Ships per colony

Question

In the EU4 wiki, I read that to avoid certain penalties you should have one heavy or light ship per colony dedicated to that colony; the penalty being a function of the ratio of ships so allocated to the number of your colonies.

However, what does that mean?

1. Do I need a ship in the coastal area of each colony?

2. As a variation of (1), if colonies are under the administration of a viceroy or such (named colonial area, eg "Spanish Brazil"), do I need (number of colonies in named area) ships anywhere in that area? (Eg, patrolling)

3. Do I check how many of my colonies contribute to a trade node, and assign at least this number to that trade node?

4. Or do I simply need to have n heavy or light ships in my navy if I have n colonies (independent of where the ships are)?

Any insight appreciated.

Edit: more precisely, this applies to overseas provinces, of which colonies are only a typical example; and this is in the chapter on tariffs.

Answer 1

You need 1 ship, light or heavy, per colonial province that you own. The location of the ships is irrelevant, you can have all your ships in a big fleet in port and you will still get no penalty. Colonial nations like Spanish Brazil handle their own fleet and are not part of the colonies you need to produce fleets for. You can check how many ships you have and need on the economy screen, under tariffs.