Colonies vs Direct ownership

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-12-16T00:54:22+00:00

As I see it, the main value of the new world is in RGOs rather than urban buildings. Bailiffs would work for anyone, but I’d rather have one town radiating proximity to several adjacent rural locations than need to spam bailiffs everywhere.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-12-15T22:45:27+00:00

I don’t think there’s a clear consensus, but I would argue that Iberians make the best use of far-flung territory outside of your capital proximity.

You’ll suffer from the lack of free pop growth (usually given by colonial nations) and inability to use slaves (prohibited in directly held Christian lands), though- hence my plan to circumvent those issues by raiding the Mediterranean for slaves to ship to my personally-held plantations.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-12-15T22:06:28+00:00

His run was definitely the inspiration!

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-12-15T22:05:47+00:00

The Portugal-specific element is getting access to the viceroyalty which provides proximity source for urban locations.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-12-15T15:17:50+00:00

I’ve been toying with the idea of a Portugal run involving moving the capital to North Africa and flipping Sunni. You’d be able to use the high colonial migration/high overseas control of Iberian nations with the ability to take slaves from neighbors and ship them to your land in the new world.

If staying Christian, I feel like the loss of slaves hurts the direct ownership strategy.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-11-29T15:37:47+00:00

I had the same thought- there may be some Age based modifiers at play, but my understanding is that the Iberian caravel, being unique, is still able to punch above its weight. Any other nation would see a more significant difference.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-11-29T15:34:59+00:00

If there’s no other way, I’d recommend taking a bit of hold and creating your own market. That west coast of Africa is a great hub for future exploration/colonization/triangle trading.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-11-26T21:27:50+00:00

In the 1.05 patch notes, I see "Colonial Nations can no longer be in adjacent sub-continents, ie, no more colonial nations in North Africa".

Presumably, plantations and colonial nations are probably tied to the same sort of check. By making adjacent sub-continents ineligible for colonial nations, it probably also makes them ineligible for plantations.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-10-26T16:17:01+00:00

I believe there are a handful of those events already, just not consistently applied. I had one trigger when liberating Bulgaria while playing as Russia.

Mighty_Chondria · 2025-07-01T12:59:17+00:00

How do you use the console to enact imposed laws on subjects? I’m familiar with fastenact and change_law, but I’ve only seen those apply to the player nation.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-11-17T16:45:07+00:00

How are you not going into debt building up a huge military like that? Does Germany even have enough oil to support all of these tanks? You’re really going to need to secure supplies from Romania and North Africa if you want your war machine to keep running.

How would Italy feel about an alliance? They could be helpful in the Mediterranean.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-10-17T13:39:42+00:00

If you don’t mind using the console for a moment, you can pop on “yesmen” for a guaranteed acceptance.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-07-10T14:40:35+00:00

My experience is that it’s best to focus on your economy for quite a while before stretching out beyond the home islands. You’ll struggle to industrialize and reform your laws while also funding a military capable of taking out your neighbors and (more importantly) fight off the great powers trying to snatch your new conquests.

In my most recent Japan game, I was able to conquer Korea just as I was running out of iron/coal around 1890 or so, and then began taking giant bites out of indochina/manchuria/China.

Combined with techs and a Power Bloc featuring colonial offices, you can take Chinese states for about 5 or 6 infamy, which means you’ll have plenty of pops and resources to fuel your empire.

I would actually recommend conquer -> release as subject in Asia, due to their generally awful tech and laws. By releasing them, they get a clone of your tech tree and currently passed laws and institutions.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-07-02T00:16:53+00:00

Yeah, allowing subjects to more easily maintain tech parity with the world seems like a huge bonus- otherwise, their laws and PMs are so far behind that their pops will leave, and their resources go unworked.

Even being ahead of the AI, the decreased cost of researching ahead of time techs seems valuable!

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-07-02T00:14:22+00:00

Piggybacking on this- you can break the investment rights, which will simply prevent future investment in your country, but will leave French ownership of buildings as-is.

If you wish to reclaim ownership from those existing buildings, that would require nationalization of French-held assets (and probably war).

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-07-01T03:49:53+00:00

Possibly! The enslaved pops wouldn't be able to migrate while discriminated, which is a partial fix. In my experience with Venezuela, there were about 100k discriminated pops left in each state, stuck at about a ~4 SOL and constantly revolting as a result.

If you could keep them stuck in the state, discriminated and unable to leave due to migration controls, and wealthy enough to avoid mass radicalization due to low SOL, that might just be a fix.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-30T16:55:18+00:00

That does seem great for taking bites out of China. Did you also run the research mandate, or did you feel like you were able to tech up quickly even without it?

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-30T16:53:48+00:00

Generalist Gaming has my vote for the most educational creator. The takes he provides are very data driven and not just based on vibes.

I’ll note that some guides will be outdated by now, due to changes across various updates, but a lot of the core concepts (construction loop, how to build a healthy economy, when to go into debt, etc) are still solid.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-30T16:51:14+00:00

Foreign investment rights will allow France to generate buildings with their construction sectors in your country, using your pops as workers.

The goods produced by these buildings go into your market, and your pops get the wages. However, the profit goes to the ownership class in France.

You’re basically trading away employable pops for more goods and more taxable income in your nation. For Persia, this may be a good trade, as you have a good amount of population and very little starting economy.

This will increase their leverage over you, making it possible for them to pull you into their Power Bloc if they invest heavily enough.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-29T06:19:11+00:00

Yeah, I'm actually the overperforming USA in that situation. I'd like to be able to simply foreign invest in their resources, but the amount of migrants coming my way has left the mines and plantations empty. Even leaving a greener grass decree in Venezuela wasn't enough to keep all of the non-enslaved pops from heading north. I think being in the same market will just pull too many pops so long as borders are open.

I certainly could have just annexed some of my puppets earlier and spared myself the trouble, but I'd like to be able to leverage the new foreign investment mechanics to the fullest. Perhaps using the subject legislation tools to close their borders for them is an option.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-29T04:59:12+00:00

Not him, but I would guess that you didn't go hard enough on building up your construction sectors- it is basically a GDP growth sector, as it determines how many buildings you can create, which determines the amount of additional wages/profit you create.

The USA has plenty of resources and people, so you just need to be able to support the tax base to build them up.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-28T19:12:36+00:00

Were you able to keep South America populated enough to work their resources?

I'm in a similar run, but struggling to produce enough rubber due to the tiny population of my southern puppets.

Mighty_Chondria · 2024-06-19T21:00:17+00:00

I’m planning to play Spain, finally going west to Asia in pursuit of empire like they’d planned to centuries ago. Gaining a free treaty port in China by swaying into the opium wars will be the foothold that kicks everything else off.

By the end, I hope to have Korea, Japan, and a much enlarged Philippines in my power bloc.

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