Promote all Protectorates to Colonies or just one at a time?

[Nerva]

Playing as USA, I'm building Naval Bases in every State in order to maximize my Colonial Power. I find I am easily able to send expeditions to every available region, with plenty of points left over to upgrade most of my existing Protectorates to Colonies -- but should I do that?

In particular, I am wondering if there is are advantages to focusing on just one colony at a time? For example, does it focus all colonial migration to that single colony, enabling it to be promoted to a State more rapidly?

I have read that one advantage of promoting Protectorates to Colonies is that Colonial POPs are taxed, but are there additional expenses (besides Colonial Power) for a full Colony vs. just a Protectorate?

Or should I always spend spare Colonial Power to upgrade every Protectorate to a Colony ASAP?

 

[Adrian Gaming]

Playing as USA, I'm building Naval Bases in every State in order to maximize my Colonial Power. I find I am easily able to send expeditions to every available region, with plenty of points left over to upgrade most of my existing Protectorates to Colonies -- but should I do that?

In particular, I am wondering if there is are advantages to focusing on just one colony at a time? For example, does it focus all colonial migration to that single colony, enabling it to be promoted to a State more rapidly?

I have read that one advantage of promoting Protectorates to Colonies is that Colonial POPs are taxed, but are there additional expenses (besides Colonial Power) for a full Colony vs. just a Protectorate?

Or should I always spend spare Colonial Power to upgrade every Protectorate to a Colony ASAP?

If I am correct, Protectorates don't experience any internal migration from your pops. Only colonies allow your POPs to move around.

If you don't want to make a colony a state, leave it as a Protectorate as POPs of your culture will not move there. Protectorates are also not taxed, but they do allow you to control territory for strategic purposes.

Usually creating Colonies is just overall better because you cannot industrialize in Protectorates.

 

[Jorlaan]

Making them colonies is highly useful as mentioned if you hope to turn them in to states at some point. People will move to your colonies but not to protectorates. As most colonies have no local cores, once you start getting enough people there it can become your own core and start assimilating the locals to your culture.

 

[Nerva]

Yeah I know there are advantages to Colonies, but my question is whether there is an advantage to choosing just the Protectorate with the greatest potential for economic development and only promoting the best one to a Colony, so that all my colonial migration is funneled to just one Colony, so it becomes a state quicker, gets a core quicker, etc. Then when it becomes a state, I promote the next best Protectorate to be a Colony, and repeat.

 

[Jorlaan]

Well honestly only you can answer that question. There are a lot of factors here, how many colonies you have at once, how large your population is to begin with will influence how many move away, tech levels, income, personal preference etc.
So if you're playing a smaller country that is colonising then yes maybe you do want to focus a bit, if you're playing a coloniser with a large population maybe you want to go more broad.

 

[Adrian Gaming]

Yeah I know there are advantages to Colonies, but my question is whether there is an advantage to choosing just the Protectorate with the greatest potential for economic development and only promoting the best one to a Colony, so that all my colonial migration is funneled to just one Colony, so it becomes a state quicker, gets a core quicker, etc. Then when it becomes a state, I promote the next best Protectorate to be a Colony, and repeat.

In short: no. Colonies are better for economic development and even then, the time period is so short that most colonies never become States even if you try. It's a waste of a NF to Encourage Bureacrats in colonies usually.

And you don't gain cores on anything in Victoria II: you have to start with them. Events occasionally will give cores, but it's rare.

 

[Jorlaan]

Its not really that rare to get cores, you just need enough of your own culture in the province for the event to possibly fire. Now in many places this is nearly impossible as someone else's core will already be on it, and people have a MUCH lower chance to migrate to somewhere with another core, excluding the Americas with their immigration bonus. In Europe you'll nearly never see a new core. In sparsely populated areas and places with no local core though it can totally happen.
I might actually look in to the event now that I'm thinking about it and maybe tweak it to fire a little more often.

 

[Nerva]

Is there anyone that knows the exact mechanics for how colonial migration works, and can say definitively whether you'll create the most States by promoting a bunch of Protectorates to Colonies in parallel, or by promoting one Protectorate to a Colony at a time, in sequence?

Here is the wiki entry on Migration, which includes Colonial Migration:

http://www.victoria2wiki.com/Migration

It seems to suggest that Colonial Migration is driven by the "upstream" conditions of POPs in each State/Province -- States with high unemployment and not getting needs met will see more of an exodus to the country's Colonies. Then there is a calculation for "Province Migration Target", but I'm not sure if that applies to colonial migration targets as well. If all of that is true, it means the total Colonial Migration is independent of how many Colonies there are to migrate to, so if you want States you should focus on one Colony at a time.

This is very important if you're playing USA, which starts the game with a large number of Protectorates that have the potential for eventual Statehood -- so I want to know what the best method is for turning them into States. I have plenty of Colonial Power to promote them, so the issue is only whether to focus on one Colony at a time or all of them at once.

 

[General WVPM]

Protectorates are also not taxed, but they do allow you to control territory for strategic purposes.

Thank you for teaching me something after years of playing Victoria 2

Edit: after some testing this turned out to be incorrect.
POPs in protectorates pay taxes.

 

[Nirmara]

Protectorates cost less colonial points than colonies giving you more points to spend to colonize during the scramble for Africa.

 

[General WVPM]

Protectorates are also not taxed, but they do allow you to control territory for strategic purposes.

Tested it, protectorates pay taxes as normal.

 

[Nerva]

Tested it, protectorates pay taxes as normal.

Are you sure they pay the same amount of tax? My recollection is the difference was that "Protectorates pay less tax". Are you sure they're being taxed at the same effective rate? I would think there would be less Administrative Efficiency in Protectorates vs. Colonies.

 

[General WVPM]

Are you sure they pay the same amount of tax? My recollection is the difference was that "Protectorates pay less tax". Are you sure they're being taxed at the same effective rate? I would think there would be less Administrative Efficiency in Protectorates vs. Colonies.

Administrative efficiency is unrelated to the tax POPs pay (it does influence tariffs though) and yes they pay the same amount.

 

[Nerva]

Administrative Efficiency doesn't affect Tax Efficiency? I thought it did...

 

[Challenge]

The manual says that Bureaucrats in a state affect local Admin efficiency which allows taxes to be collected. It also says that it affects your National Admin efficiency which does not affect taxes.

 

[General WVPM]

The manual says that Bureaucrats in a state affect local Admin efficiency which allows taxes to be collected. It also says that it affects your National Admin efficiency which does not affect taxes.

The manual lies, administration has 0 to do with taxes.
It all comes down to tax efficiency (base + techs + modifiers) and your slider.

 

[Challenge]

The manual lies!!!

That's never happened before.