Source
r/eu4•
Splorz

Beginners question about colonial nations

I just started playing EU4 this week. My first campaign, I had to give up after hitting inflation levels over 90%. The second campaign, I was a bit more careful, I thought I was doing ok, but then blam: I lose my Caribbean colonies as they form Cuba. I figured I must have done something wrong, I was overextended a bit, but a few years later: blam, I've lost Brazil.

I looked it up in the manual, and it appears to be a feature rather than a punishment. They still list as colonies, but I can't do anything with them, can't build armies, buildings or fleets in the Americas any more, and they don't bring in any money. As far as I can tell so far, all they are good for is forwarding 50% of their non-existent trade to me, and get me involved in a war with Castille.

What are the benefits to the player? How can I make better use of my two colonial nations?

Posted Sep 2, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

111
Jazz-Cigarettes•

You don't get to control their affairs directly, but they provide you half their trade power in the lucrative new world trade market, and they provide you tariffs, which if you raise them high enough are a significant source of income as well.

It's really for the best, because while it may seem like owning the provinces directly is what you want, they're actually almost worthless to you in that form. Because of the distant overseas penalty, they provide you almost no tax and manpower, and are more of a drain than a benefit. Colonial nations remove the tedium of managing them while still allowing you to profit off colonization handsomely.

6
Blackflag421Natural Scientist•

While still allowing them to do dumb things like go to war and become someone else's vassal, while still being your colonial nation. Colonial nations are a mixed bag.

Has anyone experimented with feeding new colonies to a single colonial nation (before they form a separate one) to make 1-2 very large colonial nations? Does this make them any stronger? I wonder cuz even rushing the New World and having 5 colonial nations to the AI's 0, they're useless in war.

3
rowtColonial governor•

If they get too strong they start to like you less

2
Frozen_FusionQuartermaster•

I find it's best to focus on growing one CN fairly big while focusing less on your others. It's easy to take the South American coastline and block any inland colonisation and once that's done, leave it. Only you and your colonies can colonise those lands so focus elsewhere.

I tend to give my largest CN lots of gifts and even subsidies to fund their campaigns of expansion. Only drawback of that is if they declare war on another CN and you get dragged in against their overlords. In my last game as Spain, I had the entire of South America blocked off to other colonisers and held the vast majority of the East USA CN. I just make sure to keep liberty desire below 40% and nothing should kick off in theory.

2
Tyg13Commandant•

Colonial regions are fixed and you can view them as a mapmode ingame. The prerequisite for a colonial nation forming is 5 cored provinces in a specific colonial region. So you couldn't create one incredibly large colonial nation by combining provinces from separate regions.

1
ajsadler•

That's basically how it works. Colonial nations have a lot more autonomy and you can't really give them orders. Just bathe in the income and trade power.

2
jasper2428•

Its worth it for the trade you get to pull from america,

2
Jojo-P•

If you have a significant naval force limit you don't need american colonies to get american trade. Even England will pull to the Western Europe node and the player can steal everything there with ships.

2
probabilityEngine•

They do give you money via tariffs, albeit very little initially. Look at your subjects tab and it well show you how much. You can also raise tariffs there for admin points. Larger CNs can start giving you a nice bonus to income if you keep tariffs in the 40 something percent range.

2
kaaz54•

In the longer run, they will be far more lucrative. The new world will only increase in trade value and they give you 50% of their trade power and it's easy to channel their trade value to your nation. In the long run, trade is where the real money is, while tax and production is the safe bet, but not really the big payout.

They also have an advantage in the fact that they defend themselves against invasions and build their own pretty powerful navies. Earlier, I might have been more reluctant to declare war on nations like Spain or GB, if I had my armies amassed in the old world and would take annoying medium term damage from continued occupation from the other colonial powers with few , simply due to the fact that I can't (or don't) really micromanage over several continents at once. As a colonial nation, they can somewhat hold their own, if you hold your Old World enemy mostly at bay. Don't expect their armies to be any use to you in the old world however, they're notoriously useless at using transports, even a Caribbean based nation.

So if you really want to get something out of your colonial nations, focus on trade national ideas and build light ships. You should basically be doing this anyway.

2
late2partyTheologian•

Some of the announced features included in the upcoming DLC leads me to believe we can expect more commands and control over colonies in the future

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1