In my current game, I'm playing as Bohemia and I own colonial provinces in North America. Until the recent patch 1.4, released together with Conquest of Paradise, I used light ships to “protect trade” in Chesapeake Bay.
But after the patch, my colonies were converted to separate colonial nations. Now, when my fleet is in Europe, I can't even select the option to protect trade in Chesapeake Bay. But when I move my fleet there, I can now select that option, but it deselects itself after one day. Note that I also have a trader in Chesapeake Bay.
Even more confusing is the new Western Europe trade node: it behaves the same as Chesapeake Bay to me, but apparently some AI countries managed to have their fleets there (they are listed in the node screen).
So, my question is, can I send my ships to protect trade in trade nodes where I only have colonies or in the Western Europe trade node, which doesn't have any provinces at all? If I can do that, how?
(I didn't actually have the Conquest of Paradise DLC, these changes are from the 1.4 patch.)
Best Answer
EDIT: Now I'm playing another game and it looks like protecting trade in a node requires either an active merchant or a province in that node (province of a colony is not enough).
Original answer:
I continued playing and now I can send my trading fleets to those trade nodes. It seems the issue fixed itself.