One-feature-a-day articles: #16 Colonial strategies

[DooberGuy]

This is a re-posting of Pocus's original posting on the Paradox forum. I believe he has probably been insanely busy getting PoN ready for us, so I am only attempting to help him out.



One-feature-a-day articles: #16 Colonial strategies

When you start to dig around in the Colonial Mode, you’ll at first focus only on one thing: Colonial Penetration. This is good, because CP is perhaps the most important concept to grasp when dealing with colonial lands. But it would not be optimal to focus only on CP, fundamental though it is, especially if you are playing with friends in multi-player. Even in single player, there are times where CP is not the most important criteria of a particular colony.

Having a good Colonial Penetration in most regions of a given colonial area will often be your first goal. After all, this is mandatory in order to claim an area and propose a colonial decision able to change the status, like ‘Declare Protectorate’ or ‘Declare Formal Colony’. These statuses are really very important. They will protect you from disputes about the ownership of the colony in an international crisis, plus you’ll start to gain some prestige from the colony, and you can start selling goods to the oversea population.

But you’ll see that when you are in Colonial Mode, there are around 15 to 25 different colonial decisions available (it depends of your country, some are better served than others, and you know the usual suspects here: Great-Britain, France, USA* to a less extent). These colonial decisions are not redundant in fact, because each approaches colonial matters from a different angle.


* About USA: the decisions they have are not used to create oversea colonies, but will be used to ‘convince’ the Native Indians that the Manifest Destiny of the USA is to control the land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.


A colonial decision can influence CP over time. This is quite expected for many of them. Also some will reduce the risk of revolt, because you are taking a peaceful path with the Natives. For example running a vaccination campaign or building a bush school will reduce revolt risk, while also increasing your colonial penetration. This is good because a revolt is always something that could happen, and having natives’ armed bands in a colonial area can really be harmful to your interests.
Then, there are decisions that will develop the infrastructure of the region. This can be the creation of a road, or more abstractly an augmentation of the development level. The development level is very important, because it speeds up movement and reduces attrition.

Some decisions will also provide you with an immediate gain. Merchants will give you some private money each turn. A trade post can lead to production of a rare resource. Some expeditions like the anthropological expedition can net you a hefty amount of prestige.


And then, you can target a long term goal by raising the loyalty of the population toward you, or using decisions that will cause migrants from the metropolitan area to go to your colony. This will drastically change the population profile of the area, and will perhaps allow you in the long term to produces a lot of resources in the colony, resources that you may very well lack on your national soil.

So as you see, there are several possible paths in the colonial game. Some people will aim to declare a Protectorate as quickly as possible, even if it means garrisoning the area heavily to prevent the infuriated natives from doing too much damage. Others will try different approaches, some with beneficial results. This is up to you, in Pride of Nations!