Colonizing the new world much too fast?

[Judas the Rogue]

Maybe the QFTNW should have a +1 colonist as well, and all others get a -1 colonist penalty from the start?

Another idea to make QFTNW more useful later on and make sure that if you are focusing on colonisation this NI can gice you a bonus to colonisation success over sea.

Across land it will be the same, but if you cross an ocean the chances for a successful will be lower. But if you take QFTNW the chances for success will go back to normal.

How about that?

But then with this bonus in QFTNW and the extra bonus you get by higher naval tech it seems you will at some point get 100% success chance, which is kind of unrealistic.

But you should be able to set a maximum value, about 95%, to avoid this unrealistic problem.

You would also be able to decrease the starting chance of success, which would make it more important to invest in a higher naval tech and take the QFTNW (and keep it probalby until nearlly all the known world is explored and your naval tech is high enough that you won't need the extra bonus to succeed with a colonisation) and thus keep unrealistic colonisation empires away.

 

[Secret Master]

I guess I'm in the minority when I say that humans (or AI for that matter) should be getting rid of Quest for the New World at a certain point. It makes sense. Some national ideas become obsolete as the game progresses and changes. For example, the +50% to morale of military drill becomes less important as time goes by and technology improves. National Bank becomes obsolete when you get tax assessors, since having tax assessors in all your provinces reduces inflation MUCH faster than the national idea.

Also, some ideas do not become useful until later. Viceroys is the classic example of this. Until a certain percentage of your empire is overseas, this national idea is worthless (some would argue that is worthless anyway, thanks to bankruptcy events, but that is a different issue).

So it is with Quest for the New World. Once most of the world is explored, there is no need to keep the national idea. And there should be no reason to encourage people to hold on to the national idea. To me, it makes sense and is not exploitive for people to swap out national ideas like Quest for the New World when they have outlived their usefulness. In fact, they should be swapping it out for colonial adventures so as to get extra colonists. The game is designed this way so that as the situation in game changes (i.e. nothing left to explore, but plenty to colonize) you can change your national priorities.

Tweaking Quest for the New World is not the answer. Slowing down map spread, reducing colonization chances, or reducing the speed with which explorers explore are all better options.

 

[durecellrabbit]

If you add this bonus stuff to qftnw what about colonial ventures? That give +1 colonists and will be rather useless if qftnw gets goodies like bonus colonists and colonisation chances. Which to me give the reasonable path qftnw>colonial ventures>viceroys.

 

[unmerged(68522)]

Tweaking Quest for the New World is not the answer. Slowing down map spread, reducing colonization chances, or reducing the speed with which explorers explore are all better options.

I tend to agree with this. I think adding more sea zones with attrition between the continents would effectively make exploration longer and more costly in terms of reducing the distance one can explore with their navy.

Reducing colonization chances might be harsh, but it would effectively increase the cost of colonization and the rate with which it occurs.

 

[Jasmo]

I think the EUII system of making map spread specific event specific was much better. Capturing rudders in naval combat (but should be limited to explorers though, they didn't let just any captain have those), capturing an enemy capital, inheriting or annexing a counthry, or the ever popular exhanging maps with friends. I think the automatic map spreads is a very unforunate dumbing down of the game.

 

[Judas the Rogue]

Personally I think a bit of tweaking of the QFTNW would be nice.

- can only choose it when you've reached a high enough goverment tech lvl to get your second IN.
+ This due to my personal opinion that a society choosing to start colonize have to reach some kind of govermental maturity. Colonisation is expensive.

- A penalty to colonisation success for colonisation across oceans, which QFTNW will negate. But it won't be as necessary a bit into the game since I want to edit that the higher naval tech lvl you've reached, the greater chance of successfully colonize a province (highest possible chance: 95%)
+ This would be to keep those colonisation parasites with low naval tech (which I think is unrealistic if your going to be a colonial power) out of the picture.

Tweaking of Naval Tech
- A higher standard attrition across oceans, which will be lower, the higher naval tech lvl you've reached. But 3 vessels should still be able to cross the atlantic in 1492.


But if you don't like it, it's no big deal. I just want to know how you can change this and try it out. First a couple of times at it is now and then a couple of times with these changes. I can boost you later if it made the game more realistic or if the game worked worse.

What I've heard, there are also some lousy AI sometimes. But that's another topic.

 

[unmerged(5165)]

In my rather limited experience, the AI is superhuman at exploration but sucks at actually building a colonial empire. It races towards full innovativeness, which kills both colonists and missionaries. I've had to edit their sliders in the save file to get them back into the colonizing game.

I agree with you here. As far as I am concerned, I don't mind a few nations going out colonizing ahistorically early. The fact that by 1600 the human player will be the only expanding colonizing nation left is a much bigger issue.

In the previous versions of EU, you often had to race for good spots for colonizing, since you had to be there before your European competitors. Now, you can just wait for the other nations to max out their innovativeness, and you have all the world for yourself. It makes it boring and much too easy.

 

[Rambo]

I have noticed the same things in my games. It seems once you get to a certain date the other european powers stop colonizing new lands. In every game I start at the earliest date there seems to be no more colonizing past the mid 1500s. Which is basically 100 years. They seem to continue to expand their existing holdings somewhat, but dont seem interested in starting any brand new colonies in other regions, especially asia. I havent seen anyone other than myself attempt to colonize asia yet.

 

[corporateslave]

Tweaking Quest for the New World is not the answer. Slowing down map spread, reducing colonization chances, or reducing the speed with which explorers explore are all better options.

None of these is sufficient by themselves. A comprehensive solution to the issue probably requires a bit of all three, plus some changes to the AI.

In my ideal world, here is what I would like to see:

1. Limit map spread of New World provinces and colonizable provinces in Asia/Africa to nations with QFTNW until some hard date, preferably one that is moddable. Map spread for settled provinces should remain as it is today (with some bug fixes, of course, so you don't end up inheriting a province that stays terra incognita for 100 years).

2. A malus to overseas colonization chances which could be removed by selecting Colonial Ventures (or maybe it should be attached to QFTNW - I am still undecided on which NI is best for this).

3. Modify the AI so that it no longer feels compelled to explore the entire world in the first 20 years of the game.

4. Modify the AI so that a colonial nation won't stop colonizing later in the game because it has gone fully Innovative.

 

[Rwn]

Tweaking of Naval Tech
- A higher standard attrition across oceans, which will be lower, the higher naval tech lvl you've reached. But 3 vessels should still be able to cross the atlantic in 1492.

I think the solution lies here. Make it so crossing the Atlantic before ~1500 is not really an option. Maybe slowing down cogs and early warships, until tech 5-6, where a new, faster, ship becomes available and allows a (difficult) trip across Atlantic ?

Note that this would also answer the question of japanese or chinese colonisation of the west coast ; with their tech penalties, they won't be able to cross Pacific before long.

In order to solve the "free for all" colonisation, maybe put a rather heavy penalty on the base number of colonists (maybe -2 instead of +2 for catholics, for example), and create specific events, which triggers are QFTNW and sea access, with heavy influence on MTTH from having coastal province on the Atlantic, having uncolonized provinces land-connected to capital (is this possible to check in an event ?) and being narrowminded, and which give the required colonists.

 

[Karlburg]

I dunno, I don't want to see minors entirely cut off from colonization. Minors with a lot of money ought to be able to handle small-scale colonization, maybe 1 or 2 provinces.

 

[Rwn]

I dunno, I don't want to see minors entirely cut off from colonization. Minors with a lot of money ought to be able to handle small-scale colonization, maybe 1 or 2 provinces.

I wasn't very clear in my previous post with the event thing : I mean an event that fires regularly and gives a few colonists, but which fires much more often if you have provinces on Atlantic or are next to uncolonized provinces (Russia and Siberia), and if you're narrowminded. In addition, being narrowminded/catholic/freetrader/... helps keeping these colonists for some time (otherwise, the event gives say 4 colonists, because of sliders you get -2 colonists/year, you won't be able to keep them very long).

This way, some Mecklemburg, Venice or Poland country could probably colonize (if they take QFTNW), but much slower than a Spain/England, because they won't receive the event nearly as often.

 

[mic-dk]

Personally I think a bit of tweaking of the QFTNW would be nice.

Good suggestions. How about a base penalty on over-seas provinces that complety negates their tax and production incomes? This can only be avoided with QFTNW. This forces the player to keep QFTNW around if (s)he want any income from the colonies.

This of course may introduce some problems for some kingdoms (mainly pacific ones), and it won't solve to map spreading to fast, but IMHO it's a start.

 

[Surt]

Its also a problem that very small countries gets the same amount of colonists as larger for the settings, ie. the one province Hamburg would get the same amount of settlers as a 20 province Castille, which I think would have more than 10 times the population.

 

[Featauril]

Good suggestions. How about a base penalty on over-seas provinces that complety negates their tax and production incomes? This can only be avoided with QFTNW. This forces the player to keep QFTNW around if (s)he want any income from the colonies.

This of course may introduce some problems for some kingdoms (mainly pacific ones), and it won't solve to map spreading to fast, but IMHO it's a start.

So Venice and Genoa gets 0 tax and production from the majority of their provinces?

PASS.

 

[Freebot]

I have noticed the same things in my games. It seems once you get to a certain date the other european powers stop colonizing new lands. In every game I start at the earliest date there seems to be no more colonizing past the mid 1500s. Which is basically 100 years. They seem to continue to expand their existing holdings somewhat, but dont seem interested in starting any brand new colonies in other regions, especially asia. I havent seen anyone other than myself attempt to colonize asia yet.

Edit the sliders of England, France, Portugal, and Spain to 5 narrowminded, 2 free trade, and 5 naval and they will start expanding again. You should repeat this every few years since the AI kills off its colonists by going innovative.

Note that it is pointless to go above 2 free trade since you will get a random event that forces you to either go back towards mercantilism or take a trade efficiency malus every few months.

 

[Secret Master]

Why does it do this? It doesn't make any sense for major powers in the Latin tech group to be going max innovative. Especially considering that the AI does not use that boost in technology to conquer countries like the Aztecs.

 

[unmerged(66226)]

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 )

Here is what I scored on your quiz:

Republican 92% Anarchism 58% Fascism 33% Nazi 17% Communism 8% Green 8% Socialist 8% Democrat 0%

Very interesting results, wouldn't you agree?

 

[unmerged(66226)]

Would there be a way to greatly increase the movement cost of conquistadors moving into terra incognita? They should also have a higher attrition rate. This would greatly slow down the inland advances.

As for the seas, I like the idea of something being tied to the Naval tech level. A higher naval tech level that reduces open ocean attrition rates (i.e. have very high attrition rates at the beginning, but naval tech reduces this).

Would it be possible to create an attrition factor in a specific ocean square? This could allow for easy travel in and around Europe or down the African coast, but venturing out west would get much more expensive (due to losing your ships!).

 

[Judas the Rogue]

2. A malus to overseas colonization chances which could be removed by selecting Colonial Ventures (or maybe it should be attached to QFTNW - I am still undecided on which NI is best for this).

I’ve started to think that we should lower the colonisation success and that the Colonial Ventures will give it a bonus together with the +1 colonist. Thus when your done colonizing you can change this NI for another one, since you won’t need wither bonus anymore.

But to make players take QFTNW the spread of new discoveries need to change.
One thought is that the longer you are from a country which has made a discovery the longer it will take to reach your ears. But if you’ve got an alliance with this country or personal union the time it will take before the news reaches your ears will be shorter since in an alliance you need to keep in touch with each other.
A royal marriage could also shorten the time a bit to simulate that your cousin’s daughter sends you information about how her husband is doing.

Thus what I said before about Naval tech and over-sea colonisation is neglected. Or if we should implement the same thing but to colonisation by land and make it dependant on Land tech.

Good suggestions. How about a base penalty on over-seas provinces that complety negates their tax and production incomes? This can only be avoided with QFTNW. This forces the player to keep QFTNW around if (s)he want any income from the colonies.

This of course may introduce some problems for some kingdoms (mainly pacific ones), and it won't solve to map spreading to fast, but IMHO it's a start.

No, I don’t think so. The NIs are made so that when you feel you’re done with one you are able to change it. You should never really be forced to take a special IN.

I think the solution lies here. Make it so crossing the Atlantic before ~1500 is not really an option. Maybe slowing down cogs and early warships, until tech 5-6, where a new, faster, ship becomes available and allows a (difficult) trip across Atlantic ?

Note that this would also answer the question of japanese or chinese colonisation of the west coast ; with their tech penalties, they won't be able to cross Pacific before long.

When do you get'em now? But to delay the ships which would be able to cross the atlantic until a more historical date is a great idea.
In that way you can choose QFTNW in the beginning and start exploring along the african coast and east of Russia.

Great, becuase I don't think the californians would be so happy if japs had big colonies there.

GenXer933: Please stay more or less on topic.