Questions about colonial warfare

[Eidgeniesser]

I've already played many many hours of EU4 but I never got the hang of how to calculate your colonial empire.

First off: When should you go where? In which order?

I usually go Carib, South America, North America, Africa, INdonesia. Is there a specific time when invading India makes more sense?

Second: Technology??? So, am I doing something wrong if all relevant Asian nations have about the same tech rank or is that historical to some degree? -> Am I expected to have other advantages?

Third: institutions: Are they working as intended yet? Great idea which needs some adjustments: No matter how good I play manufactories starts in mesopotamia or asia minor and Enlightenment in China.

Fourth: Military. So my colonial history is not up to date. I know Pizzaro took out the Incas with less than 1000 conquistadors, and colonial america seems to be working accordingly, but I dont know much about dutch/french/english colonialisation of Asia. I do however believe they encountered a more fragmented Asia but I'm not sure...
But what I am pretty sure about is that they didnt use a third of there standing army to conquer Indonesia. When I arrive there with 50k, + 10 disc, + 0.2 morale (???), and slightly higher tactics and constantly lose. Again I'm not well versed in colonial history but still I figure colonial armies won while being outnumbered more than two to one.

Are my MIL values expected to be Higher? High army traditions from constant european wars?

IN general: How is this part of colonialism/imperialism (Asia) portraited? What are the advantages that you have as european so that similarly to actual history all of southern asia belonges to the europeans (In a balanced quasi-historical approach to the game not WC-mode). The only thing I could think of (historically) is the abuse of local fragmentation, but by the time I get to India, there are usually 1-4 big blocks.

 

[Amadeu of Savoy]

Ok, here's my short strategy guide to Colonizing and Imperializing

Assuming you are playing with Portugal or Spain (or England or who else?), the most profitable path for colonization that I have found is Caribbean => Mexico for early income (early 1500s). Caribbean has highly pre-developed colony terrain with great goods, having a big colony in it means a good income in Tariffs and also puts in you the best central position to colonize the rest of the Americas. Mexico has a lot of small and easily conquerable nations but the prize here are the gold mines near the Aztecs.

Note I am encouraging you to slow down with colonization efforts elsewhere (Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Lousiana) since doing that is super expensive early on when you have low income and will mess up with the African-Asiatic part of this strategy. You can colonize them later, possibly coming into conflict with other European powers (and advanced natives - see more about that below). For countries in Northern parts of Europe that collect trade on the English Channel the US and Canada region might be worth investing colonizing effort on, but certainly not for Portugal/Spain.

Meanwhile, you are going round of Africa, not making too many colonies that would slow you down, and reach India and South Asia early-mid game (around 1550). It is a good idea to have a few colonies on the Ivory Coast node and transfer trade to the Caribbean and then to your collecting trade node in Europe. Take advantage of military tech disparity from Institutions at the time (Renaissance, Colonialism, maybe even Printing Press) if you want to get a large piece in these region, but I advise against due to being a complicated affair unless you have complete control and order in Europe and other colonies, since you'll need both a big navy AND a big army very far from home. I haven't found it really worth to try and conquer huge parts of territory, as I prefer building a huge trade empire controlling the flow of nodes with merchants. You just take a few territories here and there and lot of light ships in the trade flow and try stacking trade power and trade efficiency bonuses.

After building manufacturies and economic buildings in your lands, also developing certain provinces, you will eventually leverage a huge income later game (1600+) to implement all sorts of military advantages on your imperialist roleplay. For proper imperialism play by 1700, you need to upgrade your advisers past 3 to have a lot of monarch powers to be ahead of military tech, finish military idea groups and others which have good policies to implement, build a huge navy, constructing force limit/manpower buildings, improving army profissionalism, going over manpower, adding mercenaries, finding good allies nearby for your imperialist wars, etc. Even so, wining a war against a single big blob in India may prove impossible well into the 1800s.

One of my main complaints is how the later Institutions work currently - Manufactories and Enlightment. I see them serving as a handicap help artificially advance the more primitive nations of the world (South-East Asia, India, Africa, sometimes even American natives) to make the game more "fun" and challenging. In my experience, historical tech stagnancy outside Europe is badly modeled in the game, particularly military/naval tech but also administrative and economic tech with the building of universities and manufactories by virtually every nation in the world (lol). The way it works now, primitives don't have to "Westernize" as they did before, with amusingly anachronistic results starting by 1650 and the hilarious situation of tech equality worldwide in 1820. Of course, "Rest of the World" fans couldn't be more happy. This means that if you want to follow history in the game (which is fun for a lot of us), you have to focus on taking advantages of the game mechanics and work damn hard for it.

For history on European colonization/imperialism in Asia, these are good reads:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Malacca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Philippines
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company#Main_trading_posts,_settlements_and_colonies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Foothold_in_India