How do I make a colonial empire?

[Tue]

I'm in my first GC as Denmark and it's going pretty well. Sweden, The Hanse, Brandenburg, Hannover and a few other states have been added to the Kingdom and I have colonies in North America as well as South East Asia, but I can't possibly keep up with the expansionism of Spain or England.

I'm currently allied with England and every time we go to war with Spain, I end up with fewer tradeposts than when the war started - even though I beat the crap out of them. My problem is that Denmark only gets one colonist a year but Spain and England get a lot more, so when the war is over I gain a few colonies but lose a lot of tradeposts. How do I avoid this - any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tue

 

[hjarg]

You get one colonist for being protestant and an extra one if you build a shipyard.
England is reformed (+2), and gets colonial dynamism event too (probably somewhere round +3) and maybe has a shipyard as well.

You can keep some armies in your TPs to defend them. And you can upgrate them to cities (better to protect).

 

[Tue]

Yeah, but keeping armies in all of my tradeposts isn't really a viable strategy - who was it that said that he who defends everything defends nothing - and upgrading them to cities would mean a much reduced trade income, so I don't think that would work either.

Tue

 

[hjarg]

Well, there is always third option: don't colonize. And remeber, you can play with matches near enemy tps as well as they can next to yours.

And trade income is reduced only for some time: if you build colony up to city, it will generate normal trade income and you get taxes as well. So it's actually worth building cities.

 

[Tue]

For some reason, option three doesn't really appeal to me - being a meglomaniac and all . As for building all my colonies and tradeposts up to cities, the game would probably be over before since I only get one colonist a year - at least for now, since I'm researching naval tech like a madman.

So the question remains: How do I take over their territory witout losing more in the process? I guess I could declare war every five years, take a couple of colonies and tradeposts each time and save my colonists for the next war in times of peace. Comments?


Tue

 

[BiB]

Well, if u don't get colonists enough and u want a huge colonial empire, there's nothing more u can do than take it in a war

 

[BiB]

Or try inheriting Holland. I did that, works great fopr expanding ur colonial empire Not that I needed much help as France