The colonial nations features **destroyed** my Ironman game as Spain. Bug or WAD?

[TheBloke]

Income comparison, 1.3.2 -> 1.4.0 with large Americas holdings going Colonial

I just don't see how the new colonial nation mechanic is dropping the OP's income to 4 ducats a month. If it is as big as he claims, this would be basically impossible unless he never raised the tariffs at all. When I made Brazil into a colonial nation and upped tariffs to 50%, they were paying me almost 9 ducats a month with around 10 provinces. If I had the entire Caribbean as a colonial nation, with 50% tariffs I'd guess they would be paying you a small fortune.

Here were my results, loading a 1.3.2 GBR save from 1600. My income was very small with the default 10% Tariffs. I had to boost them to 70% to give me nearly the same income as before. At that point, both my Colonial Nations declared war. I am sure I would have won that war, dropping Liberty Desire down from 100% to 75%. I don't know how soon they would have declared war again.

This is a 1.3 converted save so take any income details with a pinch of salt - things might be different with a new 1.4 game


Great Britain, 1597:

• All of Aztec, Maya, Zappotek, Iroquis, Huron, Cherokee, Shawnee, Creek are annexed, plus 2-3 other colonies in NA
• After breakaway, I am left with four normal colonies, and two Colonial Nations:
  • 13 Colonies
  • English Mexico

1.3.2 Save, Feb 1597:

Total Income: 210.43
Total Expenses: 128.99

Balance: +81.43​

Screenshot:​

Spoiler

In 1.4.0, after one month, March 1597:

Total Income: 163.01
Total Expenses: 128.99

Balance: +34.02

Screenshot:​

Spoiler

Of course this is with my Tariff % only at default, 10.


So what happens when I whack it up to +70??


In 1.4.0, after two months (April 1597) - with Tariff at 70%

Total Income: 205.34
Total Expenses: 131.29

Balance: +74.04

Screenshot:​

Spoiler

Also, this happens

Note that Liberty Desire reached 100% when I got to 60% Tariff.

Of course, this is a 1.3 save taken to 1.4 so results must be taken with a pinch of salt.

But it suggests that one needs high Tariff %, and thus very high Liberty Desire / lots of wars to reach similar levels of income as 1.3. That is not unreasonable!

 

[LDSkinny]

But it suggests that one needs high Tariff %, and thus very high Liberty Desire / lots of wars to reach similar levels of income as 1.3. That is not unreasonable!

But in your screenshot, you should note that trade income was changed from 58.63 down to 41.1. That's a 17.5 ducat difference, which makes up for the remaining lost income that you would have at 50% (where the colonies cannot declare war on you).

I think a large contributor to the lost trade income is the new European Trade node which, if you had not repositioned your fleets and merchants to take advantage of, would lead to a large portion of your trade income going elsewhere. There's a lot more going on than just colonial nations.

 

[roman566]

Colonial nation sucks. The reason Spain was so powerful was gold and silver from colonies, the reason they had problems was inflation caused by said gold. In the new system it won't happen, colonies will be hit with inflation while all Spain has to do is keep their army in colonies to put out their uprisings now and then.
I like my gold, I don't like fighting my own colonies over it every couple decades.
So once again - Paradox, make those nations optional.

 

[TheBloke]

But in your screenshot, you should note that trade income was changed from 58.63 down to 41.1. That's a 17.5 ducat difference, which makes up for the remaining lost income that you would have at 50% (where the colonies cannot declare war on you).

I think a large contributor to the lost trade income is the new European Trade node which, if you had not repositioned your fleets and merchants to take advantage of, would lead to a large portion of your trade income going elsewhere. There's a lot more going on than just colonial nations.

Good point! Actually it bounced back a bit by the third screenshot, and the difference is 12 ducats. I remember it dropping then going back, and thought it bounced back far enough to be close-ish, but you are right: it did not.

So yes, with 70% I had a 7 ducat difference, but 12 was from trade. So actually, with 70%, I was +5 ducats.

I am not sure I would have the exact same income with 50% Tariff, but you are right it would be close. And in any case, this was from a 1.3 -> 1.4 save, where all I did was load it and advance it. In a proper 1.4 game I would have done things differently, optimising for the new structure.

As an example: after the two Colonials broke away, I still had 4-5 orphaned provinces in random Colonial Regions. Had I started out with a 1.4 game, I would have made sure those provinces were not left under my control, and were instead part of the Colonial; they would then earn me much more income.

So yeah, income from Colonials is definitely comparable.

I still worry that there's not as much "to do" with Colonials, because I can't build buildings to optimise income. I spent a lot of time in my 1.3 game building trade and production buildings, and planning carefully when to spend money+MP points on that and what the income would be. I can't do that so much with Colonials; all I could do is Gift them money and hope they spend some of it on buildings, which is indirect and not that reliable.

Of course, I could build buildings in my cities before I get 5 in a region, and maybe that's a good strategy: don't build that fifth colony->city until the first four have decent buildings. Then build colonies in other regions, add good buildings, and then sell them to an existing colonial. It's still not quite as good as being able to build them any time you want. But there is the whole war mechanic now as well, which might balance out the planning and strategy required.

Anyway, it's still very early days on these new mechanics. Lots more experimentation still required to understand them fully.

 

[kazper]

Yeah it ruined my game as well. I don't mind radical changes to game mechanics, and I don't mind releasing them as free patches (*duh* why would I?), but combined with Steams auto-update it's a really fracking big problem. Compounded by about a factor 10 when further combined with Ironman. Mine was not an Ironman game, but it was still a game I had put hundreds of hours into, and frankly it's worthless now. Even if I reposition my merchants and my ships, and even if I raise tariffs and devote my military to fighting my colonials and forget about further expansion on the continent, I'm still set back thousands of gold wasted on developing colonial provinces and immense amounts of AMPs and DMPs wasted on coreing colonial provinces taken in wars and converting their culture. And all I get in return now is an untenable weak empire. I should have just put all my efforts into conquest, So my game is pointless now - the rules have changed dramatically mid-game making all my previous goals pointless (colonizing the new world) or impossible (destroying the HRE with the power from those colonies).

Frankly it sucks. I've closed EUIV in disgust and don't expect to be playing it again for a while. I'll probably return someday - the mechanics are not bad (perhaps they are even good) - if they were set at the BEGINNING of the game. But I cannot trust any game I now start (without great hassle backing up different versions of the game) to stay playable until the end, so why bother. Perhaps in a few years when the DLC and major revisions are done we'll have a stable game and experience. Then it'll be worth playing again.

 

[redmark]

Yeah it ruined my game as well. I don't mind radical changes to game mechanics, and I don't mind releasing them as free patches (*duh* why would I?), but combined with Steams auto-update it's a really fracking big problem. Compounded by about a factor 10 when further combined with Ironman. Mine was not an Ironman game, but it was still a game I had put hundreds of hours into, and frankly it's worthless now. Even if I reposition my merchants and my ships, and even if I raise tariffs and devote my military to fighting my colonials and forget about further expansion on the continent, I'm still set back thousands of gold wasted on developing colonial provinces and immense amounts of AMPs and DMPs wasted on coreing colonial provinces taken in wars and converting their culture. And all I get in return now is an untenable weak empire. I should have just put all my efforts into conquest, So my game is pointless now - the rules have changed dramatically mid-game making all my previous goals pointless (colonizing the new world) or impossible (destroying the HRE with the power from those colonies).

Frankly it sucks. I've closed EUIV in disgust and don't expect to be playing it again for a while. I'll probably return someday - the mechanics are not bad (perhaps they are even good) - if they were set at the BEGINNING of the game. But I cannot trust any game I now start (without great hassle backing up different versions of the game) to stay playable until the end, so why bother. Perhaps in a few years when the DLC and major revisions are done we'll have a stable game and experience. Then it'll be worth playing again.

You can play with the old mechanics, fairly easily if it's not Ironman.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?747911-Playing-with-old-version.

And backing up different versions is certainly not 'great hassle', even if Paradox don't make the old version available next time, as they have this (within 24 hours).

Folder -> Copy -> Paste.

 

[TheBloke]

Kazper, you can play 1.3.2 still. They have now created a 'beta' stream on Steam. See sticky post in Tech Support forum. As your game is not ironman, you can just revert to 1.3.2 and load any save.

Once you've reverted to 1.3.2,back it up and keep it separate then you can play either at any time. I have written a guide on doing the backup which I can link here later, I'm not home at the moment.

 

[Great One]

That line in the patch notes was unfortunately badly worded (and I have edited it now). You haveing cores or not on those provinces make no difference. Five provinces in the same colonial region will allways form a new colonial nation. What the patch notes meant to say was that your cores would be removed upon this happening. Sorry about that.

Is it intended for other European powers to retain cores on the provinces in this process?

Here is the scenario. I am playing Spain and I made Portugal my vassal early in the game to colonize for me while I concentrated on Europe. Later I annexed Portugal so that I could use the colonies in South America (mostly Brazil) as a staging point for my own colonies having not taken the Exploration idea group myself and not having the range to colonize any other way. Now that these territories have become a colony (which I named Brazil), they have cores for Brazil and for Portugal (who no longer exists), but my cores are gone. I have another colony called Colombia which only has Colombian cores having been my colonies which sprang off the annexed Portuguese colonies.

Is this the expected behavior?

 

[kazper]

Thank you redmark and TheBloke. I've hurriedly joined the beta and made a backup so I can at least finish this game. I'm still, however, gonna stay away from playing any more games until I can believe I don't risk this happening again. I do feel that backing up game files is a large hassle - especially as I have no warning on when an update suddenly comes along and what it does (not all of us can follow along on this forum regularly) and it works counter to every single advantage of Steam to have to do this. If they maintain Betas for any major change I guess that would remove the issue except for Ironman, but do they intend to do so or is this just for a short while?

 

[ChosenChaos]

Kazper, you can play 1.3.2 still. They have now created a 'beta' stream on Steam. See sticky post in Tech Support forum. As your game is not ironman, you can just revert to 1.3.2 and load any save.

Once you've reverted to 1.3.2,back it up and keep it separate then you can play either at any time. I have written a guide on doing the backup which I can link here later, I'm not home at the moment.

Huzzah!

Once I finish my current game - which may take a while since it's part of a CKII->EUIV->Vicky II->HoI3 megacampaign - then I'll probably go back and play with the colonial nations turned back on.

Edit: Oh, goody. Because it autosaved after 1.4.0 was installed, if I try to load the save under 1.3.2, it's an immediate CTD. Yay.