Paradox: Is Castile's Rush to The Thirteen Colonies WAD???

[LiberiusX]

Question: Is Castile/Spain supposed to be rushing to Chesapeake?

Explanation:

Several players have noticed, since 1.2 I believe, that Castile/Spain has an unusual attraction to Chesapeake, even before they have gotten a foothold in Central or South America.

A few theories have been posited:

1) Spain is playing like a human, blocking England and France from Chesapeake.

2) Chesapeake is amongst the wealthiest trade nodes, so the AI targets it before the more resource(time/colonists) intensive South and Central America.

3) That Spain is getting/taking missions to colonize Newfoundland and the Thirteen Colonies before it gets missions to attack Aztec/Maya or colonize the Spanish Main or Panama.

My Problem with #1 and #2: Spain isn't collecting in Chesapeake. It is forwarding trade to Bordeaux and attempting to collect there. It does not move it's capital to the Bordeaux node. It does not do any of the rational things that would evidence that #1 or #2 are its intention.

I believe it would be more efficient for Spain to cooperate with Portugal in Gold Coast>Carib>Seville and compete against Portugal alone in Seville for collection. Instead, it competes with Portugal in Carib, it competes with England and Netherlands in Chesapeake, and it competes with France, The Netherlands, and England in Bordeaux. The added costs of so much competition(while only helping France) invalidates #1 and #2.

I'm sympathetic to #3 and/or that this is a bug. Before I submit a bug report, I would like some kind of comment before I do so.

There is an alternative:

4) It is WAD in anticipation of CoP's Western Europe trade node. According to the preliminary patch notes thread we will be getting a new trade node in Western Europe, which warrants a whole different discussion.

Note: This isn't the first thread I've started on the topic, but I didn't want to necro a month old thread, and the above notes are a summary of the previous thread's discussion. Thanks

 

[grisamentum]

Castile/Spain just colonizes too fast. I see Castile most of North America (including 13 colonies) and Britain never goes south of Canada.

By 1650 there are multiple Castilian colonies in SIBERIA. Yes, they went all the way around the Americas and colonized Asia from the east side. Revenge of Columbus perhaps?

I guess we shouldn't worry since January will turn everything on its head anyway.

Possible solution to all this might be swapping the Idea order in Exploration. The colonist just comes too early. Why does the colonist come before the explorer at all? And then Spain/Castile gets ANOTHER colonist for its first National NI? Completely absurd. By contrast Britain gets 0 bonus colonists and takes Exploration much later than Castile/Spain.

I think colonial range expands too far, too fast, too. You're already expanding range based on new colonies, but then those colonies are reaching farther by tech, AND the Exploration idea means that all the techs are actually 50% farther than their listed values. Just another vicious cycle/balancing nightmare.

 

[unmerged(184583)]

found a colony in the thirteen colonies is a very common mission, I suspect option 3 as well.

 

[SpikeyMarshmall]

I recently played a game where Castile / Spain got to NA (they had no colonies in SA) just after me but in the time it took me to get 1 colony complete they had about 3 on the go(they also had about 5 islands in the Caribbean). I fought a massive war back in Europe just to claim these small colonies and to get some cash to cover loans.

I have no issues with Castile / Spain going to NA but they completely ignored South America, which should be the first location they go. Personally I think it's the fact it has a mission to get to North America, then logically it tries to expand next door to these colonies. Personally I'd prefer if Portugal / Spain / Castile all focus on South America then get a mission after Year XXXX to get to Florida.

 

[thefourthestate]

In my Portugal game just gone I always had either 'colonise the thirteen colonies' or 'colonise Canada' as an available mission until other powers completely closed those regions out. I am 100% happy to blame mission frequency.

 

[grommile]

By 1650 there are multiple Castilian colonies in SIBERIA. Yes, they went all the way around the Americas and colonized Asia from the east side. Revenge of Columbus perhaps?

It turns out that the Spanish expedition that successfully colonized the Philippines in 1571 departed from the west coast of Mexico, not from Cadiz.

The problem is not "Spaniards in Asia in 1650", it's "Spaniards in Siberia at any time".

 

[LiberiusX]

Bump

 

[GamingHUD]

Combination of those colony missions and the amount of colonists they get early on, IMO. Can be tested pretty easily by changing Castille's idea order* and/or the requirements for those particular missions.

*Running a hands off game at the moment doing just this (and will probably do a couple more as time allows) where I gave Castille the same historical ideas and in the same order, as Spain.

 

[LiberiusX]

Please let us know your results.

 

[Dr. Crabnipples]

I think the real problem lies when you take the colony from spain or whoever, and it costs full price to core it. Sure small colony with 5 base tax with fish being made isnt all that crucial. but thats like 120 admin points. then theres the culture flip cost. Its too much for a province that gives you like .20 income.

 

[StatikShocker]

they "colony hop" to Massachusetts and Kamchatka (Russian coast) as fast as they possibly can, 100% of games no matter what. there is no variability to it, they just RUSH to spew their seed in the same few places every game, places they don't belong.

 

[OutsiderSubtype]

Pretty sure this has to do with colonial range.

 

[Viking]

The correct response to this is to invade an annex the aztecs and inca.

 

[GamingHUD]

Please let us know your results.

Test Run 1: Circa 1650 with only giving Spain's ideas and order to Castille (Religious, then Exploration for the first two idea groups).



Observations:
*First around the cape, into India and on into the Spice Islands.
*Didn't establish colonies in the Americas until roughly 1540, popping up in the Caribbean. (more on this in a bit)
*It did go for North America not long after arriving in the Caribbean, specifically targeting Manhattan. At no point did it have a mission to colonise there visible but I'm not sure if there some priority given to displaying a country's chosen mission or not (and didn't want to tag in and cause them to lose lucky nation boni) so it is conceivable that they may have gotten the mission, but a lower priority means it isn't displayed when clicking on a country on the map (Honestly don't know on this point). I'll be tweaking the mission anyway for additional test runs.
*Despite being a lucky nation, Castille/Spain really, really struggled in the diplo point department, having to endure a number of monarchs with poor dip stats. By 1650, they hadn't yet filled out exploration (sitting at 6/7) and had no ideas in the expansion tree (expansion was fourth pick IIRC, so they were pretty spread out). They were also 3 or 4 techs behind the other colonisers. Probably had a pretty big impact on how things look.

On the arrival date in the Americas; they did actually have Rio de Oro and Arguin colonised by around 1480 (in the process of becoming a city), but both were wiped out shortly after entering a war against England and for a significant time just sat there and didn't bother to recolonise them until at least 20-25 years later. Even with that set back, it still had the potential to reach the Americas much earlier than it did (anywhere between 1510-1515 IMO) but just didn't bother, instead preferring to plop down next to Kongo and not doing much else for a while.

Bit of a mixed bag really. Not having exploration first slowed it down a little, but it also could have done a wee bit better than it did in the colonial game. In any event, it still tried to go for thirteen colonies and beyond, but failed.

 

[JCFast]

Yeah good thing they're focusing on the New World in the DLC, but I think Vanilla should get some things patched too.

I too am seeing a lot of Castilian colonization, too much of it. They colonize Brazil, the Caribbean and then the Thirteen Colonies before Portugal or England have a chance to do anything. These annoying little footholds everywhere, which they don't really use to any benefit even trading-wise, just to annoy you. I'm rarely seeing France get anything at all. But the only thing nobody wants to touch are the native countries, the Aztecs and Incas are left alone until some latecomer like Norway finally rips them up. Nobody seems to want to touch the Indian tribes. The colonial wars seem rather dull as well as the AI's very poor at fighting in the colonies.

 

[LiberiusX]

In 1.1, the colonization made sense. Everybody was in their usual spots, with small variations, which was kind of neat. Portugal and Spain couldn't wait to rip the natives a new one. Now, like you said, Aztec and Inca have a much longer life expectancy.