Europa Universalis III

[ProPain]

Conquer you can without a coastal province.

Both Latin america and South America have at least one CoT. You do need to send quite a bit of your own trade through them otherwise they are prone to closure. And sadly both aren't coastal. Maybe there are more CoT at the start but in my Brabant game I only saw 2.

[barbu1977]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

North US and Canada (yes Barbu, especially Canada) isn't worth much.

Apparently, France did let Canada go to Great-Brittain in 1763 thinking it was not a good investment and would ruin them. The opinion of Canada was very weak in France:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_few_acres_of_snow

[Socrates]

Originally Posted by barbu1977

Apparently, France did let Canada go to Great-Brittain in 1763 thinking it was not a good investment and would ruin them. The opinion of Canada was very weak in France:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_few_acres_of_snow

Little kid joke I remember (sadly in French):
Context: Louis XV feared he could lose Quebec to the English, where Montcalm headed the French.
Line: Louis XV: "Je vais perdre Montcalm, je vais perdre Montcalm!..." ("I'm gonna lose Montcalm...")
Comment: Et il a perdu son calme. (Eventually he lost his temper.)

-> Pun about "Montcalm" and "mon calme" (lit. "my calm attitude")

[Shabbaman]

Originally Posted by ProPain

Both Latin america and South America have at least one CoT. And sadly both aren't coastal. Maybe there are more CoT at the start but in my Brabant game I only saw 2.

Hm. I've seen a CoT in Mexico city (which closed shortly after I got it, maybe some indian revolt made it disappear) which isn't coastal, and a coastal CoT in an incan province. You can take the incas for their goldmines, but you need to be lucky to find some tobacco to trade there. These provinces will not have a high base tax. I'm wondering if these CoT's are randomly placed. Anyway, bottom line: if you find a CoT, take it asap. It'll hurt your compete chances until you've got a core on that province though, so this might be a good time to join the Hansa. In my case the CoT was in Muskogee. This is what I found on the wiki:

Prior to the Reformation, acquire colonies as a defensive measure; acquire those lands likely to be acquired by other nations with QFTNW. One plot of land deserves special attention. The Native Americans occupying Muskogee possess a large number of inland provinces. If another power attacks them before The Netherlands, a powerful colonial rival will be created, but seizing all of these lands prior to the Reformation will make the instability created by that event very difficult to manage. One very useful strategy is to attack these lands as soon as possibly, but to only seize the southeasternmost territories: Muskogee, Yamasee, Apalache, and Pensacola. With those in hand, other colonial powers will be unlikely to come into contact with these territories.

Anyway, look at the base tax and the trade good a province has. This can help you decide if it's worth taking. There's a downside to having too many colonies: your trade efficiency will get a hit. Trade efficiency is calculated by dividing the number of warships by the number overseas provinces. This can hurt your income.

[ProPain]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

Hm. I've seen a CoT in Mexico city (which closed shortly after I got it, maybe some indian revolt made it disappear) which isn't coastal, and a coastal CoT in an incan province. You can take the incas for their goldmines, but you need to be lucky to find some tobacco to trade there. These provinces will not have a high base tax. I'm wondering if these CoT's are randomly placed. Anyway, bottom line: if you find a CoT, take it asap. It'll hurt your compete chances until you've got a core on that province though, so this might be a good time to join the Hansa. In my case the CoT was in Muskogee. This is what I found on the wiki:



Anyway, look at the base tax and the trade good a province has. This can help you decide if it's worth taking. There's a downside to having too many colonies: your trade efficiency will get a hit. Trade efficiency is calculated by dividing the number of warships by the number overseas provinces. This can hurt your income.

MExico city I have seen as well, I'm pretty much convinces that the incan CoT isn't coastal though. And I don't think they're randomly placed.
I agree that the risk of those CoT's disappearing is high. You can prevent that by grabbing enough provinces near those CoT's which will increase the trade value. Most likely you'll end up being the main, if not only, trading nation through those CoT's. So you have to make sure the trading value is high enough to keep them alive.

Never knew that trade efficiency is calculated that way. Can Trade Efficiency be > 100%? If so, I see possibilities for 2 province holland

[Shabbaman]

A CoT disappears if it becomes stagnant, which happens if the trade value or the number of trading nationalities there gets too low. You can see that information in the ledger. Trade value is determined by the price of the commodities traded there. So if you own provinces with valuable trade goods (since we're talking about America: tobacco, suger, coffee, cotton) the value goes up. If everything is crap, value goes down. So if you conquer the incan CoT, you're the only nation trading nation (besides the inca, if you keep some of them alive) there because of the distance (it's a large effective distance from Europe, so beyond the trade range of most nations). Because the Mexico or Tuskegee CoT will be closer to the self-sustaining provinces owned by the indians (or you/whoever; maybe South American colonies are close enough to it to get it's trade sent there, but they have to exist first...) the goods from those provinces won't be traded through the Incan CoT. So it's likely to become stagnant anyway. If that happens before you get there, it might be likely that the incan AI creates a new CoT, which explains why it might or might not be coastal. I'm 100% certain it's coastal in my game.

[ProPain]

I know that a CoT disappears when it's stagnant. Had it happen with Isle de France in my Brabant game.

I think the Mexico City CoT should be fairly viable because the caribbean region usually has good tradegoods. The Incan one is a different cup of tea. In my Brabant game Milan and Castille (my jr PU partner ) have some colonies in S-america that trade through the now Not-so-Incan-anymore CoT. But even with those colonies it's CoT where I have 6 merchants and a heap of empty slots.

I think I solved the Incan CoT mystery. I read in a strategy guide that you should protect your 2 CoT's. Apparently they start with 2, I can imagina that one alreadt died of in both our games. Even more amazed that in both our games 1 CoT survived.

[Kingreno]

"playing" as the Netherlands right now, my Monarch is about to be replaced by her heir, who seems a LOT less productive, diplomatic, economic, militaristic... in ... well just about everything... advice?

[ProPain]

Originally Posted by Kingreno

"playing" as the Netherlands right now, my Monarch is about to be replaced by her heir, who seems a LOT less productive, diplomatic, economic, militaristic... in ... well just about everything... advice?

Not really. In EU III you're simply screwed. You can hope for an event where your heir dies but then you run the risk of ending up with a regency council or no heir at all.

If you wanna manage your heirs, play CK II

Or maybe you can ask Beatrix for some pointers on abdication for your heir

[Shabbaman]

Originally Posted by ProPain

I think the Mexico City CoT should be fairly viable because the caribbean region usually has good tradegoods.

Yes, but only if there are colonies in that region. It's the most likely region to be colonised, since it's the closest (speaking in EU3 distance measures here) to Portugal. If you conquer the Aztecs early (early, as in: before those provinces are within your colonization/trade range) then you'll end up with a CoT where you are the only trader and the only provinces that ship their goods there are the Aztec provinces and the few (your own?) colonies in the Caribbean and South America. In that case, I wonder if the CoT will survive stagnancy.

Anyway, it's a CoT in a gold mining province with a high base tax, there's not a real good reason not to take it. I still think Muskogee is a good CoT that is a viable target for acquisition (if only to keep it from anyone else), and it might just happen to be closer to some Caribbean provinces than Mexico City. The point is moot: conquer a sizeable piece of land from any indian tribe and you're done. Better: conquer both CoT's and colonize all land between them. That should do the trick.