States/Endorsed cultures in a trade strategy

[BaronNoir]

Simply said, those days, I play with a host of Native Americans nations, and very simple question (that would apply to lots of game)

When trade companies are not an option, is this a valable approach to use states/endorsed cultures in key strategic areas ? For instance, endorse Malacca and Sumatra cultures and make states of them ?

(The issue being of course that while those two are obvious choices, there are lots of trade points and cultures...)

Generally speaking, is this right to assume that a state have to be DAMN wealthy to be worth being taken as a state without being of an accepted culture ? (when culture conversion is not a realist option)

 

[pttaylor]

It's perfectly possible to have states of unaccepted culture be worth it; pretty sure the tooltip for state maintenance and expecting increase in (tax+production) income is actually accurate for these (unlike some tooltips in the game...), and factoring in the extra manpower and trade income only improves things. TC are still better now that they've got no autonomy floor, but if they're not an option and you actually have the ADM to spare then state away.

 

[BaronNoir]

It's mostly a matter of running out of states ''slot''.

 

[Vetgirig]

Areas that is colonial nation areas or trade company areas you should not really make into states. Since you don't need to do it to make them valuable.

But if you start in those areas you probably just do it to get a good home area around your capital.

 

[netherlink]

You want to have the trade influence there, and production income from spices is nice, too.
Those spice island are not too poor in development either, so it's quiet logical to state them if you can't do TC.

Culture converting isn't important at all, as long as you don't have massive rebel problems, since wrong culture lowers taxes and manpower only IIRC.