My friend thinks colonies are worthless, and to convince him otherwise I want to know how much tax base goes in to the manpower/force limit you gain from colonies.
So how much manpower/forcelimit do colonies/vassals give you exactly?
- Thread starter hashinshin
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Not worthless if you are into a trade game,but if you can't get a good trade node to collect trade in then they are useless.
Subjects do not contribute to manpower, but do give you a part of their force limits. Vassals contribute 25% of their land FL, and I think naval as well. CNs give a large amount of naval FL (100%?) but I'm not sure about land FL.
The main attraction of vassals from a military point of view is that while they contribute only a relatively small amount of FL, they have their own FL and manpower that are larger than their provinces would contribute to you. So your vassal's army + yours is usually larger than if you annexed the vassal land directly.
CNs are less useful in this way, since they don't help in all your wars. If you go colonial you will probably want to concentrate of maximizing trade income and getting a lot of mercs. The force limit doesn't really matter when you can afford to go over 2x because of huge trade income.
The main attraction of vassals from a military point of view is that while they contribute only a relatively small amount of FL, they have their own FL and manpower that are larger than their provinces would contribute to you. So your vassal's army + yours is usually larger than if you annexed the vassal land directly.
CNs are less useful in this way, since they don't help in all your wars. If you go colonial you will probably want to concentrate of maximizing trade income and getting a lot of mercs. The force limit doesn't really matter when you can afford to go over 2x because of huge trade income.
Plus, always fun to have your colonial nations dominate the New World and have them beat your rivals' colonies in wars because they're so damn strong.
CNs are kinda essential for trade nations to improve naval force limits so you can steer trade. For other nations I don't think they're really very important and not generally worth the hassle. Of course if you enjoy the CN mechanics (as I did for a long time) then go for it!
Didn't someone say that CN naval force limits contribution is bugged and it gives way more that it should now?
I am not sure if it is a bug or a design flaw, but colonial nations do give rediculous naval force limit now. If it is by design, I think it needs a nerf. Portugal shouldnt have a fleet larger than castile, england, venice, and france combined by 1550.
No way they get it that fast. What they get is absurd money, as do all end node nations. You can make crazy money off colonies even if you have none. As Morocco I was second in income after 50 years due to taking trade, sinking ships and nailing Portugal trade power in Sevilla. Suddenly Morocco can solo Ottomans.
Colonies are good for trade, but IMO are tough to justify as self investments right now unless you use the idea group for up front native gold. Unless you fleece natives for gold it would take a long time for Portugal or Spain to make more from colonizing than from trade ideas and conquest.
If you are playing Portugal or Spain and forgoing colonization it will slow the growth of trade values down significantly. Portugal also happens to have a large tariff efficiency bonus from their NIs, allowing them to actually make decent money from CNs directly, rather than just the trade they produce. Of course, if 1.9 changes CNs to pick colonist-giving ideas earlier, the long term value of exploration will increase further.
However, with any normal non-colonizer, going after trade and land directly is probably more efficient, since the Iberians will produce trade value into your pockets.
Portugal is probably the worst example in the game, and yet money now is worth a lot more than money later. Colonies carry significant up-front cost before the tariffs and trade come back. Compared to running trade + beating down Castile for its CoT immediately alongside Aragon, I'm not sure colonies win even then. While colonies develop trade value slower, you get proportionately more of the value from other colonizers and an impressive amount immediately.
We don't care about long term total wealth as much as we care about our wealth relative to the world and how soon we get it. Owning all centers of trade and having a decent fleet + trade ideas can pull a LOT of wealth into Sevilla even with only stuff existing at 1444. We're talking about the kind of setup that can just go slap the Ottomans around incessantly early on and conquer into Asia through Mediterranean lol. Since you start with explorers you could even explore around Africa as you spank Ottomans, leave trade cap in Sevilla and move real cap to Constantinople. Conquer down to Aden + Zanzibar and start steering ^_^.
I guess you could get a bit more from tariffs. How quickly is that competitive? Hell, just inefficiently collecting in Constantinople should you own the node + have trade efficiency, even w/o protecting trade there, is going to be a CN class boost in trade IIRC.
But Portugal is the most sensible colonizer in the game and even here it's not 100% obvious to me. Granted, we're not factoring the lulzyness of giving a CN a province in the old world so it actually fights there, but that's generally not worth as much as one would like anyway.