How to handle colonial nations

[EmilAmundsen]

Playing as Portugal I now got 4 colonial subject nations. As they are starting to grow I noticed their liberty-desire follow suit. At first I dismissed it due 20 prestige cost equals -10 liberty-desire. The thought struck me that there will be a limit to how fast I can generate prestige, wageing war in Europe, when compared to the development capacity of a growing number of subject nations.

How do you deal with this challenge?

 

[Sfan]

Improve relations to 200 is a start. Have diprep also helps, via influence and diplomatic idea groups. There are some policies that help with that as well, and also further reduce liberty desire. There are age bonus from last age helping with liberty desire from subject development. You can influence them, or develop in their land. You can boost your army size. Also, mercantilism and tariffs increase the LD from subjects. Intentionally losing mercantilism in the events can be a good idea if you're having huge troubles, even if you lose money out of it.
A good half of this comes from DLCs however.

 

[DeerMan]

Grow, keep you stronger than them, if possible you want them weak,but always pay their debt to look kind to them

 

[Kergan]

The main ways are the same as for other types of subjects:

- Be stronger than they are (pump your chest by building over force limit if needed)
- Opinion sitting at 200 (improve relationship)
- High dip rep (Influence, Diplomacy, trading in Ivory bonus, policies)
- Trust sitting at 100 (use the Great Power "Influence Nation")
- Develop subjects from time to time if needed (temporary -5% liberty desire)
- Placate subjects from time to time if needed (temporary -10% liberty desire)
- Grant them provinces through the subject interaction screen (mostly for other types of subjects, but this should apply to colonial nations too if you're paused on the day you make peace; temporary -% liberty desire based on the province's value)
- Pay off their debt whenever possible (temporary -% liberty desire based on the number of loans)

If you're filthy rich you can abuse the latter by loading large subjects up with forts, to make it so that they're constantly running a deficit. And then pay off their debt every so often. Be sure to stay constantly at war if you do this, else they'll delete excess forts when at peace. (Pause to stay at peace for a single day if you ever need to do something that requires you to be at peace.)

As OPM Hamburg you can keep Eastern America as a happy colonial nation if you apply the above.

 

[EmilAmundsen]

What!? Placate Subjects is temporary!? How long does it last? I've been using it as a primary-mechanic while pumping up mercantilism massively. If it's temporary I'm gonna be in a bit of trouble :O

Are there no mechanics for reducing their liberty-desire "+" permanently, as opposed to applying "-" modifiers that require constant maintainance and have an effective roof?

 

[Badesumofu]

I find Mercantilism isn't worth pumping, really. It was a few patches ago when CNs were trivial to keep loyal. Now it isn't worth it - tariffs will give you more money than a tiny bit of trade power (and who cares about provincial trade power when you own entire nodes anyway?).

Placate does tick down, but they stack on top of each other so it's best value to stack placates onto the same CN as much as possible rather than spread them wide. So pick one or two CNs that you will raise the tariffs of very high and dump all your placates into those. Reduced LD from developing works the same way. So you might designate one CN as your placate CN and another as your develop CN. Developing CNs can be worthwhile in and of itself anyway sometimes - mainly to unlock a building slot for a manu/workshop combo.

 

[Sfan]

Trade steering. Trade steering. Trade steering. It's exponential...

Try to have 10.000 trade income without pumping Mercantilism and tell me how it goes.

 

[Badesumofu]

Trade steering. Trade steering. Trade steering. It's exponential...

Try to have 10.000 trade income without pumping Mercantilism and tell me how it goes.

I am probably missing something here - my understanding of mercantilism is that it just boosts provincial trade power.

 

[Bica]

I am probably missing something here - my understanding of mercantilism is that it just boosts provincial trade power.

Which propagates upstream.

 

[Kergan]

What!? Placate Subjects is temporary!? How long does it last? I've been using it as a primary-mechanic while pumping up mercantilism massively. If it's temporary I'm gonna be in a bit of trouble :O

Yeah, it's temporary... If you hover your mouse over their liberty desire you'll see the total -% liberty desire due to your overlord actions (includes placating) go down each year.

Are there no mechanics for reducing their liberty-desire "+" permanently, as opposed to applying "-" modifiers that require constant maintainance and have an effective roof?

Those would chiefly be high opinion, high trust, and your own army strength. Also, keep tariffs and mercantilism at a sane level.

 

[Incompetent]

Placate does tick down, but they stack on top of each other so it's best value to stack placates onto the same CN as much as possible rather than spread them wide. So pick one or two CNs that you will raise the tariffs of very high and dump all your placates into those. Reduced LD from developing works the same way. So you might designate one CN as your placate CN and another as your develop CN. Developing CNs can be worthwhile in and of itself anyway sometimes - mainly to unlock a building slot for a manu/workshop combo.

If you're going for the full tariff magic approach (which definitely makes sense as Portugal), developing in CNs is better than developing your own land, especially when you have a lot of spare DIP points.

Trade steering. Trade steering. Trade steering. It's exponential...

Try to have 10.000 trade income without pumping Mercantilism and tell me how it goes.

The most important source of trade steering is navy tradition, which means you need a giant trade fleet. Once you have said giant trade fleet, I doubt a bit of bonus provincial trade power is going to be too critical.