Colonial Flavour

[PyroMegaManZ]

Hi all. I have been thinking recently that it would be great to have a bit more flavour with Colonial Nations and Trade Companies. Here are some ideas I have thought of:

1. Colonial Nations of certain cultural groups would have different generic national ideas to normal (i.e. Colonial Nations of British, Iberian, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Maghreb cultural groups would all have different sets of national ideas)
   • Typically this would mean that Castilian Brazil would have Iberian Colonial national ideas, different ideas to if Britain or any other nation had a Colonial Nation there
   • However, if Castile had expelled Moroccans to create the Colonial Nation of Castilian Brazil, that Colonial Nation would now have Maghreb Colonial national ideas
2. Partially related to this previous idea, certain Colonial Nations with certain Cultural Groups would have the national ideas of the nation that could form in that region
   • For example, if France creates a Colonial Nation in Canada, that Colonial Nation would have Quebec national ideas; or if Spain colonised Mexico the Colonial Nation would have Mexican national ideas
3. Trade Companies could have their name changed by the player through subject interactions

I feel there is even more that could be added to flavour for the colonial aspect of the game, and if I think of anymore ideas I will add them here. I would love to hear your ideas and discuss the merits of all our ideas together I don't want to introduce new mechanics or new aspects into the game, I just want to make colonial playing more immersive and more rewarding.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

Some other ideas to add in that I have thought of:

4. Colonial Nations that form in the same region will set each other as Historical Rivals (i.e. British and French Mexico would have each other as Historical Rivals)​

5. Breaking the Treaty of Tordesillas for any given Colonial Region will result in Excommunication​

6. The nation that gets claim to a Colonial Region gets to use diplomatic action "Claim Unlawful Territory" on other nations in said region​

 

[Vaximillian]

Colonial Nations of certain cultural groups would have different generic national ideas to normal

And now you need to have someone design 45 new idea sets just because why not (there are currently 45 culture groups outside the Americas). Sure.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

And now you need to have someone design 45 new idea sets just because why not (there are currently 45 culture groups outside the Americas). Sure.

I only meant for the six cultural groups I mentioned as they were the primary cultural groups that colonised or could have feasibly colonised during our history. I also meant for the new national ideas to be loosely based off a combination of the already pre-existing generic Colonial Nation ideas and the pre-existing generic national ideas for these six cultural groups. For example the French Colonial Nation national ideas would probably have some idea relevant to Native Assimilation and Uprising Chance or something like that and the Iberian might have extra Missionaries?

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

I have some more ideas to add:

7. Provinces that have been British culture group in the Thirteen Colonies or Louisiana regions will become American, or provinces that have been Iberian in Mexico, Louisiana or California will become Mexican or provinces that have been Portuguese in Brazil will become Brazilian after fifty years of ownership​

8. Having Light Ships protect trade in a Trade Node will add +1 settler per year for every +1 trade power provided by the ships in every province you are colonising in that node up to a cap of +20 per year (only in Colonial Regions, not Trade Company regions)​

9. Related to the previous idea, for every ten cannons hunting pirates in a Trade Node you get +1 settler per year for each province you are colonising in that node up to a cap of +20 per year (only in Colonial Regions, not Trade Company regions)​

 

[Atacama]

Viceroyalties, Captaincies general, haciendas, Iberian caste system, triangular slave trade...
Much flavor of Latin American colonialism is missing. But I guess some of it would be too controversial or difficult to implement without pops.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

Viceroyalties, Captaincies general, haciendas, Iberian caste system, triangular slave trade...
Much flavor of Latin American colonialism is missing. But I guess some of it would be too controversial or difficult to implement without pops.

I suppose they have tried to demonstrate some of these systems through missions for Portugal and Castile/Spain but as you say, without pops there isn't really an effective way of demonstrating this that I can think of and I am hoping to avoid the devs having to add new in-depth mechanics to contribute to immersion and flavour. Maybe Colonial Nations could have events and mission trees to direct certain Colonial Nations into certain behaviours? For example the New Spain Colonial Nation might have events in regards to what historically happened there whereas British Mexico wouldn't have the same events?

 

[Atacama]

Mission trees for some colonial nations would be great, it's something. So are the other suggestions in this thread.

It is still insufficient, though. I can only hope EUV adds pops or at least some sort of diversity metric for each province. That would open so many gameplay elements and potential flavor for religions, cultures, estates and colonial nations.

Converting provinces for example would slowly change the religious ratios instead of waiting months/years for a sudden mass conversion (and missionaries would get some use even when your nation's religion is already predominant, to lower the occasional spawns of minority religions here and there). You could even see rarities like a Jewish nation if Jewish minorities, unrepresented right now in the map for not fully controlling any land, were to revolt and take a province. I could see that happening in a falling Granada where Sephardic populations lived around the Alhambra before Spain united for example. Cultures could also be presented in ratios to add minorities like gypsies too.

The time period for this game tells the story of the beginning of globalization, but that is not demographically represented ingame. The world doesn't fully feel alive. This is the main issue that prevents colonial nations having decent flavor. There is no flavor in "get 5 provinces in an area and win a subject far away" (usually with an ugly flag), boring if you can't juggle with casta conflicts, slave trade and slave revolts and religious diversity and fusion. (Think of Bolivian Christianity being a fusion of Catholicism with Pachamama worship, which helped facilitate native populations integration but creates conflicts with traditional Catholics).

Regarding slavery mechanics, I've seen them suggested quite a few times. I can't seem to be able to post the links to the threads though, it thinks it's spam.

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

I like ideas 1, 3, 4 and 6

All good with me, sound like some nice stuff

I don't like 2, 5, 8, 9

2 - The national ideas gained by forming those tags in the Americas should stay as a reward, besides, it would be extremely odd for, if somehow a historical game happens, the British Thirteen Colonies to have American ideas talking about how great their liberty, rights and revolutionary beliefs are when they are a colony. Same applies for Mexico, who should be sticking to Castile/Spain until they break free and make Mexico. Also French colonies should in no way be referencing Quebec at any point during EU IV's time frame, in fact Quebec shouldn't even be a country in game but that is a discussion for another place.

5 - The Treaty of Tordesillas to me needs a completely rework and should apply more to Portugal and Castile/Spain more instead of all Catholic nations, punishing Catholic nations even more is the last thing the religion needs right now.

8 and 9 - Really just not a fan of the idea.

I don't mind 7

However I would like to see it expanded upon more, there needs to be more cultures that spawn in the New World and I do think it currently needs to be tweaked, right now Brazilian is a little too specific, where it has to be Portuguese culture, which to me it should just be an Iberian culture, and Mexican is too loosely thrown to describe all territories that Mexico used to control, but that land wasn't fully Mexican and that's not until after EU's time frame. Some more cultures that should be added are Acadien, Floridan, Cuban, Colombian, Argentinian, Canadien, Canadian to name some big missing ones for me.

 

[Jams5901]

There is no flavor in "get 5 provinces in an area and win a subject far away"

I know this wasn't the main subject of your post, but it's something that I've considered before. I'd wonder if it would be better to have one colonial nation for adjacent provinces, and would be later be divided along the borders of colonial regions if the CN reaches a certain size, and combined if two CNs from the same colonial overlord in the same CR border each other. This adjacency rule would not apply to islands, such as the Caribbean or Oceania.

It seems odd that colonising Guyana and Ecuador would be part of the same CN even if somebody else held Venezuela and Columbia, whereas if you owned Brazil and your Guyanan land is small enough, then it should be part of your Brazilian CN. And on the flipside, it'd also be odd if your CN controlled the whole Caribbean but you own one province in Venezuela directly.

Historically local colonial governments were set up due to the difficulties in administrating it from Europe, so a Guyana-Ecuador CN wouldn't work from this point of view, as Guyana would be closer to Europe by sea than it would be to Ecuador, not counting the Panama Canal.

 

[Atacama]

Yes, preestablished colonial regions is a mechanic that seems outdated, as it leads to all the problems you mention. And it generally makes no sense for a game of alternative history to be be railroaded by real world regions before they get formed. One thing is to railroad an existing old world country by adding missions that led to success or aspirations in the real world, another is to railroad into existence the state of Brazil by anyone who arrives. Calling Chile part of La Plata is another issue, they were actually a Captaincy General of Peru and received aid, soldiers, resources from Lima, not from the other side of the Andes. While the Captaincy of Chile served as an outpost to detect and inform of other European ships/pirates/English privateers in particular arriving from the south to the Peruvian Viceroyalty. That kind of relationship between Viceroyalties and Capataincies working as their minors with specific strategic roles is absent ingame.

In general, a Colonization update should offer more control over our colonial nations. What they can do or not do, what their borders should aim to look like, how and if they should divide in parts, what minors/captaincies they can manage, etc. Obviously the more limitations you put on them the more liberty desire they get. With the Emperor DLC we can toggle their expansionism, which is a step in the right direction. With Golden Century, minority expulsion at least added some sort of population/culture control, albeit it wasn't successfully implemented at first.
One should definitely have the option to make Ecuador a different colony from the Guyana if you got another European dividing them in the middle.

In the real world Spain also forced their colonies to focus in producing and exporting certain goods, based on what the empire needed, sometimes disregarding what each land was actually good for. That was a major economic reason for their desire to independence, since local merchants barely made any money most of the time under those regulations. So finding out your new colonial province has fish or fur should not be a definitive sentence. Although changing province Trade Goods ingame would probably require changing a lot of other trade mechanics. On the other side, mercantilism already increases liberty desire.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

I like ideas 1, 3, 4 and 6

All good with me, sound like some nice stuff

I don't like 2, 5, 8, 9

2 - The national ideas gained by forming those tags in the Americas should stay as a reward, besides, it would be extremely odd for, if somehow a historical game happens, the British Thirteen Colonies to have American ideas talking about how great their liberty, rights and revolutionary beliefs are when they are a colony. Same applies for Mexico, who should be sticking to Castile/Spain until they break free and make Mexico. Also French colonies should in no way be referencing Quebec at any point during EU IV's time frame, in fact Quebec shouldn't even be a country in game but that is a discussion for another place.

5 - The Treaty of Tordesillas to me needs a completely rework and should apply more to Portugal and Castile/Spain more instead of all Catholic nations, punishing Catholic nations even more is the last thing the religion needs right now.

8 and 9 - Really just not a fan of the idea.

I don't mind 7

However I would like to see it expanded upon more, there needs to be more cultures that spawn in the New World and I do think it currently needs to be tweaked, right now Brazilian is a little too specific, where it has to be Portuguese culture, which to me it should just be an Iberian culture, and Mexican is too loosely thrown to describe all territories that Mexico used to control, but that land wasn't fully Mexican and that's not until after EU's time frame. Some more cultures that should be added are Acadien, Floridan, Cuban, Colombian, Argentinian, Canadien, Canadian to name some big missing ones for me.

That is true that it would seem a bit weird for the Thirteen Colonies to be talking of revolutionary spirit etc. so it would probably be best to stick with the generic British Colonial ideas in that case. With the Treaty of Tordesillas I would like it to still be dynamic to avoid it just being an Iberian mechanic as I believe it is plausible that if Portugal and Spain just decided to never colonise (as unlikely as that would have been) that other nations would still have tried to use the Pope to press their claims to the New World.

I am hoping to avoid overhauls or reworks in my suggestions and instead just tweak features a bit more (so that these features won't require a complete redevelopment of the game if the developers do like them) but I do suppose Excommunication is also a bit too harsh for breaking the treaty (I had found some references to the threat of Excommunication for nations that broke the treaty but that would likely go against the flow of the game).

I would still like to stick on if possible with 8 and 9 personally as I believe it is a good way of representing how crucial the navy was to colonisers (as it stands right now it doesn't really matter if you have no ships or the largest navy in the world when it comes to colonising).

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

I know this wasn't the main subject of your post, but it's something that I've considered before. I'd wonder if it would be better to have one colonial nation for adjacent provinces, and would be later be divided along the borders of colonial regions if the CN reaches a certain size, and combined if two CNs from the same colonial overlord in the same CR border each other. This adjacency rule would not apply to islands, such as the Caribbean or Oceania.

It seems odd that colonising Guyana and Ecuador would be part of the same CN even if somebody else held Venezuela and Columbia, whereas if you owned Brazil and your Guyanan land is small enough, then it should be part of your Brazilian CN. And on the flipside, it'd also be odd if your CN controlled the whole Caribbean but you own one province in Venezuela directly.

Historically local colonial governments were set up due to the difficulties in administrating it from Europe, so a Guyana-Ecuador CN wouldn't work from this point of view, as Guyana would be closer to Europe by sea than it would be to Ecuador, not counting the Panama Canal.

You have a very good point about Colonial Nations but my main hope with this thread is to avoid suggestions that might require an overhaul of the game (in other words, lots of development time) and instead try to tweak some features of the game to bring out more flavour or immersion where possible with the tools we already have access to (in many ways acting as if we were suggesting a mod for the game). I would love to see what you suggest implemented though, especially if an EU5 or a future colonial themed DLC for EU4 comes out. Thank you for your addition and I hope it is added in future!

Yes, preestablished colonial regions is a mechanic that seems outdated, as it leads to all the problems you mention. And it generally makes no sense for a game of alternative history to be be railroaded by real world regions before they get formed. One thing is to railroad an existing old world country by adding missions that led to success or aspirations in the real world, another is to railroad into existence the state of Brazil by anyone who arrives. Calling Chile part of La Plata is another issue, they were actually a Captaincy General of Peru and received aid, soldiers, resources from Lima, not from the other side of the Andes. While the Captaincy of Chile served as an outpost to detect and inform of other European ships/pirates/English privateers in particular arriving from the south to the Peruvian Viceroyalty. That kind of relationship between Viceroyalties and Capataincies working as their minors with specific strategic roles is absent ingame.

In general, a Colonization update should offer more control over our colonial nations. What they can do or not do, what their borders should aim to look like, how and if they should divide in parts, what minors/captaincies they can manage, etc. Obviously the more limitations you put on them the more liberty desire they get. With the Emperor DLC we can toggle their expansionism, which is a step in the right direction. With Golden Century, minority expulsion at least added some sort of population/culture control, albeit it wasn't successfully implemented at first.
One should definitely have the option to make Ecuador a different colony from the Guyana if you got another European dividing them in the middle.

In the real world Spain also forced their colonies to focus in producing and exporting certain goods, based on what the empire needed, sometimes disregarding what each land was actually good for. That was a major economic reason for their desire to independence, since local merchants barely made any money most of the time under those regulations. So finding out your new colonial province has fish or fur should not be a definitive sentence. Although changing province Trade Goods ingame would probably require changing a lot of other trade mechanics. On the other side, mercantilism already increases liberty desire.

Maybe you could change the Trade Goods in provinces you or your subjects control in a Colonial Region for the cost of Diplomatic MPs (almost in a similar way to changing culture). The cost would scale up based on how unlikely it was originally that Trade Good would appear in that province when it was first colonised (for example a province that only had a 8% of Gems appearing would cost perhaps 250 Diplo points to convert to instead of 50 for Tropical Wood which had a 40% chance). The other side effects would be a -20% Goods Produced and +10 Unrest modifier for 10 years and if it was in a subject's province that subject would have an additional +0.5% LD per development of the province(s) that were converted that would decay at -0.5% LD per year. Also it should be noted that under this proposition you would not be able to convert a province to produce Gold and you would not be able to produce any Trade Goods that had <5% chance of appearing in the province initially. I believe this would have several positive effects; it would actually make it somewhat possible that rebellions could pop up in your colonies (rather than always being beacons of impeccable stability), it would reflect the way colonies were exploited for certain resources, and it would give another way for Colonial Nations to actually rebel rather than just Mercantilism, Tariffs, and pure Development alone.

 

[nyetflix]

There is no flavor in "get 5 provinces in an area and win a subject far away" (usually with an ugly flag), boring if you can't juggle with casta conflicts, slave trade and slave revolts and religious diversity and fusion. (Think of Bolivian Christianity being a fusion of Catholicism with Pachamama worship, which helped facilitate native populations integration but creates conflicts with traditional Catholics).

I have a very extensive proposal for a total rework of colonization that I'm working on at the moment, I will eventually post in it this forum but I might take a while to refine it. Some of the things it will cover:

- religious syncretism (mainly between Christianity and American/African traditions)
- gradual assimilation of some native peoples, while others will be very hard to convert at first
- African diasporas, slave revolts and slave trade to a limited extent (seems that paradox really doesn't want to show it)
- encomiendas, repartimientos, haciendas, the conflict between the crown and nobles and anti-hacienda uprisings, decisions to abolish native land ownership or ban native languages
- pandemics get rid of or relocate several centers of trade in parts of the Americas
- possibly conflicts between different conquistadors, which happened in the conquests of Honduras and Mexico
- Indian auxiliaries to help conquest, which will retain autonomy for their homes and still be necessary after the conquest
- conquistadors can generate income from gifts/looting and be kicked out of some cities
- ability to conquer certain areas like the Caribbean, Colombia, Central America by founding reductions instead of going through the process of colonization, so that it can happen much faster
- colonized provinces don't just automatically take the colonizer's culture/religion
- giant buff to certain tribes like Chichimecas, Guaycurus, Mapuches and others to make for more interesting wars of expansion
- ability to "read requirement" in order to try to force some native states to submit to vassalage/convert to your religion
- much more detailed and consistent system of colonial cultures
- more post-colonial tags and event chains that simulate whether larger independent CNs will veer towards federalism or centralism

Plus I have tons of ideas for native american content.

 

[Atacama]

I have a very extensive proposal for a total rework of colonization that I'm working on at the moment, I will eventually post in it this forum but I might take a while to refine it. Some of the things it will cover:

- religious syncretism (mainly between Christianity and American/African traditions)
- gradual assimilation of some native peoples, while others will be very hard to convert at first
- African diasporas, slave revolts and slave trade to a limited extent (seems that paradox really doesn't want to show it)
- encomiendas, repartimientos, haciendas, the conflict between the crown and nobles and anti-hacienda uprisings, decisions to abolish native land ownership or ban native languages
- pandemics get rid of or relocate several centers of trade in parts of the Americas
- possibly conflicts between different conquistadors, which happened in the conquests of Honduras and Mexico
- Indian auxiliaries to help conquest, which will retain autonomy for their homes and still be necessary after the conquest
- conquistadors can generate income from gifts/looting and be kicked out of some cities
- ability to conquer certain areas like the Caribbean, Colombia, Central America by founding reductions instead of going through the process of colonization, so that it can happen much faster
- colonized provinces don't just automatically take the colonizer's culture/religion
- giant buff to certain tribes like Chichimecas, Guaycurus, Mapuches and others to make for more interesting wars of expansion
- ability to "read requirement" in order to try to force some native states to submit to vassalage/convert to your religion
- much more detailed and consistent system of colonial cultures
- more post-colonial tags and event chains that simulate whether larger independent CNs will veer towards federalism or centralism

Plus I have tons of ideas for native american content.

This is it. This is the update we need. I very much like every single point here. Hoping to see the full proposal when you refine it. And praying that the devs consider it.

This thread has raised many good ideas, I would also consider climatic elements I read in another suggestion. Including El Niño/La Niña cycles, earthquakes, etc. impacting our colonies. Unlike calm Europe, the rest of the world suffers from climate disasters all the time, which halts travel in whole areas, impacts commerce and destroys buildings and development. So you better be prepared for them, sending your ships to the closest coasts where they have fleet basing rights, or they may get destroyed in storms, etc.

Another addition for flavor that comes to mind: Events about aid requests.
Your colony may sometimes, in times of need or just for preparation, request aid in form of troops, ships or money, which if you accept to send will be substracted from your nation and added to theirs, lowering a lot their liberty desire. If you refuse, ld may increase. You could also get events to pay half of a building or pay half the monarch points cost to develop a province in the colonial nation, while they pay the other half. These events can strengthen relations and loyalty for some years, or you can just ignore their demands and hope they don't develop much. Aid requests can be triggered when rebels appear, after native uprisings, to rebuild/redevelop after a climate disaster, to build forts in provinces that neighbor other empire's colonies, or just when the colonial nation thinks they will really need it.