I've been thinking about one of my favorite sandboxes, namely the new world. It's mostly a blank slate if we ignore the SOPs and can be colonized in a myriad of ways.
What I'm wondering about, is stuff like: will it be fun to play as the thirteen colonies? What will I have to do if I'm not constantly warring? What are my opportunities? This will largely be a thought experiment from the perspective of the thirteen colonies, as a colonial nation of a powerful England. I know I'm not hitting concerns of say Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru or other regions, but that would take too long, I'm not as knowledgeable on them, and my interest is less for those regions than my home nation.
This isn't meant to be a super evocative thread or incisive critique of the game loop, I'm mostly just bored and trying to imagine what the gameplay will be like.
I foresee a number of challenges, and several opportunities.
Challenge 1: Population. I assume that a colonial nation will be able to have migrants come from their parent nation. Will this happen automatically or is it something that needs to be initiated by either party? Do colonial nations get the ability to secure migrants from other nations? As pops are power, being able to hit the point where I can start growing my own population, I hope colonial nations can get the invite settlers option or something similar that Greenland and Iceland get as a unique advance. Once sufficient food is secured, then obviously a starting population should be able to self sustain and grow, especially as more land is settled.
Challenge 2: Colonization. I'm not very sure how fast colonization is, nor some of the specifics. I believe it's faster and cheaper based on distance, and if you have explorers, at least to explore the land. I think over land you can just have armies do it, but I'm not sure on that fact. The cost factor concerns me, but I'll set that one aside for now as I think I can address it with one of the opportunities. I really hope colonization isn't glacially slow, but I also hope it's not so fast that North America is full by 1600. I'm also a little concerned about integration speed with newly annexed colonial regions, say Pennsylvania, or Ohio.
Challenge 3: Goods. At the start of colonization, nearly all goods I think will have to be imported from Europe or whichever region is closest and settled. You may be able to import from Mexico and the Andes, I'm not sure on the cost, and availability of goods. Many goods will be expensive to import from say England, and so the player will be incentivized to start producing their own materials like wood, stone, iron, et cetera. Obviously, you're likely not to be the only colonizer, so other colonial nations will likely start cropping up, providing both challenge and market opportunity. Having looked at the dev diary, I really, really hope what we see on raw goods isn't all we have access to in game. There's game, fur, wheat, fish, clay, stone, tobacco etc. But there's like 2 iron in all of the Appalachian mountains, and no where else. If this is all north America has to offer then I think playing here will suck, as I assume iron is likely expensive as hell to import, same with many other goods.
I really, really hope there's some sort of Colombian exchange, and prospecting mechanics. The USA has way more mineral wealth than the dd on north America Implies, and introducing goods like potatoes, rice, tea, sugar cans, and other more valuable crops would do wonders for the concerns of the region. If we can somehow dig new mines to find different RGOs, then I'll be much happier. If you read this pdx, please please please let new world mines appear, or at least toss us a bone and more metal RGOs.
Challenge 4: Natives. If I understand the culture mechanics, the similarity of a culture to one's own reduces the cost to accept or tolerate the culture, and so if one is an Asian or European culture, then accepting the haudenosaunee culture would be very expensive. This makes me think one should either ignore the natives when possible, vassalize them, conquer and release as your religion (if possible?), or conquer and just deal with the rebels. I think Alternatively, one could use a cabinet member to encourage emigration or whatever term they use, which I think will either send them to other nations, or at least spread them out to make them less of an issue in your country. I think ideally I like the vassal state from a role play perspective, as it gives these first nations people's at least some autonomy. I checked the north America dev diary, and wow nearly all of the land east of the Mississippi River is a society of pops, or the one settled haudensaunee tag. This may be more of an issue than I first thought. I hope it doesn't meant constant rebellion, and I can't very well release all the natives as their own nations or I'd own nothing personally.
Challenge 5: Taxes. I assume, as the point of a colonial nation is to produce goods, as well as pay taxes to the overlord, that these will be a pain to deal with. Any tax on the colonial nation is an outflow of capital that could otherwise be invested in the colony itself. Ideally, after one has sufficient population and an established market they can declare independence and realistically win against their overlord. If the Ai can ship 50k troops across the Atlantic in 1650-1750 I'm going to be more than a little miffed. Really no one should be able to ship large armies over seas without massive attrition or exorbitant supply costs. I really hope the colonial nation can conduct some amount of diplomacy, in order to get a rival of your colonial parent to help free you like France did for the USA.
Challenge 6: Control. Oh boy, essentially no starting roads, and somewhat limited riverrine systems in the east, I think control is going to be terrible for new England or Canada. I know there are some rivers to the north, and ideally we can use canals to approximate the eerie canal to propagate control and market access from the gulf of Saint Lawrence into the great lakes. If we can, then we're cooking. But I think the most promising source of control in North America is the Mississippi river. I don't think we have a ton of information on rivers and control/market access, but I saw Johan posting that Hungary was able to use their southern River (I don't think it was the Danube, but I forget sorry) to great effect in this regard. I don't recall off the top of my head, but I think the eastern seaboard has some good harbors. One thing I'm mildly confused by is that Montreal seemingly has no good harbor modifier? My plans for control really depend on how the road systems work VS how good rivers are. I would think normally that new York city is probably the best capital, at least early on as a short river trip north, or a road nw across the hills gets you to eerie, which is a good quality harbor interestingly. I think sprinting to get control of the great lakes will be critical in terms of effective control, beyond the flat lands on the coast. The Appalachian hills and mountains pose a serious quandary on control. Mid game, I'd think we use coastal control propagation to go from new York to New Orleans, and travel up the Mississippi river to get control deeper inland across the massive Mississippi drainage area. This part is speculation, but I seriously hope that the Mississippi is as powerful in game as it was in real life for shipping. If we can get good control to new Orleans and Erie, then we have a huge heartland of flat land to exploit for out nation. As an aside, I seriously hope the barrier islands are represented in some way, as thet make transport and movement along the Atlantic seaboard much safer than it otherwise would be.
One other thought regarding control, is to release subjects from areas in poor control, so that they will have their own good control and you should be able to still build there and extract value from subject taxes.
Challenge 7: Money. Starting out, you're not going to be rich as a colonial nation, and I assume your colonial parent probably won't invest much in you. Combine this with the taxes and assumed tarrifs on foreign goods you need to pay, and you're not looking very wealthy. Money drives a lot in this game, no money means no buildings, no buildings means no manufacturing, no armies, et cetera. I hope the US can exploit its large woodland and forest regions to export products like ash, as that was a prominent export from the USA historically, and required little other than fire and lots of timber. If not this, then I hope that there are other goods that we can export profitably in order to enrich our nation to the point of self sufficiency. My last idea is somehow to raise and army and invade the mesoamericans to get war reparations, or in a more silly idea, establish your own colonial nation on the meso Americans. Is this possible? I have no idea, I hope it is, as it's not in eu4 at all for several reason which makes me sad. Does it make a lot of sense? Nah, but it would be cool to be like a federal government ruling over a bunch of states.
Challenge 8: Market access. I touched on this briefly when I discussed rivers, but I worry that unless rivers are effective for market access, then most of the US past the Appalachian mountains will be really poor in terms of market access. Which I think has all sorts of knock down effects, not to mention getting rgo goods in and out of these areas will be very expensive and not worth it. If rivers and coast are effective, then we're in business again.
With that all said, here are some things I think are opportunities to exploit in this area.
Challenge 9: Fun. As much as I love the idea of national gardening and development, I worry that this kind of gameplay may end up being less interesting than a nation focused on conquest and competing with established nations like say Italy is. I really hope there's enough to do to make this kind of game fun. If it's not early on, I probably will end up playing Britain and colonizing the Americas and pouring a serious amount of national resources and manpower into developing the colonies, which would also let me control the tax level and really baby the colonial nation until it's strong enough to tag over to.
Opportunity 1: RGOs. Yeah, they're not glamorous, but we do have access to cotton and tobacco, which I assume will form a reasonably export source early, and later one will be able to process those into more expensive goods, keeping jobs domestically, and shipping the goods cheaper. (I assume cloth is cheaper than cotton to transport). Lumber can likely be manufactured up into furniture and naval supplies, tobacco assumedly can be turned into cigars or similar and so forth. If one controls most or all of the USA, then this is an unprecented amount of raw materials to access. These RGOs will then let you export massive amounts of goods to not only the surrounding areas, but later even more lucrative markets like Europe, and the middle east. I'm ignoring Asia for now as I have no idea how quickly one will be able to get there, and I assume sailing around south America or africa is ruinously expensive for trade.
Opportunity 2: manufacturing. If one starts colonizing first, and gets a head start on producing finished goods, then I assume that any manufactured goods will be substantially cheaper for say Canadians, Carribeans(unsure on what term to use here), or Mexicans to import than it would be to import from Europe. This will not only enrich you, but also enrich your neighbors, this would have a reciprocal effect as more wealthy neighbors means more consumption, and increased exports from their nations, win win.
Opportunity 3: Trade. I'll be honest, I have a very shaky idea on how trade works, but I'm going to assume that having a large coastline and good harbors means the US region poses a seriously powerful base to make a trading empire. You stand at the crossroads of multiple large and underutilized markets, and if you can be the one to make those trades, connecting Mexico to Britain, then you're liable to be make scrooge mcducat levels of money from trade. If you can do that between east Asia and Europe, then I think you're approaching mansa Musa levels of wealth potential.
Opportunity 4: maritime hegemony. The USA as stated before, has a very large coastline, and many decent harbors. I think this combined with the natural timber supply means the USA is suited to becoming a naval powerhouse, which would be doubly useful for defense and power projection. So far we've seen that navies seem to be far more potent in eu5 than they are in eu4, and if one can dominate an enemy navally then you can really force them to the table and ruin their trade through blockades. I see naval superiority as a viable means of securing independence if one is patient.
Opportunity 5: population. I know I said population is a challenge, but such a massive landmass should mean a large carrying capacity for the nation, which in the mid to late game should mean you can rival even the great powers of Europe once you get the population engine going. If you can expand even beyond the natural bounds of the USA, securing all of the great lakes, and the large carribean islands, then you're really looking at a potential power house. If one is able to colonize north America in say 1500 in earnest, then I think by end game you could be a massive nation.
Side thoughts: I really hope that American culture and other colonial cultures can form, it'd feel strange to have English people in an independent USA great power in 1830, or Spanish in Mexico or what have you. I'm curious how colonial nations interact with the unify culture group mechanic, as I posted in another thread that all we've seen so far suggests the presence of a colonial nation of your culture would stop you from unifying your culture. Vice versa, it'd be a shame if a dominant north American colonial nation couldn't unify the colonial anglic cultures together. My personal hope when playing is to play Britain long enough to unify the British culture group, then form the colonial nation, so at least all the anglic folks would be one culture.
And now I've run out of things to say, so it you have any Interest in this, I'd like to hear your thoughts and concerns, and maybe some feedback on how I am considering the situation. I know I didn't address all the nations directly, but many of these are transferable to other regions like say Argentina. If the thread is hard to read, my apologies, I wrote this all on my phone and so it probably doesn't look great.
What I'm wondering about, is stuff like: will it be fun to play as the thirteen colonies? What will I have to do if I'm not constantly warring? What are my opportunities? This will largely be a thought experiment from the perspective of the thirteen colonies, as a colonial nation of a powerful England. I know I'm not hitting concerns of say Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru or other regions, but that would take too long, I'm not as knowledgeable on them, and my interest is less for those regions than my home nation.
This isn't meant to be a super evocative thread or incisive critique of the game loop, I'm mostly just bored and trying to imagine what the gameplay will be like.
I foresee a number of challenges, and several opportunities.
Challenge 1: Population. I assume that a colonial nation will be able to have migrants come from their parent nation. Will this happen automatically or is it something that needs to be initiated by either party? Do colonial nations get the ability to secure migrants from other nations? As pops are power, being able to hit the point where I can start growing my own population, I hope colonial nations can get the invite settlers option or something similar that Greenland and Iceland get as a unique advance. Once sufficient food is secured, then obviously a starting population should be able to self sustain and grow, especially as more land is settled.
Challenge 2: Colonization. I'm not very sure how fast colonization is, nor some of the specifics. I believe it's faster and cheaper based on distance, and if you have explorers, at least to explore the land. I think over land you can just have armies do it, but I'm not sure on that fact. The cost factor concerns me, but I'll set that one aside for now as I think I can address it with one of the opportunities. I really hope colonization isn't glacially slow, but I also hope it's not so fast that North America is full by 1600. I'm also a little concerned about integration speed with newly annexed colonial regions, say Pennsylvania, or Ohio.
Challenge 3: Goods. At the start of colonization, nearly all goods I think will have to be imported from Europe or whichever region is closest and settled. You may be able to import from Mexico and the Andes, I'm not sure on the cost, and availability of goods. Many goods will be expensive to import from say England, and so the player will be incentivized to start producing their own materials like wood, stone, iron, et cetera. Obviously, you're likely not to be the only colonizer, so other colonial nations will likely start cropping up, providing both challenge and market opportunity. Having looked at the dev diary, I really, really hope what we see on raw goods isn't all we have access to in game. There's game, fur, wheat, fish, clay, stone, tobacco etc. But there's like 2 iron in all of the Appalachian mountains, and no where else. If this is all north America has to offer then I think playing here will suck, as I assume iron is likely expensive as hell to import, same with many other goods.
I really, really hope there's some sort of Colombian exchange, and prospecting mechanics. The USA has way more mineral wealth than the dd on north America Implies, and introducing goods like potatoes, rice, tea, sugar cans, and other more valuable crops would do wonders for the concerns of the region. If we can somehow dig new mines to find different RGOs, then I'll be much happier. If you read this pdx, please please please let new world mines appear, or at least toss us a bone and more metal RGOs.
Challenge 4: Natives. If I understand the culture mechanics, the similarity of a culture to one's own reduces the cost to accept or tolerate the culture, and so if one is an Asian or European culture, then accepting the haudenosaunee culture would be very expensive. This makes me think one should either ignore the natives when possible, vassalize them, conquer and release as your religion (if possible?), or conquer and just deal with the rebels. I think Alternatively, one could use a cabinet member to encourage emigration or whatever term they use, which I think will either send them to other nations, or at least spread them out to make them less of an issue in your country. I think ideally I like the vassal state from a role play perspective, as it gives these first nations people's at least some autonomy. I checked the north America dev diary, and wow nearly all of the land east of the Mississippi River is a society of pops, or the one settled haudensaunee tag. This may be more of an issue than I first thought. I hope it doesn't meant constant rebellion, and I can't very well release all the natives as their own nations or I'd own nothing personally.
Challenge 5: Taxes. I assume, as the point of a colonial nation is to produce goods, as well as pay taxes to the overlord, that these will be a pain to deal with. Any tax on the colonial nation is an outflow of capital that could otherwise be invested in the colony itself. Ideally, after one has sufficient population and an established market they can declare independence and realistically win against their overlord. If the Ai can ship 50k troops across the Atlantic in 1650-1750 I'm going to be more than a little miffed. Really no one should be able to ship large armies over seas without massive attrition or exorbitant supply costs. I really hope the colonial nation can conduct some amount of diplomacy, in order to get a rival of your colonial parent to help free you like France did for the USA.
Challenge 6: Control. Oh boy, essentially no starting roads, and somewhat limited riverrine systems in the east, I think control is going to be terrible for new England or Canada. I know there are some rivers to the north, and ideally we can use canals to approximate the eerie canal to propagate control and market access from the gulf of Saint Lawrence into the great lakes. If we can, then we're cooking. But I think the most promising source of control in North America is the Mississippi river. I don't think we have a ton of information on rivers and control/market access, but I saw Johan posting that Hungary was able to use their southern River (I don't think it was the Danube, but I forget sorry) to great effect in this regard. I don't recall off the top of my head, but I think the eastern seaboard has some good harbors. One thing I'm mildly confused by is that Montreal seemingly has no good harbor modifier? My plans for control really depend on how the road systems work VS how good rivers are. I would think normally that new York city is probably the best capital, at least early on as a short river trip north, or a road nw across the hills gets you to eerie, which is a good quality harbor interestingly. I think sprinting to get control of the great lakes will be critical in terms of effective control, beyond the flat lands on the coast. The Appalachian hills and mountains pose a serious quandary on control. Mid game, I'd think we use coastal control propagation to go from new York to New Orleans, and travel up the Mississippi river to get control deeper inland across the massive Mississippi drainage area. This part is speculation, but I seriously hope that the Mississippi is as powerful in game as it was in real life for shipping. If we can get good control to new Orleans and Erie, then we have a huge heartland of flat land to exploit for out nation. As an aside, I seriously hope the barrier islands are represented in some way, as thet make transport and movement along the Atlantic seaboard much safer than it otherwise would be.
One other thought regarding control, is to release subjects from areas in poor control, so that they will have their own good control and you should be able to still build there and extract value from subject taxes.
Challenge 7: Money. Starting out, you're not going to be rich as a colonial nation, and I assume your colonial parent probably won't invest much in you. Combine this with the taxes and assumed tarrifs on foreign goods you need to pay, and you're not looking very wealthy. Money drives a lot in this game, no money means no buildings, no buildings means no manufacturing, no armies, et cetera. I hope the US can exploit its large woodland and forest regions to export products like ash, as that was a prominent export from the USA historically, and required little other than fire and lots of timber. If not this, then I hope that there are other goods that we can export profitably in order to enrich our nation to the point of self sufficiency. My last idea is somehow to raise and army and invade the mesoamericans to get war reparations, or in a more silly idea, establish your own colonial nation on the meso Americans. Is this possible? I have no idea, I hope it is, as it's not in eu4 at all for several reason which makes me sad. Does it make a lot of sense? Nah, but it would be cool to be like a federal government ruling over a bunch of states.
Challenge 8: Market access. I touched on this briefly when I discussed rivers, but I worry that unless rivers are effective for market access, then most of the US past the Appalachian mountains will be really poor in terms of market access. Which I think has all sorts of knock down effects, not to mention getting rgo goods in and out of these areas will be very expensive and not worth it. If rivers and coast are effective, then we're in business again.
With that all said, here are some things I think are opportunities to exploit in this area.
Challenge 9: Fun. As much as I love the idea of national gardening and development, I worry that this kind of gameplay may end up being less interesting than a nation focused on conquest and competing with established nations like say Italy is. I really hope there's enough to do to make this kind of game fun. If it's not early on, I probably will end up playing Britain and colonizing the Americas and pouring a serious amount of national resources and manpower into developing the colonies, which would also let me control the tax level and really baby the colonial nation until it's strong enough to tag over to.
Opportunity 1: RGOs. Yeah, they're not glamorous, but we do have access to cotton and tobacco, which I assume will form a reasonably export source early, and later one will be able to process those into more expensive goods, keeping jobs domestically, and shipping the goods cheaper. (I assume cloth is cheaper than cotton to transport). Lumber can likely be manufactured up into furniture and naval supplies, tobacco assumedly can be turned into cigars or similar and so forth. If one controls most or all of the USA, then this is an unprecented amount of raw materials to access. These RGOs will then let you export massive amounts of goods to not only the surrounding areas, but later even more lucrative markets like Europe, and the middle east. I'm ignoring Asia for now as I have no idea how quickly one will be able to get there, and I assume sailing around south America or africa is ruinously expensive for trade.
Opportunity 2: manufacturing. If one starts colonizing first, and gets a head start on producing finished goods, then I assume that any manufactured goods will be substantially cheaper for say Canadians, Carribeans(unsure on what term to use here), or Mexicans to import than it would be to import from Europe. This will not only enrich you, but also enrich your neighbors, this would have a reciprocal effect as more wealthy neighbors means more consumption, and increased exports from their nations, win win.
Opportunity 3: Trade. I'll be honest, I have a very shaky idea on how trade works, but I'm going to assume that having a large coastline and good harbors means the US region poses a seriously powerful base to make a trading empire. You stand at the crossroads of multiple large and underutilized markets, and if you can be the one to make those trades, connecting Mexico to Britain, then you're liable to be make scrooge mcducat levels of money from trade. If you can do that between east Asia and Europe, then I think you're approaching mansa Musa levels of wealth potential.
Opportunity 4: maritime hegemony. The USA as stated before, has a very large coastline, and many decent harbors. I think this combined with the natural timber supply means the USA is suited to becoming a naval powerhouse, which would be doubly useful for defense and power projection. So far we've seen that navies seem to be far more potent in eu5 than they are in eu4, and if one can dominate an enemy navally then you can really force them to the table and ruin their trade through blockades. I see naval superiority as a viable means of securing independence if one is patient.
Opportunity 5: population. I know I said population is a challenge, but such a massive landmass should mean a large carrying capacity for the nation, which in the mid to late game should mean you can rival even the great powers of Europe once you get the population engine going. If you can expand even beyond the natural bounds of the USA, securing all of the great lakes, and the large carribean islands, then you're really looking at a potential power house. If one is able to colonize north America in say 1500 in earnest, then I think by end game you could be a massive nation.
Side thoughts: I really hope that American culture and other colonial cultures can form, it'd feel strange to have English people in an independent USA great power in 1830, or Spanish in Mexico or what have you. I'm curious how colonial nations interact with the unify culture group mechanic, as I posted in another thread that all we've seen so far suggests the presence of a colonial nation of your culture would stop you from unifying your culture. Vice versa, it'd be a shame if a dominant north American colonial nation couldn't unify the colonial anglic cultures together. My personal hope when playing is to play Britain long enough to unify the British culture group, then form the colonial nation, so at least all the anglic folks would be one culture.
And now I've run out of things to say, so it you have any Interest in this, I'd like to hear your thoughts and concerns, and maybe some feedback on how I am considering the situation. I know I didn't address all the nations directly, but many of these are transferable to other regions like say Argentina. If the thread is hard to read, my apologies, I wrote this all on my phone and so it probably doesn't look great.
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