More Semi-Newb questions

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1: Colonization. How does one offset location penalties? I'm trying to colonize bits of Africa and steadily losing population.

2: Economy. I've gotten 5 merchants in a CoT and still been told I'm recieving 0 income from them (Trade level 3). Is there something more useful to do here?

3: This is less a newb question and more a programming gripe. As Burgundy I took over most of France (Brittany is independent and a Royal Marriage, Auvergne is one province, Spain owns Gascogne and Poitou, France owns Ile de France). Yet France is invited to the Catholic League, the Schmalkaldic League, the Holy League...is there an easy way to give Burgundy France's events without messing up the programming?

4: Similarly: Do I have to take over an enemy's colonies to be able to annex them? While France still owned Vendee it took over a bunch of random places that I haven't explored, and has one or two colonial cities. Do I have to hunt them all down before I can enter Paris?

5: What are the 5th+ trade levels and 7th+ infrastructure levels good for?

Thanks all.

 

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1: Colonization. How does one offset location penalties? I'm trying to colonize bits of Africa and steadily losing population.

Location penalty decreases every 1000 pop in a colonial city, and a colonial city will never decrease population under 1000, so the hard thing is to get to 1000. Only one solution : send colonists quickly. And don't kill the natives.

2: Economy. I've gotten 5 merchants in a CoT and still been told I'm recieving 0 income from them (Trade level 3). Is there something more useful to do here?

Yes : don't conclude too many Trade Agreements, move DP-sliders toward PLUTOCRACY/NAVAL, don't get embargoed.

3: This is less a newb question and more a programming gripe. As Burgundy I took over most of France (Brittany is independent and a Royal Marriage, Auvergne is one province, Spain owns Gascogne and Poitou, France owns Ile de France). Yet France is invited to the Catholic League, the Schmalkaldic League, the Holy League...is there an easy way to give Burgundy France's events without messing up the programming?

Edit the events files : replace the line

country = FRA

by the line

country = BUR

for all relevents events. You should also browse the event files of the other countries to change FRA tags to BUR tags, for some events giving CB/relations/RMs/and the like.
You can also copy/paste the french leaders into the savegame to your part of the savegame.
But only do this when you've finally annexed France.

4: Similarly: Do I have to take over an enemy's colonies to be able to annex them? While France still owned Vendee it took over a bunch of random places that I haven't explored, and has one or two colonial cities. Do I have to hunt them all down before I can enter Paris?

TPs don't count, but I don't remember for colonies (I never force-annex). You should now diplo-vassalize then diplo-annex France, it'll cost less BB-wise (unless they have more than 5 colonies).

5: What are the 5th+ trade levels and 7th+ infrastructure levels good for?

Increasing Trade and Production Efficiencies. It's very important.

 

[dharper]

1: Colonization. How does one offset location penalties? I'm trying to colonize bits of Africa and steadily losing population.

Get your colonies to a city and this should stop. That means 1000 population but usually means 900 (at 900+ the natives will join you, which quickly bumps you past 1000 in most cases).

2: Economy. I've gotten 5 merchants in a CoT and still been told I'm recieving 0 income from them (Trade level 3). Is there something more useful to do here?

It's possible you're making an easy mistake - trade income doesn't change (like many things in the game) until the end of the month. If you sent 5 merchants all at once you may not see their real income until the month changes.

If that isn't it, you need to increase Trade tech, but I've never seen 0 income before!

3: This is less a newb question and more a programming gripe. As Burgundy I took over most of France (Brittany is independent and a Royal Marriage, Auvergne is one province, Spain owns Gascogne and Poitou, France owns Ile de France). Yet France is invited to the Catholic League, the Schmalkaldic League, the Holy League...is there an easy way to give Burgundy France's events without messing up the programming?

You'll have to go into France's event file, copy and paste the events you want Burgundy to have, then change their event IDs so they don't conflict with France's. To be complete you'd want to change the event descriptions and add triggers to make sure you own affected provinces, etc. If it's only for a few events you should be fine! Just give them numbers guaranteed not to be in the game, like 999999991.

EDIT: And change the country to BUR. Oops.

Note that this won't help you with a saved game - saved games have a list of events that are 'loaded' and new events don't get added. You can change events in a saved game, but not add new ones.

4: Similarly: Do I have to take over an enemy's colonies to be able to annex them? While France still owned Vendee it took over a bunch of random places that I haven't explored, and has one or two colonial cities. Do I have to hunt them all down before I can enter Paris?

I believe so. I think there's a rule about being able to force a peace on a country when you control all the provinces connected to their capital - so colonies wouldn't count. You could occupy Paris and force them to give you colonies, then repeat until you owned the whole shebang.

5: What are the 5th+ trade levels and 7th+ infrastructure levels good for?

Increasing efficiency. Notice that having Infra 6 still only gives you about 40% production efficiency - so your profits go up with increased technology. The same for Trade, only moreso - with higher Trade technology you can compete with merchants easier, your profits go up and you're more likely to receive a colonial CoT.

Hope this helps!

 

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I think there's a rule about being able to force a peace on a country when you control all the provinces connected to their capital

This rule only applies to a human player.

You don't have to take the nation's colonies to be able to force annex. Colonial cities are not colonies though. If you want to force annex, you need to control all cities (ie provinces with population of 1000 or higher), be they in Europe or not.

 

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Note that this won't help you with a saved game - saved games have a list of events that are 'loaded' and new events don't get added. You can change events in a saved game, but not add new ones.

Yes, you can. The savegame only retains three informations :
- events having already been fired
- events sleeped
- list of event files to load

If you add events in an event file already detailed in the save, even if not in the appropriate file (e.g. an event for BUR written in FRA event file will fire normally), the new events will be correctly loaded next time you load your game.
If you add a new event file, you may add a line in the list of event files to add, and it's ok too.

 

[dharper]

If you add events in an event file already detailed in the save, even if not in the appropriate file (e.g. an event for BUR written in FRA event file will fire normally), the new events will be correctly loaded next time you load your game.
If you add a new event file, you may add a line in the list of event files to add, and it's ok too.

I didn't know that! Thanks, lawkeeper. Back when I was writing events for the Reformation, I tried simply adding new events to an existing file and they never fired in a save game (although changed events worked fine), thus my idea about how things worked.