Colonization FAQts for 1.07

[mueller]

Rather massive changes to colonization system were done in 1.07 and betas. Here are some results that were obtained by simultaneously playing with Portugal and a couple of Excel worksheets. I better follow Castellion's colonization FAQ point by point.

System used in 1.06 and lower.
Percentage chance to Colonize = BP-(DM+CM)+CB+NB+OB
The Maximum is capped at 95%
The Minimum is 1%

BP = Base percentage:
Under optimal conditions is 80%

DM = Difficulty Modifier:
DM=(Aggressiveness of natives + Colonization Modifier) * 4
Aggressiveness of Natives and Colonization Difficulty Modifier can both be found in provinces.csv.

CM = Climate Modifier:
CM = 10 if Climate = 4 or 6
CM = 0 for all others.
Note: Nations who's capitol has a climate of 4 or 6 are exempt from this penalty.
Climate can be found in provinces.csv.

CB = Conquistador Bonus:
CB= 3 times their Movement rating.
Note: Explorers can add their movement rating x3 if in port in the province. But obviously that cannot be done on the first attempt at colonizing as no port exists yet. Also the bonuses are not cumulative, It takes the higher of the two values.

NB = Nation Bonus:
(...)

Other Bonuses
+5% if province already contains a Trade Post.
+5% if province is your state religion. (note: This accounts for why many believe that the first level of a colony adds 18% since colonizing changes it to your religion as well.)
+13% for 1st level of colony.
+5%/Level above1 of existing colony.

NOTE: Lots of changes being made with 1.07+ open Beta, So this info may not be fully correct for those patches.

Some of the (tested) change to 1.07 and betas.

1. Nation bonuses were eliminated. That was easy

2. BP = 80 - "lack of experience" penalty. A good thing about this penalty is that it converges to zero with time. Each successful establishment of a new colony/TP reduces this penalty (expanding existing TPs or colonies does not count). High infra efficiency seems to reduce this penalty. Perhaps time contributes something as well.

This penalty only applies to completely new establishments. For expanding existing colonies, BP=80.

3. DM and CM - no changes.

4. CB, a conquistador bonus, is now 5%*movement rating. Same for exploreres.

5. Other bonuses.

A trade post in a province now adds 15% to colonization success rate.
+5% if province is your state religion.
+8% if province is your state culture.
+5% for each level of existing colony.
// Since first succesful attempt changes province to your state religion and culture, the first level of a colony effectively yields
+5% religion bonus + 8% culture bonus + 5% level 1 colony = 18%.

6. Adjacent settlement bonus.
If the province you are trying to colonize borders any friendly settlement (either TP or a colony), there is a 5% bonus to colonization success chance. This only applies to colonies.

7. Isolated settlement malus.
If the province you are trying to colonize does not border any friendly settlement (either TP or a colony), there is a 5% malus to colonization success chance. Again, this only applies to colonies and not to TPs.

// So effectively you get +10% benefit from colonizing a province that is adjacent to existing TPs/colonies. TPs are not affected by this.

TP success rates

If natives in a province you are trying to colonize have been killed, a success rate for a level 1 TP is
BP-LE-CM-DM,
where
BP, base percentage = 60% in the early game. In older patches BP was raised by 30% (iirch) once your trade efficiency was 100% or higher. Not tested.
LE is a "lack of experience" penalty described above.
CM is a climate modifier from Castellion's FAQ, 10 if climate=4 or 6 and 0 otherwise.
DM is a colonization difficulty modifier from province.csv.

Ie, to a establish a level 1 TP in Recife once natives were killed:
(Portugal, 1439, LE=8)

DM = collonization difficulty from province.csv for Recife = 5
CM = climate for Recife = 6 (I think it means tropical)
Thus,
success rate = 60-8-10-5=37%.

Natives: can't live with them, can't kill'em

Natives effect on colonies works exactly as described in FAQ.

From readme to 1.07:

- Establishing a trading post in a province where the natives have been killed off is now much harder.

Sadly, I gave up on finding an exact formula for the relationship between success rate for TPs and the presence of natives. Sometimes success rate goes up after killing natives, sometimes it goes down. It certainly is not a linear combination of colonization success factors from province.csv. I can only say that the benefit/malus from killing off natives is an integer multiple of 5%. In certain cases keeping extremely agressive (9) natives before establishing a TP gives a bonus although in most cases agressive natives would give a penalty. Example: a chance of establishing a 1st level TP in Parnaiba, Brazil (1500 extremely agressive natives) is 42% if you decide to keep them but only 37% if they are killed off.

A rule of thumb. If you have followed this post carefully (what are the chances), you will notice that success rates for establishing a new TP in "ethnically cleansed" (without natives) provinces are very similar. Ie Portugal in the example above will have success rates in 30s pretty much anywhere in Brazil (where climate penalty=10) and in 40s in North America (which has no climate penalty). If your success rate when natives are present is as good as expected or better, your success rate for establishing a new TP will probably go down if natives are eliminated; if it is lower than expected, it will most likely go up a bit.

South America looks too yellow, or existing colonies/TPs penalty

I do not have complete data here. However, it appears that
- you can maintain up to ADM rating unfinished colonies without suffering a colonization success rate penalty.
- each level 1 or 2 TP beyond the first one provides a 5% penalty towards establishing a new TP. Yup, it's THAT bad It's not affected by the monarch's ADM skill either. Perhaps things improve with time - mostly everything was tested using Portugal in 1430s.
- TPs of higher level (3+) do not count towards this penalty.

Thus, if you ever establish a TP, it is better to either convert it to a colony right away or to expand it to level 3.

Questions, comments, corrections, statements, and angry remarks are all welcome. Well, maybe not angry remarks

[Castellon]

What version of the game did you use for your figures? THe latest betas or vanilla 1.07?

The 13% = 8% for culture, 5% for 1st level had been pointed out to me before, I thought I had updated the FAQ to reflect this but I guess I forgot. I will take care of that now.

Strange that they would add +5 for adjacent and -5 for no adjacent. (when it is either one or the other)
Although a there was always a rumour, I think from the manual, that adjacent provinces gave a bonus pre 1.07, exhaustive testing confirmed that there was not one. So maybe it was a bug that got fixed, then the penalty for non adjacent was added?
Ithink the time period penalties and the exact effect of # of colonies are where the search for the new system should concentrate.
Good work!

Here is the stated list of changes to Vanilla 1.07 for reference.
Changes made in Patch 1.07
- Removed some hardcoded national bonuses on colonisation success.
- Colonial success have now been rebalanced, conquistador bonuses are bigger, early timeperiod gives a penalty, the first attempts gives penalties, the production efficiencies gives bonuses and the number of current colonies gives a penalty. Basically, the ADM value of the monarch affects how many colonies can be maintained at the same time below colonial city status. This is only valid for colonies not attached to the mainland of the nation.
- It is now slighly more expensive to start a new tradingpost.
- Establishing a trading post in a province where the natives have been killed off is now much harder.
- You can no longer place colonies or tradingposts in provinces which you can not trace a discovered and unblocked path too.

[mueller]

Originally posted by Castellon
What version of the game did you use for your figures? THe latest betas or vanilla 1.07?

The 13% = 8% for culture, 5% for 1st level had been pointed out to me before, I thought I had updated the FAQ to reflect this but I guess I forgot. I will take care of that now.

Strange that they would add +5 for adjacent and -5 for no adjacent. (when it is either one or the other)
Although a there was always a rumour, I think from the manual, that adjacent provinces gave a bonus pre 1.07, exhaustive testing confirmed that there was not one. So maybe it was a bug that got fixed, then the penalty for non adjacent was added?
Ithink the time period penalties and the exact effect of # of colonies are where the search for the new system should concentrate.
Good work!

I've tested with the latest beta.

As for adjeacency bonus, TPs are not affected by this. But placing a TP in, say, Para, increases colonization success rate for TPed Marajo by 5% and (uncolonized) Tiracambu (sp?) by 10%. Maybe it was something that got fixed.

Exact effect of # of colonies/TPs is bloody hard to test since it may change over time and/or interact with early period/monarch ADM skill.

Native bonus/malus is something that I want to see ironing out. With a new 15% TP bonus for a colony it is quite common that it is easier to expand TP into a colony rather than to upgrade an existing TP. Which is nuts.

Also, apparently TPs and colonies are counted differently for colonization success rates elsewhere.

This stuff needs further testing.

[Neckkit]

In my current GC with the latest beta i am playing as scotland, busy colonizing west NA. I no longer have the patience to colonize those low tax base fur provinces. So i decided to build TP instead. I cleared all the natives. But so far I have failed to find any reasons for the low success rate of building TP, just 40 something at best. I have tried to upgrade some of my TP to level 3 or higher but it didn't help. It's 1660. Is 40 something already the best i can hope for?

[mueller]

Originally posted by Neckkit
In my current GC with the latest beta i am playing as scotland, busy colonizing west NA. I no longer have the patience to colonize those low tax base fur provinces. So i decided to build TP instead. I cleared all the natives. But so far I have failed to find any reasons for the low success rate of building TP, just 40 something at best. I have tried to upgrade some of my TP to level 3 or higher but it didn't help. It's 1660. Is 40 something already the best i can hope for?

Promote all of your TPs to level 3. This should help a bit. But if you cleared the natives, and if your trade efficiency is less than 100%, your success rate can not be higher than 60% (see formula in the first post) and will likely be around 51-55% range.

I have done some more tests to clarify remaining issues and will post new data soon.

[Castellon]

Don't spend too much time on this with the beta version, since beta version info will not make it to the FAQ forum. Only stuff based on official versions of the game.

As beta versions are in a state of flux, the info from any one version is useless, since tommorow the system may change again, or atleast you would have to do all your testing over again to prove that some change made in the code did not effect the way it works.

Also when 1.08 comes out, your info would not be correct for any of the available release patches.

Therefore, I might chalk up what you have as a head start on 1.08, but for now concentrate on vanilla 1.07.

[mueller]

Ok, here we go.

Trade Efficiency and Production Efficiency Effects

Neither trade tech nor infra tech has any direct effect on colonization success rates, costs, and speed. They, however, influence these factors indirectly through increasing your trade efficiency and infrastructure efficiency. 50% production efficiency will produce the same results whether it is a result of infra 3, high centralization, and low serfdom or if it comes from infra tech 6 and adverse DP settings.

Trade efficiency only affects TPs and production efficiency only affect colonies. Results follow.

[mueller]

TPs and Trade efficiency

Tests below were done with Portugal, 1439, for Diamentina province. Trade efficiency was adjusted using DP sliders and "good government policies" events.

TE%	SR%   Cost   Time
-------------------------
43	37	15	4
53	37	15	3
63	37	15	3
73	37	15	3
83	37	15	2
93	37	15	2
103	87	15	2

First column - trade efficiency
Second - success rate for a TP in Diamentina (no settlement)
Third - cost of establishing a TP there
Fourth - time in months.

Thus, a trade efficiency of 100% or higher provides a 50% bonus to a success rate for establishing new TPs. [This was present in 1.05 as well but the bonus was 30%]. Costs are not affected. Time to establish a new TP gradually declines as trade efficiency increases. Changes only happen at 30%, 40% and so on ie at integer multiples of 10%. 31% TE or 39% TE does not matter.

[mueller]

Colonies and Production Efficiency

Same conditions as above.

PE%	SR%   Cost   Time
-------------------------
34	34	66	6
40	35	64	5
42	35	64	5
50	36	64	5
60	37	62	4
70	38	62	4
80	39	61	3
90	40	61	3

Each 10% of production efficiency increase success chance for establishing a colony by 1%. Colonization costs gradually decline while colonization speed gradually increases. Again, only multiples of 10% matter.

[mueller]

Excessive number of TPs/Colonies penalty

Same conditions as above. TPs of level 3 and higher do not count again this penalty. Portugal's monarch in 1439 has an ADM skill of 6. I have edited Portugal's trade level to 10 to speed things up (gives 100%+ TE). Infrastructure efficiency is 34%. Testing was done by establishing a boatload of level 1 TPs using "pocahontas" cheat and converting them to level 1 colonies as TPs are established.

Colonies     TPs   % Success,   % Success,
                          TP       Colony
---------------------------------------------
       1       0           87      29
       1       1           87      34*
       1       2           82      34
       1       3           82      34
       1       4           82      34
       1       5           82      34
       1       6           81      34
       1       7           79      34
       1       8           77      34
       1       9           75      34
       1      10           73      34
       1      11           71      34
       1      12           69      34
       1      13           67      34
       2      13           67      34
       3      12           69      34
       4      11           71      34
       5      10           73      34
       6       9           75      34
       7       8           82      29
       8       7           84      24
       8       6           87      84**
       9       5           87      19
      10       4           87      14
      11       3           87       9

First column is # of low level colonies
Second - # of level 1 TPs
Third - success rate for a new TP in Diamentina
Fourth - success rate for a colony in Diamentina

* First TP was established in Pernambuc, which is adjacent to Diamentina. This causes an increase in a colonization success rate by 5% due to "adjacency bonus" documented in the first post.
** This is not a gap in series; simply, natives have burned my TP on an unsuccessful colonization attempt.

Further testing was prevented by a friendly CtD.

As you can see, for colonies things are rather simple. Each colony past the monarch's ADM skill gives a 5% penalty to colonization success rates elsewhere.

For TPs things are not so simple. It seems that if you have more than one low-level TP, you get a 5% penalty to success rates. Then the number of TPs can be increased up to monarch's ADM skill with no further penalty, although a TP #6 gives a rather weird 1% penalty. Afterwards, success rates for TPs drop by (Tps - ADM)*2%. Once my TPs were converted to colonies, success rates seem to return to normal faster. I have no idea why it is so. Maybe there is a penalty for having way more undeveloped TPs than colonies.

It seems obvious though that TPs and colonies do count separately towards the "excessive colonization" penalty.

[mueller]

That's all for now

Originally posted by Castellon
As beta versions are in a state of flux, the info from any one version is useless, since tommorow the system may change again, or atleast you would have to do all your testing over again to prove that some change made in the code did not effect the way it works.

Therefore, I might chalk up what you have as a head start on 1.08, but for now concentrate on vanilla 1.07.

I don't particularly care if it will go into FAQ or not. I mostly done these tests to satisfy my own curiosity since I could not figure out why my success rates jump up and down all over the place.

I think that some of these findings have a public value though since at least they may help to balance the betas better. In particular, I think that added penalties for TPs are too high and often make it easier to establish a new colony than to expand an existing TP which I personally find somewhat silly. Thus, I've decided to post my test results. Obviously, there are easier ways to increase my post count, not that I care about it.

As for vanilla 1.07/betas: the only change done to colonization system in betas (documented in readmes at least) is an added penalty for TPs "to make it harder to paint map with level 1 TPs". This is probably a 5% penalty for having more than one level 1 TP. But this is the least documented part in above FAQcts anayways.

[Wetboy]

I´m not sure I understood your "lack of experience" correctly. At least, that is not how it works when I play the game. Attempts to place Tps don´t count and each attempt to colonize, whether new establishments or just adding to existing ones counts towards reducing this penalty.

But more importantly, great stuff.

[Misha]

Originally posted by mueller
I think that some of these findings have a public value though since at least they may help to balance the betas better. In particular, I think that added penalties for TPs are too high and often make it easier to establish a new colony than to expand an existing TP which I personally find somewhat silly. Thus, I've decided to post my test results.

Well I for one appreciate the effort mueller. This is the point of betas - to test out new changes to the game. If something is obviously out of whack, the beta players need to point it out so that the problem doesn't get enshrined in the next patch.

[Stonewall]

Good job mueller, thanks for the tables and the formulas. They have gone a long way to prove what I have thought were the reasons behind colonization success chances.

[Alexandre]

Originally posted by mueller
Questions, comments, corrections, statements, and angry remarks are all welcome. Well, maybe not angry remarks [/b]

Thanks! I'm just starting a Portugal AAR, and this will really help me in planning out my colonization strategy. Things are really going to have to change in my game plan. Well, it'll be a challenge at least.

Alexandre