Colonization

[NRose97]

Hello,

I was just wondering what exactly happens when you colonize a country... Do you get their military units, or military facilities, or both? And is there any other benefits of it??

[IceCold]

I think you get there military facilities, their units i think stay their's so you don't have to control them.
You can build on their land, so you can build rail tracks for supplies ets. i think you can order them to make more resources as well by building mining/any goods production facilities, I don't know if it's you paying/providing materials for the construction or them tho.

You can order them to give you anything they have basically in the trade menu. No matter how unfavorable the treaty/trade agreement is, they will accept it i believe. So if it shows up as red they will still accept.

[domcoppinger]

I depends...

If you conquer a country then make choose to make it your colony the following happens:

You gain control of all their military facilities
You gain all their military units
You become their "owner" nation...

However if you gain a colony by default, i.e. if you conquer Russia all Russia's colonies become your colonies by default.

In this situation you just become their "owner" nation. They keep any bases/units they have. (Will have to double check that to be sure on the bases but I am 90% sure!)

There are certain advantages/disdvantages to having a nation as a colony:

If you are an "owner" nation you can make ANY trade you want with your colony. I.e. You could trade all their money for nothing, you can even acquire one way treaties from them!
(To do this just use the normal diplomacy screen setup the deal exactly as you want it then hit trade... Ignore the red bar indicating it won't work! They will accept anything)
If you colonise a nation it remains a world player yet very much your puppet.
You may not want random pieces of land your nation directly controls scattered all over the world.
Nations will vary in willingness to declare war on a colony from an owner... I.e. they may not declare war on Haiti but would declare war on Russia so you maintain Haiti as a colony to protect it
You can control building in colonies, you should also gain control of any military bases you start to build (only works some of the time, possibly it only works if you start in a new hex!)
The world map is preserved, this is very much an individual thing but some players jsut don't like to see Israeli land where Cuba should be!

Disadvantages:
You don't get full control over it. Social spending/taxes/actions against countries are all left in the hands of the Ai
You may lose out on increasing your population, which can be especially bad if you are in desperate need of a large, quick population growth!

It is all down to how you want to play, I personally tend to colonise nations that are a decent distance from my borders but will annex any nations that I share a border with! I also like to manage lots of countries on what is basically a federal level, by controlling the military directly and then indirectly balancing economies of nations by sharing out resources as they are needed and building industrial structures where they are best placed and providing loans from one colony to another...

But that is just me!