Best way to Colonize as Tuscany?

[Dnote]

You want to control the Genoa trade node, make sure you take Aragon before Castile does. Then you're in a good position to pull trade from the Seville node as well Alexandria in the other direction.

Colonies... with the latest patch the AI takes a long time to get going. You'll want a province on the west of Iberia or north/west Africa, then get your colonial range up enough to get to the new world. I found in my game that Portugal, Castile and England all went South America first, so I took the Caribbean, which gives me the best trade power in the region. Up to you though, you need to get land on the Atlantic though.

 

[Dnote]

You don't really need to worry about pulling trade from the West, the only reason I went for the Caribbean was to ensure the trade went to Seville and not the English Channel. Getting a percentage of that Seville trade sent on to Genoa is easy when you control the Genoa trade node. If you have a presence in Ivory Coast that will help as well.

Alexandria is much harder to get a strong trade presence in. I've not gone East yet, but I was planning to push most of the Ceylon/Malacca trade around Africa, rather than through Alexandria, to further increase my take from Seville. I'm not playing a traditional Italy game though, my campaign goal was to control the Genoa trade note completely and be the biggest trade power in the med, so I've taken land from France and Castile to achieve this. If you're not planning to do that, then something closer to how you'd play Venice might be more appropriate.

Also, once you start taking land from Aragon, Castile is going to turn against you, they will want that land (which for me was the excuse I needed to take their land).