Colonizing the new world much too fast?

[unmerged(66460)]

I have played a few games now (1.1 patch), and everytime i start a new game, some European power goes straight for the Americas. A year or so after gamestart, there are colonies popping up.
This is getting rather annoying. Colonizing by the AI shouldn't start in earnest so early in the game? What happened to 1492 as the approximate starting point for European colonization? Now everyone starts colonizing right of the bat, making 1453 the "new 1492".
The biggest problem is not that they are taking the "best" spots, but that if you go to war with a nation that has the QFTNW - idea, you will never get the peace you want unless you are prepared to choose the idea yourself, and go scouting the entire American coastline looking for that pesky little colony that could be anywhere.
IMHO, the location of a nations colonies should be revealed if you control their capital or something. Also there should be somwhere in the ledger that show what provinces every nation control.
Fine-combing the whole world to try and find out if Castille has colonized some pesky province in Indonesia that you have to take to get a peace deal, just isnt much fun!
Anyone else having some thoughts on this? Is there some way of delaying AI colonizing until at least 20-30 years of gameplay has passed?

A lot of questions at once, i know, but they kinda fit together.

 

[Finnish Dragon]

Anyone else having some thoughts on this? Is there some way of delaying AI colonizing until at least 20-30 years of gameplay has passed?

I wonder if it is possible to make national ideas like QFTNW or Colonial Adventures are required to gain colonists. I guess Colonial Adventures would be better because otherwise QFTNW would become too powerful if it allows discovering and colonization.

Also, I would make that at least Castille´s first national idea would be Deus Vult to simulate the Reconquista of Spain and their attitude towards "infidels". I would keep QFTNW the same and only Portugal should be the AI nation that will have it as the first national idea in the beginning of the game.

 

[unmerged(12921)]

You're going to get a lot of the same replies I recieved. Parados has chosen to make this version "dynamic" (freeform) with all the AI Nations free to make any choice a player might make---no historical scripting. Unfortunately, common sense and self-preservation seem to have been left out as well, resulting in the kind of "strange behavior" you're observing.

I'd suggested no nation but Portugal be given "QFTNW" as an option for their first "National Goal" (the were the only ones out looking for anything in 1453) as a means of reining in some of the idiocy..., but got "shot down" rather quickly. You might want to check one of the more historical mods. Apparently that's the only means for even a semblance of rationality to "rear it's head" in this version.

 

[unmerged(67738)]

The colonizing is much to fast, but I don't know if I'd mind it as much if it were more interesting. More events maybe. As it is, its very predictable, no surprises. Its more like an elaborate coloring book than a colonizing sim.

 

[unmerged(20628)]

I think the problem is that you don´t really need either Qftnw or Colonial adventures to play a heavily coloninsing country because of the way the map spread works.

Either the ideas need a boost by penalising colonisation efficiency for those who don´t have the ideas, or the base colonists gain should be drastically reduced.

Alternatively, the map spread could be tweaked, for example in a way that only sea provinces spread but no uninhabited land provinces.

 

[unmerged(4875)]

I don't find that QftNW effects my ability to win wars. As Castille I fought Portugal, who had a crapload of settlements in North America, and conquering all of their homeland provinces gave me a 99% victory.

 

[Judas the Rogue]

I wonder about when you get your next National Idea.
I have the game but the comp I'm going to play it on is still in pieces.

The reason I wonder is if you could actually change something in the script that disables the QFTNW idea as your first National Idea just to delay the exploration to a more historical correct date.

Or if you can set a certain date as a requirement to be able to choose the QFTNW.

//Judas

 

[OutsiderSubtype]

This bothered me so much that I started playing beginning in 1492 rather than in 1453.

 

[madogvelkor]

This bothered me so much that I started playing beginning in 1492 rather than in 1453.

I've found for other reasons that starting in 1492 is the better choice, unless you want to play a nation like Morea or Burgundy.

You seem to start out with better tech and a better economy than you can get by playing from 1453. For 90% of nations it's a waiting game for the first 50 years of play if you start in 1453.

 

[N Katsyev]

Simply attacking a country's homeland will get you the same result, and usually a 99% warscore as someone else indicated. Also, if they are so heavily built up abroad that this is not the case, they might not have relented historically either with so much power elsewhere untouched. Or, their colonies may simply go crazy in revolts. Either way you're damaging your opponent.

 

[Judas the Rogue]

As an answer to my own question I found this in MrT's Saxony AAR.
http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showthread.php?t=276894

"[Saxony's research investment in government tech results in Level 1 being reached. This allows me to choose my first "national idea" from a list of 30 different ideas, each of which gives me a nice bonus in some area. Once selected, there is a nasty stab hit if you change it later, and it will probably be another 40-50 years before I will reach the government tech level that will unlock my next "national idea slot" so I have to choose carefully. I settle on "bureaucracy" which gives me +5% tax income from all provinces -- not much, but it adds up over time to quite a tidy sum of cash. Saxony needs money if it's going to send gifts to try to influence the electors, and it needs cash to buy and support a larger army, so that seemed the best selection.]"

So according to this it would be very logical to me to disable QFTNW as your first National Idea. To delay it 40 to 50 years would actually be more realistic than that Columbus finds the New World in a diaper.

 

[Cagliostro]

The real problem is that exploring is too fast, and spread is too fast. If you halved the speed on both, you'd have a much more reasonable AI.

 

[pdubz]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to make crossing the Atlantic dependent on having a certain level of naval tech, with the chances of successfully completing the voyage increasing with each level?

 

[Chaingun]

A simple solution would simply be to limit QFTNW to some earliest date, like 1492 (probably some years earlier since Portugal explored before that). It's not a great amount of "simulation" by doing so, but it would remove the inevitable silliness occurring when players have access to instant colonization in 1453.

 

[Judas the Rogue]

A simple solution would simply be to limit QFTNW to some earliest date, like 1492 (probably some years earlier since Portugal explored before that). It's not a great amount of "simulation" by doing so, but it would remove the inevitable silliness occurring when players have access to instant colonization in 1453.

Wasn't that I just said or did my countryman just clearify what I said?

 

[unmerged(56271)]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to make crossing the Atlantic dependent on having a certain level of naval tech, with the chances of successfully completing the voyage increasing with each level?

Hey, that makes quite a bit of sense. That way colonization could be very risky with low chance of success early on, and increase as your naval tech increased.

It would also make naval tech research a lot more important, and make it less likely for continental countries which need to concentrate on land tech to get a foothold in colonization until later in the game.

Hmm, yes, I think this idea has some merit...

Edit: It occurs to me this could well be moddable right now too. You'd just have to find a way of greatly decreasing the initial likelihood of a colonization being successful, with some sort of trigger for increased colonizaton chance with different naval tech levels.

 

[agibaer]

Well I started in 1453 as well, but I didn't see any colonies in the americas before around 1500 (using a bug that sometimes comes up where ships don't lose percentage and I was able to explore the 7 seas with one cog )

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to make crossing the Atlantic dependent on having a certain level of naval tech, with the chances of successfully completing the voyage increasing with each level?

Tottaly agree.As it is you can explore the South and North America with a 1 cog and 1 explorer.Ocean going exploration should only be possible from the point on that one has carvels, and even then there should be a high attrition, voyages should be short and discover not that much in one go, and explorers should die earlier.And cogs should die from the moment that they are longer than 1 month on an ocean suare IMo.

Because historicly the ships were a very practical limitation to what could be explored, the Portugese under Hendrik the seafearer mostly remained at the coast, only later, with the invention of the caravel, would the Portugese and others go over oceans.Hence also that Hendrik put so much effort in the development of better ships.And the chinese started exploring over the seas under Zheng ye even sooner than the Portugese, and that was because China at the start of the 15th century had gone trough a lot of innovations on shipbuilding.

Even then voyages with caravels were often dangerous and suffered quite some attrition.Only later ship types would make travel to the colonies safer and easier.In EUIII you can discover north and south pole with a cog, while historicly these colder and harder to acces regions were only discovered when better ships were developed to handle the weather.

 

[unmerged(66460)]

wow...as always i am in awe of the seriousness on this forum, and the good ideas that comes up here (Paradox-games has attracted the more mature gamers i suppose).
Plenty of food for thought here, i espescially like the idea of making oceanic voyages dependent on naval tech- levels (something like civ? only caravels can enter sea-zones with no coastline?).

As a comment on getting warscore; yes, you can get 99% by taking all mainland - provinces most of the early game at least, but that is 1 % less than needed for anexation. In two games (as Portugal and Aragon) now, i've beaten castille down to where they only had their capitol left on the peninsula. But because of some hidden colony somewhere in America that i just couldn't find, I was unable to get the full anexation. I suppose that this would be a problem for other nations as well. I know there are several possible workarounds here (vassalizing- diploanex, or just waiting 50 years for maps to spread), but it's still annoying. I think you should get 100% warscore, and have the possibility of anexation, if the enemy has only colonies left (coloniesw mind you, not full cities). A single colony should not make a one- province nation immune to anexation...

 

[Caranorn]

Just a few notes.

1) Historic caravels were cargo ships, so essentially the game tech does not represent actual caravels (more likely advanced carracks (even less sea worthy then their predecessors due to bad distribution of weight). The fluyte seems to roughly represent the actual caravels (the fluyte was a much later, dutch cargo ship type)...

2) In my current game as Portugal I picked Quest for the New World as my second national idea only. Castile picked first and started exploring and colonising early on (Brasil and Martinique). I got QftNW sometime around 1488, at that time I'd had advanced naval techs (the barque is ideal for exploration) and good naval traditions (wars against Grenada and Morrocco with my good neighbour Castile). I currently am around the year 1522 and Portugal has as many fully developped colonial cities as Castile, so those 30 years headstart served them very little (yes they got the gold of Brasil, I got good trade techs and am growing fat from 5-6 traders per CoT).

3) The major limiting factor to colonisation I encoutered in this game was simply cash. Early on I could at best expand 3 colonies a year, by the 1520's theoretically 5 (but I'm spending some of that money on fortifications and other improvements of the fully developped colonial cities). I even cashiered the colonial governor I'd hired at one point, I just couldn't spend as many colonists as I was gaining in a year. I noticed how Castile also slowed down after the first rush (faster then I did as I'd built up a small cash reserve).

In short, allowing ai countries to pick QftNW as first idea is actually bad for them as a good human player can do much better with other choices. I'd really have welcomed some serious competition, yet the worst I encountered was a failed attempt by Tuscany to colonise Panama right between my two major province groups (my first two colonies were Mosquito and Cartagena, growing together over the years just lacking Panama to complete the chain from Venezuela to Honduras). The Maya, Zapotec and Aztecs were actually a bigger problem to me then any of my fellow European colonial powers (I'd tried to vassalise the Maya by war (I'd gained a core on Honduras) but finally had to settle for Honduras and some money as my 5,000+ good tech troops weren't up to manhandling those 20,000 infantry (I only managed victory through better mobility (cavalry and ships))) .