About colonization 1- The only way to manually expand your territories in the Americas is to send colonists into unoccupied provinces (the grey oens around your colonies) just like you did and conquer natives' provinces. If it becomes too expensive to have four colonists working at once like you do, you can limit yourself to two or three. It is still pretty fast this way.

2- When you have completed the colonization of five provinces in a colonial region, such as Brazil, Columbia, Perou, etc. (you can see these colonial regions via the Colonial Regions mapmode in the geography tab), the game creates a colonial nation out of these provinces. Every new province colonized (as in fully colonized) by this colonial nation's overlord will be given to this colonial nation. Having a colonial nation has advantages and inconveniences. You get a purcentage of their income, and colonial nations with gold mines will send shipments of gold to the motherland. Them being a entity of their own also gives you more troops in the long run, since every country has a base supply limit (of 6) plus what their provinces give them. Colonial nations can also revolt and declare independance if their liberty desire gets high (this usually happens much later in the game).

3- These islands off the coast of Tropica are part of the Carabbean colonial region. If you colonize five islands in total (or if you conquer three of those provinces, since theyall seem to be taken), they will become a country too. It's not really an issue that they aren't part of Tropica.

4- If you can't use the CB you get from exploration ideas against Arawak, it might be because the westernized from being so close to you. You can only use that CB against countries with the Nort or South American tech group. You can check Arawak's in their diplomacy screen (top right of the menu I think). I don't understand why you couldn't fabricate a claim on them if their pronvice if you have a big enough spy network there. You could always try to vassalize them if they are westernized (since you can't do that to natives)

5- When an army has a conquistador, you can send them on the Find the Seven Cities of gold mission. Whilst they are exploring, they reveal the terra incognita and you get random events about what they find or how they are doing. You mostly get small bonuses or negative effects off of these events. I mostly use this to reveal all the terra incognita.

The land you inherited in the low countries is part of a chain of event concerning the burgundian inheritance. To make this simple, this duke of Burgundy can die without an heir and France, Spain, the emperor of the HRE and some others can claim parts of the lands of Burgundy. You got lucky and got it! be sure to staiton troops there because at some point in the game, there are huge sta