Colonial claim system

[sobisonator]

It should be possible to lay colonial claims without actually owning the land. Your claim builds up to the ability to annex an entire region once it is strong enough.

You will need to access the region / province overview (the top half of the below image) on an uncolonised province or an owned province of a nation that is below a certain industrialisation threshhold (so that colonial influence can be exerted over pre-industrial nations).

The GUI would allow you to make "colonial investments". They would be in categories.

• Military
• Commercial
• Cultural

In order to claim a region as your colony, you must have at least 1 level in all of the categories, and an overall points total that crosses a threshold and is higher than all other colonisers there.

In order to be a coloniser you must:

• Not be tribal
• Have a minimum national industrialisation level of X%
• Have at least 1 urban province
• Have a "colonial administration" building in your capital
• Have a fleet size of at least X
• Have a public law that allows colonisation OR:
• A landed or landless corporation tag (as a vassal of a landed tag) can colonise. They can only do commercial and cultural buildings, unless the state they are a vassal of has a law that allows private militaries.
• The corporation may colonise on behalf of their master state, or colonise on their own behalf (therefore creating a megacorp if they successfully claim the region). Whether they can create a megacorp or not depends on the law.
• Whether a corporation can invest in colonies at all depends on corporate autonomy laws

In order for a region to be colonisable it must:

• Have at least 1 uncolonised province, or 1 province owned by a country with industrialisation level under X% This value would be quite low, so that nations such as China, Persia, Russia and the Ottoman Empire surpass it at the beginning of the game, but it would be hard for pastoral starting nations to get past it before around 1890. It would represent a culture that had at least rural manufacturing and advanced civil infrastructure.
• Be coastal, or adjacent to land owned by the coloniser
• If any land in the region is owned by a pre-industrial country, that country must have an open trade, missionary or military cooperation law. Gunboat diplomacy could be used to compel a country to implement these laws. Depending on the openness,

When a region is fully colonised and the coloniser "cashes in their claim":

• A colonial nation is created that owns all uncolonised land in the region, as a vassal of the coloniser.
• All pre-industrial local tags get the option to accept colonisation or not. This triggers events to negotiate how they will be integrated. Most commonly, the situation would be to become a protectorate of the coloniser. Alternatively, they may be directly annexed to the colonial nation, or resist the colonisation and declare war against the coloniser. This would depend on relations between states and the stability of the local government.
• Local pre-industrial tags with closed borders would not be annexed, but the colonial nation would get a casus belli on them.

COLONISING: When building up your claim, you may build the following buildings. You can build up to three of the same type. Each building gives 1 "presence" point which goes towards your final claim on the region.

MILITARY:

• Outpost (Increases local supply limit?)
• Local recruitment centre (Slight manpower boost?)
• ??? COMMERCIAL:
• Trading centre (Gives the claimant partial access to the local goods market)
• ???
• ??? CULTURAL:
• Mission (Very slowly converts some locals to coloniser religion)
• School (Very slowly increases local education)
• Embassy (Increases relations of local countries)

WINNING A COLONIAL RACE: You must have at least 2 more "presence" than any other country there.

You must have at least 10 "presence".

Once you have met these conditions, you may claim the region whereupon it spawns a colonial nation.

If all countries involved have reached maximum "presence", or are tying for presence and are above the threshhold for more than 5 years, then a colonial conference event chain fires where all competitors must negotiate a settlement as to who gets the land, or if the negotiations break down a war could break out. Local countries may side with one coloniser against the others if their relations are good

[sobisonator]

Tag presence/claims on an "area" could be displayed here