Guide to performing the colony to state exploit and craftsmen glitch news

Here I will explain how to turn some large population colonies into states without having to get 1% accepted culture bureaucrats for the entire state and also one way to perform the craftsmen assimilation glitch in Victoria Universalis. I will be performing these tricks as Denmark on the colonial state of Ghana.

Step 1: Convert Danish Ghana into a full state.

Turn the Danish part of Ghana into a state by the colonial policy there to settlement and reaching the 1% accepted culture bureaucrat threshold in the state. Even with Denmark's small starting population of 400k, I was able to accomplish this by 1847 because the province of Accra only has 35k starting pops.

Step 2: Annex the rest of Ghana.

After I turned Danish Ghana into a state I annexed the rest of Ghana from uncivilized Ashanti.

The result:

Even though Ashanti was uncivilized, the rest of Ghana became a civilized state after I annexed it from them. In Victoria 2, if you own part of a state and annex the rest of it in a war later, it will always become a fully civilized non-colonial state if the part you owned was a non-colonial state at the time of annexation. The reverse is also true, if you own part of a state as a colony and annex a non-colonial part of it later, the entire state will revert to a colony.

This method works whether you have pre-existing accepted culture craftsmen in your nation or not. There are 2 important Victoria 2 programming quirks that are important to this glitch and neither of them are caused by this mod, they are true for vanilla Victoria 2. The first is that if you promote a POP in a province, it will merge into an existing POP of the target profession if a same culture POP of that profession doesn't already exist in that province. For example: if Russia promotes a farmer into a craftsmen in a province that has Jewish craftsmen but no pre-existing Russian craftsmen, all Russians in that province that become craftsmen will merge with the existing Jewish craftsmen rather than create a new Russian craftsmen POP. If a Russian craftsmen POP is somehow able to migrate to that province, then all new Russians that promote into craftsmen will start promoting into Russian craftsmen instead of Jewish Craftsmen.

The second thing to know is if the population of a POP is below 100, it will sometimes merge with existing POPs in the same province, UNLESS you use a promote national focus of the same type in that province. An example, if 25 Serbian farmers migrate to a province that has no Serbs, there's a chance they will merge with the existing other culture POPs in that province randomly and there will be no Serbian farmers in that province anymore. However, if you use a promote farmers national focus on that province then this merge doesn't happen and the Serbian farmers will not assimilate so long as you have the national focus active. Once the Serbian farmer population in that province goes above 100, it will not merge with other POPs in that province even if you take off the promote farmer national focus. This mechanic does not matter so much with countries that have a large population of accepted culture POPs, because when their POPs migrate to a new province they often arrive in numbers greater than 100, however this does present a challenge for some small population countries like Denmark or Serbia.

Step 1: Disable non-accepted craftsmen promotion.

This prevents any non-accepted POPs from promoting into craftsmen. This is important because if a single non-Danish POP in Ghana becomes a craftsmen, this glitch won't work.

Step 2: Use the province selector to direct migration to Ghana and use a national focus to promote farmers in Ghana until each province has over 100 Danish farmer POPs and there's an open factory in the state with no craftsmen POPs.

It is important that you do not stop promoting farmers in Ghana until you have over 100 farmer Danish farmers in each individual province in Ghana. If any Danish farmer POPs in Ghana fall below 100 population, there's a chance they will merge with other non-accepted culture POPs and you won't have any more Danish farmers in that province.

Step 3: Promote craftsmen in Ghana until you have at least 1 Danish craftsmen POP in each province.

It doesn't matter how big the POPs are, you just need 1 in each province.

Step 4: Turn on non-accepted craftsmen promotion and keep promoting craftsmen.

Once every province in Ghana has one Danish or other accepted culture craftsmen POP and no other non-accepted culture craftsmen POPs, every POP in Ghana that promotes into a craftsmen will merge with the existing Danish or other accepted culture POPs in Ghana.

The result:

One year after turning back on non-accepted craftsmen promotion, all new craftsmen POPs in Ghana are still Danish and not their native cultures. Beware though, if you get non-accepted craftsmen POPs in other provinces and they happen to migrate to Ghana, then the native POPs in Ghana will no longer be forcibly assimilated into the Danish craftsmen POPs.

The second way to perform the craftsmen exploit only works if you have a large number of accepted culture craftsmen in your other provinces. It is simpler and involves fewer steps than the 1st method.

Step 1: Disable non-accepted craftsmen promotion.

This step is the same as before.

Step 2: Use the province selector to direct migration to Ghana and promote craftsmen in Ghana until you have 1 danish craftsmen POP in each province.

Even though we don't have any Danish farmer POPs in Ghana, the migration attraction province selector decision will eventually fill each province with a small amount of Danish craftsmen POPs from Denmark.

Step 3: Enable non-accepted craftsmen promotion and keep promoting craftsmen.

Same as the last step in method 1, once you have one accepted culture craftsmen POP in each province of Ghana and no non-accepted craftsmen, it is time to turn non-accepted craftsmen promotion back on and start turning those non-accepted farmers into Danish craftsmen.