Extra colony penalty is arbitrary

[Cheesecakeczar]

I made the mistake of making my second extra colony a base 6 tax province. The bank is breaking. There is no ability for me to choose which colony receives the maintenance penalty. Instead of being arbitrary, the colonies with a colonist in them should not suffer the penalty.

 

[LiberiusX]

Recall your colonist and abandon the colony, or turn your maintenance slider down.

 

[IIWW]

Colonial maintance is tied to BT of province? It certainly wasn't so in 1.7, and I can't recall nor find any such in patch notes.

 

[Azikiel]

It isn't. Maybe he is talking about the fact that natives tend to be more mean if the higher BT provinces and they are stopping his colony from finishing?

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Each unfinished colony over your colonist count has double the cost of the last, which isn't too unreasonable. Just slow down your rate of colonization and stick to your limit. The base tax of your target doesn't matter.

 

[LiberiusX]

I thought he was talking about the increase in colonial maintenance for every extra colony past your colonist count.

I know this is how it was in 1.3: The game assigned a penalty based on the order in which you colonized and took base tax into account. So the optimal strategy was to colonize High BT provinces first and shoot for lower BT provinces last in each wave of colonization.

It must have been changed in the past year.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

Colonial maintance is tied to BT of province? It certainly wasn't so in 1.7, and I can't recall nor find any such in patch notes.

It is to some extent, but the scaling is fairly negligible. There's a base cost of 2, and then an additional 0.04 per base tax. It used to scale linearly with base tax, but that is a long time ago indeed.

 

[Xara]

There seem to be a lot of people who don't understand what "arbitrary" means.

It is not arbitrary. It has a system behind it. The most recent colony pays the additional cost.

If you can't handle that, let the first one complete, colonize the expensive province, then colonize a lower BT province as your 2nd one.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

I made the mistake of making my second extra colony a base 6 tax province. The bank is breaking. There is no ability for me to choose which colony receives the maintenance penalty. Instead of being arbitrary, the colonies with a colonist in them should not suffer the penalty.

If your second extra colony is 6 BT, you're paying exactly one additional ducat compared to it being a 1 BT colony. Your problem is that you can't actually afford to run that far over the cap, not which colonies it applies to.

 

[Cheesecakeczar]

I haven't played Europa Universalis in a long time, so if there was a change with BT on colonies, I wouldn't know. However, when I placed my second additional colony (4x maintenace) in a 6 BT colony, I experienced a deficit, but when my second aditional colony was 2 BT, I stayed above water. I consider the penalty being determined by order of colony creation arbitrary. Order should have nothing to do with it. Order is meaningless. Because I created a colony first doesn't make it less expensive. Instead, it should be determined by the presence of a colonist, which the player can control.

 

[Cheesecakeczar]

If your second extra colony is 6 BT, you're paying exactly one additional ducat compared to it being a 1 BT colony. Your problem is that you can't actually afford to run that far over the cap, not which colonies it applies to.

The penalty is x4 for my second, so I am under the impression that I am paying 4 additional ducats.

 

[Xara]

You can consider the color green to be a type of fruit, but that doesn't make it so.

 

[Schmoekoeksklok]

The penalty is x4 for my second, so I am under the impression that I am paying 4 additional ducats.

The penalty is +400%, so it costs five times as much as normal. A 1 BT colony would cost you 10 base (2 x 5), and .2 for the BT (0.04 x 1 x 5). A 6 BT colony costs 10 base again, but 1.2 (0.04 x 6 x 5) for the BT. So exactly one ducat difference, or 0.8 in your example comparing 2 to 6 BT.

 

[Karabas1543]

The penalty is +400%, so it costs five times as much as normal. A 1 BT colony would cost you 10 base (2 x 5), and .2 for the BT (0.04 x 1 x 5). A 6 BT colony costs 10 base again, but 1.2 (0.04 x 6 x 5) for the BT. So exactly one ducat difference, or 0.8 in your example comparing 2 to 6 BT.

What? Since when are colonies BT-based?

 

[Cheesecakeczar]

You can consider the color green to be a type of fruit, but that doesn't make it so.

I was using the definition of 'arbitrary' that includes "something without reason." There is no reason why a colony settled later would cost more. The method by which the game decides maintenance penalties is arbitrarily decided by order of creation. Instead, it could be decided by the presence of a colonist, which would allow the player the chose which provinces are penalized, and would also make sense, since the colonist could manage the colony without additional cost. But apparently BT doesn't matter.

 

[VampireBoot]

Colonial maintenance hasn't been affected by base tax for many patches. Now, it doesn't matter what order you colonize them; the maintenance is simply based on the number of provinces you're colonizing and the number of colonists you have.

So yes, the thing you're complaining about was a legitimate problem. But it's been fixed, a long long time ago.

 

[ChildeR]

Colonial maintenance hasn't been affected by base tax for many patches.

It's affected, the effect is just very minor:

One is BT 1, the other 3.

 

[VampireBoot]

It's affected, the effect is just very minor

Ah, I see. The difference used to be much more dramatic. At this point, it's so minor as to be irrelevant; may as well remove it completely.

 

[AurochsAway]

Well now I know that the BT effect is significantly reduced! Thanks all.