An idea

My suggestion is that a very basic system of autonomy is employed when founding cities/colonizing. If, say, I wanted to colonize a city in Carthage (as Iberia), and reach down to get the rare plant node in Mali. Instead of dumping 5mil in Carthage, or creating a gamey little trail down to it, I could increase the autonomy.

Autonomy would be very simple. If I wanted 25% autonomy, I would get 25% more pixels of ZoC in that city, but have -25% less tax income and -25% less PP from that ZoC. Going up would increase and decrease the units at the same increments.

I'm suggesting this because most large colonial territories were pretty much empty. It was nigh impossible to enforce what was going on in the Amazon or the Rocky mountains in the early colonial era. This would not only alow people to take realistic amounts of time in building their colonial nation but decrease gamey and ugly rescource grabs.

Claims do this. Build a large city in Mali and get its ZoC to reach the coast normally, or build a coastal city first as a stepping stone. and then say that it's a port city for migrants to Plantown

First, that was just an example. Second, I still kinda don't undertsand your reasoning.

I feel like this would almost certainly result in people gaming the system to take as much land as they could and cut it off from everyone else.

Mods would have to approve it to reasonable bounds, of course.

Actually, Delta, that was what happened in the Scramble for Africa. "Gaming the System" is actually realistic in this instance.

I think this would be a great mechanic--it would more accurately represent the realities of colonization and create a difference between colonies and normal cities. However, to more accurately simulate this difference, maybe the level of autonomy should be based on whether the city is a certain distance away from your capital?

This would make colonies not worth having. Why waste over 500 000 people's worth of taxes and PP in exchange for a 5% tax increase?

Sorry, I don't really follow. My suggestion just meant that you could have less densely populated colonies, just stimulating the fact the most colonial nations had 1-2 major cities and the rest was just uncivilized farmland. Instead of having hideous spaghetti of borders and claims in the new world, there should be defined borders. This suggestion wasn't about increasing wealth, it was about building a colonial empire. The biggest colonizers became rich from the gold and siver and resources their nations produced, not their tax income.

I think that the "who would do it, that's a waste" is kind of moot. If someone thinks it useful to their gameplay, then it's his problem.

Though, this looks a bit too radical of a proposal to me. Maybe putting this option behind a tech barrier (colonial administration?), and having the 25, 50, and 75 percent autonomy give you just 20, 35 and 40 percent more pixels?

Dunno, just throwing ideas on the wall to see if something sticks. I kinda like this idea, and I'd like to see it implemented, for RPing reasons too.

No, like, this isn't needed. At all. Using it in any circumstance would disadvantage the user.
You're meant to build a city near the resource node. If you want to have more land than that, then you have no way to keep rule of law over it so you claim it instead.

Honestly? I think the minimum 1 million pop for 250 pixels of ZoC should be changed. Like, ok, have 500 pixels only from 2 million or whatever, fine, but at least allow the 250 pixels from like, 100k. I mean, most colonies didnt even nearly have 1 million people there.

But maybe there's people willing to make a different colonization approach: they are not interested in settlement colonies, but just in exploitement ones. This is a real world aspect of colonization, that emerged later (that's why I seggested a tech barrier) and that makes sense even in the RP.

Let's say I want to exploit a resource node in the middle of Congo. It's a bit insensate to send a million disgraced christians in the middle of the freaking Heart of Darkness, just to most probably see them die of disease or killed by genetically engineered gorillas guarding a long lost city.
Doesn't it makes more sense to found the city in the relatively safe coast, and then sending miners, hunters and mad Belgian outpost chiefs up the river? Of course, their work would be shit, so in exchange for the precious material they produce for the motherland, they are exempted from taxes.
Again, it would add a lot of RPing, IMHO.

My fear, as I said above, is that the result will be a couple of people using 100% autonomy colonies to control vast swathes of coast and cut everyone else off from doing any colonizing without war. While maybe it's a bit historic, it also means that a few people will snowball out of control and ruin the RP for everyone else.

borisperrons wrote:But maybe there's people willing to make a different colonization approach: they are not interested in settlement colonies, but just in exploitement ones. This is a real world aspect of colonization, that emerged later (that's why I seggested a tech barrier) and that makes sense even in the RP.

Let's say I want to exploit a resource node in the middle of Congo. It's a bit insensate to send a million disgraced christians in the middle of the freaking Heart of Darkness, just to most probably see them die of disease or killed by genetically engineered gorillas guarding a long lost city.
Doesn't it makes more sense to found the city in the relatively safe coast, and then sending miners, hunters and mad Belgian outpost chiefs up the river? Of course, their work would be shit, so in exchange for the precious material they produce for the motherland, they are exempted from taxes.
Again, it would add a lot of RPing, IMHO.

I guess I kinda strayed off the point on my idea. My idea was just to add a system to have a more realistic way to colonize other than sending 2 million people from your cities to found another one the same size. Most colonies had only a few cities with real tax and governmental enforcement. In Colonial America, I could have set up a meth lab or cockfighting ring in the Appalachians and for 100 years no government would be the wiser. Maybe I should downsize my original idea to Boris's one: 25%, 40% and 55% increase in size with a tax and PP reduction of 25%, 50% and 75%, respectively. Resource nodes would be unaffected, because having a huge mountain of coal or oil or clay is probably gonna draw governmental resource protection.