage several small armies to keep the natives from destroying my colonies is annoying.

3) Make the human and AI play by the same rules when it comes to colonizing. The AI doesn't have to park armies in colonies to prevent native attacks, why should we?

So, the suggestion is this:
1) Give colonial regions an interface like trade regions have. The interface could tell you things like, how much BT there is available to colonize, which native tags are in the region, which other nations have claimed the region, which other nations are trying to colonize the region.
2) Send your colonist to a region instead of a single province, much like traders are sent to a node. Having a colonist assigned to a colonial region could do different things. If you don't have a colonial nation in the region, then there is a chance that a colonial nation will appear in a single province (usually a high BT province or high trade value province). Once there is a colonial nation in the region, then your colonist will work for the CN and colonize an adjacent (or nearby) province. You would still pay the upkeep on the colonist, so this would be a way for CNs to get bigger without you having to subsidize them. This could also set up new war and peace mechanics, like giving you a cb on any nation that has a colonist assigned to a region where you have a CN, with a peace deal that forbids the loser from sending a colonist to that region for a period of time.
3) This is the part I think is really interesting. Much like traders can either steer trade or collect trade, colonists assigned to a region would have two options, settle or conquer. Settle would work as describes in point 2, but conquer would have a chance to spawn friendly "rebels" in native countries that, if successful, would create a CN for you. Even better, you could assign a conquistador to a region along with your colonist, and when the "rebels" fire, they would be led by your conquistador, which would make them more likely to succeed. I think this option would better simulate the formation of New Spain, rather than what we have now, where Spain declares war on a native tag and then sends 40k troops over the Atlantic, which is not really how any of that went down.

I have more thoughts to go along with this, but I think I've got enough down to give you the basic idea. Thoughts?

 

[GiftGruen]

1) is actually a good idea, even though the five province limit was there for a reason. For example, you might want to give a province to your adjacent CN even if the colony actually isn't in that colonial region, for example because you couldn't hope to get a CN up in that region. Moreover, that would mean a lot more CN tags would form every game, and couldn't be merged if two or multiple ended up with the same owner after an annexation in Europe.

I am not sure about 2), I like having control over the colonialization process, as my main colonization strats are: A) Kill Portugal and Castile, B) Colonize coastal provinces to block ENG/GBR and France from colonizing. So I usually do a lot of sending colonists around form Africa to America and vice-versa. Also, how would you handle provinces like St. Helena, that one isolated province between Kongo and Cape, or the Pacific islands? To each their own region? Or a completely different mechanic for America while the Old World still has to use EU 3 mechanics?

3) Also only applies to the 'Muricas, and would trivialise killing the North American OPMs, since their only province to spawn rebels is their capital containing their army, they would get wiped and sieged down, and annexed. IRL, North American natives were mainly fought off by the settlers themselves or what little regiment the monarch sent with the expedition. Conquistadors were only sent by the Spanish Crown, when they still believed to find El Dorito.

 

[tman144]

1) is actually a good idea, even though the five province limit was there for a reason. For example, you might want to give a province to your adjacent CN even if the colony actually isn't in that colonial region, for example because you couldn't hope to get a CN up in that region. Moreover, that would mean a lot more CN tags would form every game, and couldn't be merged if two or multiple ended up with the same owner after an annexation in Europe.

I am not sure about 2), I like having control over the colonialization process, as my main colonization strats are: A) Kill Portugal and Castile, B) Colonize coastal provinces to block ENG/GBR and France from colonizing. So I usually do a lot of sending colonists around form Africa to America and vice-versa. Also, how would you handle provinces like St. Helena, that one isolated province between Kongo and Cape, or the Pacific islands? To each their own region? Or a completely different mechanic for America while the Old World still has to use EU 3 mechanics?

3) Also only applies to the 'Muricas, and would trivialise killing the North American OPMs, since their only province to spawn rebels is their capital containing their army, they would get wiped and sieged down, and annexed. IRL, North American natives were mainly fought off by the settlers themselves or what little regiment the monarch sent with the expedition. Conquistadors were only sent by the Spanish Crown, when they still believed to find El Dorito.

For #2, you would only get the interface where there are colonial regions, so Africa and Siberia would work the way they do now. I know people like to micro manage where they colonize, but I think it's kinda "gamey," in that the AI doesn't try to block you out by taking all the coast, plus, you would be able to prevent other countries from colonizing an area altogether by using the new cb and peace deal.

For #3, I thought up this as the same time I was making this suggestion: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ve-americans-more-interesting-to-play.875061/
So, one, north american tribes would be bigger, and two, an opm native tag could also get "expelled" from their last province and migrate to another province if there is an empty province nearby.