EU5 Pops and Colonization Thought

[DominusNovus]

I think we can all be reasonably sure that EU5 will have pops, but even if we're not, lets take it for granted that they will, for sake of argument. I'm of the opinion that one of the main reasons to include pops in EU5 is to better represent the dramatic demographic shifts as the pre-existing New World populations collapsed through disease, and Europeans and Africans began to migrate (willingly or otherwise) to the New World. I'm going to set the historical background in a spoiler tag, just to help keep this post from looking too large.

Spoiler

The population of what would become the Thirteen Colonies of British North America and then the United States went from a couple hundred people between Jamestown and Plymouth aroune 1620 to 10 million in 1820 - largely through natural population growth, but obviously immigration played an important part. In fact, between 1790 and 1820, the population more than doubled almost entirely through natural population growth alone.

What is interesting about this is that we're basically talking about going from a few fledgling outposts that could barely survive on their own (so you can treat it as any arbitrarily small size), to a population of 10 million in about 200 years. Or, put another way, the population increased by something around an order of 10,000 times. Meanwhile, the population of Europe and Asia both increased by a factor of 2-3 times.

Meanwhile, the population of typical Spanish colonies was relatively stagnant over this time period - largely because these colonies were largely populated by the pre-existing populations and their descendants, and those poulations were devastated by disease. Estimates, for example, of the population of what would become New Spain, before the Spanish conquest, put it around 20 million. Mexico would not reach that level of population until the 1940s. These estimates could be wrong, of course, but they can't make up for the difference in growth that the British settler colonies saw. The Spanish did not rely nearly as much on establishing settler colonies, with entire families of Spaniards coming to the new world, establishing towns of Spaniards in the New World. Keep in mind that, in all of this, the Spanish had more than a century head start on the English. Imagine if the English had settled Jamestown and Plymouth around 1500 rather than after 1600.

Therein lies the balancing issue: if there are pops in EU5, it would make sense for a colonial player to want to establish settler colonies as early as possible and move as many pops over into the New World as possible, because that will form the nucleus of a large population from which the player can derive a lot of power, be it military or economic or whatever else. But it would seem to make so much sense that any other style of colonization would be totally outclassed by settler colonization. So, how could such a game play decision be balanced?

 

[InvisibleBison]

When they are small, settler colonies don't provide much benefit to the colonizing nation, and may be expensive or otherwise difficult to establish or support. Once they get larger, settler colonies are more useful, but they also are likely to develop an independent cultural identity and start seeking greater autonomy or outright independence. In contrast to this, colonies based around exploiting preexisting populations would provide significant benefits to the colonizer more quickly, at the cost of not being as productive as a large, loyal settler colony.

 

[Ttrgw]

I think that the Pops, not the players, should decide how to colonise, depending on the situation of the settlements.

However, I don't think that settler colonies are the best option when it comes to economic benefits.
It was slave plantations that produced global commodities like sugar and tobacco with high efficiency, and governing a huge population in a region 3000 miles away would involve all sorts of difficulties.

 

[DominusNovus]

When they are small, settler colonies don't provide much benefit to the colonizing nation, and may be expensive or otherwise difficult to establish or support. Once they get larger, settler colonies are more useful, but they also are likely to develop an independent cultural identity and start seeking greater autonomy or outright independence. In contrast to this, colonies based around exploiting preexisting populations would provide significant benefits to the colonizer more quickly, at the cost of not being as productive as a large, loyal settler colony.

I’ll note that the New England colonies in particular were almost entirely autonomously run and funded initially, and the crown’s involvement only became significant after the colonies were pretty well established.

I think that the Pops, not the players, should decide how to colonise, depending on the situation of the settlements.

However, I don't think that settler colonies are the best option when it comes to economic benefits.
It was slave plantations that produced global commodities like sugar and tobacco with high efficiency, and governing a huge population in a region 3000 miles away would involve all sorts of difficulties.

You can have a settler colony with slave plantations. The contrast is whether you’re relying on the pre-existing population as your population base, or settlers from the old world - whether slaves are also important is perpendicular.

 

[Harpagon]

Pops overall will be a huge balancing problem for Paradox that has to be solved for a good game. For colonies I see 2 types of them:

The Trade city which serves as a navy base and increases your reach as well as helps trade steering. Should be cheap to maintain and make you lot of money from the region.
They could be then turned into a Colonial Nation which would attract people from both your country and Africa (if you allow slavery and should cost money). They would setlle the nearby area and if independent they could attract pops from all over the world.

From balance perspective I would see food as the most important resource. In the new world there is an abundance of food so people won't starve while in the old world this would be a regular occurrence. The other would be the trade fleet as you would need to ship people to the new world. So as technology gets better there would be more food in europe therefore more pops and bigger fleets so faster colony increase.

 

[Azkiol]

I'm of the opinion that pops in eu4 should work much more like Imperator pops than Vicky pops. In that case, there is a clear disadvantage to settler colonialism: you loose mainland pops, who are generally more important than colonial pops because of the more direct control you have over them (assuming that CNs still exist). Settler colonialism should also cause much more native unrest than other colonial models, making it much less effective in areas with a large native population like Mesoamerica or the Andes.

 

[DominusNovus]

I'm of the opinion that pops in eu4 should work much more like Imperator pops than Vicky pops. In that case, there is a clear disadvantage to settler colonialism: you loose mainland pops, who are generally more important than colonial pops because of the more direct control you have over them (assuming that CNs still exist). Settler colonialism should also cause much more native unrest than other colonial models, making it much less effective in areas with a large native population like Mesoamerica or the Andes.

To the first point… yes and no. In general, the number of British immigrants to the Thirteen Colonies prior to independence resulted in 4x as much population in those colonies by independence. And for the English colonists themselves, it was closer to 10x the population - 230k English left for the colonies, and the English descended population in 1790 was around 2.1m. This is mostly due to the simple fact that the carrying capacity of the New World was so much higher than what the population of settlers and American Indians together was. Especially as the latter kept declining through skirmishes and disease.

When you consider that many of the colonists were dissidents of some sort, and sending them to the colonies made the metropole just a little easier to govern,

I do agree that one major penalty to settler colonies would be pissing off the native population but… given the playstyle of paradox players, I’m not sure that would sting too much. Stellaris players just embrace xenocide, and EU4 players just treat rebels as training for their armies.

One important consideration that could limit settlers is climate - today, everyone might want to live on a Caribbean island, but back then, they just wanted to own land on one and live in a more temperate climate. It wasn’t a lack of appreciation for warm beaches, just Europeans couldn’t handle the diseases.

Which does bring up an interesting scenario for an EU5 player: an African nation might be able to more readily establish settler colonies in the tropics.