Finding Ivory Coast Node was something I'd been working on for a while. 0 trade was being pushed to Seville, now I have a merchant there. How exactly do Trade Companies work? I think I joined one when I colonised Arguin, not sure what it does.
Controlling Natives
- Thread starter PaulMClem
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https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade_company
There are regions (on one of the mapmodes in the game and on the wiki). Whenever a nation that does not have their capital there acquires a province in a trade company they can add it to it. It gives bonus trade power and goods produced, sets autonomy to 0, ignores religious and cultural intolerance and if you have enough trade power there also gives a merchant. You can chain trade companies from Beijing to Seville if only you have control of Gulf of Aden (Yemen, Oman) which is a non trade company region, but also a crucial one for trade steering.
The problem with killing natives is less about the money tradeoffs and more about losing colony growth rate (via native assimilation) and especially military power. Wiping natives out of areas like Africa can add up to > military tech cost fast, and in my mind that's not worth it. I'd rather station 3 infantry there after a couple techs or just go coexistence.
As Portugal, I usually have native repression policy and put half my army (9~10k) at 20% maintanence on Arguin while on a truce between moroccan wars. Not really needed, Cabo Verde is way more important. After that, either Caribbean/Mexican or Brazil while running the African coast to Zanzibar and finally India/Moluccas. Might take a couple of bankruptcies in the beginning, trouble in Morocco, but by mid-game you'll have a good powerbase and swimming in ducats if you make good European and local allies in the region you are expanding into.
PS: Native assimilation events are a blessing.
PS: Native assimilation events are a blessing.
Ok, so I acquired Arguin and in doing so also created a Trading Company called the "Portuguese West Africa Trading Company". I've since started to colonise Cape Verde and I've added that to the same Company. Means I lose tax, manpower etc but gain trade. As these are fairly small places I'm guessing the tax, manpower would be low and so I'm ok to ditch these in favour of trade power.
Well, consider: in the early game you're most likely running level 1 advisers: so about 1 ducat per monarch point. Killing 5,000 natives = 50 monarch points = 50 ducats. If it's costing OP 5 ducats per month to sustain their army on the colony, then if the colony takes more than 10 months (which it will by a long shot, early game), you make an effective profit by killing all the natives. To put it another way, it'd be less efficient to drop a +1 mil advisor to pay for the army, than it would be to have the advisor and have the army massacre the natives.
If a small number of troops can guard the area effectively on the maintainence you would have had your army on anyway, that's usually better (but remember that reinforcements cost money, so it's rarely as good as you think). But genocide still has genuine, though admittedly very situational, application. Doubly so in situations when it isn't practicable to cover all your colonies with armies. (Or if you have an excess of mil points due to having a good mil ruler, which is likely to happen occasionally if you're prioritising trade and colonisation idea groups over military ones.)
In this scenario, the cost of either option just to attain +20 settler growth is questionable. What are the expected earnings from getting colonies finished faster? I doubt it's cost competitive and in this case you're not paying MIL at all while you can run that adviser.
Finishing colonies fast is a huge money-saver, particularly doing it before bankrupting and having to wait 5 years before colonizing again.
That's an extremely inefficient use of resources to get a low amount of development.
Bankruptcy shouldn't be on the table. Native council OPM starts can colonize using the native ideas colonist after developing a little (while running positive balance, and not long after doing it while running advisers). Needing to finish colonies quickly to avoid bankruptcy is a mistake scenario.
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Bankrupting 2 or 3 times with Portugal to have a colony/trade empire 100 years later is a great strategy. The game lasts 400 years.
By the time you fill out Religious, you won't have any issues with any of the three native policies
You can get a first thought by considering that very-early-game colonial growth is something like 25 +20 from exploration ideas +35 from colonist chance. That's 1 colony per 12.5 years. Another +20 is one every ten years. Saves about 30 months. At 2 ducats per month to sustain the colony, that's 60 ducats.
So in the Arguin example where we spent 50 ducats to run a mil advisor to murder the natives, that's 10 ducats saved just on maintainence. For any province where there's less natives, the gain is proportinally greater.
You can then also consider the income from the colony in the time between the earlier and later finishing times, plus the trade gains, plus getting to the spice islands faster, plus the strategic importance of getting to certain provinces before your competitors.
And if you're running 2 colonies, that advantage doubles.
So, overall, I'd say that +20 is pretty great.
Personally I would use Attack Natives in the early game and try to make as many colonies as quickly as possible. The reason being that the Higher Developed Colonies age ability gives you +1 to development in each colonized province, but this only lasts until the Age of Reformation begins. Meaning that you have to make a value judgement: would you rather have 50 mil per colonized province, or an additional 3 development per colony in more colonies than you would've had if you chose Coexistence?
Personally I'd rather have the latter, ESPECIALLY as Portugal considering Portugal has no serious military threats nearby and has an easy ally in Castille/Spain, meaning MIL points for tech are less important. Plus Portugal gets yet another age ability that makes early colonization extremely important. So I would prioritize getting as many colonies out in the early game as possible. I haven't done the math but it may be profitable in the long run to do so even if extra colonies put you in the red/incur loans.
Of course there's always the other option, pay for your units at all times and just put down uprisings manually.. This may also actually be profitable in the end if you take age abilities into account. But you also have to consider that money is easier than ever to obtain so monarch points are worth more in a relative sense.
Personally I'd rather have the latter, ESPECIALLY as Portugal considering Portugal has no serious military threats nearby and has an easy ally in Castille/Spain, meaning MIL points for tech are less important. Plus Portugal gets yet another age ability that makes early colonization extremely important. So I would prioritize getting as many colonies out in the early game as possible. I haven't done the math but it may be profitable in the long run to do so even if extra colonies put you in the red/incur loans.
Of course there's always the other option, pay for your units at all times and just put down uprisings manually.. This may also actually be profitable in the end if you take age abilities into account. But you also have to consider that money is easier than ever to obtain so monarch points are worth more in a relative sense.
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Could I ask for more insight on this? In my own Portugal run (very casual trade game once I'd grabbed my slice of Castile - I didn't even bother with absolutism) I was making an easy 100 ducats/month by the mid-1500s. Whatever were you spending on to go bankrupt multiple times?
You can't assume that you get to run 0 slider that whole period, because doing so precludes more lucrative expansion. After very early game even half of the period isn't too great. We're also not yet factoring reinforce cost of the attack on natives (tiny but a couple ducats) or the native assimilation event (impossible with no natives in the province), or the relative value of the province after it completes with slaughtered vs not slaughtered natives vs goods produced.
+1 adviser is pretty fast to run regardless, and after that the marginal increase to military point income hits a break point at which killing natives again starts to look suspect from a points perspective. +20 isn't nearly as obvious as it seems if going high native pop + aggression provinces. Taking out smaller populations is more reasonable/attractive as you say.
The bankruptcies happen in the 1400s so you can both fight Morocco and colonize like crazy at the same time, you have to really time the truces and colonies finishing for this to work. I was being a bit hyperbolic to mess with TMIT.
If I can't control the natives in a colony for the whole period I attack them but taking them to finish is usually better for more goods produced and for farming those amazing assimilation events.
It's possible to fully annex Morocco and core it while simultaneously getting the navigator achievement, this isn't a scenario where solid play is bankrupting lol.
I think I did say that it's usually better to station troops if you don't have to raise maintainance to do it; and I mentioned reinforcement costs (obviously smaller if you're doing one attack than stationing an army there for a while and fighting several times). Massacres will always be a pretty situational strategy dependent on what you can practicably do with your military. (The classic case is the inuits - small numbers, low-value provinces which you might nevertheless want in the early game to extend your colonial range, and vicious as all hell.)
As soon as you've got a few more settler bonuses, a slightly bigger economy, and have reached provinces like those in East and South Africa and Indonesia with a lot of natives and more valuable trade goods, the minmaxiest way is the +50% native assimilation policy for the increased trade goods bonus. It'll pay for small armies keeping the natives down in a few colonies. I'm only advocating the +20 settlers policy for the early game, when a small boost to speed has the most impact.
Unless I've misread you I think we agree more than we differ.
Seems that way. It would suck if picking one thing were ALWAYS the right answer.
Pre tech 8 you kinda need same numbers and full maintance to be able to win against natives