Tired of colony sniping.

[argentus]

If there is one thing that regularly pisses me off in this game, it's that countries like France, England, the USA, and even effing RUSSIA can snipe colony states out from under you as long as they have a little sliver that they can squeeze through and then shoot forward.

This is in no small part enabled by the fact that you cannot control in any way which direction your colony expansion goes through or even what to prioritize beyond the institutions you can get (which provide the same bonus, one just gives you more money and creates more tension and the other doesn't) and whether or not malaria affects you.

Even if you limit the number of colonies you make, it still takes *time* time that France, especially once they get the colonial administrator trait (and who knows how that is enabled cause the game refuses to tell you) doesn't need to need and you're left smoking in the wind because the devs wanted to give France and Britain their colonial empires without them having to actually set the historical focus on the AI or the nations having to earn it...

I wish there was more we were allowed to do than just hope that we can cut off sea access soon enough and that they wont be able to go around you faster than you can spread out. Even on one colony and high institution, there's no functional way to compete with France, England, USA or Russia if they infect the region you are in.

[Emygdius]

This I can agree with. I actually don't really understand colonizing at all. Is it just free real estate and you are silly for having no colonial affairs enacted? I thought my economy would be tanking when I started colonies as Cuba, only to find that no, it did virtually nothing at all to my economy which felt... Weird? Wouldn't it cost money to set up a colony and keep it there?

[argentus]

You don't get a lot of taxes from the colony population, (although good luck getting information on how the tax capacity works in game because I have looked and there's little to no tooltips on the matter, you have to hunt for it out of game which right there is a failure of game design) so the incentive with colonial exploitation is that it *does* give you some of that wealth in exchange for the locals being more REEE happy and thus willing ot uprise (which gives you more territory at the cost of everyone looking at you funny for winning like how dare you succeed),

Whereas the other option just has you move people there with no discernible bonus to the speed of your colony and while tension doesn't rise as FAST it still rises fast in its own right and you're left conquering states before you have time to lower your notoriety.

You basically use colonies for the building spaces for the resources and maybe industry if you want to build them there to save on having to have pops migrate to your home turf until you fork over the red tape to incorporate them to get the tax bennies...that's it.

This is one of MANY 'force the player to be as passive as possible' systems that are a major issue in the game, the war system is just one of many.

[curtadamsCA]

Originally posted by Hemigidius:

This I can agree with. I actually don't really understand colonizing at all. Is it just free real estate and you are silly for having no colonial affairs enacted? I thought my economy would be tanking when I started colonies as Cuba, only to find that no, it did virtually nothing at all to my economy which felt... Weird? Wouldn't it cost money to set up a colony and keep it there?

Yeah, colonizing is too easy in the game right now. The Race for Africa starts almost immediately when it really didn't happen until well into the second half of the 19th century. And the US loves to hop into Patagonia which is really lolwut?

[Emygdius]

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

Originally posted by Hemigidius:

This I can agree with. I actually don't really understand colonizing at all. Is it just free real estate and you are silly for having no colonial affairs enacted? I thought my economy would be tanking when I started colonies as Cuba, only to find that no, it did virtually nothing at all to my economy which felt... Weird? Wouldn't it cost money to set up a colony and keep it there?

Yeah, colonizing is too easy in the game right now. The Race for Africa starts almost immediately when it really didn't happen until well into the second half of the 19th century. And the US loves to hop into Patagonia which is really lolwut?

Yeah honestly I have had to stop myself from making my first claims (when I am in the region anyways) for la plata (or whatever its called) and Oceania.... It just feels so weird that there is nothing hindering me from spamming colonies virtually everywhere asap. At least EU4 had colonists and a financial burden involved haha.

[argentus]

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

Originally posted by Hemigidius:

This I can agree with. I actually don't really understand colonizing at all. Is it just free real estate and you are silly for having no colonial affairs enacted? I thought my economy would be tanking when I started colonies as Cuba, only to find that no, it did virtually nothing at all to my economy which felt... Weird? Wouldn't it cost money to set up a colony and keep it there?

Yeah, colonizing is too easy in the game right now. The Race for Africa starts almost immediately when it really didn't happen until well into the second half of the 19th century. And the US loves to hop into Patagonia which is really lolwut?

They don't just snipe patagonia, they will go for so much and it's so ANNOYING when they do because they can just barrel through faster than anyone save france.

It goes down to the hard number factor, colonization is based on population, pure and simple. The more pops you have in incorporated states, the faster you acquire colonial territory. This means that nations like France, Russia and the USA in particular dont even need the first anti malaria tech to just speed through ahead of nations that are trying and have more infractructure in place like Portugal.

Personally...I think it should be a factor of Infrastructure if only because that would mean needing to *invest* in the colonies with malaria having a really strong effect on building speeds and efficiency in the regions it is in until you get cures for it and then you STILL have to build up to get something. This would reflect the real world issue for many projects like the panama canal where malaria made things soo much harder even if they had the numbers to pull it off

[KONDO DEATH SQUAD]

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

Yeah, colonizing is too easy in the game right now. The Race for Africa starts almost immediately when it really didn't happen until well into the second half of the 19th century. And the US loves to hop into Patagonia which is really lolwut?

This. The hoop-jumping in Vic2 was rough, but having it immediately available to only some countries (and having them control unstoppable swathes of colonies) is even worse.

[BadWizard]

Originally posted by Hemigidius:

This I can agree with. I actually don't really understand colonizing at all. Is it just free real estate and you are silly for having no colonial affairs enacted? I thought my economy would be tanking when I started colonies as Cuba, only to find that no, it did virtually nothing at all to my economy which felt... Weird? Wouldn't it cost money to set up a colony and keep it there?

hahahaha ::::insert free realistate meme:::

[curtadamsCA]

Originally posted by argentus:

It goes down to the hard number factor, colonization is based on population, pure and simple. The more pops you have in incorporated states, the faster you acquire colonial territory. This means that nations like France, Russia and the USA in particular dont even need the first anti malaria tech to just speed through ahead of nations that are trying and have more infractructure in place like Portugal.

The game somehow needs to account for whether *anybody* would want to go to a colony, no matter how many live in the country. I think a penalty for overseas colonies would be good. Another idea would be to make overseas colonists come mostly from crowded areas, which would help with the US going all over the planet although it wouldn't keep France out of Africa too early.

[argentus]

It just feels very bare bones and 'more pops = more colony' and NOTHING else factors in aside from malaria and that really annoys me with the clear bias this creates in the game for how well some nations can do.

Like for example, Russia never wanted overseas colonies cause they had effing sibera which was their colonization of a continent and that should be reflected in game with maybe there being core russian territory being incorporated but the vast majority of the reason being in either fractured states like africa reflecting the fact that the most russia did to organize the region for a time was build forts on its southern borders to maintain border integrity, basically they have to do to the east, what the USA needs to do to the west.

Another thing is just how broken the colonizer traits are for rulers, holy crap do they speed them up.

[rickerts]

Originally posted by argentus:

I

Like for example, Russia never wanted overseas colonies

Alaska enters the chatroom

[Paddy]

Originally posted by argentus:

You don't get a lot of taxes from the colony population, (although good luck getting information on how the tax capacity works in game because I have looked and there's little to no tooltips on the matter, you have to hunt for it out of game which right there is a failure of game design) so the incentive with colonial exploitation is that it *does* give you some of that wealth in exchange for the locals being more REEE happy and thus willing ot uprise (which gives you more territory at the cost of everyone looking at you funny for winning like how dare you succeed),

Whereas the other option just has you move people there with no discernible bonus to the speed of your colony and while tension doesn't rise as FAST it still rises fast in its own right and you're left conquering states before you have time to lower your notoriety.

You basically use colonies for the building spaces for the resources and maybe industry if you want to build them there to save on having to have pops migrate to your home turf until you fork over the red tape to incorporate them to get the tax bennies...that's it.

This is one of MANY 'force the player to be as passive as possible' systems that are a major issue in the game, the war system is just one of many.

Surely if you play beyond the games deadline the population will grow in colonies quite significantly to where they provide high amounts of tax

[=(FGR)=Sentinel]

The issue is that colonies start as unincorporated states, which irrc provide zero taxes and generally don't benefit from institutions. What this means is you need to wait for a state to be fully colonized to even have the ability to start earning taxes from it, unless I'm wrong.