European Campaign - Creating Protectorates?

[Braden]

It seems that Protectorates might actually work in NTW but now I don't fully understand them.

Main question is, can I create Protectorates by attacking Allied factions and liberating their cities? In particular with the European Campaign where this is of some use...assuming this is how you do it? I have created protectorates thus far by only attacking FORMER allies (Allies that attack allies, I side with one of them of course...attack the other and liberate etc etc).

Suggestions, ideas? thanks

[Alsn]

Whether or not they are allied with you before you attack them has no bearing on the creation of protectorates. The point is that certain regions have an attached "nation" to them, such as Warsaw is Polish, Milan and Torino are Italian, Amsterdam is Dutch, Brussels is Belgian, Wallachia and Transylvania are both Romanian etc etc.

How it then actually works is that whenever you capture any of the regions flagged as specific nations, the game checks if that particular nation already exists, if it doesn't, you get the option of liberating it as your protectorate. As such, you can't actually make for example Prussia your protectorate by going in and seizing Berlin, since the prussian faction is already in play(I'm not actually sure if Berlin is even flagged as such a region, but you get the idea).

A few examples:
1)You are Russia and declare war on Denmark, quickly capturing Copenhagen, however the Danes are still alive(they also start with Oslo) and as such your only option is to occupy or loot Copenhagen.
2) You are russia and again declare war on Denmark, except this time you attack Oslo first, and when you capture it you get the option of liberating the region as Norway(since the region is flagged as originally Norwegian and the nation Norway does not exist at this point).
You then proceed to capture Copenhagen and at this point Denmark is eliminated and you now have the option of liberating Copenhagen as your Danish protectorate. If at any point these regions are captured by an enemy nation(and thus are destroyed in the process) you can always re-liberate them by capturing them again assuming the conditions are still met.
3) You are Russia and attack Ottoman controlled Iasi, the only option you have at this point is to occupy or loot, since Iasi has no nation attached to it in the game.

Edit: As a side note, early on in the game making a region a protectorate is highly advisable for several reasons:
1) You usually don't have enough money early on to develop even your starting regions and as such won't be able to upgrade any meaningful infrastructure in the region without skimping on the rest of your empire.
2) Your protectorates provide you with part of their income(I haven't been able to figure out an exact formula, but its roughly 1/3rd-1/2 of their taxed income.
3) You get an automatic trade partner that will never stop trading with you(unless you somehow break your alliance) which can be quite important if you are lacking trade partners(which can so easily happen on the higher difficulties because people sooner or later you always get forced into breaking alliances and as a result have the entire world hate you).
4) Protectorates work towards your victory conditions, but don't give you a diplomatic penalty with the other nations due to having too many regions.
5) Lastly, but most importantly is that minor nations get about 3000 gold income per turn for free, this means they will be able to support a full stack of defenders even though they only have one region, something you would never ever be able to support based on only that region's income.

There are a few exceptions when you probably don't want to liberate a protectorate. Notably when you need a base to mount further assaults which is helped tremendously by having a supply post in a region(the AI almost never upgrades their supply posts even if they have them). Also, some regions are just filthy rich or have the potential of becoming it(the Italian regions in particular due to being littered with gold mines, Istanbul, Amsterdam etc).