Formed the Netherlands as Utrecht, Austria hates me for all my conquering in the HRE and France is sick of my expansion, so I'm kind of locked in in Europe. Without a direct route from the New World into Antwerp, do I colonize Chesapeake/Hudson Bay, direct trade to the North Sea and just spam light ships at it? Is there a better strategy where I don't lose half my trade gains to naval maintenance?
Colonization & Trade as the Dutch
- Thread starter wanderlust33
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So there's no way to make my tariff income and trade income synergize? It seems like it's a more efficient use of colonists to let the UK and France colonize North America and throw light ships at London/Bordeaux to siphon off the gains, while heading to greener pastures in Africa/India/SE Asia for my own colonization...
Siphoning trade off London, Bordeaux and Lübeck is a good idea. But beyond that, you can collect outside of your capital as long as you own some provinces in the region. There's nothing wrong with putting a fair number of colonies in Chesapeake Bay and/or Caribbean, as these are fairly valuable provinces (good chance of rolling luxury goods like tobacco or coffee) and very well-positioned for controlling trade. As you say though, there's big money to be made in the Orient. You don't need to colonise much in Africa by the way, because other Europeans will generally pull trade in the right direction; the only really important regions are Ivory Coast and Gulf of Aden.
If you wish to deliver your colonial trade home, you must do so through a primary node. Sevilla, Bordeaux, London, or Lubeck. This will requir conquest. London or lubeck are arguably the easiest to take control of. London is protected by a powerful navy, If that navy can be over come, Englands land forces are an easy target. Lubeck is controled by many small states, some of which can Field dangerous armies (Brandenburg). But the split up into many smaller states makes it the easier of the 2 choices. However going through the north will exclude other possibilities unless you can also at the same time, dominate Ivory coast and the Carribean, no easy task against the early colonizers in Iberia.
Hence my usual Amtwerp game does not rely on colonization at all, but conquest and foot holds in all the primary nodes. Although france is a hard nut to crack, Normandy and Brittany are not. North Africa can be an easy way to cut into and rob Sevilla. The benefits of this tactic is, having a more central base of power, as apposed to far flung weakly held reagions of a very spread out empire, I can keep all my power in Europe and let the other nations bring the trade to me. My cut wont be 100%, but that's the price you pay for greater military supremacy where it matters most, in Europe.
Holland is my capital, and All nodes feed some money towards it, even though I have few colonies of my own. When war comes my trade fleets provide overlapping patrol zones and can quickly be pulled together into one massive fleet. Wheras spain or england may have there fleet as far away as India. Until recently with the conquest of mexico (for the gold) and the colonization of canada I required no armies anywhere else in the world.
Edit; sorry if the image isnt loading, Image shack is having issues lately.
Hence my usual Amtwerp game does not rely on colonization at all, but conquest and foot holds in all the primary nodes. Although france is a hard nut to crack, Normandy and Brittany are not. North Africa can be an easy way to cut into and rob Sevilla. The benefits of this tactic is, having a more central base of power, as apposed to far flung weakly held reagions of a very spread out empire, I can keep all my power in Europe and let the other nations bring the trade to me. My cut wont be 100%, but that's the price you pay for greater military supremacy where it matters most, in Europe.
Holland is my capital, and All nodes feed some money towards it, even though I have few colonies of my own. When war comes my trade fleets provide overlapping patrol zones and can quickly be pulled together into one massive fleet. Wheras spain or england may have there fleet as far away as India. Until recently with the conquest of mexico (for the gold) and the colonization of canada I required no armies anywhere else in the world.
Edit; sorry if the image isnt loading, Image shack is having issues lately.
Nowhere near the optimal trade set-up (no trade ideas or expansion for extra merchant) and only conquered single provinces in key trade nodes as a self-imposed rule (i.e. only colonized single Ivory coast provinces, conquered Zanzibar, Ceylon). But I do have all of the Caribbean + every province in Malacca here.
Set-up is collect in Malacca, steer from Ceylon to Aden, Aden to Cape, Ivory coast to Caribbean, collect in Caribbean (a lot of leakage here due to massive navies from Portugal/Castile), steer from either Bordeaux or London with the last merchant depending on circumstance.
Obviously a much better setup would be to Steer as much trade from Malacca->India->Aden->Ivory Coast-> Timbuktu and collect in Timbuktu.