AI colonizing without tech???

[Puffin]

How is it possible the AI can colonize without tech? Denmark started to colonize while they don't have any exploration or expansion idea!

[grotaclas]

The AI has the same options as the player. Denmark for example can get a temporary colonist from the mission Colonial Ambitions[eu4.paradoxwikis.com]

[Malvastor]

Originally posted by Puffin:

How is it possible the AI can colonize without tech? Denmark started to colonize while they don't have any exploration or expansion idea!

Several tags get non-idea group colonists from missions or something similar.

[cayenne_spicy]

It's also possible for one country to conquer another country's colony via war, thereby obtaining an in-progress colony they didn't themselves initially colonize. They don't get the ceding country's colonist, though, so unless they do have their own colonist they can assign to the ceded colony, it'll grow very slowly.

It'd be a weird fringe case, but, you can also get a colonist from a parliament outcome, though I think that can only come up in parliament if you already possess a colonist. However, hypothetically, if you had Exploration Ideas and got that debate issue in parliament, and obtained the additional colonist from parliament, you wouldn't lose that additional colonist if you then changed the Exploration Idea group to something else... it's not at all likely that an AI would jump through that specific set of hoops, but it is at least a possible case of an AI having an active colonist working on a colony when they don't have any Ideas which grant a colonist and have no mission or event related reason why they should have a colonist outside of Ideas.

[RCMidas]

Does the AI even remove idea groups? I don't think it does.

[Mason]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Does the AI even remove idea groups? I don't think it does.

They do not.

[Puffin]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

The AI has the same options as the player. Denmark for example can get a temporary colonist from the mission Colonial Ambitions[eu4.paradoxwikis.com]

What about the colonial range???

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Puffin:

Originally posted by grotaclas:

The AI has the same options as the player. Denmark for example can get a temporary colonist from the mission Colonial Ambitions[eu4.paradoxwikis.com]

What about the colonial range???

What about it? You get plenty of colonial range from dip tech, so you don't need exploration ideas for that.

Or do you mean that they get more colonial range? The 25% bonus to colonial range was removed from the AI modifiers in version 1.8 and I found no evidence that they still get any bonus when I checked it in version 1.36.2

[Puffin]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by Puffin:

What about the colonial range???

What about it? You get plenty of colonial range from dip tech, so you don't need exploration ideas for that.

Or do you mean that they get more colonial range? The 25% bonus to colonial range was removed from the AI modifiers in version 1.8 and I found no evidence that they still get any bonus when I checked it in version 1.36.2

It is just ridiculous that Denmark is colonzing like Portugal without even getting the ideas... like where is the balance?

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Puffin:

Originally posted by grotaclas:

What about it? You get plenty of colonial range from dip tech, so you don't need exploration ideas for that.

Or do you mean that they get more colonial range? The 25% bonus to colonial range was removed from the AI modifiers in version 1.8 and I found no evidence that they still get any bonus when I checked it in version 1.36.2

It is just ridiculous that Denmark is colonzing like Portugal without even getting the ideas... like where is the balance?

I don't understand what you are complaining about. Maybe it helps if you show concrete examples with screenshots and save games and explain what exactly you think is wrong there.

In general I would say that the game would be more balanced if two countries can colonize equally well. But the game does not really try to be balanced anyway and Portugal gets plenty of bonuses to colonization which allows them to be much better than Denmark(if everything else is equal).

[Marquoz]

Right. The EU series is not about balance. EU games are about trying to succeed with massively unbalanced starting nations. Want an easy campaign? Pick a strong one. Want a challenge? Pick a weak one. Balance isn't the goal, and it never has been.

[Puffin]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Right. The EU series is not about balance. EU games are about trying to succeed with massively unbalanced starting nations. Want an easy campaign? Pick a strong one. Want a challenge? Pick a weak one. Balance isn't the goal, and it never has been.

I think I used the wrong word, but you can see I exactly complain about that because Denmark can colonize so well without taking the idea, it basically makes the exploration ridiculous, so I wanted to say something like the ideas vs no idea ability are not balanced well, like without the colonization ideas I think the nations should not really get such chance to colonize so easily as Denmark does in my game without taking any expo or expansion idea.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Puffin:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Right. The EU series is not about balance. EU games are about trying to succeed with massively unbalanced starting nations. Want an easy campaign? Pick a strong one. Want a challenge? Pick a weak one. Balance isn't the goal, and it never has been.

I think I used the wrong word, but you can see I exactly complain about that because Denmark can colonize so well without taking the idea, it basically makes the exploration ridiculous

The purpose of the Exploration idea group is to get a jump start on everyone else. Diplo tech will give you colonial range and buff your settlers all by itself--but slowly. Knowledge of provinces revealed by other nations' explorations will spread to you as well--but again, that takes time. Even if your national ideas or missions give you a colonist, you'll be way behind nations that take Exploration as their first idea group. Taking Exploration late is a bad choice. It's an "early or not at all" group. Many players ditch it after they've explored as much of the world as they care about and replace it with something more useful.

I don't see this as an issue.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Puffin:

I think I used the wrong word, but you can see I exactly complain about that because Denmark can colonize so well without taking the idea, it basically makes the exploration ridiculous, so I wanted to say something like the ideas vs no idea ability are not balanced well, like without the colonization ideas I think the nations should not really get such chance to colonize so easily as Denmark does in my game without taking any expo or expansion idea.

We don't know what happened in your specific save, but it sounds like it was pretty unusual. In my experience, the danish AI occasionally colonizes, but I have never seen them form a big colonial empire like Portugal and Castile/Spain do regularly and France and England/GB do often. The danish mission modifiers are by no means a replacement for taking exploration and expansion ideas. Their two colonists only last 50 and 75 years and their other bonuses don't match the bonuses which you get from exploration or expansion ideas. I think it is only natural that the developers gave Denmark a few colonization options in their mission, because they did some colonization historically. But they get much smaller bonuses than the major colonizers. Some other countries which did colonize historically also have the option to colonize without taking exploration or expansion ideas(e.g. norway).

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by Puffin:

I think I used the wrong word, but you can see I exactly complain about that because Denmark can colonize so well without taking the idea, it basically makes the exploration ridiculous, so I wanted to say something like the ideas vs no idea ability are not balanced well, like without the colonization ideas I think the nations should not really get such chance to colonize so easily as Denmark does in my game without taking any expo or expansion idea.

We don't know what happened in your specific save, but it sounds like it was pretty unusual. In my experience, the danish AI occasionally colonizes, but I have never seen them form a big colonial empire like Portugal and Castile/Spain do regularly and France and England/GB do often. The danish mission modifiers are by no means a replacement for taking exploration and expansion ideas.

Yup. In my campaigns, Denmark often creates a small colonial nation in Canada. It also likes to colonize the Ivory Coast. But in 7000 hours of play, it's never come close to equaling the kinds of colonial empires that Portugal, Spain, France, and England build.

[estebancastellino]

Norway starts colonizing pretty soon since it gets a colonizer from national ideas and when annexed by Denmark, colonies become danish. Check if the culture in the colony is norwegian. Note that culture in ongoing colonization process may switch to danish.