Europa Universalis 4 Thread 2: Comet Sighted!

[Leecros]

On the topic of colonial strategies, as a country like Spain or France, what's the best way to keep other countries from establishing major colonies? (Or at least limit them)

In my personal experiences....you can't, or at least it's incredibly difficult to do so. If you're playing as Spain, the best way to take down early major colonies is to crush Portugal into the ground, but that isn't going to stop England or France from colonizing.

However, if you want to do any kind of colonization with anyone, Spain and Portugal are your biggest enemies....er threat. They just have so much of an advantage between already having some early colonial expansions(portugal starts with the Azores), National Ideas that promote colonialism(Portugal gets +25% colonial range and +15 yearly settler increase and Castille/Spain gets a +25 yearly settler increase and straight up +1 colonist), and Idea group selection(Both Portugal and Castille will both take Quest for the New World very very early).

They also have the advantage in Colonial Nations. Colonial National Ideas do NOT give colonists and Colonial Nations go with the same Idea groups as it's parent nation would(If it was controlled by the AI). So that means if you play as a nation that doesn't do any colonizing...like Ulm, You simply won't see your colonial nations colonize at all...Whereas the Castilian and Portuguese colonial nations will.

My personal strategy with Scotland was to colonize through Greenland and hit Canada and then just beeline down the coast, doing what i can to cut off all coastal access for other nations to colonize. You could use the same strategy in EU III and take complete control over the whole americas...However, because EUIII started earlier, you could start colonizing before the timeline of EUIV even starts. Thus, while i currently have most of North America and parts of mexico completely shut down from other European Powers, South and Central america are still divided between Castile and Portugal

Something to keep in mind though: They can't or won't colonize without their coastal provinces. That means that if you don't want to full annex a nation like France or Spain to stop them from colonzing(as that would take too long), just take their coastal provinces.