Explorers? Conquistadors?

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Okaaaaaayyyy....Kind of a stupid question, but how the heck do you get explorers and conquistadors? Do you build them, do they just show up, or what?
The manual in EU is simultaneously one of the best and worst I've ever read. It has loads of great historical info, it just doesn't say much on how to actually PLAY the game.

 

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There are historical conquistadors and explorers that you get at the appropriate time, depending upon what country you play. You have absolutely no control over this.

There are also occasional random events, which result you get getting a conquistador or explorer who didn't actually exist for real.

Whenever you get a new leader, you'll get them on January 1st, and a bugle will blow. Pause the game instantly and look carefully at any new leaders.

Many of the historical leaders have very short lifespans, so you want to get them moving immediately. For instance, the English get an explorer early on, and he only lives long enough to get across the ocean and take a pass or two down the eastern seaboard.

Conquistadors are not very hard to use. You load them up with troops and run them around. They take attrition, but not as much as a normal unit. Once again, be efficient, because they tend to die off.

Explorers are extremely difficult to use at the beginning of the game, since ship attrition is extraordinarily high. It will take you many ships to get across the Atlantic, and you may not be able to make it back across.

When playing England, you'll be lucky if you find one spot for a colony with your first explorer, and another few with the next one.

This will frustrate you a lot. It happens to everyone.

Later in the game, a primary use for conquistadors is as a means of increasing colonization chance. Having a conquistador in a province markedly increases the chance of a successful colonization.

bruce

 

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If you're playing Russia in the GC, you'll get two or three around 1560 and a couple more in the last decade or so of the century. With this in mind (an a priori cheat, I know) I generally stretch out my conquests of the Khanates and Sibur so they conclude around 1550 or so. This keeps the BB down, and allows me to redeploy most of my forces westward to deal with the Poles, Swedes, Crimeans, Georgians, Persians, Turks, etc., while building some attrition-fodder in eastern Sibur for the soon-to-arrive conquistadors.

Regards,
Maturin

 

[Xanadu]

Originally posted by Maturin
If you're playing Russia in the GC, you'll get two or three around 1560 and a couple more in the last decade or so of the century. With this in mind (an a priori cheat, I know) I generally stretch out my conquests of the Khanates and Sibur so they conclude around 1550 or so. This keeps the BB down, and allows me to redeploy most of my forces westward to deal with the Poles, Swedes, Crimeans, Georgians, Persians, Turks, etc., while building some attrition-fodder in eastern Sibur for the soon-to-arrive conquistadors.

Regards,
Maturin

Hail Maturin,

I restarted last night a Russian GC , and you nailed my strategy so far right on the head. For me it's 1565 I think Hertman (the conquistidor) or something like that finally found China.I took out Kazan,Golden Hoarde,parts of Astarahn (sp?..I never get it right),and Sibir.I have 2 more conquistidors sitting in the Siberian Corridor helping out my colonizing chances.I took Inglemamd from the Teutonic Order right off the get go in Jan. 1492 to start getting colonists. each year after I was getting maxing out at 6 I would send a colonist to Far Karelia , and Kola , and that other weird spelling one waiting until I conquered my way to Sibir.

 

[Frederick]

As Turkey you get an explorer around 1565 and a conquistador in 1575. They will be around for 30 years, but once they're gone, that's it unless you get one by a random event. Of course, if you want to play a minor country, you can always use the leader editor and add your own, or just use the cheat menu: "event 58" = explorer "event 59" = conquistador.

I have been advocating that a future patch/ EU2 allow countries to purchase explorers and conquistadors. This would represent a government effort to undertake colonialism where the local lords or trade companies would not finance such enterprises as was done in Spain, Portugal, France, England, and Holland.

 

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Originally posted by Frederick

I have been advocating that a future patch/ EU2 allow countries to purchase explorers and conquistadors. This would represent a government effort to undertake colonialism where the local lords or trade companies would not finance such enterprises as was done in Spain, Portugal, France, England, and Holland.

Not a bad idea at all. Even better would be to make some of the 'historical' explorers and conquistadors open for hire. They could offer themselves in turn to several countries and the first to pay for them gets them. The countries they offer to could be based first on their historical setting, then on who is actually doing exploration at the time in the game.
In reality a lot of the historical explorers/conquistadors were not citizens or natives of the country they ended up working for. Most notorious examples, of course, are the Genoese Christofor Columbo working for Spain, the Cabots father and son who were Italians working for England, or Bering the Dane exploring for Russia.
This option would allow a country that falls into a non-historical path, like Poland or Austria developing a colonial empire, to get some explorers by hire. Otherwise, as now, you are more or less forced into something of a set historical path: Russia cannot usually do anything in Siberia before 1560, England cannot really push colonization before the mid to late 1500s even if their economy is booming at home and they are at peace with Europe! Because it will send the game into perhaps radically unhistorical paths, it should probably be an Option to be turned on or off at the player(s) discretion.