France colonial tactics. Through colonists or war?

[Restless Native]

So I’m playing France for first time in a long time. I know it’s an easy run but wanted to tests out my new mechanics.
I’ve picked exploration as my third idea after offensive and humanist so am a bit late to the party. England, Castille and Portugal ( who are in a PU with Castile ) all went for exploration and expansion first two ideas. Although Spain have started in Caribbean and Portugal have skipped Brazil and did west African and now Argentina. England have done nothing as I expect because I am feeding them to my Irish vassal.

I was planning to take expansion 4th but that will be a long way away and try and take what I can before then going for wars to take the rest. But I then noticed this if I complete exploration.

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Bonus:

Can fabricate claim overseas in colonial regions

So my questions first

1. Was this always there and I didn’t notice?
2. How does it work, does it apply to natives and colonial nations? And is coring distance still taken to account?
3. is there any need to make my own colonial nations any more?

Can I just make 1 colony in each region for voting distance then fabricate and take the Iberians colonies easy enough? Has anyone tried it this way?

Also I can have a PU CB on Castile through missions as I already have Naples so I will use that eventually. I understand that would give me their PU’s if they’re not high livery desire? But what happens their colonial nations?

 

[bokorthedust]

1. It has been like that for a couple of years now, but I don't recall now how it was before that. But it isn't a relatively new thing

2. It allows you to claim provinces in the New World without having the usual next to a province or through a sea tile requirement. I never cared for it much, so I don't know if it will work on inland provinces, but it will definitely allow you to claim anywhere on the coast without having nearby presence.

3. You could brute force it by taking the others, then once you have a CN established just use Cede colonial region in peace offers to get all the others in an area in the follow up war(s). I think Exploration only suffices for France with this tactic, and you can use the 1 colonist to go and colonize in TC regions instead.

If you PU Castile their colonies will remain under them, they'll only transfer to you if you inherit (unlikely because of their size) or integrate them manually after the 50 years are up.

 

[necro84]

I prefer to take only 3 first exploration ideas as France (to explore and complete missions) and later switch them to expansion.
For me whole group is weak and useful only before exploring everything needed. Expansion gives bigger settler growth, one extra colonist and lower autonomy

 

[Restless Native]

1. It has been like that for a couple of years now, but I don't recall now how it was before that. But it isn't a relatively new thing

2. It allows you to claim provinces in the New World without having the usual next to a province or through a sea tile requirement. I never cared for it much, so I don't know if it will work on inland provinces, but it will definitely allow you to claim anywhere on the coast without having nearby presence.

3. You could brute force it by taking the others, then once you have a CN established just use Cede colonial region in peace offers to get all the others in an area in the follow up war(s). I think Exploration only suffices for France with this tactic, and you can use the 1 colonist to go and colonize in TC regions instead.

If you PU Castile their colonies will remain under them, they'll only transfer to you if you inherit (unlikely because of their size) or integrate them manually after the 50 years are up.

Ok thanks so I could just potentially not bother colonising and just claim and attack to create my own colonies. They would be wrong culture but would that even affect me?

 

[jonjowett]

Ok thanks so I could just potentially not bother colonising and just claim and attack to create my own colonies. They would be wrong culture but would that even affect me?

IMO, "wrong culture" is only a big deal for your states. (It's immaterial for territories and TCs, because the penalty from high local autonomy is much worse than the penalty from wrong culture.)

After the CN forms, the wrong culture provinces won't be part of your country any more, so it's definitely not a problem for you!

When a CN forms, I believe its primary culture is forced to be the same as that of the parent nation. They will probably promote the major cultures in their territory fairly quickly. Sometimes, they might even decide to change primary culture to a native culture, but that kind of AI behaviour is hard to predict/understand.

 

[Restless Native]

Great ok. I think I’ll just complete exploration and go to war for others colonies. From what I read it won’t work for Africa and trade companies so I might need to focus colonising there instead. The way trade works the Asian trade around Africa is way more valuable.

 

[vitek69]

So I’m playing France for first time in a long time. I know it’s an easy run but wanted to tests out my new mechanics.
I’ve picked exploration as my third idea after offensive and humanist so am a bit late to the party. England, Castille and Portugal ( who are in a PU with Castile ) all went for exploration and expansion first two ideas. Although Spain have started in Caribbean and Portugal have skipped Brazil and did west African and now Argentina. England have done nothing as I expect because I am feeding them to my Irish vassal.

I was planning to take expansion 4th but that will be a long way away and try and take what I can before then going for wars to take the rest. But I then noticed this if I complete exploration.

---

Bonus:

Can fabricate claim overseas in colonial regions

So my questions first

1. Was this always there and I didn’t notice?
2. How does it work, does it apply to natives and colonial nations? And is coring distance still taken to account?
3. is there any need to make my own colonial nations any more?

Can I just make 1 colony in each region for voting distance then fabricate and take the Iberians colonies easy enough? Has anyone tried it this way?

Also I can have a PU CB on Castile through missions as I already have Naples so I will use that eventually. I understand that would give me their PU’s if they’re not high livery desire? But what happens their colonial nations?

It definitely works and I would argue it’s really efficient. The Castillians will colonize faster than you anyway, so just spawn a colonial nation in a desired area and then enforce the ‘cede colonial (area)’ in a peace deal. That way, the AI does the colonizing work for you but you reap all the benefits. Taking colonial provinces generates minuscule aggressive expansion so you can gobble up a lot of land real quick.
I recently did a Savoy->Italy game where I picked Explo as my 3rd idea just for fun. Thanks to Spanish efforts I got large CNs in Brazil, Colombia and Argentina while I only colonized a handful of provinces in each area.

 

[currylambchop]

IMO, "wrong culture" is only a big deal for your states. (It's immaterial for territories and TCs, because the penalty from high local autonomy is much worse than the penalty from wrong culture.)

After the CN forms, the wrong culture provinces won't be part of your country any more, so it's definitely not a problem for you!

When a CN forms, I believe its primary culture is forced to be the same as that of the parent nation. They will probably promote the major cultures in their territory fairly quickly. Sometimes, they might even decide to change primary culture to a native culture, but that kind of AI behaviour is hard to predict/understand.

I think trade companies ignore wrong culture penalties anyway.