Early colonization as England. 1.8 AOW

[Insigna]

So I am playing as England with one of my goals being beating Spain & Portugal to the Caribbean. I took a long break from the game so I'm a bit rusty at this.

I have a few ideas that I've been thinking about but I'm not sure what works in 1.8:

•Conquer a Castile or Portuguese island. This is relatively straight forward but would I be able to core fast enough to make this make sense? Perhaps I could try to take a province in Iberia to make it closer to core? Not sure if that is needed though.

•Attack a native country. Conquer it or vassalize it or first vassalize and then diploannex. This could be done early but I'm not sure if this would get you the cores you need and what method would be best or can a vassal can give you colonization range.

•Also I could annex a 5 province native nation if I can find one which I believe would form a colonial nation right away. Not sure if the overextention or aggressive expansion would kill me but I think in theory this could work.

So what are your thoughts?

 

[Empire_Rule]

You cannot vassalize natives, only protectorate.

Colonial nations need 5 CORED provinces

 

[fraesp29]

Tried it in one of my first playthroughs. You can't core provinces out of your range.

 

[_megafone_]

You can try the trick of protectorate a native nation and then core an adjacent one. I know this works with vassals (that was how we did African Power up to 1.7), but never tried with a protectorate.

 

[Insigna]

You can try the trick of protectorate a native nation and then core an adjacent one. I know this works with vassals (that was how we did African Power up to 1.7), but never tried with a protectorate.

So you can core the neighboring province of a vassal even if it's out of coreing range? I had no idea.

 

[_megafone_]

You definitely could on 1.7. I don't know if that was working as intended or a bug, though.

 

[VampireBoot]

So you can core the neighboring province of a vassal even if it's out of coreing range? I had no idea.

Only if it's on your home continent.

 

[Insigna]

So my second option won't work and the 1st might be tricky depending on how far your coreing range is at around the time that colonization begins.

 

[chrnno]

Attack Portugal/Castille and steal a colony when it is almost finished. Even if you won't be able to send colonist it should finish quickly enough and get you a core which in turn gives you range for proper colonization.

 

[Beagá]

Not to mention you should screw Spain anyway

However, if you do a colonial conquest CB do NOT burn the goal colony - if you do, ticking warscore will be negative.