Remove "Colonize the Caribbean" Portuguese Mission

[Buklius]

Eu4 is supposed to be a historical game for the most part. Sure, a lot of times crazy things happen and nations just pop up or become very weak. Yet im sick and tired of seeing Portugal colonize the caribbean in every single of my games. Castile barely even has the chance to have a colonial nation every 50 games in the caribbean, although historically was the primary colonial force there. And you know what's good to have every now and then in ahistorical game? You guessed it. Some history. So take this mission out completely or put it way down in the tree cause it doesen'nt make much sense.

[Corvone]

You're completely right. It's so annoying to se always a portuguese caribbean

[corisai]

Actually it's not because of mission but because of +50 settlers age modifier.

[Malvastor]

There's plenty of missions for things that historically never came close to happening (like Granada/Andalusia reconquering Iberia, or Britanny conquering Northern France, or Navarra conquering/PUing France and colonizing chunks of Canada. I think the bigger issue is that colonization in general happens too early and too fast, and that Portugal especially gets a huge early boost to it that lets them lock out other colonizers before they can get started good.

[Radene]

Originally posted by Kitchen Nightmares Historian:

Eu4 is supposed to be a historical game for the most part.

"Historical" goes out the window the moment you unpause.

But, the reason Portugal can do that is the "Portuguese Colonial Growth" age ability. 50 is huge; especially as an early-game advantage, and with that advantage, they can then also abuse the hell out of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

[Maul]

Ye it never made sense to me how by the time UK and/or France can start colonising. Portugal and a bit behind them Spain has like 2/3rds of the new world colonised.

[hopefor]

well , you are right, but war is the only choice then :D

[Myll]

Originally posted by Radene:

Originally posted by Kitchen Nightmares Historian:

Eu4 is supposed to be a historical game for the most part.

"Historical" goes out the window the moment you unpause.

But, the reason Portugal can do that is the "Portuguese Colonial Growth" age ability. 50 is huge; especially as an early-game advantage, and with that advantage, they can then also abuse the hell out of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Whoever at Paradox came up with that +50 Portuguese Colonial Growth didn't do their history homework, as that's not a historic thing nor does it result in a proper amount of scale and breadth to Portugal's colonization pace/presence in the New World as it currently plays out. That buff should have been nerfed long ago. Portuguese people weren't that much more motivated to leave the home country, than other nations of the time. They simply had an advantageous position in terms of geography that permitted less total travel time. The whole "New World" colonization is broken in EU4 right now, for many other reasons to include Native Americans having cannon-equipped Tall Ships in early 1500s, plus Cavalry (when no horses on continent) and cannon regiments (when no Natives were smelting ore nor did they have an Industrial Revolution) in same 1500s timeframe.

Colonization is just totally botched for the Americas, and PDX hasn't fixed it yet, but the few open provinces that do exist - shouldn't be geared toward predominantly Portugal, as that just makes no sense. I've seen Portugal end up with the Pope's blessing for 4x different colonial regions in some games, if Portugal gets lucky on some CN wars and rapid-expands more than average. Other than Castille in South America, you'd think that Portugal was the only nation sending Colonists to Central and North America, the way some games play out now. West coast of North America is also capable of a lot of weirdness - had one play where Alaska forms an independent nation, as does Mexico, and because they blob all western Americas they end up butting heads Alaska vs Mexico, while a USA doesn't even form in Eastern NA. Heck, you can't even find enough provinces on the East Coast of NA to come up with 13 of them for the "13 Colonies" at this point. Whoever was behind these changes at PDX should have been fired, but the poor design and logic continue unabated, it seems.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

Portugal needs the early-game buff - which for the record only lasts for about 10-30 years, barely enough for them to reach South America - to make up for the fact that they're the only one of the three major colonizers that gets no access to a fourth colonist (Castile/Spain through their National Ideas, England/Great Britain through Parliament). The real issue, besides the North American Space Marines that Tinto added in 1.31, is how poorly designed the Treaty of Tordesillas mechanics are and have been for years.

Historically, the Treaty was literally a longitudinal line drawn through South America, with the stipulation of "Spain gets everything west of this, Portugal gets everything east". Whereas in-game, there's a separate treaty for every colonial region basically saying "you're the first Catholic who got here so you have dibs on everything in this region". I think that something resembling the actual Treaty of Tordesillas should be added in-game via a multi-country event, with a historical option, an ahistorical option where you attempt to renegotiate where the line is drawn or who claims which side of it, and another ahistorical option where you refuse to negotiate altogether. Castile/Spain and Portugal would be weighted towards accepting the historical option when controlled by AI, especially if they are on friendly terms with each other, with a small chance that one or both countries refuse, resulting in substantially lowered opinions, permaclaims or some other CB, and the kind of colonial base race that is currently just the norm. Perhaps there should even be a path where, if Castile/Spain accepts the treaty but Portugal declines, or if Portugal attempts to renegotiate and is refused, they get a CB against the Papal States (given the historical situation where the Pope at the time just happened to be Aragonese). In any case, whatever form of treaty is signed should exclusively affect Spain and Portugal - not only did non-Catholic powers like England and the Netherlands completely ignore this treaty, so too did other Catholic nations such as France. Perhaps there can even be follow-on events later giving the opportunity to extend the longitudinal line to the other side of the globe and renegotiate South American borders, as both happened historically as well.

[Marquoz]

Earlier iterations of EU had a much more historical ToT mechanic that did what you said: it drew a line, penalized Catholics who ignored it, and Protestants didn't care. But...there were thousands of complaints about the ToT being too rigid and deterministic. Literally thousands. And thus we have the system they created for EU4 instead.

[Myll]

Originally posted by Totally Innocent Chatbot:

Portugal needs the early-game buff - which for the record only lasts for about 10-30 years, barely enough for them to reach South America - to make up for the fact that they're the only one of the three major colonizers that gets no access to a fourth colonist (Castile/Spain through their National Ideas, England/Great Britain through Parliament). The real issue, besides the North American Space Marines that Tinto added in 1.31, is how poorly designed the Treaty of Tordesillas mechanics are and have been for years.

Historically, the Treaty was literally a longitudinal line drawn through South America, with the stipulation of "Spain gets everything west of this, Portugal gets everything east". Whereas in-game, there's a separate treaty for every colonial region basically saying "you're the first Catholic who got here so you have dibs on everything in this region". I think that something resembling the actual Treaty of Tordesillas should be added in-game via a multi-country event, with a historical option, an ahistorical option where you attempt to renegotiate where the line is drawn or who claims which side of it, and another ahistorical option where you refuse to negotiate altogether. Castile/Spain and Portugal would be weighted towards accepting the historical option when controlled by AI, especially if they are on friendly terms with each other, with a small chance that one or both countries refuse, resulting in substantially lowered opinions, permaclaims or some other CB, and the kind of colonial base race that is currently just the norm. Perhaps there should even be a path where, if Castile/Spain accepts the treaty but Portugal declines, or if Portugal attempts to renegotiate and is refused, they get a CB against the Papal States (given the historical situation where the Pope at the time just happened to be Aragonese). In any case, whatever form of treaty is signed should exclusively affect Spain and Portugal - not only did non-Catholic powers like England and the Netherlands completely ignore this treaty, so too did other Catholic nations such as France. Perhaps there can even be follow-on events later giving the opportunity to extend the longitudinal line to the other side of the globe and renegotiate South American borders, as both happened historically as well.

My opinion, the Paradox Designers didn't design the ToT correctly in the first place, and it's still not quite right. "A Way" could have been to enable auto-Casus Belli against any nation colonizing after a papal declaration of a "winner" to that Colonial Region, but should not nerf the Settler rate as it does now. If there are Native nations - auto-CB as well against any/all nations within the Colonial region that are not the declared Catholic "winner" nation that gets the Papal declaration. There's many other ways and combo's of buffs and/or nerfs that could be brought to bear, scaled up/down, with timeline/dates involved. ToT expiration or nullification if certain events occur against Catholicism during the Reformation, etc. - basically, more "dynamic" than what we currently have in game. Current system appears too generic and lazily done in the Design of the game.

[bri]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Earlier iterations of EU had a much more historical ToT mechanic that did what you said: it drew a line, penalized Catholics who ignored it, and Protestants didn't care. But...there were thousands of complaints about the ToT being too rigid and deterministic. Literally thousands. And thus we have the system they created for EU4 instead.

While this is true they could have pretty easily updated it with the dynamic events path so that it only triggers when circumstances warrant (which was the biggest complaint about the version in earlier games in the series). If Castile gets neutered and isn't colonizing they have no business being involved for example.

However, that's straying somewhat from the point of the thread which is Portugal definitely shouldn't have a mission to colonize the Caribbean.

Actually it's not because of mission but because of +50 settlers age modifier.

It's 100% because of the mission, without the Caribbean mission the ai would follow their Brazil mission to completion and then choose randomly among the various locales open to them at that point. With the +colonist buff they might get a province or two in the Caribbean before being blocked out by someone else and the ToT but it's unlikely they'd get a full colony going. Instead we constantly see them in the Caribbean because of the mission.

[pbernie1]

The best way to do it is have a time limit. Say 20-30 yrs after TOT is first done for NA and SA when it is first colonized for just Spain and port. During this time Spain and Port should have colonizing buffs and after the expiration of treaty it can be a free for all. It should not be for the entire world.

[Rhodzey]

You should not have to but you can stop Portugal from over colonising as Spain or England or even France by making a beeline straight for a colonist. Set ya focus on Admin points, get a lvl 2 admin adviser, income depending, take the estates buff that gives you +1 point per month and get exploration ideas asap, once you have it, switch all the focus to diplo points, colonise the canary islands? (I forgot the exact name right now) and that gives you access to the new world. As England I beat Spain and Portugal to the new world, I have Colonial Brazil, Colonial Columbia, Colonial Mexico, Thirteen Colonies, Newfoundland, Colonial California, Australia, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Spice Islands etc. Does mean less focus on Europe in wars etc.

But we should not have to do this. Also I agree natives are OTT now, if you play slower, by time you reach America its full of natives with no land left to colonise.

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by Rhodzey:

You should not have to but you can stop Portugal from over colonising as Spain or England or even France by making a beeline straight for a colonist. Set ya focus on Admin points, get a lvl 2 admin adviser, income depending, take the estates buff that gives you +1 point per month and get exploration ideas asap, once you have it, switch all the focus to diplo points, colonise the canary islands? (I forgot the exact name right now) and that gives you access to the new world. As England I beat Spain and Portugal to the new world, I have Colonial Brazil, Colonial Columbia, Colonial Mexico, Thirteen Colonies, Newfoundland, Colonial California, Australia, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Spice Islands etc. Does mean less focus on Europe in wars etc.

But we should not have to do this. Also I agree natives are OTT now, if you play slower, by time you reach America its full of natives with no land left to colonise.

Aren't the Canaries (and Madeira) already owned by Castile and Portugal at game start? Or is that different in 10.31?

[Exarch_Alpha]

North America is a mess and the lack of a hotfix makes me lose even more faith in Pdox than I have already lost. Is it that difficult to fix FFS