Native trading is totally worth it if you are France. But otherwise, probably less so. Assimilation events and the free goods produced are not trivial bonuses, though.
Controlling Natives
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Native trading is totally worth it if you are France. But otherwise, probably less so. Assimilation events and the free goods produced are not trivial bonuses, though.
Even the meager Portugese force can conquer 2 out of the 3 centers of trade in Ivory Coast early in the game. You don't even need finished colonies in Africa to do this (Cape Verde doesn't count).
Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, East Coast, Canada all have natives you can conquer, leaving you with basically Caribbean that is the only colonial area of real importance where you have to actually invest into 5 colonies. If you stay away from North Africa (which you should for the first 50-100 years), you can easily keep all your military in the Americas.
This not only nets you provinces that come "gold-free" if you exclude the reinforcement costs but also provides you with income in form of peace treaty money.
How or why would you go bankrupt is beyond me.
As an aside, if you have limited (1 or 2) colonists, is it worth just using them to start a colony and then move somewhere else i.e. not keep in place until a city is formed? The wiki says a colonist being present gives a possibly monthly buff of +25 pop, but it's still tempting to move them and start new colonies.
Depends if you can afford it. Once you have a solid cash flow, absolutely. If you are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy (or even just at the point where 1 or 2 ducats a month is a substantial income), not so much.
Note that additional colonies increase rapidly in cost. IIRC every colony over your colonist limit doubles in maintenance cost, which adds up quick.
Cash is getting better and I now have 2 colonists in action and still have +ve ducats, so things looking ok for now.
One other quick colonisation query. I have both territories in Cabo Verde (Anguin, Cape Verde) and could make them a State. The tool-tip suggests this would gain me an extra 0.00 ducats a month. However, is it still worth doing for a States inherent buffs? (was going to say Edicts, but I've just noticed that's a MoH thing...damn...another reason I might need to get it, Edicts and the ages mechanic
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Cash is getting better and I now have 2 colonists in action and still have +ve ducats, so things looking ok for now.
One other quick colonisation query. I have both territories in Cabo Verde (Anguin, Cape Verde) and could make them a State. The tool-tip suggests this would gain me an extra 0.00 ducats a month. However, is it still worth doing for a States inherent buffs? (was going to say Edicts, but I've just noticed that's a MoH thing...damn...another reason I might need to get it, Edicts and the ages mechanic
I only know in the case with all DLCs, because that's how I play, but I usually turn them into states and give Anguin to the Clergy or something (it's not a very important province).
The costs for over the limit colonies (the limit being your number of colonists) exponentially increases with each new one: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Colonization#Maintenance
Running four colonies over the limit is prohibitively expensive.
As an aside, Anguin and Cape Verde are currently Portuguese territorial cores. Tool-tips and Wiki suggests this means they should have an autonomy floor of 75%. However, both have local autonomy of 0%. Turning into a State is meant to remove this autonomy floor, but it's not there to begin with. Any thoughts on why autonomy isn't 75%?
No idea, territory cores have 75% minimum autonomy, 50% if in states: https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Territories_and_states
I wonder what's going on.
Edit: Nevermind, I found out what it is. You have assigned them to Trade Companies (TC). Territories in TCs have 0% autonomy:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Local_autonomy
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade_company
I wonder what's going on.
Edit: Nevermind, I found out what it is. You have assigned them to Trade Companies (TC). Territories in TCs have 0% autonomy:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Local_autonomy
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Trade_company
Ah, good work
Yep, I put them both in my West African TC because there didn't seem any significant downside and trade is my main interest at the moment....my views on TCs will likely change/develop with more game time and understanding of the mechanics.
Ah, good work
Yep, I put them both in my West African TC because there didn't seem any significant downside and trade is my main interest at the moment....my views on TCs will likely change/develop with more game time and understanding of the mechanics.
Trade Companies is probably the most OP thing in the entire game. 0% autonomy at 50% core cost, and all you really give up is 100% tax income and manpower (which is really much less than it sounds due to buildings, ideas and other modifiers being additive).
Trade Companies are great for production buildings such as manufactories and the workshop line, particularly if they have a high priced good early on, but eventually even fish will do. You just dont build churches or military buildings in them. I usually convert them to my religion and culture convert the colonized/conquered provinces in a TC region before adding them to the TC, but it's mostly for roleplaying reasons, specially the culture conversion which is not needed at all.
Churches and military buildings will do exactly as much in a trade company as in any other core state province. As will +10% tax income from economics or +50% manpower from quantity. That's what additive means, and the reason TC's are OP.
This. Every building in a trade company is just as effective as an accepted-culture state w/ zero autonomy. And, yes, it's due to the additive modifiers, but combined with the fact that the core (75%) and city (25%) modifiers exactly cancel the -100% modifier so that the baseline is 0% (and not some negative value such that you'd only get a part of the modifier from buildings).
Cash is getting better and I now have 2 colonists in action and still have +ve ducats, so things looking ok for now.
One other quick colonisation query. I have both territories in Cabo Verde (Anguin, Cape Verde) and could make them a State. The tool-tip suggests this would gain me an extra 0.00 ducats a month. However, is it still worth doing for a States inherent buffs? (was going to say Edicts, but I've just noticed that's a MoH thing...damn...another reason I might need to get it, Edicts and the ages mechanic
If it's in a TC region, there's no need to state it (unless you're really hurting for money/manpower...). Although there's little harm in stating a region, but not full-coring it, if you're planning on un-stating it later. The only downside is that you might have to give estates a bit more land (their land-percentage desires come from all states, not just full-core states). If you have edicts, this is also a way to temporarily run an edict and turn it off, say for religious conversion or development.
As for DLC, Edicts aren't all that great either, but they can be situationally useful. The Age bonuses, however, are quite nice.
Minor quibble - the increase is quadratic, not exponential. The tooltip is actually correct on this one.
As an aside, if you find yourself colonizing anywhere that has around 1k natives or less, a stack of 11 at minimum maintenance will insta-wipe any natives that pop, with no causualties on your side (this is especially prevalent in N. America). I find myself doing this whenever playing a New World native after “unifying” my starting area, just to pass the time until Europeans show up.
As @DDRJake says, always get your ten-to-ones.
As @DDRJake says, always get your ten-to-ones.