Explorers and Conquistadors

[unmerged(2213)]

Greetings fellow rulers. Please accept this letter of introduction from a new participant in the struggle for world domination.
So far I've only played the tutorial and part of the Fantasia scenario and there are a couple of things I'm still not clear about, notably how to get explorers and conquistadors. A search of this forum suggests you can't actually build them but have to wait for them to pop up randomly. Is this true and if so, do all countries get them and how do you know when you've got one? Also, how do you improve a province's suitability for colonisation without an explorer? Will wiping out the natives help, or stationing an army there?
That'll do for starters, I think.

 

[BiB]

Originally posted by Earl Rivers
Greetings fellow rulers. Please accept this letter of introduction from a new participant in the struggle for world domination.
So far I've only played the tutorial and part of the Fantasia scenario and there are a couple of things I'm still not clear about, notably how to get explorers and conquistadors. A search of this forum suggests you can't actually build them but have to wait for them to pop up randomly. Is this true and if so, do all countries get them and how do you know when you've got one? Also, how do you improve a province's suitability for colonisation without an explorer? Will wiping out the natives help, or stationing an army there?
That'll do for starters, I think.

They pop up. The historical ones pop up at the historically correct times for the appropriate country (u won't get many with PLC this way obviously) U also can get the occasional random one. Set the messages on to notify u when u got one.

Wiping out unruly natives and statioining a conquistador there helps.

 

[unmerged(2193)]

Is there anything we can do to influence the game to make them pop out more frequently?

 

[StephenT]

Putting a trading post in the area first gives a 5% bonus to the chance of colonisation. Having an army in the province doesn't help.

However, if you're trying to improve an existing colony, an army is useful. Failed colonisation attempts mean that the local natives rise up and burn your settlement; if you have troops there they'll defend it and at least prevent you losing the rest of your colony there.

The appearance of explorers and conquistadors is hard-wired into the game; it's one of the main methods it uses so that events follow the course of history instead of being a random Civ-type game... your only hope of getting extra explorers as a non-colonial country is by hacking the save files.

Stephen

 

[unmerged(1598)]

Or you can try cheating

 

[BiB]

Or not.