Serious AI Colonization Problems Spain Colonizing Thirteen Colonies has ruined 1.3.1

[LiberiusX]

The fact that Spain is colonizing the Thirteen Colonies is highlighted in another thread, and I know I'm not the only one witnessing this.

In my current grand campaign as France, started at the launch of 1.3.1, I have been attempting to roleplay France, limiting myself to the maximum boundaries of the French Colonial Empire before 1789. It is currently 1601AD. Yes, I have been playing on speed 2-3 with major wars being played on 1-2.

At work, so I don't have an image, but here is how the New World map looks(will post image later if I can figure out how):
Thirteen Colonies and Ohio area: Castile, not a single English colony
St. Lawrence, Great Lakes(outside of Ohio) and Louisiana: France(me)
Hudson Bay and Newfoundland: England
Caribbean: Only the Antilles are colonized. Castile, England and Portugal each have 3 or so. I have 4 islands and Haiti. Cuba, Jamaica, Bahamas remain uncolonized. Northern Coast of SA remains uncolonized
Panama: Aztec and Maya remain unmolested.
South America: Portugal has one or 2 provinces on the east end of SA. They've pretty much just ignored the New World beyond that and a few islands in the Carib.

State of Europe:
Mostly normal. Castile has had a few setback with Aragon, but nothing serious. England has eaten all of Britannia, save the Scottish capital. Potugal is normal. I'm constrained to Frances cultural borders. However, Spain and England are economically 'broke' compared to how they were in previous versions. Even the Dutch are having a hard time extracting income for Antwerp.

So, the main problem here is that Castile is hellbent on colonizing the Thirteen Colonies. It sends its trade to Bordeaux, since that's the closest it can get to Iberia. In effect, I'm being flooded with ducats. It has totally altered the game and is making Castile and England non-powers. If I were an AI France, I would be almost unstoppable. This would have major ramifications on the rest of Europe.

As I understand it, we are waiting until January for a patch? Is there any way this could be rectified before then?

EDIT: Also, since I've been roleplaying, I wouldn't be opposed to starting a campaign around my current tech level. What's a good date to start as France "to pick up where I left off" where England mostly controls the Thirteen Colonies and Spain and Portugal are in the correct spots?

 

[1alexey]

+1. It is so vierd to see GB colonising Carrebian, and Spain colonising 13 colonies.

 

[Gabriel SPR]

It happened before 1.3.1 as well, it's one of my biggest pet peeves. AI is extremely inconsistent in its colonization strategy, and its top priority always seems to be "colonize in the same area as the player no matter what".
I think the developers didn't put too much emphasis on that part of the game before release, because they knew that the first expansion would have completely changed its mechanics.

 

[lucaluca]

yes it's an issue mainly because they don't get much trade from there... They did the trade so well and accurate so the AI should try to maximize it

 

[Hootieleece]

1665-1670 is a good time to start as France. England should have most of 13 Colonies. Netherlands at th Zenith of their power. You have 150 years to become hegemon.

 

[grisamentum]

Yeah there was another thread mentioning this. Spain always ends up with a bunch of useless (to it) Chesapeake Bay colonies.

In fact it would be awesome if the AI was just written to prioritize based on incoming trade nodes since that's the whole reason the trade system is set up like it is. I mean why does Caribbean feed into Seville and Chesapeake in to London? Because that's who colonzied this areas in real life.

 

[LiberiusX]

It was working fine in 1.1 as far as I could tell. Spain had most of CA and western NA. Portugal was a bit too zealous in SA, but it was acceptable. France was doing fine and so was England.

Caribbean was a major hotspot as England, France, Portugal and Spain colonized there like mad men. Almost all of the Caribbean and Panama trade nodes were totally claimed by 1590....now it's just desolate.

This is just weird, it's like Spain got England's colonization missions.

 

[Hootieleece]

This is a screenshot from my latest game. Ottomans played ALL 1.3.1.

 

[Dr.Goldstein]

This is a screenshot from my latest game. Ottomans played ALL 1.3.1.

On an unrelated note, i hate how Tunis trade doesn't flow to Constantinople, considering the lands were under Ottoman hegemony for the most of the EU4 period.

 

[Narkis]

That's nothing. In my latest game as Russia, the Netherlands colonised all northern Japanese islands and the Pacific coast of Siberia was split evenly between the Spanish, the French and the Dutch. I don't exactly remember the date that my colonists found themselves blocked a province inlands, but it was certainly years before the historical date the Russians reached the Pacific. No screenshots because the game is now finished, but I know others have seen the same thing too.

 

[LiberiusX]

Here are some images from the campaign

and

I was wrong about Portugal. They have 5 or so provinces in SA and they don't have anything East of the Cape of Good Hope.

 

[Charles Louis]

Clearly there is some Spanish interest in Chesapeake. In a lot of my games it confined to a half dozen provinces if England is a viable colonial power. But was we all know, England can get really messed up with a long reign of Henry VI (Mr 0-0-0), bad War of the Roses, and maybe a peasant war for good measure. If this happens, England just won't be a colonial power and someone is gonna fill the gap. Based on New Sweden in the Deleware/ south Jersey area and the Dutch in New Amsterdam dominating the Hudson Valley and making a play for the Connecticut valley, I would prefer to see 2nd tier powers filling the some of the gap when England crashes and burns c. 1500.

But in the absence of that, its gonna be either Spain, France, or Portugal. France (true to its nature) is often distracted by continental affairs. I'd say I see Spain twice as often as Portugal filling in the gap. At least Spain has trade power in Bordeaux.

The English feared Spanish interest in the area, so its good that Spain does have that interest. I'd say the problems are as much England and France getting mired in their own domestic troubles or continental ambitions as it might be bad colonial expansion AI. I'm more troubled by Spain ignoring Caribbean and Aztecs than I am by her move into Chesapeake.

 

[Gihren Zabi]

What I don't get is why the AI isn't wired to just go after the places in America that it historically colonized. This is what we had in EU2. Pretty simple and it seems pretty integral to proper gameplay. As other people mention, having Spain sending all its trade to Bordeaux is pretty stupid.

 

[Turboflex]

I would assume AI colonial logic is being heavily worked on considering it will have to deal with randomized America now. Probably why they won't hotfix these current problems.

 

[Vishaing]

Also hard-coding any AI strategy is a terrible idea because it makes it harder for the AI to adapt to a different situation. In this case, suppose you hard code Spain to colonize Central and South America and ignore the 13 Colonies, what happens then when a Player controlled Spain beats Castile to the Americas and colonizes almost all of Central America? does Spain just not colonize anywhere?

The real problem that causes this is two-fold;
1: Spain gets Colonial Ideas before they have the range to reach Central America. I think this could be resolved with a Columbus DHE that creates a Spanish Colony in Cuba, but so far all of my attempts to use the create_colony event effect targeting specific provinces have either not worked at all or crashed the game completely.
2: Once you have a Colonial Base it only ever becomes easier to colonize even more. This is largely because there's no cost whatsoever to actually maintaining the colonies you have once they hit that magic 1000 people number. So Spain starts colonizing the first province they can reach, in north America, and then just keeps going from there.

 

[unmerged(195685)]

2: Once you have a Colonial Base it only ever becomes easier to colonize even more. This is largely because there's no cost whatsoever to actually maintaining the colonies you have once they hit that magic 1000 people number. So Spain starts colonizing the first province they can reach, in north America, and then just keeps going from there.

Completely false. The first colony Spain goes for is Manhattan-a COT in the Chesapeake Bay. Spain goes for it precisely because of the benefit of going for such a valuable territory-high base tax and an important center of trade, The AI, unsurprisingly, heavily weights such a territory (and Manhattan is *definitely* not the first province Spain can reach). From there, the AI continues to expand in NA because of the two weights in its favor-high base tax and contiguous colonies. South America is contiguous but generally worse basetax; the Caribbean has the basetax but obviously isn't contiguous. Spain wouldn't care about NA territories and still seek SA/Caribbean stuff if it weren't for Manhattan outweighing every other consideration. I'd bet that if Portugal got to Manhattan first, then we'd be seeing a Portuguese thirteen colonies instead. Spain also always beats England to Manhattan because, as mentioned, it takes its exploration ideas sooner and bunnyhops from SA.

 

[unmerged(815621)]

People are complaining about the AI doing what the player ideally would do?

Sorry, but this is not an issue. The AI should have the same information that the player does (unfortunately they have more). As such, they should always go for an optimal colonization strategy. Besides, Spain was in North America, and they probably would have been in more of it if it was not for the British and the French. If England does not colonize, Spain should take it place (as they were probably the biggest reason why they weren't).

 

[unmerged(195685)]

The problem is that it isn't actually right for Spain to colonize that territory. NA colonies can only feed as far south as Bordeaux, and even though spain technically can collect there it's wildly inefficient (and is giving france, their main rival, more money for sure). The *player* would ignore NA territories in favor of a stronger Caribbean presence, and while AI Spain does expand in the Caribbean it will almost always move to NA colonies before finishing the Caribbean.

 

[Shawn1066]

In my game Castille is the premier colonial power, having colonized all of South America, Meso America, Africa, parts of Southeast Asia and the west Siberian coast. Britain has successfully colonized the 13 colonies, but Castille is absolutely dominant elsewhere. It's 1700 and I'm glad they didn't get the 13 colonies, because they already got everything else.

 

[Checco]

Am I the only one who thinks that the Caribbeans could use more contiguous sea connections (like in Greece)?