Colonization

Colonization is revised in M&T. The new system keeps the old system except for one major change, a strict limit on colonial range. Then, we add a significant addition of an event-based expedition system. After unlocking expeditions from the third exploration idea a annual event becomes available offering to send an expedition to a region of your choice. The places are unlocked based on your capital location and diplomatic technology level. If the expedition is successful it grants a province from that region to the sender. That province may have previously been either uncolonized or already owned. If the province was already owned the owner is given an event to either sell the province or contest it in which case a comparison primarily determined by military technology level gives the sender a chance to take the province. After acquisition the sender can follow up with regular colonization nearby or conquest if there are countries there.

AI
AI pick expeditions based on weights for each expedition telling it how much to prefer sending that expedition compared to others. For example, the AI will prefer sending an expedition 4 times as much to Cuba than to Canada. Once an AI has a province in a region it is half as likely to send future expeditions there. This is to encourage spread of provinces to get trade sectors started up in many trade nodes. If the AI fails to takeover an already owned province it will become 90% less likely to send expeditions to that region for 20 years. This is to discourage the AI repeating expeditions to a region that will always fail due to military tech comparison.

Province Selection
On the day the expedition is due to finish it randomly selects a province in the region. If it is uncolonized that province is picked and selection ends. If it is already owned the province is scored according to the comparison formula and then a random province in the region is picked again. If the score is more favorable for the expedition sender than the previous score that province is saved as the new selected province. This repeats up to 10 times with the new province becoming the selected province if its score is better than the previous best score. Scoring only happens for owned provinces, and selection stops and picks the first uncolonized province.

Comparison Formula
Owner Mil Tech + 2 + (Province Fort Level * 2) [- 5 if colony] + Size bonus + Manpower bonus - Sender Mil Tech