How to prevent overseas colonies from becoming vassals

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I truly love the EU series, and I've played it numerous times, but everytime that my overseas lands (colonies) become too large they are declaring themselves independent and they become a vassal.

I find this very frustrating, since I put a lot of money and resources in those countries/cities, for example to build ships and armies there, so that they don't need to travel from Europe.

I would understand it if those countries would be angry with me, but most of the time they are nearly 100% happy, so I find this separation really stupid. The only way to prevent this seems to have maximum 3-4 countries next to each other there, and then conquer lands farther away.

Btw: I know that in real history a lot declared themselves independent, but they were always angry, and not 100% happy like in the game.

Best Answer

In the Americas and Australia there is no way of preventing a colonial nation from forming. If for some reason you really want to retain direct control over colonized territories you can always focus on Africa.

For me, the bigger question is, why would you want to keep them yourself? Here's some things to consider:

  1. I'm personally always out of quota to form new states out of provinces I conquer in Europe. If the same goes for you, those nice provinces you've colonized at a high cost will always remain at 75% local authority. This gives you -75% on tax income, -37,5% trade power and -75% on production income.
  2. Once a colonial nation forms, tons of good stuff starts happening. They transfer 50% of their trade power to you, they start colonizing on their own, thus growing your colony without it costing you anything (might have to subsidize them for a bit to get them going), once they hit 10 provinces they give you an additional merchant and a +5% on your global trade power. Since the last update they will also ship armies to the European mainland to support you in wars. That's a LOT of good stuff and you only have to give them 5 provinces for it all to start happening. Five provinces which were not of great worth to you anyway.
  3. Logistics are not an issue. You have full fleet and army access to your own colonial nations at all times. This means that there's no reason to want to prevent them forming on that basis either.

Point of attention: the colonial nation forms whenever you have 5 provinces fully colonized in a single colonial region. Them not being adjacent is not a factor.

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