Colonial Scepticism
A mod designed to prevent the AI (looking at you, Portugal and Castile) from taking over most of the Caribbean and South America by around 1500. In practice, it adds a significant debuff to settler increase once a european country has started building (or somehow captured) a colony province in either of the Americas and the Caribbean until 1550, werein all european countries get an event that either removes the debuff and potentially offers some buffs, or other buffs to a nation that never colonised. New to the updated version of this mod is what I’ve dubbed "Immersive Mode", activated via decision, where instead of having to either way for 1550 or spend 500 gold to remove the mod’s effects (as was the original mod’s purpose), you instead will have to pay 125/175 ducats per colony in order to fund each one, with the hard mode option allowing the AI to do so as well, so long as it isn’t in debt.
At first I was considering changing the mod entirely to make this the only way the mod functions, but I’ve always worked on a philosophy of choice for the player and some might like the mod as it works now. Plus, this doesn’t come with the problem of breaking anyone’s in-progress game due to the effects of my own mod being altered. Current users of this mod shouldn’t find their saves disrupted by this update.
Colonial Scepicism 3.0 brings with it the option for Region Blocking (affectionately known as the Blockinator). Upon activation, this will render certain areas of the map utterly uncolonisable, including Australia, South Africa and the Western Seaboard. Some of these areas will automatically become colonisable after a certain date, while others can be settled either by the appropriate nations (ergo, Asian and Australian nations may settle California and Alaska) or nations within their own continent. While everything should function as intended, any bug reports would be deeply appreciated.
In theory, this mod should work with anything that still has anything resembling earth as its map. The AI is not altered or messed with in any way; this just uses a sequence of events. It should work with both your Extended Timeline mods and alt-histories such as Ante Bellum; so long as the continents of the Americas and Africa still exist, everything will work as intended.
Thank you for all the people who have subscribed and played with this mod. This was originally an answer to a continual frustration less at historical inaccuracy but more of a gameplay issue where duelling the AI for colonial control is a huge pain, particularly if you’re playing either a non-european country or even a european country without an optimal start for it. It was also my first foray into EU4 modding and modding in general and it has been a learning experience. There is more I want to do with this game and I am slowly working on it. I can only hope you might give it a look when it finally reaches something resembling a playable state.
-Isidor_von_Edelsburg for providing a German localisation for this mod.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?edit=true&id=3076806766
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
