Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll be talking a little bit about how colonial nations are evolving with Leviathan.



When a colony nation is formed you can pick what kind of colony this will be. This type of colony can then be upgraded for a cost for the overlord and a change of liberty desire for the subject. You can always change a colony to become another type of colony, but that will increase their liberty desire.

Crown Colony
This type of colony is for areas you want to have most control over, where liberty desire should be lowest.

• global_autonomy = -0.05
• recover_army_morale_speed = 0.02
• embracement_cost = -0.1
• governing_capacity = 100
• global_autonomy = -0.05
• global_colonial_growth = 10

Increase Draft from Colony (+10 Liberty Desire)
+5 Land Forcelimit for Overlord & -5 Land Forcelimit for Subject
Enlarge the Gold Fleet (+10 Liberty Desire)
+20% Treasure Fleet Income for overlord
Increase Religious Control (+10 Liberty Desire)
+1% Missionary Strength & -1 Heathen Tolerance for Subject
Increase Integration (-10 Liberty Desire)
-10 Liberty Desire for Subject & TBD for Overlord



Private Enterprise
This is the colony type you want to have when you want to maximize profits, where you want the colony to providea strong navy and control trade.

• global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
• embracement_cost = -0.1
• merchants = 1
• production_efficiency = 0.05
• global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
• global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.2
• naval_tradition_from_trade = 0.1
• ship_power_propagation = 0.1
• 5% less Tariffs for Overlord

Increase Trade Power Transfer (+10 Liberty Desire)
+2% Trade Power for Overlord, and -10% Trade Power for Subject
Encourage Cash Crops (+10 Liberty Desire)
Increases likelihood of cash-crop goods to appear for subjects new colonies.
Increase Navies from Colony (+10 Liberty Desire)
+5 Naval Forcelimit for Overlord & -5 Naval Forcelimit for Subject
Increase the Gold Tax (+10 Liberty Desire)
Effects TBD

Self-Governing Colony
This is the colony type that will expand and develop fastest, but they will have the highest liberty desire, and the perks you can give them are not beneficial directly to you.

• global_ship_trade_power = 0.2
• embracement_cost = -0.1
• merchants = 1
• production_efficiency = 0.05
• colonists = 1
• development_cost = -0.15
• liberty_desire = 25
• 10% less Tariffs for Overlord

Allow Autonomous Trade (-5 Liberty Desire)
+5% more trade power for subject.
Allow Autonomous Taxing (-5 Liberty Desire)
+5% more tax for subject
Allow Autonomous Militias (-5 Liberty Desire)
+5% more manpower for subject
Allow Autonomous Navy (-5 Liberty Desire)
+10% more Sailors for Subject

There are also different events happening depending on which colonial type your colony is.

We are not just adding new features and polishing them, for 1.31 there is also currently over 500 different older bugs that has been fixed so far, and we have been busy tweaking and improving the interface as well.

Some of the UI improvements include.

- Alert for Inactive Merchants
- Alert for when one of your coasts are being invaded by an army.
- When you view rebels in the stability view, the locations will revolt risk for that rebel will highlight on then map.



Now we are taking a small hiatus from development diaries, until we are back to talk about diplomacy by the end of March.

 

[arosenberger14]

These are solid changes, but IMO the game could greatly benefit from a more total overhaul of colonization, the base mechanics of which are unchanged since EU1. I've had a much longer post about colonization percolating in the back of my head for years now, but I'd love to see even more differentiation between extractive colonies based on conquered native states (i.e. Mexico, Peru), plantation colonies (Caribbean, US South, Indonesia), trading colonies (Quebec and early New England), and settler colonies (which should be gated behind tech). Instead of colonizing provinces one by one, colonists should be sent to a region like a merchant to build up or support one of these types of colonies, reducing the ability of early colonizers to cut everyone off by snaking along the coasts. Colonial nations were a good addition to the game, but I think they should be used a bit more sparingly and only crop up when you've conquered large native states or started making settler colonies.

I'd also like to see some changes to reflect the reality of just how damaging European contact was to the natives; being near colonizers should trigger a disaster for native states that decimates their development and spikes unrest, and the Euros should have a chance to send a Cortez to join in a civil war for their own ends. Playing a native American state should be like playing Byzantium; a very tough challenge for the more masochistic players. Extractive colonies should also suffer from periodic development crashes and higher instability as a price for their greater profitability and to simulate the historically damaging conditions of the Spanish corvee labor system and plantation agriculture.

 

[Thorum]

Would it be possible to, instead of taking 2 week break, give two of the people who did the bugfixes like an hour each to give a short overview of the most important bugs they solved (or 4 of them, depending on how much there is to write about) ?

EDIT : seeing the responses under last weeks dev diary, maybe keep them anonymous

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

Do Colonial nations still automatically form, or is it something we can optionally do?

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

This is nice but will my colonial subject notify me/ask me to join when it's losing a war I didn't even know it started

Nooooo, how am i supposed to troll my (allied) friends by starting colonial wars between my colony and theirs while he is distracted and slowly but steadily stealing all his colonial land without them realising what is going on?

 

[Greene]

Will revolution finally spread now to your African/Asian lands (which yes, do count for max zeal)?

 

[BoomKidneyShot]

What about colonies expanding into different colonial regions turning into that region's particular colony?

This way you can avoid a Caribbean CN in the US and vice versa or a Mexico CN in Peru.

Does that make sense though? A lot of tension came about from the Thirteen Colonies being restricted in where they could colonize. Letting them do it, but simply handing over that land to British Louisiana or Canada doesn't make sense.

 

[Willem IV]

Does a Crown Colony expand on it's own or not?

 

[hillr005]

I hope that more of the north American trade can be steered into the Sevilla node with the new patch. Chesapeake Bay almost always just goes to the English Channel. It would encourage a more competitive colonial game rather.

 

[TheHeroz]

Will there be an option to make colonys culture convert again?

 

[Zhetone]

can we also see the americas not fully colonized by 1600 now? considering most countries were much later to the colonial game than spain, but if you wait in eu4 there's basically nothing left

 

[IndigoRage]

I quite like this, but it would be even better yet if the player could define the borders of a colony manually, be that by colonial region or by individually drawing out which provinces can be taken for a cost of liberty desire. (No extending past the appalachians, anyone?)

I understand why you wouldn't necessarily want that from a dev perspective as @Evie HJ explained it to me. Still.

Perhaps I can just do this in a different way by picking and choosing what kind of colony I want them to be at any given time to adjust their rate of expansion. Though, as @Bandua_of_Gallaecia said, the increased colonization rate of some of these options only compounds the problem.

Also the whole world gets colonized extremely quickly in EU4 relative to what it did IRL. Everything is often gone by the mid-1600s when it wasn't all down until very late, and even well into the 1800s.

And this doesn't really address some fundamental problems as @arosenberger14 said (I suspect that will have to be an EU5), but I still think it's great to give something that felt like it was missing here.

 

[Dojo704]

I would love to culture convert my colonies! And for the love of bordergore jesus please give me an option to stop my colonies grom expanding in other colonial regions. Thats all, ty for those changes mentioned so far

 

[kaide]

hoping they make it possible to tell your cns to not expand outside the cn region

 

[PrussicAcid]

Good stuff!

About the colonisation speed, we need something very simple:
- A positive colonial growth modifier for coastal provinces
- A negative colonial growth modifier for inland provinces

 

[Sulphuric_Glue]

Are we finally going to get colonial nations being restricted to only colonising/conquering in their colonial region?

 

[Ivashanko]

These are solid changes, but IMO the game could greatly benefit from a more total overhaul of colonization, the base mechanics of which are unchanged since EU1. I've had a much longer post about colonization percolating in the back of my head for years now, but I'd love to see even more differentiation between extractive colonies based on conquered native states (i.e. Mexico, Peru), plantation colonies (Caribbean, US South, Indonesia), trading colonies (Quebec and early New England), and settler colonies (which should be gated behind tech). Instead of colonizing provinces one by one, colonists should be sent to a region like a merchant to build up or support one of these types of colonies, reducing the ability of early colonizers to cut everyone off by snaking along the coasts. Colonial nations were a good addition to the game, but I think they should be used a bit more sparingly and only crop up when you've conquered large native states or started making settler colonies.

I'd also like to see some changes to reflect the reality of just how damaging European contact was to the natives; being near colonizers should trigger a disaster for native states that decimates their development and spikes unrest, and the Euros should have a chance to send a Cortez to join in a civil war for their own ends. Playing a native American state should be like playing Byzantium; a very tough challenge for the more masochistic players. Extractive colonies should also suffer from periodic development crashes and higher instability as a price for their greater profitability and to simulate the historically damaging conditions of the Spanish corvee labor system and plantation agriculture.

I love most of these ideas. Colonisation is a mechanic that has needed reworking since at least the release of EU3, and probably before. Hopefully EU5 really changes things up.

 

[RuneCarver2000]

Will there be a change in Colonial Ideas for this? At present, Colonies get to completely disregard tolerance penalties, so giving them less Tolerance doesn't really do anything.

That is true, but catholic nations get papal influence by converting.

 

[kuvetelxo]

I still hope for a mission for the post-colonial states. (USA, Texas, Brasil)

 

[Alyosha]

While it’s nice to have some “immersion” for CNs, the bigger question will be, “Will CNs be made worthwhile?” As it stands CNs are definitively less useful than Trade Company land. Yes, they give a merchant after ten provinces and yes, Treasure Fleets are nice. Other than those two pieces they are inherently worse than Trade Company land, over which the player has more control.

Did I miss something on tariffs? Are they being de-nerfed? Because if not these changes are nothing more than mildly useful. I’m surprised at the joy expressed here - do these posters use CNs as part of a strategy? Otherwise I’d say focus on the cosmetics and give us a way to maintain proper borders, since CNs as they stand are primarily a cosmetic exercise.

 

[simanthegratest]

Very exxited about the new dlc