The College is a type of cultural building in Napoleon: Total War.
Description[]
Each turn a college may produce a gentleman, and it always helps with research into new technologies.
A college offers an academic education, perhaps a veneer of sophistication, to the sons of the aristocracy, the gentry, and the merchant classes. It may also, unintentionally, expose these people to the dangerous concept of thinking about the world, and that can create a wish for reform, if the world's many injustices are considered.
Historically, a college education usually required substantial wealth, as there were scholarships or charitable places for the talented poor. Although science and philosophy were on the curriculum, the ideas taught were usually socially and politically conservative rather than radical. College masters were unlikely to see any reasons for upsetting the parents of their scholars, and most students saw no reason to question their entrenched privileges. Radicalism was confined to a small number of students, or came out in rebellious and extremely bad behavior involving local taverns, bawdyhouses, and "actresses". Rebellion could always be curbed by a dose of the pox, or a threat from father to cut off an allowance!
General Information[]
Requires 3 turns and 1,000 gold. Can be upgraded into Classical University.
Colleges engage in research, giving factions an economic and/or military edge in the long run. Gentlemen that are placed in colleges grant an increased rate of research.
Colleges may be upgraded to classical universities, which have double their effects (both positive and negative). This upgrade is immediately available, though it is quite costly for an early game investment.
Colleges occupy the same building spaces as member's clubs, which offer a bonus to happiness instead of a penalty, and spawns spies instead of gentlemen. Colleges have better long term effects as a whole, but member's clubs may be more useful in regions with particularly high unrest. After all desired research has been concluded, colleges lose their prime benefit so switching them to member's clubs may be an attractive option.
The Peninsular Campaign[]
In The Peninsular Campaign, colleges require 500 gold and 2 turns to build.
Only France and Great Britain have the ability to build colleges and their upgraded versions; Spain and Portugal may only build church schools, though they can still make use of college in captured regions. Colleges conduct research more quickly in The Peninsular Campaign. They gain the ability to spawn provocateurs, who have the ability to convert the population toward pro-French or anti-French sentiment (dependent on the faction). Additionally, when colleges are upgraded, they automatically spread pro-French sentiment in the region they are built (regardless of what faction builds or controls them).
The utility of colleges compared to church schools vary among the factions. For France, there is no downside to using colleges: their faster research rates and their conversion to pro-French sentiment are both better than what church schools offer. Spain and Portugal may benefit in the short term from colleges' research speed but may want to eventually switch to church schools to benefit from the anti-French sentiment generated. Great Britain benefits from anti-French sentiment, but may only build and upgrade colleges, so it must weigh converting church schools to colleges carefully as such a switch is one way only.