Portuguese financial crisis

[Susanna]

Mothball or protect against pirates. And your light ships should be protecting trade.

 

[Sfan]

2 forts is not the minimum, you could go with 0 and be fine. The one in Lisboa is useless, the one in Ceuta should be mothballed at least since you are at peace. Apart from that I agree with everyone else. Especially the part about tradeships to be used for trade instead of explo apart from 3 of them and the rest of the ships being mothballed.

The maintenance of colonies is not linear btw, it's exponential. They cost you 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Reduce your army and fort maintenance and stop paying the harbor fees and you'll have a balanced budget even though you are colonizing above your limit. Your financial situation is great.

Edit: Also, why are you exploring with 10 ships? You only need 3, mothball the rest. And are you not protecting trade with your remaining lights? Do these things and you'll soon be turning a healthy profit

+1

Separate three light ships into a separate small fleet, put the explorer on that small fleet, and use that to explore. Use the rest of the light ships in its own fleet and take the mission "protect trade" in Sevilla.

(or another trade node if it's more profitable... your home node is the most profitable in most cases but once you dominate a trade node you start to face diminishing returns. Adding ships to the trade nodes upstream from your collection point eventually becomes more cost effective).

http://www.eu4wiki.com/Naval_warfare#Naval_missions

You can also use the three heavy ships on a mission to hunt pirates so your enemies can't steal your trade in peacetime. Everyone says to save money by mothballing them though, but I've never seen a workup so I don't honestly know which one is the cheaper option.

 

[Ketilsen]

The maintenance of colonies is not linear btw, it's exponential. They cost you 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...

We're both wrong; my memory is dodgy and you're reading the tooltip and not the numbers: it's quadratic. Wiki says (1+(#colonies-#colonists)^2))*[base cost], so the cost multiplier is 2x, 5x, 10x, 17x for colonies over limit (i.e. first over limit is twice as expensive as normal, next one five times, etc).

Btw you can see the cost for each colony in the Economy screen, just mouseover "Colony Maintenance", it will show you what each colony costs you.

 

[Ketilsen]

Have no idea why I'm paying harbour fees, but there always seem to be harbour fees . . .

Harbor fees is what you pay when you have port access with someone. If you don't remember who you should be able to see in the Economy screen, just mouseover the appropriate section in expenses (Diplomatic expenses? I can't recall which it is).

 

[Philadelphus]

Yeah, Diplomatic Expenses should show it.

 

[Sfan]

We're both wrong; my memory is dodgy and you're reading the tooltip and not the numbers: it's quadratic. Wiki says (1+(#colonies-#colonists)^2))*[base cost], so the cost multiplier is 2x, 5x, 10x, 17x for colonies over limit.

Thanks for the info. I remember finding some numbers weird in a run with 5 colonies over limit or so, but as it also increases based on a lot of other factors I did not go further.

You should also get your harbor fees or whatever expenses you have from checking your diplomatic tab. Everything you have should be listed.