User Guide

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Colonies
An unoccupied province may be an excellent
place to attempt to expand your colonial em-
pire. This occurs in several distinct steps. First,
you must establish a foothold in the province
by sending a colonist to live there. Next, you
will continue to send more colonists to expand
the size of the holding. Eventually, the size of
the colony will be large enough for it to evolve
into a full colonial city and will become a full-
fledged province in your empire.
Establishing a Colony
As we saw above, when you click on an unoc-
cupied province that is available for colonisa-
tion, the left side of the Province Management
interface will display the colonisation interface.
At the top of this area, you will see the time
and cost required to establish a new colony,
and an approximation of how likely it is that
your attempt will succeed. At the bottom, you
will see a “send colonist” button. Provided that
you have a colonist available in your pool and
sufficient gold in your treasury, the button
will be highlighted in gold, and clicking it will
send a colonist to attempt to establish your new
colony.
The cost and time are usually a function of
the distance between the intended colony and
your capital. The chance of success is deter-
mined by the presence of any natives, the dis-
tance from the capital, and most importantly
by the number of other colonial efforts you
have under way. Concentrating your efforts on
establishing and expanding only a few colonies
at a time will result in a far greater success rate
than attempting to colonise many provinces at
once.
There are a variety of other factors that will
affect the cost or chance of success, including
some national ideas, government types, reli-
gions, inflation, and domestic policies.
Expanding a Colony
Once you have sent your first colonist, you will
have to wait to find out if it succeeds. You will
see a small caravan travelling across the main
map towards its destination (yes…it really does
walk on water!) and eventually it will arrive at
the province and attempt to establish a basic
colony. If it fails, you can always try again. The
likelihood of its success will usually increase
with subsequent attempts. Once you have a ba-
sic foothold, your country will have claimed the
province and will begin receiving a tiny trickle
of income from it. No other country can send a
colonist to take the province away from you.
By expanding the colony, you will increase
the income you receive from it and will help it
to become a colonial city. To do this, use the
same colonisation interface you used when first
establishing the colony. The chance of expand-
ing a colony is usually considerably better than
the chance of establishing one, since the set-
tlers who are already there will help to establish
the newcomers.
As the population grows, so too will the
amount of tax and trade revenue you receive
from it. Unless the province is in a very hostile
environment, it will probably grow a little of its
own accord as a result of the natural popula-
tion growth rate. This will be higher if your
country maintains a positive level of national
stability. The presence of aggressive natives in
the province may hamper expansion. Each fac-
tor of aggressiveness will reduce the population
growth rate by 1% and could even result in the
population decline. Similarly, very unfavour-
able climates could result in a stagnant or de-
clining population.
Eventually, by sending additional colonists
or by waiting for natural population growth to
occur, the colony will cross the special thresh-
old of 1000 inhabitants, granting it the sta-
tus of a full-fledged city. When this happens,
clicking on the province will display the full
Province Management interface that allows
you to build province improvements, recruit
local regiments, and possibly build ships. It is
now a colonial city, and any remaining natives
in the province will likely join your country as
citizens.