In the previous Dev Diary, we looked at Imperialism: Concert of Europe’s Influence mechanics. Perhaps the most important use of Influence was to influence Traditional Minor nations in the hope that an “incident” will occur, which will allow the influencer to press its colonial claim on the target nation. How does this occur? Whenever such an incident occurs, a Concert of Europe Congress will be held. All colonial powers (all nations with the ability to colonize) are invited to the congress.
Explaining the mechanics of the Colonial Congress is a bit awkward, but it is simpler than it might initially appear. This difficulty in explaining is partly due to the Colonial Congress being perhaps the most original aspect of the game. I am not aware of any game having anything quite like it.
In order to have a colonial claim recognized by the Concert of Europe, at least 51% of the colonial nations, weighted by their naval strength, must recognize that claim. Each nation’s voting power is equal to its percentage of the total naval power of all colonizing powers combined. This is measured not by the number of fleets each nation possesses, but on the total power of its combined fleets. Accordingly, improving fleet strength with naval technologies and military doctrines will increase the number of votes a nation has during a Colonial Congress meeting. Also, Dreadnaught fleets contribute far more voting power than Frigate fleets.
When attempting to have a claim recognized, the claimant nation automatically votes in favor of itself, so nations with powerful navies will not require as many votes from other nations. Each of the other colonial powers will make one or more recognition request that they would demand in exchange for granting the claimant colonial recognition of the targeted nation. Nation A granting colonial recognition of Nation C to nation B, has the following implications:
- If Nation B ever requests recognition of C in a future Congress, A automatically votes in favor of B’s claim.
- If some Nation D ever requests recognition of C at a future Congress, B cannot vote in its favor of D’s claim.
- Nation A cannot influence Nation C, and any influence tokens it currently has on C will be removed (but can be placed elsewhere on A’s next turn).
- Nation A cannot grant recognition of C to any other Colonial Power at any future congresses.
Some of the other nations will refuse grant recognition either because they wish to gain that colony for itself, or it cannot find a request to make that it believes is worth the votes it has to offer. Nations with more voting power will generally make greater concession demands than those with less voting power. For example, Portugal’s recognition of claims are not of much value to the UK, so the UK would only recognize a claim made by Portugal if Portugal were to recognize the UK’s claim on several other Traditional Minor nations.
The claimant nation will try to accept enough requests to get at least 51 votes in total. Sometimes this will not be possible, and the claimant will fail to obtain colonial recognition of the target nation. When a deal is made, the claimant will recognize the claims requests of those it had chosen to reach 51 points.
Sometimes, by the time a Colonial Power has an opportunity to make a colonial claim, it will have already obtained 51 or more votes in favor of recognition. In which case, that power just has to wait for an incident to occur to receive its colonial claim.
After obtaining recognition, the claimant nation will have a colonial casus belli on the target. Making the target into a colony can then be accomplished by defeating it in a war.
Imperialism: Concert of Europe 