Originally posted by Coeur de Lion
Well I'm pretty sure that it is feasible but it is also very difficult. Let's face it, taking every province is not all that simple and this example showed that even using trading posts can still be a close-run thing.
On the contrary. Check the Empire of the North AAR in which the world is conquered by 1620 and every province colonized/TP'ed by the 1750s. With a colony nation, this would have been even simpler.
1) Sometimes keeping natives will make the task easier
Not in terms of building them up to cities.
2) Take colonies in peace deals to force powers like Turkey and France to build others.
In general, as Adamx states, states colonize their "scripted" regions. I've yet to experience that a state colonizes beyond its scripting once its core colony areas have been conquored. Secondly, once a nation is into the badboy cyclus against you, it rarely colonizes seriously.
3) Playing Spain or Portugal allows you to take colonies from the ToT
My experience is that the ToT is rarely invoked (except against me).
4) Don't send colonists one after the other. in North America, 2 successful attempts before 1692 will be enough. Use naturaly population growth.
This is not my experience (incidentally, the population growth percentage is another place where the numbers displayed by EU are often inaccurate). 400 colonists before 1692 would be my minimum estimate + you need to have established a trading post first before you can colonize in the inland provinces. And for most of the world (Asia) + this only applies to the coastal provinces. And for most of the rest of the world, you require the full monty.
So if you're playing a "conquer the world" strategy, leave Spain, Portugal and England alone until late in the game, so they place colonies for you.
The problem is - will they leave you alone?
The other problem is that, if you yourself don't have a lot of colonists, then you can't colonize those places that the others won't colonize (S. American interior, Siberia, Asia).
/Strategy