Handling Unfinished Colonies as Russia?

[likk9922]

Hey-

I've had the game for quite a while now, and I finally built up the courage to play as Russia.

In the beggining I took Finland and most of Scandanavia (owned by Denmark, not Sweden. Maybe Kalmar?), and I used the money I looted/my new income to fund the wars in the west to open up Siberia for me. Once this was done, I started expanding into Siberia with colonists. It pretty much fueled its own expansion, the money I got for setting up level two colonies in each province funding the next colonists I would send. Unfortunately, all of these unfinished colonies have made the chances go down in the rest of Siberia (core provinces), but brought the chances down in the Aleutians, too.

Do you guys have any tips on more quickly/easily finishing these colonies? Any tips for the next time I play?

 

[Ericus1]

Unfinished colonies to not affect placement to territories you have a direct land connection to, so they are not the cause of the lower chances in Siberia. They do decrease placement chances in non-adjacent territory.

The best way to build colonies is to send colonists until they are up to 800 (with natives present) or 900 (no natives) and let population growth take them to full colonial status.

In general, you always want to colonize the high value trade good provinces (like fur or sugar), gold provinces, and provinces with high base tax values first. I personally never kill off natives, but killing off those that are highly aggressive (>6) can making building a colony significantly easier. It's probably the natives that are causing you low chances in Siberia, as they get larger and more aggressive the farther you go.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

Sure. Finish each colony before moving on. You can have up to N unfinished colonies without penalty, where N is your monarch's admin rating.

Although I would note that the penalty for having lots of colonies applies only for colonization attempts not connected to your capital via a land connection. So if you want you can cover siberia in colonies without penalty, so long as you do it from west to east. However this does, as you've discovered, ruin your chances of establishing colonies anywhere else.

Assuming you are getting at least 25% of the trade, I'd suggest first covering Siberia in trading posts before you settle it, other than the gold provinces which should be taken ASAP. Trading posts have a similar penalty for low-level ones (level 1 and 2), but they only require 3 colonists to "finish", as opposed to 8-10. The level 3 thing is just on average. So, what you actually want to do is establish a bunch of TPs at level 1, where you're going to colonize later, while you make some of them level 6, where you probably won't colonize, at least for a while. For more on TPs:
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Trading_posts

TPs are also great in that they don't increase supply of goods, thereby keeping prices high. And they don't require expensive buildings to finish, i.e., tax collectors and governors. The only real downside of TPs is that they burn; but in a huge inland empire like Siberia this is not a problem.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

I expect where he's seeing low chances in Siberia is in non-connected parts of it. Those can be overcome easily by finishing the land connection (owned provinces, TPs are good enough) from west to east.

 

[unmerged(49508)]

To go faster with colonisation you simply need more colonists and more money to fund them. To increase to number of colonists you can move your DP sliders and build (or conquer) a shipyard. Beware that neither TPs nor colonies yield any census tax, you need to build them up to city size to get money into your treasury.

As Russia I would build a line of colonies (built up to city) to gold provinces and fill up the space later. Also I would keep the natives in all provinces. I would also annex and convert Sibir then release as vassal after exploring northward, so they would contribute to my colonisation efforts.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

Don't finish colonies or TPs when you're going for gold. Finishing them will slow you down.

What's the deal with Sibir? I can't think of any good reason to release it as a vassal. How is it supposed to contribute to your colonization efforts?

 

[unmerged(49508)]

Sibir has altai culture which is one of Russia's, so if they are converted to orthodox and have extensive knowledge of the uncolonised area by the Ob river then after releasing them you can annex a much larger vassal and don't even have to bother with converting them. The riches of Siberia become valuable only later in the game, when trade and production efficiency are higher, until that it's not much a loss if you create a vassal there.

As for buiding the colonies up to city size it might by my personal preference. Never played Russia, but by the time the corridor opens up, american colonisation can be an option too, so it's not an easy choice to have lot of unfinished colonies. Again it is my personal preference that I never build TPs (okey, there is an exception, if I want to colonise a province where the population growth is negative, then I first send a trader instead of a settler)
Colonies don't give you manpower nor census tax, while cities do. These might be as important as gold, depends on situation.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

But Sibir does not colonize. Not in vanilla, anyway. Are you thinking of a mod?

 

[unmerged(49508)]

But Sibir does not colonize. Not in vanilla, anyway. Are you thinking of a mod?

I also play vanilla and I am yet to see a colonising Sibir, but if I release them as vassal, they get my tech and my knowledge of uncolonised provinces. That makes the difference. Also being orthodox as opposed to sunni gives +1 colonist per year. In my current game as Burgundy I released Kingdom of Jerusalem with the hope that they will convert the province, but all they did was setting up trade posts all over the wierdest places. In the same game the Knights also had 2 or 3 TPs and colonies.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

AI do not colonize not because they lack tech or knowledge of empty provinces. They do not colonize because their AI file tells them not to.

The Knights get the "crusader.ai" file, which tells them not to colonize. JER get the "default.ai" file, same thing. You're sure you saw them colonize? In vanilla 1.09, not a mod?

BTW, JER will eventually do conversions, as will all AIs. They are just very, very slow about it. Also, when they are small they probably don't have the money.

 

[AdmiralNelson]

It's probably the natives that are causing you low chances in Siberia, as they get larger and more aggressive the farther you go.

The natives get larger?! I bet there are giants in Yakutsk!

 

[unmerged(49508)]

AI do not colonize not because they lack tech or knowledge of empty provinces. They do not colonize because their AI file tells them not to.

The Knights get the "crusader.ai" file, which tells them not to colonize. JER get the "default.ai" file, same thing. You're sure you saw them colonize? In vanilla 1.09, not a mod?

BTW, JER will eventually do conversions, as will all AIs. They are just very, very slow about it. Also, when they are small they probably don't have the money.

I don't know much about ai files, I just write what I have seen. Additional info about the knights' colonies: all of them were in provinces where previously existed a TP or colony but were destroyed somehow. So no conquest. Recently annexed them, so no screenie, but KoJ is still around, I will post some pic to the strange screenshots thread. (first I will need to find out how to post a screenshot...)

I never played anithing but vanilla.