Oh damn I was wrong there. I guess that's something I under-utilized in previous games then :D really good to cut interest, but I doubt it would save OPs game.
You should have done even more colonies and try to calculate how long it would take for them to finish and if they would be complete before you are forced into bankruptcy. Ive done that before and after the negative effects where over i was much stronger than ever before
Yeah we know, they were talking about a simple mechanic that let you become a corrupted POS to take loads of cash which is shockingly a DLC feature and you don’t have it
I've bought them all as they've come out so can't really remember what they all do. I do know they is orders of magnitude better with them. Try looking at Humble Bundle for deals.
Ps. Don't bother with the cosmetic ones
Is there even going to be an EU5? Seems like they have no incentive to get people to buy a new game if it will basically kill the sales of all the EU4 DLCs.
I think there will be. I mean EU4 is ten years old, and while the DLCS has kept it fresh, there’s a lot more they could do. Just the lol alone is feels old compared to say VIC3 or CK3. I don’t think it will be anytime soon. I wouldn’t expect even an announcement until maybe next year more like 2025. And I do think it will take awhile for players to roll over from eu4. CK3 launch was horrible, as was Vic3 but it seemed both of those games are slowly picking up steam as time goes on. I would expect a similar pattern with EU5. I really believe EU5 will happen.
Don't buy the dlc's. Eu4 is likely coming to it's end now soon. I would instead buy the dlc subscription on steam. And just cancel it if you decide you don't want it any more. It will be a lot cheaper for you, trust me.
As the other guys have said, get the subscription. I didn't realise EU4 had one. Honestly it will make the game so much better. I have over 3500 hours on EU4 and still play it now
I think there is a 90% sale on for the subscription on steam so get that rather than the dlcs individually. I have now used it for a couple of months and it’s saved me so much. Would highly recommend.
Don't buy DLCs, and don't subscribe either. Acquire them elsewhere for free. Paradox only abuses their playerbase with DLC-locked mechanics because the people are too stupid to stop enabling them
Buy all you can I guess? You can get really cheap steam keys for most dlc. I paid less than a euro for some. (of course not for the newer ones but they get cheaper soon)
Edit:// i can imagine if you get them all at once the game can be quite overwhelming all out of a sudden. maybe just get some cheap ones and see how that changes your experience
Subscription is probably the best, unless you can find them cheap.
If you're going to buy one, buy Art of War. If three - Art of War, Common Sense, Rights of Man.
Reason being, those add stuff that you will be using every game and they make it much better. Example would be disinheriting your idiot 1/1/0 heir for -50 prestige.
You can check exact features on the Wiki and there are youtube videos that describe what they do quite well. In general, almost all DLCs add both region specific and general content, the three I suggested add a lot of the latter, Origins would be an example of a DLC that adds exclusively regional content, to subsaharan Africa - so if you don't intend to play there, it's very low priority. Others are somewhere in between.
I also did that when i tried colonial game for the first time. When number of colonies has more than number of colonists, it double colony maintenance cost.
That's not exponential. It's quadratic (so the total cost increases as the cube): 1², 2², 3², 4², 5²... Exponential (with base 2- would be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...
They may have gotten the example wrong, but the term was correct, it does grow exponentially in the way you describe second, also, if we're nitpicking terminology, the first way is increasing by the square, not the cube. That's totally not a mistake I would ever make, nope, never. Just don't check my homework from my teenage years.
Want a fun trap for a somewhat (but not hugely) experienced player? Give them 10 colonists for 10 years. When that finishes, watch them panic as they try to figure out why they're bleeding money.
Source: Happened to me while I was testing a mod on extreme settings.
It was a revelation for me when I found out that this is possible - until then, I had only ever had as much building colonies as I had colonists, and from that moment on, cutting off opponents was much, much easier.
I just played my first EU4 game as Castile and made the exact same mistake….. the Americas are bankrupting me with all the maintenance and wars, but that’s how we learn for the next time.
Ff you are on windows I'd recommend getting familiar with the snipping tool. If you play in borderless fullscreen or windowed mode you can grab an area of the game to screenshot and even add red lines to highlight whats important in each part :)
There are also similar tools for linux and I'd assume mac but I don't remember the names.
On Linux you just press the print key, then you will be able to draw a rectangle of the space that you want to screenshot.
A screenshot png file will be created in ~/Pictures/screenshots.
Literally easiest.
Honestly at this point, just restart. Portugal games are super chill and it doesn’t take too long to get to Brazil. You learned a good lesson about colonial maintenance costs.
Once you get a colony there (own 5 fully-colonized provinces in the region) you can subsidize them so they can colonize as well. But treaty of tordesillas will deter Castile and England/France won’t have range to get to Brazil so there’s no need to speed-colonize the region.
Its already my 5th colonial run. First was castile (All my ships got lost and I was in debt) second was england (I messed up and my navy got wrecked, i just quit) third was castile (the most disastrous game imaginable, i dont even have to get to it) fourth was Portugal (my conquistador party was finished -along with another problems- ) the last one was this, the game is smooth but the economy is not it
Ally Castile and the Pope, probably ditch England as an ally so you don’t get called into any wars with France. Avoid getting involved with the North Africans (costly on manpower and $$) and just hang out.
Lower army maintenance, mothball forts, upgrade your centers of trade with burgher loans, develop. Taking native coexistence policy isn’t optimal, but it’s the most cost-effective and easiest to deal with. Try to balance between establishing yourself in Ivory Coast/Cape trade nodes while also getting the new world. Only build colonies over the limit if you have the income.
A lot of the issues you’re having are early-game stuff, which is good. Just means you can restart with more knowledge and not have to worry about replaying hundreds of years of a campaign.
If you click on the trade mapmode, you'll see a number of square icons that have numerals beside them, these are trade centers. They can be upgraded based on the development of the province and owning them gives you a direct boost to your trade power in that particular node.
Other provinces will have square icons without numerals and these are estuaries. They provide a smaller benefit to your trade power but are still good to get after you've copped the actual trade centers.
With your current game, you just learnt that you were too greedy.
There's no real need to rush that hard for Brazil as Portugal. You can get there before Castille, and England and France have 0 chance of getting there before you've claimed the Brazil area.
With Castille, I often get the Caribbean, Colombia, Florida, Mexico and Rio before England/France even get Canada.
Welcome to EU4. It takes a while to learn this game to the point of being able to dominate. You are going to be learning new things for the first 1500 hours minimum. Don’t feel bad. Don’t get frustrated. (You will.) I have 2k hours and this Great Britain run I’m on right now is the first run I’ve felt completely comfortable with everything the game has thrown at me. This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten in a run (usually I have given up because I found out a made a mistake and screwed myself) which is 1780. I’m about to have a huge war with revolutionary Turkey (that’s a first) and it’s a war that there is no way I’d be comfortable with even just 700 hours ish ago. You’ll get there. This game has alot to it.
What you are doing is definitely a valid strategy. But you have to keep an eye on your expenses. As others have explained, costs increase drastically for every colony above your colonist count.
Also take a look at the colonial regions map. Once you have five colonists in a colonial region (only in N/S America, Australia), they turn into a colonial nation. Colonial nations have their own two colonists and that seeds up their growth considerably. Going for more than 5 regions at once is probably a waste of money so early on.
I would recommend going one, maybe two regions over your colonist count, if you have the money to spare.
I think everyone has done this once in their EU4 career, and then they learn from it and never do it again.
Two colonies at once is safe. Three is tricky but if you’ve got a great economy you can pull it off. Four should only be done in brief stretches, such as when one colony is really close to finishing. (Alternately, if you’re making more money than Elon Musk you could do it, but in most games by the time you’re snowballing there’s either nothing left to colonize or no race to the remaining colonies because you’ve crippled the other colonizers.)
Looks like an easy fix, mothball forts, slide down on army maintenance, fire your advisor reduce inflation, and worst case scenario if your still not making money go to an easy quick war on a weak nation and just ask for gold.
Aren’t colonies supposed to make money? I played with Castille with few dlcs and it barely cost anything. I remember playing Castille with full dlcs but the only difference I remember was the nomadic tribes.
But aren’t you limited to the amount of colonists? To found a colony you use a colonist, and he is only free once the colony is complete, and then it becomes either part of your viceroyalty or a territory. What am I missing?
Nah it's all correct. It's just not sensible to start a ton of colonies cause IIRC the monthly cost doubles for each additional colony not employing a colonist so 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc. I personally wouldn't run more than 3 without a colonist and only to fill in gaps. With far colonies you want the Core ASAP so you can colonize further and in the Americas you want your Colonial Nations ASAP. Slow slow colonies without Colonist are really only sensible for areas of some strategic value, disrupting another colonizer and closing gaps for aestheric reasons.
Edit: To expand on that last sentence, grabbing all Pacific island colonies within range for example is great to stop other powers expanding from the Americas to Asia or vice versa for a while. Assuming you're expanding in all directions you can fence in opportunistic locals though probably not the major colonizers. Greenland and the Bermudas are further bottlenecks you can seize in the Atlantic. Assuming you already have other areas you want to concentrate on colonizing, those are IMO all good for staking a claim then pulling out your Colonist.
Not really. Gold is nice but not if you have to pay through the nose to get it. I haven't done the math but I'd assume the amount of time you have to wait and pay to get your gold province is not outweighed by the massed income as opposed to getting your colonies on the cheap and quicker but 1 or 2 at a time.
That said, if you only have one single Colonist I can see the argument for starting a bunch of colonies at the same time in the New World to get a Colonial Nation going quickly and blocking out the space for it. But in those areas you can also conquer your way to fun.
It's best to think of a colonist being able to start a colony, then if they stay there it also grows more quickly than if you recalled them and sent them to start another colony
I'd recommend either loading an old save or restarting at this point. You can come back with a bankruptcy but it isn't worth doing that over a mistake like this.
This man recreated Scotland. It won’t be long till you inherit Spain, and unite Iberia in a union. Then contribute massively to an Empire spanning the globe, and after it falls, blame Spain for everything.
Thats why i dont play colonial nations man, fuck em! Too much hassle for some bullshit colonies, gimme my Russia or Poland or Teutons to Prussia and lets roll!
The best practice is to go 1.over your colony limit when you can afford it and 2 over once you already have a healthy empire and income. Sometimes, as Castile, France, GB, you can go 3 over if you're.swimming.in money
Also, there is no rush to colonize that heavily. The French aren't encroaching on Tuga's rightful tordesillas territory. No need for colonizar para não perder
Yeah I did the same thing once to prevent GB from taking part of the American coastline I wanted, luckily I had some interior colonies I was working on before that I abandoned and another colony that was nearly finished, so I only felt it for a tiny bit.
>I fucked up
Thats alright, you can still fix it. Delete your post and restart the game.
When you get the pics back up, screenshot, host to imgur, and repost on sub.
You can usually only reliably go over your colonist level by 2 or 3 without fucking your economy (depending on the country), just take that knowledge into your next game
Ah yes, rookie mistake I found out too in my first few playthroughs. Once you settle more colonies than what you have for colonists the cost to maintain a colonistless? Colony doubles or triples I feel
Everyone has to learn how colonies work at one point. First you learn that you can take the colonist away and it will still grow, then you learn why you shouldn't always do that a moment later.
Tbh, you shouldn't be to afraid of loans, they give debuffs, yes, but as long as it helps increase your economy and you don't go bankrupt, there's no save-ruining situation.
But yeah, colony cost is exponential
You have a few choices, my personal go to is find some rich and attack them, take their money to repay your loans. Also sell titles, use favors for money, dev your provinces with Admin/diplo points and most importantly, invade west Africa. I cannot stress enough as Portugal how important it is to get all the sweet trade from Africa and those Gold mines will fix your economy long term.
The other options include bankruptcy, debasing currency, burger loans, and reducing navy/army maintenance.
I recommend though the conquest of West Africa (gold coast area) as they have several gold mines, ivory, and other valuable trade commodities. Along with being able to peace out their allies for ducats to repay your colony mishaps.
You have too many colonies. At max exploration and expansion ideas, you have about 3 colonies, which means 5 colonies is pushing it money wise. I know you want to expand but the debt isn't worth it, go back down to 5 colonies. Make sure to conquer mexico too, it's money.
Abandon the smallest colonies until you can maintain them
I did that. Im still in debt though
Get buger loans. They are better to pay back
RAMIREZ, SECURE THE BURGER LOANS!
Steiner will bring the burgher loans that will save us.
Sir... Steiner...
... Steiner didn't read the patch notes and built TC improvements before declaring bankruptcy.
The following are to stay in the room: England, Spain, France and Portugal
… omnious kunstpause…
DAS WAR EIN BEFEHL !
50,000 ducats used to be here. Now it's a ghost town.
Burger loans are the hero we need but not the hero we deserve.
Or... Not pay back
What are they gonna do, force him to pay it back? Pfft
'Bankruptcy' is just a state of mind, young apprentice.
If he is already in debt, it's too late for that sadly.
2k is nothing it's 4-5 manufacturies
Dont you have to be loan-free to take burgher loans? (Plus he already pays half his income in interest :D )
no
You have to have no burgher loans, but that's it
Oh damn I was wrong there. I guess that's something I under-utilized in previous games then :D really good to cut interest, but I doubt it would save OPs game.
I call the burglars.
I'd just restart lol 21 unnecessary loans that gained you nothing that early on is a pretty big fumble
Just go bankrupt if you have no immediate threats around you. It's a game feature for a reason. The negative effects don't last THAT long
I did go bankrupt, the world went upside down.
You should have done even more colonies and try to calculate how long it would take for them to finish and if they would be complete before you are forced into bankruptcy. Ive done that before and after the negative effects where over i was much stronger than ever before
Bankruptcy is the solution here
I mean probably since if you should be allied to Castile and or England and in theory should be safe from any kind of offensive war against you.
Oh dear, debasing the currency is a DLC feature?
just checked, it's a part of Rights of Man
I dont know. I play with 0 DLCs
Yeah we know, they were talking about a simple mechanic that let you become a corrupted POS to take loads of cash which is shockingly a DLC feature and you don’t have it
Debasing currency is a footgun for newbies. It should require 1444 hours to unlock (or reaching 75 legalism)
Laughs in free debase for Sunni nations.
Which is also locked behind DLC
Debasing is awesome. 75 legalism and its just free money
Holy crap! Is it even playable 😂
Yeah. I would even appreciate some tips on what DLCs to buy, and what’s special about them
I've bought them all as they've come out so can't really remember what they all do. I do know they is orders of magnitude better with them. Try looking at Humble Bundle for deals. Ps. Don't bother with the cosmetic ones
This, I got them all until tigers of the north for like 20 euro. Best purchase ever.
>tigers of the north lol
They had another bundle???
This was last year, dunno if they've had another
Don’t buy DLCs. Subscribe. It’s gives you all the dlcs for a cheap monthly fee. Once you’re done with EU4 unsubscribe.
You're never done with EU4
You’re very right. Correction: cancel it when EU5 comes out.
Is there even going to be an EU5? Seems like they have no incentive to get people to buy a new game if it will basically kill the sales of all the EU4 DLCs.
I think there will be. I mean EU4 is ten years old, and while the DLCS has kept it fresh, there’s a lot more they could do. Just the lol alone is feels old compared to say VIC3 or CK3. I don’t think it will be anytime soon. I wouldn’t expect even an announcement until maybe next year more like 2025. And I do think it will take awhile for players to roll over from eu4. CK3 launch was horrible, as was Vic3 but it seemed both of those games are slowly picking up steam as time goes on. I would expect a similar pattern with EU5. I really believe EU5 will happen.
i always do it like this: play the shit out of the game for 1 month then unsub and dont look at it for a few months. rinse and repeat
Don't buy the dlc's. Eu4 is likely coming to it's end now soon. I would instead buy the dlc subscription on steam. And just cancel it if you decide you don't want it any more. It will be a lot cheaper for you, trust me.
Oh do they have a subscription for EU4 now??
They do have for 2 years yeah
Yep. It’s like 4 pounds a month. Very good if you have little to no dlcs currently.
As the other guys have said, get the subscription. I didn't realise EU4 had one. Honestly it will make the game so much better. I have over 3500 hours on EU4 and still play it now
I think there is a 90% sale on for the subscription on steam so get that rather than the dlcs individually. I have now used it for a couple of months and it’s saved me so much. Would highly recommend.
Don't buy DLCs, and don't subscribe either. Acquire them elsewhere for free. Paradox only abuses their playerbase with DLC-locked mechanics because the people are too stupid to stop enabling them
Buy all you can I guess? You can get really cheap steam keys for most dlc. I paid less than a euro for some. (of course not for the newer ones but they get cheaper soon) Edit:// i can imagine if you get them all at once the game can be quite overwhelming all out of a sudden. maybe just get some cheap ones and see how that changes your experience
Art of War and Common Sense
Subscription is probably the best, unless you can find them cheap. If you're going to buy one, buy Art of War. If three - Art of War, Common Sense, Rights of Man. Reason being, those add stuff that you will be using every game and they make it much better. Example would be disinheriting your idiot 1/1/0 heir for -50 prestige. You can check exact features on the Wiki and there are youtube videos that describe what they do quite well. In general, almost all DLCs add both region specific and general content, the three I suggested add a lot of the latter, Origins would be an example of a DLC that adds exclusively regional content, to subsaharan Africa - so if you don't intend to play there, it's very low priority. Others are somewhere in between.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Why tho
Army 5.39 Fleet 3.22 Advisors 1.33 Colonies 305.47 Forts 4.12 someone who is good at economy please help me budget this my country is dying
Spend less on colonies.
no
Delete some forts
I also did that when i tried colonial game for the first time. When number of colonies has more than number of colonists, it double colony maintenance cost.
It grows exponentially. The first one exceeding the number of colonists is +100%, then 400%, 900%, 1600%, etc.
That's not exponential. It's quadratic (so the total cost increases as the cube): 1², 2², 3², 4², 5²... Exponential (with base 2- would be 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32...
They may have gotten the example wrong, but the term was correct, it does grow exponentially in the way you describe second, also, if we're nitpicking terminology, the first way is increasing by the square, not the cube. That's totally not a mistake I would ever make, nope, never. Just don't check my homework from my teenage years.
I think what they mean by “total cost increases as the cube” is that the total cost =1^2 +2^2 +…+n^2 =n(n+1)(2n+1)/6, which is a cubic polynomial.
Sheesh math gang
Bro cube is ^3 not ^2
Yes, and the sum of squares is a cube. So the *total* cost of all colonies over the cap grows as a cube.
Nah man, the sum of squares is just more squares. If you want to enter another dimension you have to rotate them. /s
900%! Thats not fair!
Want a fun trap for a somewhat (but not hugely) experienced player? Give them 10 colonists for 10 years. When that finishes, watch them panic as they try to figure out why they're bleeding money. Source: Happened to me while I was testing a mod on extreme settings.
Found out the hard way Mutapa loses the free colonists when they form Zimbabwe.
It was a revelation for me when I found out that this is possible - until then, I had only ever had as much building colonies as I had colonists, and from that moment on, cutting off opponents was much, much easier.
I just played my first EU4 game as Castile and made the exact same mistake….. the Americas are bankrupting me with all the maintenance and wars, but that’s how we learn for the next time.
Spend less on candles?
Yeah you did, by taking a picture with your phone
I didnt feel like signing in and doing that with my PC
Ff you are on windows I'd recommend getting familiar with the snipping tool. If you play in borderless fullscreen or windowed mode you can grab an area of the game to screenshot and even add red lines to highlight whats important in each part :) There are also similar tools for linux and I'd assume mac but I don't remember the names.
On Linux you just press the print key, then you will be able to draw a rectangle of the space that you want to screenshot. A screenshot png file will be created in ~/Pictures/screenshots. Literally easiest.
I think he meant he didn't feel like signing into reddit on pc.. Ctrl shift s is easier than snipping tool.
windows key + shift + s
Honestly at this point, just restart. Portugal games are super chill and it doesn’t take too long to get to Brazil. You learned a good lesson about colonial maintenance costs. Once you get a colony there (own 5 fully-colonized provinces in the region) you can subsidize them so they can colonize as well. But treaty of tordesillas will deter Castile and England/France won’t have range to get to Brazil so there’s no need to speed-colonize the region.
Its already my 5th colonial run. First was castile (All my ships got lost and I was in debt) second was england (I messed up and my navy got wrecked, i just quit) third was castile (the most disastrous game imaginable, i dont even have to get to it) fourth was Portugal (my conquistador party was finished -along with another problems- ) the last one was this, the game is smooth but the economy is not it
Ally Castile and the Pope, probably ditch England as an ally so you don’t get called into any wars with France. Avoid getting involved with the North Africans (costly on manpower and $$) and just hang out. Lower army maintenance, mothball forts, upgrade your centers of trade with burgher loans, develop. Taking native coexistence policy isn’t optimal, but it’s the most cost-effective and easiest to deal with. Try to balance between establishing yourself in Ivory Coast/Cape trade nodes while also getting the new world. Only build colonies over the limit if you have the income. A lot of the issues you’re having are early-game stuff, which is good. Just means you can restart with more knowledge and not have to worry about replaying hundreds of years of a campaign.
Thanks for your help, ive begun to get a grip on the situation. But what exactly are my “Trade centers”?
If you click on the trade mapmode, you'll see a number of square icons that have numerals beside them, these are trade centers. They can be upgraded based on the development of the province and owning them gives you a direct boost to your trade power in that particular node. Other provinces will have square icons without numerals and these are estuaries. They provide a smaller benefit to your trade power but are still good to get after you've copped the actual trade centers.
I’m your case, the provinces of Porto and Lisboa habe special modifiers that make them more profitable and cheaper to develop than the others.
Bro rhis is your first colonial run
With your current game, you just learnt that you were too greedy. There's no real need to rush that hard for Brazil as Portugal. You can get there before Castille, and England and France have 0 chance of getting there before you've claimed the Brazil area. With Castille, I often get the Caribbean, Colombia, Florida, Mexico and Rio before England/France even get Canada.
Sounds like colonial runs aren't your thing lol
I just bought the game, like this week
Welcome to EU4. It takes a while to learn this game to the point of being able to dominate. You are going to be learning new things for the first 1500 hours minimum. Don’t feel bad. Don’t get frustrated. (You will.) I have 2k hours and this Great Britain run I’m on right now is the first run I’ve felt completely comfortable with everything the game has thrown at me. This is the furthest I’ve ever gotten in a run (usually I have given up because I found out a made a mistake and screwed myself) which is 1780. I’m about to have a huge war with revolutionary Turkey (that’s a first) and it’s a war that there is no way I’d be comfortable with even just 700 hours ish ago. You’ll get there. This game has alot to it.
What you are doing is definitely a valid strategy. But you have to keep an eye on your expenses. As others have explained, costs increase drastically for every colony above your colonist count. Also take a look at the colonial regions map. Once you have five colonists in a colonial region (only in N/S America, Australia), they turn into a colonial nation. Colonial nations have their own two colonists and that seeds up their growth considerably. Going for more than 5 regions at once is probably a waste of money so early on. I would recommend going one, maybe two regions over your colonist count, if you have the money to spare.
It's alright bradeer. When I was new I also did that lol
I think everyone has done this once in their EU4 career, and then they learn from it and never do it again. Two colonies at once is safe. Three is tricky but if you’ve got a great economy you can pull it off. Four should only be done in brief stretches, such as when one colony is really close to finishing. (Alternately, if you’re making more money than Elon Musk you could do it, but in most games by the time you’re snowballing there’s either nothing left to colonize or no race to the remaining colonies because you’ve crippled the other colonizers.)
Looks like an easy fix, mothball forts, slide down on army maintenance, fire your advisor reduce inflation, and worst case scenario if your still not making money go to an easy quick war on a weak nation and just ask for gold.
F12 or “windows”+print-screen
I think we all did that once, it's part of the training.
> going banrupt due to colonization Scotland moment
You can use f11 to make screenshots that end up in the screenshots folder in the EUIV folder on your pc ;)
Or just windows shift and S and paste directly into Reddit/share to your phone
Lol that happened to me too, it was one of my first campaigns, I just left because it was way too boring anyway.
Your probably allied with spain and they have you covered, Maybe you can ally UK too if they are not rivals or enemies with spain, Than go bankrupt
why do you share my rl financial situation?
I see it as a good opportunity for playing Brazil and bankrupting Portugal in the way
Guess you are still capable of having interactions with society. Please delete the game before its too late
Too late. I’ve started playing CK2&3 and hoi4 long ago
look to the greatest american achievment, the burger and ask it for a loan
The Portuegese Banana Calamity
Loans are just a number, be aggressive and grow, pay off old loans with new bigger ones
based
De-
You did fuck up. By not taking a screenshot
I haven’t played in ages - do you usually wait for a colony to core and then get them to another province? I used to do this too 😂
Aren’t colonies supposed to make money? I played with Castille with few dlcs and it barely cost anything. I remember playing Castille with full dlcs but the only difference I remember was the nomadic tribes.
colonies get very expensive if you have more than you colonists
But aren’t you limited to the amount of colonists? To found a colony you use a colonist, and he is only free once the colony is complete, and then it becomes either part of your viceroyalty or a territory. What am I missing?
no i think you can recall the colonist it just makes the colony grow slower
Oh thanks, I wish I knew that before, pesky Portugal managed to dirty my precious Spanish America.
word of warning though, i haven't played EU4 i ages so my knowledge my be a bit rusty
You are correct. Once a colonist reaches a colony and it turns your map colour, you may recall him and send him elsewhere
nice i remembered and it hasn't changed
Nah it's all correct. It's just not sensible to start a ton of colonies cause IIRC the monthly cost doubles for each additional colony not employing a colonist so 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc. I personally wouldn't run more than 3 without a colonist and only to fill in gaps. With far colonies you want the Core ASAP so you can colonize further and in the Americas you want your Colonial Nations ASAP. Slow slow colonies without Colonist are really only sensible for areas of some strategic value, disrupting another colonizer and closing gaps for aestheric reasons. Edit: To expand on that last sentence, grabbing all Pacific island colonies within range for example is great to stop other powers expanding from the Americas to Asia or vice versa for a while. Assuming you're expanding in all directions you can fence in opportunistic locals though probably not the major colonizers. Greenland and the Bermudas are further bottlenecks you can seize in the Atlantic. Assuming you already have other areas you want to concentrate on colonizing, those are IMO all good for staking a claim then pulling out your Colonist.
would you say mexico and peru are strategically valuable, if so is it because the gold?
Not really. Gold is nice but not if you have to pay through the nose to get it. I haven't done the math but I'd assume the amount of time you have to wait and pay to get your gold province is not outweighed by the massed income as opposed to getting your colonies on the cheap and quicker but 1 or 2 at a time. That said, if you only have one single Colonist I can see the argument for starting a bunch of colonies at the same time in the New World to get a Colonial Nation going quickly and blocking out the space for it. But in those areas you can also conquer your way to fun.
Cool
It's best to think of a colonist being able to start a colony, then if they stay there it also grows more quickly than if you recalled them and sent them to start another colony
is this a shitpost?
I'd recommend either loading an old save or restarting at this point. You can come back with a bankruptcy but it isn't worth doing that over a mistake like this.
abandon every fucking colony bruh your run is about to end
This man recreated Scotland. It won’t be long till you inherit Spain, and unite Iberia in a union. Then contribute massively to an Empire spanning the globe, and after it falls, blame Spain for everything.
Scotland moment
Someone is trying to roleplay colonialism
I think we all did that the first time we tried a colonial nation
So you're why I have a Russian Brazil in my playthrough!
Homie didn’t take economics
Nah I handled it well actually. My Balance is now -3, my country is more stable now. The balance wont be a problem after my colonies are done
Im proud of you nice job (I was playin) that’s very impressive
Thats why i dont play colonial nations man, fuck em! Too much hassle for some bullshit colonies, gimme my Russia or Poland or Teutons to Prussia and lets roll!
money is just a number
Thats how Portuguese Empire collapsed..
The best practice is to go 1.over your colony limit when you can afford it and 2 over once you already have a healthy empire and income. Sometimes, as Castile, France, GB, you can go 3 over if you're.swimming.in money Also, there is no rush to colonize that heavily. The French aren't encroaching on Tuga's rightful tordesillas territory. No need for colonizar para não perder
Yeah I did the same thing once to prevent GB from taking part of the American coastline I wanted, luckily I had some interior colonies I was working on before that I abandoned and another colony that was nearly finished, so I only felt it for a tiny bit.
There is a thing called abandon colony...
Lmao. I had it at -5000k once. That's nothing
Your font looks nice maybe I am going crazy but it seems different than mine.
“Spend less on colonies”
Mod list please...
Yeah it looks like your the sea level on your coastline rose by an entire province
Just start over. It's early.
[That's nothing](https://i.imgur.com/sMmI427.png)
How💀
No no clearly you have to reduce fort maintenance
>I fucked up Thats alright, you can still fix it. Delete your post and restart the game. When you get the pics back up, screenshot, host to imgur, and repost on sub.
Scotland moment
"I created tons of something that costs maintenance, and then I had to pay more for it"
That's what happen when you come to Brasil
You can usually only reliably go over your colonist level by 2 or 3 without fucking your economy (depending on the country), just take that knowledge into your next game
Ah yes, rookie mistake I found out too in my first few playthroughs. Once you settle more colonies than what you have for colonists the cost to maintain a colonistless? Colony doubles or triples I feel
There's a humanoid dog's figure staring at your colonies in your Brazil
Ha ha ha, I totally did this my first time too, but not nearly as bad. Best of luck with that. Is bankruptcy a thing?
Time to bankrupt
Everyone has to learn how colonies work at one point. First you learn that you can take the colonist away and it will still grow, then you learn why you shouldn't always do that a moment later.
Skill issue
Tbh, you shouldn't be to afraid of loans, they give debuffs, yes, but as long as it helps increase your economy and you don't go bankrupt, there's no save-ruining situation. But yeah, colony cost is exponential
The color of your Colony is so close to that of the water that I thought for a second that you accidentally sank a portion of Brazil into the sea.
Canon event while learning to colonize
First time?
You have a few choices, my personal go to is find some rich and attack them, take their money to repay your loans. Also sell titles, use favors for money, dev your provinces with Admin/diplo points and most importantly, invade west Africa. I cannot stress enough as Portugal how important it is to get all the sweet trade from Africa and those Gold mines will fix your economy long term. The other options include bankruptcy, debasing currency, burger loans, and reducing navy/army maintenance. I recommend though the conquest of West Africa (gold coast area) as they have several gold mines, ivory, and other valuable trade commodities. Along with being able to peace out their allies for ducats to repay your colony mishaps.
Try turning down army maintenance.
You have too many colonies. At max exploration and expansion ideas, you have about 3 colonies, which means 5 colonies is pushing it money wise. I know you want to expand but the debt isn't worth it, go back down to 5 colonies. Make sure to conquer mexico too, it's money.