Spanish pace of Colonization
I've never played Spain to any great extent, but now I have a lot of sympathy for Spanish players who have to scrape for every last ducat to pay for colonization since I played my first playtest of Unified Iberia. So I wondering if some settlement events are in order for the major Spanish colonies. But there is one psychological issue that plays into this as most gamers want to immediately start colonizing everything all at once. But the actual pace of colonization was quite slow for the South American mainland. So I poked around the web to see how fast they colonized places in the first century after Columbus and came up with the following, which was a bit more complicated than I anticipated since Paradox's names don't correspond well with current borders. Mosquitos is modern Costa Rica, Costa Rica is modern Nicaragua and the game Nicaragua wasn't settled by the Spanish for all intents and purposes.
Cuba and Santo Domingo - half handled by Fodoron's events
Trinidad unsuccessful colony
Puerto Rico - 1508
Jamaica - 1534
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Honduras - Camayagua, Honduras 8 Dec 1537
Mosquitos - Cartago, Costa Rica 1563
Guatemala - 25 Jul 1524
Isthmus - 1512
Campeche - 1540
Yucatan - 1542
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Cupica - 1654?, but this needs to be further researched although it seems to have been plagued with hostile Indians and not much settled.
Bogota - 6 Aug 1538
Cartagena - 1533
Maracaibo - 29 Jul 1525
Tocuvo - 1527
Yaraguay - 1567
Caribe - 1522
Jujuy - 19 Apr 1593
Corrientes - 25 Jul 1573
Neembuck - Asunción, Paraguay 15 Aug 1537 (not a good fit geographically, but close)
Rosario - 1573
Parana - not settled until much later
Uruguay - 1624
Aires - 2 Feb 1536, but abandoned and refounded in 1580
Pampas del Norte - 6 Jul 1573
Pampas de Sud - 1561
Valparaiso- 12 Feb 1541
Talca - arguably never completely settled due to the fierce Mapuche Indians
Aisen, Magallanes, Tierra del Fuego, Santa Cruz and Chubut, San Matias weren't settled until after the end of the game. Copetonas is a borderline case, but wasn't settled, using a generous definition, until the very late 1700s.
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Seminole - 28 Aug 1565
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Luzon, Samar and Mindoro from 1570
So roughly 31 or 32 provinces settled before 1600. In Fodoron's experiment he managed 38 provinces. So roughly 400 colonists in a century using 12.5 colonists for AI settlement and a cost over 22,000 ducats. And let's not ignore the 250+ for city improvements for each province which is another 10,000 ducats or so.
Fodoron's already provided settlement events for Cuba, Luzon and Santo Domingo that save 30 colonists and 2100 ducats or so. These are quite doable for a peaceful Spain, but that ignores how often Charles and Felipe were at war with someone or another. Which was most of the century.
While I respect the amount of effort that Fodoron put into his recapituliones events I'd prefer a series of province based events that would give 500 colonists and a bailiff to each province based on the historical dates. If a player wants to get there early he can pay full price. To cater to my alt Iberia I'd prefer to have a simple trigger of religion = catholic and non-pagan rather than specifically Spain. I realize that this could cater to France or Portugal poaching, but since the provinces are all within the Spanish ToT boundary it would be an easy matter to retake them.
Something like this, using Fodoron's Cuban events as a model:
Code:
#(1536-1820) Settlement of Honduras
event = {
id = 338xxx
trigger = {
NOT = { provincereligion = { province = 36 data = pagan } } #not a TP
religion = catholic
}
random = no
province = 36 #Honduras
name = "Settlement of Honduras"
desc = "The first colonists arrive in Honduras."
date = { day = 8 month = december year = 1537 }
offset = 10
deathdate = { year = 1820 }
action_a = {
name = "Excellent"
command = { type = population which = 36 value = 500 }
command = { type = gainbuilding which = 36 value = bailiff } #Honduras
command = { type = colonists value = 2 }
}
}
I'm not sure if any colonists are really needed, but I left them in as a legacy from Fodoron's originals.