Although EU4 is a war and diplomacy-focused game, it has a wide variety of gameplay with different mechanics. For example, countries like England, Portugal, Castile, and France can become incredibly wealthy despite having fought a lot of wars. The source of this richness takes us to that important question “EU4 How to Discover America”.
Unfortunately, most players don’t know exactly how to master colonization despite playing EU4 for a long time. While America is easy to explore, the natives of that region can undermine your colonization process. But you don’t have to worry because we will tell you how you can dominate the most productive and richest trade routes of the new world.
Is Country Selection Important for EU4 America Discovery?
Before we start the guide, we need to answer this important question that you probably have in mind. Of course, country selection is important to discover America in EU4. For example, playing with countries with exploration quests, such as England, Castile, or Portugal, will make your job much easier. However, playing with these countries is not always fun.
Well, if you ask “EU4 How to Discover America” while playing with small countries, the answer is very simple. Devote all your attention and effort to discovering America and strengthening your navy. While preparing our guide for you, we wanted to take Florence, one of the small states of Italy, as an example.
By the way, if you are thinking of starting the game with a small state, you may want to read our EU4 Cyprus guide.
EU4 How to Discover America – Ideas
When you start the game, start making important settings for the country administration. We generally close forts, cut military spending, and develop diplomatic relations with the most powerful states around us. After doing all this, there are some small tricks that you should definitely pay attention to.
- The first important tactic is to boost “Administrative Power” from the Court page. If you have a good general, your monthly ADM earnings can reach 11. The purpose of doing this is to have a new national idea by quickly researching administrative technologies.
2. The second important step is to gradually push the limits of the navy. Produce as much trade and carrier ships as possible. Because when you start colonization, you use them both to carry soldiers and to get maximum efficiency from trade routes.
3. When the date shows 1453 at the earliest and 1456 at the latest, your Administrative technology should probably have reached level 5, no matter what country you play. After reaching this level, you need to enter the ideas page and select “Exploration Ideas“.
4. Once you have made this choice, you can now spend your focus on unlocking the features of the idea. In particular, it is worth paying attention to the “Colonial Ventures” and “Overseas Exploration” ideas. Because these features will provide us with “+1 colonists” and “+50% colonial range” contributions.
While you continue to accumulate ADM points for the features we mentioned above, we can now start exploring.
Recruiting An Explorer
Sails up! We can finally cross the Strait of Gibraltar and start our journey to America. But before that, there is a small thing you need to do.
- First, bring your entire navy to one of your port cities and gather them.
- Then open the “Leader” page and click the “Recruiting An Explorer” button to assign an admiral to your united navy.
- Then bring the explorer you hired to the head of the navy and click on the “Explore” option from the “Select Mission” menu. By the way, if the Explore mission is not active, it means you need 3 Light or Heavy ships.
- After choosing the Explore mission, you will be presented with West Africa or the unexplored areas closest to you. You’ll need to increase your Colonial range and diplomatic tech level a little more to see America in the list of discoverable regions.
- Additionally, after you go to your first discovery mission, you will encounter a new setting called Native policy. You can access these settings from the “Stability and Expansion” page. We generally try to adopt the idea of a “Native Trading Policy.”
- After successfully completing the Explorations and “Overseas Exploration” we will now need to shift our focus from Administrative technology to diplomatic technology. Because we need to increase our colony range even more. However, after completing the “Overseas Exploration” idea, we will begin to explore the Caribbean and America.
- By the way, don’t forget to choose “Expansion Ideas” as the new National idea after your Administrative technology level reaches 7. Because this way, you will get +2 additional colonists and +1 merchants, and you will be able to colonize multiple regions.
You have finally set sail for the new world on the Caribbean Sea. But there are still areas to explore. In particular, you should continue until you come across a region that can send colonies to exploration. When you’re ready to ship colonies, we can move on to the next phase of our guide.
EU4 America Colony Distance and Management
By now, you must have discovered Florence and the shores of America when the dates show 1475-1480. However, when you try to colonize these places, you cannot do it because the distance is far. Quickly start colonizing any island in the Caribbean where the colony distance is suitable for this. And don’t forget to send a highly professional army of 2-5k to the island as soon as the colonization begins.
As you can see in the picture, we managed to occupy a small island near San Martino. After that, if you check all the coasts of America where your colony distance is not enough, you will see that the problem has been solved.
We are ready to explore a region with tobacco and lots of cotton. You will now be able to craft and trade new merchandise. As you can see, the answer to the question “EU4 How to Discover America” is very simple. Moreover, we discovered America only 44 years after the game started. We can easily say that no country has started colonization yet, except Castile.
