User Guide

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A colonial city will immediately “convert
itself” to your country’s state culture and re-
ligion. After a fairly short period of time, it is
also very likely to be considered as one of your
core provinces if it is not already.
Colonial Limitations
Colonies and provinces that are overseas will
generate somewhat less income than provinces
that are directly connected to your capital. It
will also take considerably longer to build ships
or recruit new regiments, and it will take long-
er to find suitable soldiers to garrison any for-
tresses you might construct. If you capture an
enemy’s colonial province and wish to convert
it to your own religion, the cost of sending a
missionary will be much higher than normal.
Colonial Conquest
Until a colony becomes a full-fledged colonial
city, it is extremely vulnerable to an enemy’s at-
tack. When at war, you may send an army to
an enemy’s colony and instruct your troops to
either burn the colony to the ground or to seize
it. This is done by clicking the “burn colony”
or “seize colony” buttons that appear below the
regiment listing in the army details box.
Burning a colony to the ground will completely
destroy the colony and make the province un-
inhabited once more. Of course, you can subse-
quently send a colonist to create new settlement
of your own. If you prefer, your army can be
ordered to seize the colony, which will imme-
diately transfer its ownership to your country.
This is the only instance when province own-
ership can change during war by any means
other than a peace settlement. You may then
continue to expand the colony in the normal
way, although you may experience some resist-
ance to your efforts until you have built it up
into a full-fledged colonial city.
Gaining Maps from
Other Nations
If you would prefer not to adopt the Quest for
the New World as one of your national ideas, it
is still possible to obtain new maps of distant
lands. You will simply need to be patient and
wait for another country to do so. After a new
province has been charted, there will be a pe-
riod of some years when only the country that
discovered it will be in possession of the map.
Eventually, word of the province will begin to
spread throughout the international commu-
nity, and within several decades the province
will appear many countries’ maps.
This process is usually limited to those
countries that would normally interact on a
frequent basis and will vary depending on your
respective relationships, religions, cultures,
and various other factors. It is unlikely that
drastically different nations will ever share any
significant amount of their knowledge. There
is no way to prevent this cartographic spread
from occurring, so if you discover an unoccu-
pied province that is of particular interest to
your colonial aspirations, you should arrange
to develop it into a colony as soon as possible.