I had recently an interesting what-if type of idea and discussed and refined it a bit with FAL on ICQ.
In short, when colonial cities have state religion + culture and grow to, say, 20k population, the GM would between sessions edit them to be European. The obvious downside for this idea is that it forces the use of a mod scenario that is regularily updated. But can the positive consequences overcome the negative ones?
There would be 3 certain effects for all edited colonial cities.
1) More manpower
2) More naval supply limit (if the colonies have ports)
3) Can hire mercenaries (this could be disallowed by house rules, if needed. However it is not necessarily a bad thing)
Since this could get totally out of control for countries that traditionally annex pagan countries, Like Spain in Americas and Portugal in Africa, I think converted pagans should be excluded from the rule, or their populations should be cut to reasonable levels (like 2000 per city) when Europeans take over.
Besides the obvious effects comes the more interesting part, how would this affect the usual strategies of the players? How would it affect the game balance?
Manpower and naval supply. An active Portugal would for example probably try to pump up a few colonial cities instead of colonising large areas, for Portugal has income but lacks manpower and naval supply. Spain likely needs neither unless it is largely naval, and thus might colonize as usually.
Strategical choices. England has the supply limit, but the extra manpower would still be useful for them. How England would change its play depends much on the player. Denmark and Sweden might try to get as much extra manpower as possible, but on the other hand would also benefit of the 'income' way, i.e colonizing as much as possible. Netherlands who usually arrives late to the colonial scene would definitely build up her colonies for they certainly need the extra naval support limit, and can utilize the manpower too.
More space. Also, with at least Portugal obviously colonizing less, there would likely be more open colonial land and non-traditional colonial players would find more room to compete. For example Austria might decide to build a few colonies just to improve income.
Trade effects. In general I think we would see also slightly lessened trade incomes for more colonists would be used for building up existing colonies instead of colonizing new areas, and it would result in having more extremely valuable provinces for colonial war targets, removing pressure from the gold mines and CoTs.
Colony values. Completely new areas might become valuable for colonization. The 'Location' factor for population growth would decrease the value of Africa, East Asia and Central America, but interestingly increase the value of regions like Canada, Australia and Agrentina which have rather good location values.
Mercenaries. Another interesting effects to ponder is the use of mercenaries. For a land-oriented country, this could open a way for defending the colonies (even if expensively). If mercenaries in colonies were allowed, every colonizing country would be likely to build up some locations within larger colonial areas.
Natives. Natives could be a very unbalancing factor and would probably have to be cut a little in the initial scenario. Possibly to levels between 500 and 2500 in overall? Also I think the location factor could be evened out a little bit.
That's the analysis so far. Now some questions to the multiplayers:
- How do you guys feel a scenario like this would work?
- Would it be worth it?
- Should mercenary recruitment be allowed?
- Should natives and locations be 'evened out'?
- Should conquered pagans be excluded or their population reduced?
- Is 20k too high, should it be 6k or 10k or 15k instead?
- Any obvious problems you can think of that are not listed here?
- What would you do as country X?
- Would you be interested in playing a game like this in the Finding Neverland timeslot when that game ends?
In short, when colonial cities have state religion + culture and grow to, say, 20k population, the GM would between sessions edit them to be European. The obvious downside for this idea is that it forces the use of a mod scenario that is regularily updated. But can the positive consequences overcome the negative ones?
There would be 3 certain effects for all edited colonial cities.
1) More manpower
2) More naval supply limit (if the colonies have ports)
3) Can hire mercenaries (this could be disallowed by house rules, if needed. However it is not necessarily a bad thing)
Since this could get totally out of control for countries that traditionally annex pagan countries, Like Spain in Americas and Portugal in Africa, I think converted pagans should be excluded from the rule, or their populations should be cut to reasonable levels (like 2000 per city) when Europeans take over.
Besides the obvious effects comes the more interesting part, how would this affect the usual strategies of the players? How would it affect the game balance?
Manpower and naval supply. An active Portugal would for example probably try to pump up a few colonial cities instead of colonising large areas, for Portugal has income but lacks manpower and naval supply. Spain likely needs neither unless it is largely naval, and thus might colonize as usually.
Strategical choices. England has the supply limit, but the extra manpower would still be useful for them. How England would change its play depends much on the player. Denmark and Sweden might try to get as much extra manpower as possible, but on the other hand would also benefit of the 'income' way, i.e colonizing as much as possible. Netherlands who usually arrives late to the colonial scene would definitely build up her colonies for they certainly need the extra naval support limit, and can utilize the manpower too.
More space. Also, with at least Portugal obviously colonizing less, there would likely be more open colonial land and non-traditional colonial players would find more room to compete. For example Austria might decide to build a few colonies just to improve income.
Trade effects. In general I think we would see also slightly lessened trade incomes for more colonists would be used for building up existing colonies instead of colonizing new areas, and it would result in having more extremely valuable provinces for colonial war targets, removing pressure from the gold mines and CoTs.
Colony values. Completely new areas might become valuable for colonization. The 'Location' factor for population growth would decrease the value of Africa, East Asia and Central America, but interestingly increase the value of regions like Canada, Australia and Agrentina which have rather good location values.
Mercenaries. Another interesting effects to ponder is the use of mercenaries. For a land-oriented country, this could open a way for defending the colonies (even if expensively). If mercenaries in colonies were allowed, every colonizing country would be likely to build up some locations within larger colonial areas.
Natives. Natives could be a very unbalancing factor and would probably have to be cut a little in the initial scenario. Possibly to levels between 500 and 2500 in overall? Also I think the location factor could be evened out a little bit.
That's the analysis so far. Now some questions to the multiplayers:
- How do you guys feel a scenario like this would work?
- Would it be worth it?
- Should mercenary recruitment be allowed?
- Should natives and locations be 'evened out'?
- Should conquered pagans be excluded or their population reduced?
- Is 20k too high, should it be 6k or 10k or 15k instead?
- Any obvious problems you can think of that are not listed here?
- What would you do as country X?
- Would you be interested in playing a game like this in the Finding Neverland timeslot when that game ends?
