Controlling Natives

[PaulMClem]

Playing as Portugal I am over half way to creating a city in Anguin. However, it's an extremely expensive process as I need to have a 7-8k stack on full maintenance at all times. If I don't, Natives spawn and spear my low morale troops where it hurts. Army maint is a global setting, so even though I'm at peace elsewhere I need to spunk 5 duckets a month to keep the colonial stack at readiness. This to me seems overly expensive.

I know you can't manipulate army maint at a unit/stack level, but I can't help feel I'm missing something obvious somewhere. Colonisation must be easier than this when it comes to dealing with natives!

 

[bradles0]

1: native coexistance policy - 100% reduction to native armies spawning in your colonies (you don't need to guard colonies, but your colonies grow slower).
2: attack natives (lower right button in the army panel) - attacks the natives in your army's province. This reduces the total number of natives in the province. If that number is 0 you won't get attacked, because you murdered all the natives. (i don't why this doesn't make people hate you. I feel like it should cause aggressive expansion or something at least)

 

[PaulMClem]

I am trying to avoid the "kill all natives" approach as the Wiki suggests the presence of natives post-colonisation helps to buff the goods produced modifier. I'll check out the coexistence policy to see how much it slows things down. Would really like to get Anguin up and running.

 

[PhoenixG]

Not sure how many natives are in Anguin. But I think you can go with half maintance.

 

[SaucyBaron]

Coexistence policy is the way to go, purely to avoid the annoyance of needing to ship troops around.

 

[mhaell42]

Yep. Take the -100% native uprising policy. You don't need to keep a stack on every colony in progress now. You can lower maintenance, save money.

Assuming you are early game you would otherwise need a stack with as many men as there are natives on full maintenance. For africa that's often way too much men to spare as Portugal.

 

[Bouchart]

I am trying to avoid the "kill all natives" approach as the Wiki suggests the presence of natives post-colonisation helps to buff the goods produced modifier. I'll check out the coexistence policy to see how much it slows things down. Would really like to get Anguin up and running.

I'd just wipe out the natives on Arguin. It's one of the few provinces I'd do attack natives since it's so important when starting in or near Iberia. It's only a 2/1/1 province so you aren't going to make it a state, and it isn't in a trade company.

 

[Dan1109]

The key is of course to colonize adjacent provinces which means you can have 1 stack protect 3 (5 if you have forced march) provinces. As well, if you keep the troops on a developed province, you can raise army maintenance once attacked, and get atleast 1 month to raise morale before troops arrive. It’s a tough balancing act, but only in early game. To me it’s worth the pain, to use native suppression policy to boost settler rate, it pays off in the end. Anyways by midgame you need to be drilling as many troops as possible on continental provinces to boost army professionalism, which requires 100% maintenance anyways.

Yes, the morale issue it difficult to deal with at low tech levels, or when you are poor during early game. But it pays off in the end, especially if you can stay out of European wars in early game.

 

[ShoGuL]

I kill all the natives early game, where rapid growth is important. Later I use a stab to switch to native coexistence policy when the +20 pop growth is less important.

 

[mhaell42]

The key is of course to colonize adjacent provinces which means you can have 1 stack protect 3 (5 if you have forced march) provinces. As well, if you keep the troops on a developed province, you can raise army maintenance once attacked, and get atleast 1 month to raise morale before troops arrive. It’s a tough balancing act, but only in early game. To me it’s worth the pain, to use native suppression policy to boost settler rate, it pays off in the end. Anyways by midgame you need to be drilling as many troops as possible on continental provinces to boost army professionalism, which requires 100% maintenance anyways.

Yes, the morale issue it difficult to deal with at low tech levels, or when you are poor during early game. But it pays off in the end, especially if you can stay out of European wars in early game.

Arguin is surrounded by wasteland. And as Portugal your army is not big. If you want to apply what you de scribe most of your men would be there instead of being use to conquere morocco or control the conquered land.

Early game when this is a question, it's not worth it.

 

[netherlink]

I am trying to avoid the "kill all natives" approach as the Wiki suggests the presence of natives post-colonisation helps to buff the goods produced modifier

This modifier is based on the number of natives. Thus, almost every american province can be cleansed, the bonus would be so small anyway.

The real benefit comes in Indonesia, where almost every province has a couple thousands natives and valuable trade good.

Who need +.025 goods produced at 2/1/1 Arguin producing fish or grain? ^^
*EDIT*: +0.025 is completely made up, don't know the exact number, but i bet its something around that...

 

[PaulMClem]

the bonus would be so small anyway

Agreed. However, unlike some other players (i.e. more experienced and later in their campaigns) I am far from drowning in duckets. TBH I look for any opportunity to make 0.1 duckets. Money is extremely thin on the ground. A fraction of a ducket is not to be sniffed at. That said, I'm beginning to think there is no real harm in taking endless loans on the premise that one day I too will be "drowning in duckets" and could easily afford to pay back a 6,7000 ducket loan.

 

[Horn and Ivory]

Who need +.025 goods produced at 2/1/1 Arguin producing fish or grain? ^^
*EDIT*: +0.025 is completely made up, don't know the exact number, but i bet its something around that...

Every 4,000 natives grants a +0.2 good produced (= 1 production development).

So 1,000 natives is a +0.05 bonus - trivial enough that you'll never make the money back from maintaining an army there. Many native american provinces and nearly all inuit provinces are thus fair game for genocide.

Also note that the 'native assimilation' bonus (for example, from the middle way settlement policy, clergy, or French ideas) multiplies the number of natives you get. So on a 4,000 native province with +50% native assimilation you'd get +0.3 good produced. If you stack these modifiers in high-natives provinces such as those in West Africa and Indonesia it can add up to a free manufactory with every couple of provinces.

 

[PaulMClem]

If you stack these modifiers in high-natives provinces such as those in West Africa

Arguin spawns 5000 strong native armies. Would this count as a "high-native" province?

 

[Horn and Ivory]

Arguin spawns 5000 strong native armies. Would this count as a "high-native" province?

If it's more than 4,000 natives, you're effectively getting a free +1 production development for keeping them rather than killing them.

If you're spending 5 ducats a month doing that, it'll take something in the region of [25 divided by trade good value] years to pay back for every month you spend making the colony. More if you take loans to do it. There's a small effective cost in killing the natives, but not much of one. So it strikes me as hard to justify not massacring the natives in this case.

If all four of: you have native assimilation bonuses, it's producing a valuable good, you control most of the trade from Arguin, and you could reduce your military costs a little bit, then it might be worth it. Otherwise just kill 'em.

 

[AnssiA]

In the early game, I think it is pretty much mandatory to have the +20 settlers native policy. Thus, you need to use troops to guard colonies. You have couple of options:

1) if you want to stay at low maintenance, ship more troops to Arguin. 20k 0.5 morale troops should eliminate any uprisings.
2) Kill the natives. This cost military points (bad) and slightly reduces the goods produced (bad), but means you don't have to tie up your troops in middle of nowhere for multiple years (great) AND makes the province your culture and religion. (In American and Australian colonies this happens automatically, but in African and Asian colonies if there are over 0 natives the colony will have native culture and native religion, which is quite large drawback. Even though trade companies eliminate the maluses, it means they won't have high unrest reduction from tolerance of true faith.)

Later on, if you want to min-max, you should switch to the 50/50-policy.

 

[mruuh]

I found it quite cost-saving to keep army maintenance on minimum (assuming I do not need it up for other reasons), and whenever I get the popup and pause about natives attacking my army standing on the colony, I set army maintenance to max and natives get crushed with minimum losses. After the battle is over, I either keep the army maintenance at about half for a month, or set it back to minimum, depending on whether I need to replenish the losses - that is usually only needed every five or so native attacks.

I haven't looked at the combat formulas and numbers, but an army on minimum 0.50 morale seems to fight much better if the morale ceiling is raised (max army maintenance).

 

[PaulMClem]

In the early game, I think it is pretty much mandatory to have the +20 settlers native policy.

You mean the Native Repression Policy i.e. no nerf to uprisings but quicker colonisation?

1) if you want to stay at low maintenance, ship more troops to Arguin. 20k 0.5 morale troops should eliminate any uprisings.

I did exactly that i.e. overcame the low morale with numbers. It worked but it meant most of my army was in Arguin. Then got called into a war with Castile and had to ship 15k back - remaining 5k were now at full maint.

2) Kill the natives

Hmm, choices, choices.

 

[PaulMClem]

I found it quite cost-saving to keep army maintenance on minimum (assuming I do not need it up for other reasons), and whenever I get the popup and pause about natives attacking my army standing on the colony, I set army maintenance to max and natives get crushed with minimum losses.

Is there definitely time to do that?

 

[mruuh]

Is there definitely time to do that?

What do you mean? You need to have the attack notification set to pause the game, of course, so that you can up the maintanance immediately when the battle starts. It's probably not as effective halfway through the battle.