Balor said:

if you border horde territory you have 1 colonist.

So how do you get colonists... Click to expand...

Ah, the first bit of information about hordes in EU4. I take it the horde mechanics work more or less like in EU3 when it comes to colonization. Have you considered introducing 'nomadic' provinces? That is, no complicated stuff, just regular provinces that does not have a capitol city. They would work like a regular province in all other aspects, except that you can't build any buildings. At any time you could send a Colonist to the province and build a city, and with that the province would be a normal province. Steppe nomads would begin the game with mostly nomadic provinces, and they would be able to draw twice the manpower from nomadic provinces. They would have the choice to build cities themselves in a effort to settle down and modernize. Also, when a horde conquers a province from a settled neighbour with the help of the occupying mechanism in EU3 they would have the choice to burn the capitol city and turn the province into a nomadic province.It would bring an underlying logic to why you have to send colonists to horde provinces to capture them. Before you do it is just a vast steppe land, and to control the area you need to set up a city. I know it has been a source of frustration to players that they have needed to send colonists to provinces they have lost earlier to a horde, thinking it made no sense. But this would bring the simple explanation that there is no city left in the province and all the city population are gone. They need to rebuild the city with a colonial envoy.From a horde perspective it would bring an extra strategic choice between keeping your nomadic provinces and high manpower, or turning them into regular provinces and lose some army might. It would also be greatly satisfying to capture a province, burn the cities and turn all the settled farmers into nomads.