u/Cheyap

How do you protect your merchant ships in trade nodes from attacks efficiently in terms of upkeep costs?

I have this ambitious idea where I will play as Bavaria and will play a long and tedious world domination campaign but instead of claiming the whole world for my own, I will make every single nation as my protectorate and and give them every regions that is rightfully theirs just like from the start. I will just make all of them my puppets. I know its very hard but is that possible?