GB and colonization

**Town Watch** · July 30, 2010, 10:47 PM

Ok, currently I'm playing as Britain, I pretty much dominate the CoTs in Europe and now I made a ton of money from mainly trade and national tax, I had good national tax and compete chance boosting advisors, but my money was kind of drained when I started colonising Canada. It's only 1503 but I decided to start colonizing early.

It seems that this region isn't too profitable to colonize? What are the most profitable colonial regions then?

So how do you go about colonizing as Britain, do you go for the east coast of America, or Caribbean first? Or do you get like one base colony in America and simply conquer the native americans and annex them? Or do you attack the south american natives and simply extort them for cash, I actually heard that this works pretty well!

I hate rebellions, especially colonial ones, is there a way to easily decrease the revolt risk in colonies? I know that the bill of rights idea got a bad rep in previous EU3 versions? Although I think my current problem might also be low legitimacy, I was in regency council for a little while and now I got 22 legitimacy.

I was also thinking about the slider positions for Britain also. I am going to max out the naval slider of course, but is it better to go mercantilist or free trade as Britain, how about aristocracy or plutocracy? I guess free trade and plutocracy are better directions, especially since that way you can still get extra income from European CoTs rather easily. But narrowminded is probably best for Britain since I want quick colonial growth.

**Kamos** · July 31, 2010, 12:30 AM

East Coast America typically supports higher populations and better trading goods while not have tropical penalties making it a fantastic target.

As for my methods? All of the above.

Legitimacy is definitely hurting you there big time, just keep smacking the revolts down and make sure to invest in forts ASAP. How is your stability and war exhaustion looking as well? Finally I think it's to early for the Bill of Rights event to fire so don't worry there.

Sounds like you've got the sliders under control.

**Town Watch** · July 31, 2010, 12:47 AM

heh Im not in a war with anybody, stab +3, that's why I kept wondering how these revolts are possible. wonder if I can somehow get better legitimacy though, are there any advisors for that?

**Kamos** · July 31, 2010, 02:48 PM

Originally Posted by Town Watch

heh Im not in a war with anybody, stab +3, that's why I kept wondering how these revolts are possible. wonder if I can somehow get better legitimacy though, are there any advisors for that?

Well you can use magistrates to generate more legitimacy I think and the big thing is get a bunch of royal marriages, comes with minor risks but worth it.

EDIT: Damn now I converted to protestant while having some colonies on the east coast, I can say that I got swarmed by rebels, both in Britain and the colonies, I lost Greenland and Azores to rebels, I'm fighting to contain the rebels but they just keep coming and coming. I was getting revolts like crazy already because of the rise of protestantism, so I converted to that, but yea, the thing just got worse

Now I took a revolt risk advisor and I'm recruiting more armies in America, at least my income is now okay with many of the colonies becoming self sufficient. Well, a lesson for next game, either take up counter reformation of convert to religion before colonizing!

Oh yeah conversion really creates huge penalties.

**Town Watch** · July 31, 2010, 01:33 AM

but yeah, if I'm Britain, colonial empire, should I go in the direction of offensive army, or defensive army? Can't really decide LOL, I mean offensive army brings crap events for example you might lose land forts randomly, but in turn you have a morale and leader shock bonus, defensive has discount on cannons but a morale penalty? What does fort defense actually do though, the bonus that defensive slider gives?

I mean certainly If I was on the continent like France, Burgundy or Spain I'd definitely go offensive.

EDIT: Damn now I converted to protestant while having some colonies on the east coast, I can say that I got swarmed by rebels, both in Britain and the colonies, I lost Greenland and Azores to rebels, I'm fighting to contain the rebels but they just keep coming and coming. I was getting revolts like crazy already because of the rise of protestantism, so I converted to that, but yea, the thing just got worse

Now I took a revolt risk advisor and I'm recruiting more armies in America, at least my income is now okay with many of the colonies becoming self sufficient. Well, a lesson for next game, either take up counter reformation of convert to religion before colonizing!

**hellheaven1987** · July 31, 2010, 01:50 AM

Great Britain should probably maintain a balanced military doctrine...

**Lysander13** · July 31, 2010, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Town Watch

but yeah, if I'm Britain, colonial empire, should I go in the direction of offensive army, or defensive army? Can't really decide LOL, I mean offensive army brings crap events for example you might lose land forts randomly, but in turn you have a morale and leader shock bonus, defensive has discount on cannons but a morale penalty? What does fort defense actually do though, the bonus that defensive slider gives?

I mean certainly If I was on the continent like France, Burgundy or Spain I'd definitely go offensive.

Actually, sharing a border with a behemoth like France or Burgundy, depending who wins that struggle, being defensive would be a great strategy. Being defensive slows down doomstacks.

EDIT: Damn now I converted to protestant while having some colonies on the east coast, I can say that I got swarmed by rebels, both in Britain and the colonies, I lost Greenland and Azores to rebels, I'm fighting to contain the rebels but they just keep coming and coming. I was getting revolts like crazy already because of the rise of protestantism, so I converted to that, but yea, the thing just got worse

Now I took a revolt risk advisor and I'm recruiting more armies in America, at least my income is now okay with many of the colonies becoming self sufficient. Well, a lesson for next game, either take up counter reformation of convert to religion before colonizing!

Taking Ecumenism as a NI right before the Reformation hits is a good strategy to help with them pesky rebels. As is Human Tolerance, if one is a colonizer who plans to be tolerant. Which as of HttT is a perfectly viable strategy.

**Niles Crane** · July 31, 2010, 07:33 AM

I never bothered with colonisation as GB. It's much more financially beneficial to slowly take over Asia, even if you have to deal with the occasional nationalist revolt.

**Poach** · July 31, 2010, 10:50 AM

Are your finances being drained, perhaps, because you're supporting large numbers of colonies? Any colony under 1000 inhabitants costs you a monthly upkeep to support. Try to colonise a few regions at a time and bring them up to "full" city status (>1000 inhabitants) before colonising new ones.

North America is rich in furs and, on the south of the continent, the likes of tobacco and cotton. It certainly isn't poor.

**G-Megas-Doux** · August 07, 2010, 04:40 AM

Carefully choose your targets for colonisation. Otherwise you will fall behind in tech delelopment. As for military. You would be best suited with offensive for the increase in morale that your land army needs.

**Town Watch** · August 08, 2010, 12:27 AM

ok I did better this time around, I waited a bit on the colonization and converted to protestantism first, and converted all my catholic provinces to protestant so now I have only reformed and protestant provs in mainland.

I fought a couple colonial wars, after VERY hard fighting I took florida from the Spanish, but I incurred some naval losses to the Spanish armada, I think their navy is basically equal in size now

I just cant manage to scrape enough money to get a superiour fleet, and get enough troops to fight my colonial wars AND quell THE FRIKING rebellions! somehow my legitimacy just gets very low, then again I don't pay much attention to my monarch's skills or heirs or royal marriages and whatnot. Not to mention the fricking PIRATES

Then again I do own eastern seaboard of North america all the way to Florida, some islands in the west indies, and venezuela. Overall I find that taking over Portugal's colonies was a much easier task than fighting the Spanish. By the way year in my game is currently in the 1520s.

But yeah, I rapidly colonized in south america to box the portuguese in, and it was pretty funny to see ONE rebellious Portuguese colony basically overrun the whole Portuguese South American empire. Spanish are fighting tooth and nail for every colony that they have, both navally and on land. Even their ally URBINO keeps invading my canadian colonies, I'm really at my limits, because I feel the need to patrol the atlantic, and protect my weaker island colonies with navies so that I can focus on expansion with naval task forces and land armies. I don't really have the assets to actually blockade Spain, which might be a good strategy though.

While blockading France worked initially for me during the 1400s, I didn't even make a dent with blockades to Burgudny, they racked the WE up to 7.2 or something, had maybe like one rebellion, then their 20k cav army went south from Antwerp and blitzed the rebels, a while later their WE was somewhere at 3. This was with a northern ports blockade on France, and total blockade on burgundy

Norway built a hilarious doomstack of 30k troops in orkney (8k cav, 4k cannon,18k infantry) and invaded scotland, the army was lead by some guy named Troll (or something)

Those troops actually caused way lot more trouble than something like portugal.

Yeah, burgundy gobbled france from the beginning and wiped them out, personally I would have like to see even now, a strong continental france to keep spain in check or something, somehow burdgundy died though, or maybe they reformed into france, because now the purple blob is actually back into a blue blob. (I was busy defending my colonies and gearing up for the counter attack on Florida)

I used to have a very good yearly income, with maybe like 5 merchants in maybe like 5 CoTs ( I was still in the trade leage). I had production efficiency, minting, and trade efficiency ministers all with level 5 skill and I was really racking up the ducats as my american colonies became self sufficient.

**G-Megas-Doux** · August 08, 2010, 05:09 AM

Workshops, build them in every province. I usually find that Spain by this point as well as the colonial empire have targeted North Africa, Italy, Eastern Europe, the Crimea and the Levenant, oh and also Egypt. Usually due to alliances so it grows rediculously large.

**Town Watch** · August 08, 2010, 01:48 PM

yea currently Spain holds North Africa, up to Egypt, and Mexico, and a few colonies on the east coast of South America. Portugal has a few colonies on the west coast of Africa and South America. Austria gobbled up Northern Italy, Holland inherited Brandenburg, Burgundy had earlier eaten up France, but now it transformed into France back again.

Currently I'm actually fighting TOGETHER with France against Spain and Portugal LOL!

**Poach** · August 16, 2010, 03:14 PM

Spain will be your main naval contender for a while: France is more land-based and Portugal doesn't have the money. If you plan on fighting wars against Spain fairly regularly, get a Fleet that can do it. Personally, I play offensive with my Navy and go after their squadrons then set up my own blockades.