To kill the natives or not?

[DominusNovus]

My only nearly full game, I played as Ethiopia and, surrounded by high ferocity, high native pop uncolonized territories, I always left them alive, even though my tech sucked (since the European colonizers took forever to get around Africa) and just parked a modest sized army where it was needed. Given that several of my colonies were near Egypt, it made sense to park an army there anyway.

Plus, I needed to keep my military budget up since my neighbors kept on thinking I was a good target. I got all the way down to South Africa with this strategy, with decently valuable provinces (close to +2 base tax on a lot of those). Still mad that the one place in Africa Spain beat me out on was Madagascar.

 

[merserm]

Before around miltech 8, you need X*3 regiments and transports, where X is your number of colonists (so 1 colonist = 3 troops/transports). From 8-12 or so, you need X*2, then around tech 16 you only need one. For African colonies, double this. It's not very expensive, even 0.3 BT can make that back.

# of Colonists does not apply. 1 colonist can build an unlimited # of colonies.
Plus you are not paying for only the cost of troops standing on the colonies, you are paying for your worldwide army.
...I could be paying maintenance on 100+ regiments for a decade so I can get 0.3 oversea's base tax?

I'm sorry I have to support the slaughtering of the natives

 

[synthshadow]

now that keeping them alive actually serves a useful purpose (in my opinion as they always should have done) I will do all I can to keep them alive.

Always felt a twinge of guilt slaughtering them for the S's and G's, but the way I see it you will need that army stationed over there for 'particularlist" or some other random rebels that spawn or even to defend if you go to war and teh other country go for your colonies so at least you have SOME defence already there.

But there I am not a huge number cruncher so maybe I'm losing out money-wise...

 

[zodium]

# of Colonists does not apply. 1 colonist can build an unlimited # of colonies.
Plus you are not paying for only the cost of troops standing on the colonies, you are paying for your worldwide army.
...I could be paying maintenance on 100+ regiments for a decade so I can get 0.3 oversea's base tax?

I'm sorry I have to support the slaughtering of the natives

If you exceed your colonist limit, it won't be the 1-3 regiments you keep on your colonies that break the bank.

 

[Andrew4250]

If i'm playing Ironman I kill them as fast as I can. Each time they spawn they waste my valuable time by saving the game. Since they're likely to do it 4-6 times for each colony I might as well kill them at the start and save myself 3 minutes of autosaving

 

[Illanair]

Look at it this way - If you're a colonizing nation, you're going to be able to leave 5k troops around in 2-3 provinces all the time. Keep a transport fleet around that can move either at any given point if you suddenly need them desperately at home (Or hey - hire mercenaries, all the extra income should allow that)

 

[Evil4Zerggin]

...I could be paying maintenance on 100+ regiments for a decade so I can get 0.3 oversea's base tax?

Because it takes a decade to finish a colony and 100 regiments to hold off 1500 natives?

 

[Nutcracker]

Base tax is pretty much irrelevant for your colonies anyway due to Distant Overseas malus. It's not a reason not to exterminate.

 

[Grubnessul]

Of course!

 

[Illanair]

Of course!

Of Course!

 

[unmerged(780209)]

The "Attack Natives" button is basically a "click this if you are a noob" button, so I'm not sure why it even exists.

The only scenario I can think of where you'd want to kill the natives is if you for some reason didn't have an army to manage them, in which case the button isn't even an option for you anyway.

Basically that's correct. It's a NOOB tactic. However, I find the kill natives button is occasionally of use in certain situations.

EX: I'm Portugal and I want to get a bunch of colonies going at once to block the expansion paths of my rivals. So, I'm colonizing perhaps 5-6 colonies at once in Southern Africa. These are low income provinces to begin with and I only want them to block the competition, as well as build naval buildings in them to lower my naval over forcelimit so I can balance my budget and pay off my loans.

I can kill the natives in some of these semi-worthless provinces just so I don't have to deal with rebellions. True, it's going to lower my income, but the provinces are 1 provinces anyway and are never going to be high income producers.

But, in general it's just shooting yourself in the foot to kill the natives.

 

[Evil4Zerggin]

Base tax is pretty much irrelevant for your colonies anyway due to Distant Overseas malus. It's not a reason not to exterminate.

Distant overseas gives -90%, but you get 20% back via tariffs, so really it's only effectively -70%. In addition, any tax increasing effects are still as effective as they are on your mainland due to additive stacking. So tax isn't as effective financially as it is on the mainland, but it's not "irrelevant". More importantly, though, base tax has subtler effects such as the diplo-vassalization modifier.

 

[smellymummy]

kill them all. as much as you might like to think your troops aren't needed, they probably really are needed. and you'll only know that they are needed when its too late

obviously this is mostly relevant to those big native provinces that can wipe out your colony in one go. when it comes to american provinces it really doesn't matter much if you park a regiment here and there

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Nope. Killing natives, disables natives event as far as i recall. And those, gives you quite nice boons.

 

[zodium]

Nope. Killing natives, disables natives event as far as i recall. And those, gives you quite nice boons.

I've actually never counted these up, but I'd put the amount of free population I get from those +100-200 events somewhere near 10k over the course of an early colonization game.

 

[Chronicler]

What about aggressive natives? I remember in EU3 I wanted to try to keep natives somewhere, and natives were so aggressive they kept attacking my army until they were all gone.

That happens?

 

[Illanair]

What about aggressive natives? I remember in EU3 I wanted to try to keep natives somewhere, and natives were so aggressive they kept attacking my army until they were all gone.

That happens?

Not really - Even in Africa where they are at their strongest, they can easily be beaten down by a 5K army. By the time the natives attack again, morale and manpower have long since been restored.

 

[zodium]

What about aggressive natives? I remember in EU3 I wanted to try to keep natives somewhere, and natives were so aggressive they kept attacking my army until they were all gone.

That happens?

Natives can be consistently suppressed using the heuristic I posted, even back to back uprisings.

 

[DarkThug]

What about aggressive natives? I remember in EU3 I wanted to try to keep natives somewhere, and natives were so aggressive they kept attacking my army until they were all gone.

That happens?

It is changed from EU3 in that defeated native doesn't reduce in number anymore.
No matter how many time you beat them, A 9000 strong native will come back with 9000 men over and over.
Until you click the kill-native button, that is.

 

[unmerged(80402)]

Well, this is good - no more need to kill them - just put some stacks in more agressive natives, and you don't need to fear. This becomes : "Iamnoobbutton"