Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise Developer Diary 7: Colonial Diplomacy

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Of course, colonial nations cannot ally with any nations other than native states.

Well, can colonial nations allied with another colonial nation of the same overlord :) ?
Let's say for exemple that french Louisiana and Nouvelle-Flandres seeks to conquer british XIII Colonies (Why ? Because they are spawn of the BBB, muahaha :D)

Can they create an alliance in order to proceed or have relationship between each other ? It might be interessting to have pre-independance relationship of the colonies. Just an exemple !^^

Anyway, have a nice december beer ;) ! Prost :D !
 
Question: When the colony reaches 5 provinces and becomes pseudo-independent, will the player, playing the mother country, get the option to tag switch, like we do when we release vassals?

If so, contrary to releasing vassals, will players be allowed to tag switch to colonies in Ironman?

For instance. England sets up 5 colonial provinces in the Thirteen Colonies region which becomes the Thirteen colonies. Would the English player get the option to tag switch to the thirteen colonies at that moment?
 
I think what Gars meant was that they provide you with the same income as of 1.3.2 but that that income, compared to what you can squeeze out of a full-fledged colony with the new tariff system will be much greater than what you can take out of 3-4 provinces with the old system.

Presumably they will still provide Trade Power, too, which I can ship back. 4 provinces of 100% trade power that I picked seems better than 5-8 with 50% trade power.

In that case, why would you even bother colonizing? All the Monarch Points are better spent at home, not to mention you won't need to deal with oversea wars.

What monarch points? Colonies cost gold, not MP. And I have Expansion (or Exploration for other reasons) anyway, so it's not like I took a different idea group I wouldn't have otherwise taken.

And what overseas wars? It'll be great; colonial nations will allow me to declare war on people I have RMs with by declaring war on their colonies - which only works if they're my provinces, not my colonies.
 
I think what Gars meant was that they provide you with the same income as of 1.3.2 but that that income, compared to what you can squeeze out of a full-fledged colony with the new tariff system will be much greater than what you can take out of 3-4 provinces with the old system.

I would love it if you were correct. But Captain Gars' answer seemed very specific, to me:

There's not much point in retaining provinces in the New World that don't form a colony as they won't give income.

(emphasis mine.)

This is unambiguous I feel: there would be a point to them if they did give per-1.3.2 income, which is far from nothing.


Presumably they will still provide Trade Power, too, which I can ship back. 4 provinces of 100% trade power that I picked seems better than 5-8 with 50% trade power.

Maybe.. I suppose we could still hope that Gars' statement does not reference Trade Power. But I really think that he wouldn't have said "won't give income" if they in fact still contributed to Trade income via giving Power.

I might be wrong, and hope I am! But so far it's not seeming like it's going to be like that.

I did ask Captain Gars if they would add moddability to all this. He sounded positive regarding adding a defines entry that would allow changing the breakaway amount from 5. I asked also if we could have a toggle that would allow pre-Colonial Nation colonies to still give income like normal ones, but there's not been a response to that so far.

My guess is no for CoP/1.4, but it could come later. Gars has been on a moddability-improvement overdrive the last few days, so I'm very optimistic about future modding improvements, even if it's not immediate :)
 
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I believe it was only said that colonial nations cannot declare on other colonial nations that share the same overlord. But I might have missed a detail here or there.

Sorry, I misread; he said 'ally' and yes I was referring to same-overlord, not allied overlord. We've not had a statement regarding that.
 
I would love it if you were correct. But Captain Gars' answer seemed very specific, to me:



(emphasis mine.)

This is unambiguous I feel: there would be a point to them if they did give per-1.3.2 income, which is far from nothing.


Personally i think he meant that if you only had 4 province in a given region, that would leave the rest to another country, which would thus suck all the income from your 4 mere colonies;
 
Personally i think he meant that if you only had 4 province in a given region, that would leave the rest to another country, which would thus suck all the income from your 4 mere colonies;

This seems to me to be a rather optimistic reading :) Other colonies can't suck tariff and tax income, only trade power. Tariff and tax income is not "no income." And as soon as you have provnices providing some Trade Power, you can significantly buffed it with Light Ships.

I really feel that what you, Comes and grisamentum say could only be read into a statement like "not much point.. you will gain far less income." That's a lot different to "won't give income."

But I would be very glad if I were wrong :)
 
Do the colonies share the Overlord's NIs, tech, and ideas?

I believe it was confirmed that colonies do not share the Overlord's NIs, and instead get their own set of colonial NIs.
 
This seems to me to be a rather optimistic reading :) Other colonies can't suck tariff and tax income, only trade power. Tariff and tax income is not "no income." And as soon as you have provnices providing some Trade Power, you can significantly buffed it with Light Ships.

I really feel that what you, Comes and grisamentum say could only be read into a statement like "not much point.. you will gain far less income." That's a lot different to "won't give income."

But I would be very glad if I were wrong :)

No, I'm sure they might not give tax or production income. But trade power isn't income. In fact it often doesn't even provide any income; if it's not collected, or if it's steered elsewhere, or if you're out-powered in your own collection node, it can actually be someone else's income.

I'm just saying I don't see a lot of clear advantages to actually going for a larger nation if I then lose control of it and start getting dragged in to colonial wars and possibly real wars against European powers. (actually it does create interesting scenarios; what if I'm England, I PU France, we both colonize. Can France's colonial protectorates get in a war with my colonial protectorates? Can that somehow make me fight my own PU junior? Historically this is the kind of thing Paradox drops the ball on, like when vassalizing a war enemy made you switch sides in the war.)

Even if there were actually no Trade Power flowing at all, I'd still prefer the ability to have a permanent CB against my own RM partners through attacking their colonial juniors.
 
Is there any way for another foreign power to seize control of an entire colonial nation in a peace deal? Say, for instance, the French have colonized Canada, creating Quebec, and they lose a war to the English/British. Would it be possible for the British to become Quebec's overlord, at the cost of raising nationalist sentiment in Quebec pretty high?
 
No, I'm sure they might not give tax or production income. But trade power isn't income. In fact it often doesn't even provide any income; if it's not collected, or if it's steered elsewhere, or if you're out-powered in your own collection node, it can actually be someone else's income.

Yeah true. We certainly can't preclude the possibility that Gars wasn't referencing Trade Power in his statement.

I'm just saying I don't see a lot of clear advantages to actually going for a larger nation if I then lose control of it and start getting dragged in to colonial wars and possibly real wars against European powers.

I agree completely. I remain a little concerned about this new system. With the current mechanics, I build my colonies and in doing so there's a reasonable amount for me to do, and strategic considerations. I put them where appropriate to create borders, for making war, and for extending colonial range. I put them where appropriate for Trade Power, and then send and adjust my Light Ships and merchants accordingly. I plan what buildings to build to buff their direct (tariff, tax) and indirect (trade) income. I can DOW and then annex 7 or 8 Native nations, and work on integrating them into my nation, for their tariffs, gold, and trade, and perhaps releasing one or two and then feeding new colonies to them.

In other words, there's a reasonable amount of things I can "do".

Based on what we know so far, I'm wondering how much there is to do in the new system. I build colonies, and I gain (it seems) nothing until they breakaway. Then once they do, I gain 50% of some money, and I sometimes get pulled into wars. I can still make the merchant/light ship decisions, based on a lower amount of Trade Power than I'd have now.

And.. that seems to be it, from what we know so far. I can't build buildings in any of those colonial nation provinces (this was confirmed by Gars last week.) I don't get my own borders, and even if I did, there doesn't seem much I can do with them. I'm at the mercy of what the AI decides to do, with no way to manipulate it. They don't sound awfully different from our current vassals, save for the extra income types and their ability to wage independent war.

What I was hoping was that these new Colonial Nation vassals would come with a bunch of new control mechanisms. That I would be able to manipulate their diplomacy. That I would be able to manipulate their decision making. That could make things really interesting, because rather than just directly putting down buildings and Light Ships where I wanted them, with no effort, I would instead (I hoped) have to convince/manipulate the vassal to do it, through a more complex/indirect process.

But there's thus far no indication that any of that will happen. Today's DD was quite brief, and maybe significant new info is still to come. In particular, Beschuov did say "there are other elements we are still working on balancing." Maybe they contain the key.

But I must admit I do have a worry that while the new Colonial Nations are very 'fancy looking', fun to watch, and more historic maybe, they might be somewhat lacking in terms of strategy and gameplay. They might even be a regression on what we have now.

I very much hope that I'm missing some salient point that indicates that the options we will have will result in loads of strategic opportunities, and lots for the player to 'do'.

Anyway, worst case:
a) This only applies to the New World; Africa and Oceania remain exactly the same. We'll have a region-specific choice of mechanics.
b) It's been confirmed that Colonial Nations will only operate with the DLC enabled. So games can be played without this new system, albeit at the cost of losing other mechanics as well.
c) There's always 1.5 and beyond, and past behaviour tells us that Paradox will continuing adding new features and improvements.

And, I should add, even if it is the 'worst case' of it resulting in the player doing less overall with regard to the New World, this is very far from the end of the world. It's just one continent, and there's still plenty to do in the rest of the world. I'm not against having new mechanics and flavour in specific parts of the world, and indeed I like it. I would much prefer it if they also added new player options, new buttons and new mechanics and new strategic planning. But even if they don't, the game will be improved overall.

There's still going to be more to think about, even if there's slightly less to do.
 
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Personally i think he meant that if you only had 4 province in a given region, that would leave the rest to another country, which would thus suck all the income from your 4 mere colonies;

I am pretty sure PI will take care that holding colonial provinces yourself ends up being disadvantageous. The whole point of the system is to add the downside of being unable to directly control your colonies. For both gameplay reasons and historical (American colonies had a lot of autonomy no matter what Motherland would have preferred) the Colonial Nations will be a must for colonial players. And if players fidn a way around it, you can put your money on 1.5 patch fixing that.