I'm actually very pleased with the changes Art of War has made, and am very glad to have bought it when I did. But there's still one notable issue(IMO) that's just throwing me off, and that's colonization. Aren't we tired of seeing Portugal or Spain colonize Siberia while ignoring the East Indies? Or seeing places like Colombia and Panama being settled as afterthoughts in the 1700s versus locations such as Canada and the Rio de La Plata, which were historically very late settlements? I feel like there needs to be some degree of overhaul; watching Portugal go HAM in the Caribbean was neat for a few games, but it loses its charm when you never actually see Portuguese Brazil beyond a handful of provinces. England and France also tend to get involved in the colonial game earlier than usual, and Norway being one of the largest competing colonizers without fail is simply aggravating. Africa's certainly much more improved, although I've noticed that by the 1700s there are too many free colonists in the world, resulting in the coasts of Africa being eaten up too.
While I'm not sure exactly what can be done to improve the colonial game, I'd recommend making transoceanic troop transportation incredibly costly at the beginning, as well as weighting certain regions in general(Colombia/Venezuela/East Coast) for all nations, adding negative modifiers to other regions(Texas, Canada, Patagonia, Siberia, California), as well as giving Europeans more incentive to invade (non-tribal) New World states in pursuit of gold. Additionally, I'd also recommend increasing the failure rate of colonies/increasing the time it takes to establish a colonial foothold. Or maybe even differentiating between a true settlement and a colonial claim; for example, Spain's control of the Antilles, or California, or France's control of the Louisiana Purchase. It's actually times like this that makes me bemoan the lack of a primitive population system in the EU series, because it makes the diffusion of migrants and ultimately, a population base, difficult to model; for example, French Louisiana would be a monster colony ingame because all provinces are created equal pop-wise, and so they're strictly relegated to being worth their base tax/production/trade values. By all rights, French North America should have beat the ever loving stuffing out of British North America in the French and Indian War. But it was the (much) greater population of British North America and the lack of in French North America that all but doomed French ambitions on the continent even had they won the war.
For an alternate-history example, if anyone is a frequenter of alternatehistory.com, a timeline recently popped up called 'Portuguese Southern Africa' that analyzes the result of Portugal(historically the biggest emigration state in Europe) settling the Cape Colony early on and allowing for the natural growth of frontier populations to take its course over several hundred years. To make a long story short, Portuguese Southern Africa became the manpower pool and economic linchpin of the Portuguese Empire due to its incredible rate of population growth combined with Portugal's historically great emigration rates, as well as the discovery of gold(something that historically ushered great population movements, for example, the settling of California in the 1800s beyond a few military bases and small towns, and yet is something that cannot be modeled in EU4).
This post has become a bit of a hydra, trying to tackle two issues at once, the latter of which I don't really expect to be addressed at all(as sad as it is). But seeing a bit more sense in colonization patterns would be (strongly) appreciated. Even without population models, I believe EU4 can ultimately succeed in depicting a better colonization system.
While I'm not sure exactly what can be done to improve the colonial game, I'd recommend making transoceanic troop transportation incredibly costly at the beginning, as well as weighting certain regions in general(Colombia/Venezuela/East Coast) for all nations, adding negative modifiers to other regions(Texas, Canada, Patagonia, Siberia, California), as well as giving Europeans more incentive to invade (non-tribal) New World states in pursuit of gold. Additionally, I'd also recommend increasing the failure rate of colonies/increasing the time it takes to establish a colonial foothold. Or maybe even differentiating between a true settlement and a colonial claim; for example, Spain's control of the Antilles, or California, or France's control of the Louisiana Purchase. It's actually times like this that makes me bemoan the lack of a primitive population system in the EU series, because it makes the diffusion of migrants and ultimately, a population base, difficult to model; for example, French Louisiana would be a monster colony ingame because all provinces are created equal pop-wise, and so they're strictly relegated to being worth their base tax/production/trade values. By all rights, French North America should have beat the ever loving stuffing out of British North America in the French and Indian War. But it was the (much) greater population of British North America and the lack of in French North America that all but doomed French ambitions on the continent even had they won the war.
For an alternate-history example, if anyone is a frequenter of alternatehistory.com, a timeline recently popped up called 'Portuguese Southern Africa' that analyzes the result of Portugal(historically the biggest emigration state in Europe) settling the Cape Colony early on and allowing for the natural growth of frontier populations to take its course over several hundred years. To make a long story short, Portuguese Southern Africa became the manpower pool and economic linchpin of the Portuguese Empire due to its incredible rate of population growth combined with Portugal's historically great emigration rates, as well as the discovery of gold(something that historically ushered great population movements, for example, the settling of California in the 1800s beyond a few military bases and small towns, and yet is something that cannot be modeled in EU4).
This post has become a bit of a hydra, trying to tackle two issues at once, the latter of which I don't really expect to be addressed at all(as sad as it is). But seeing a bit more sense in colonization patterns would be (strongly) appreciated. Even without population models, I believe EU4 can ultimately succeed in depicting a better colonization system.