Optimal Colonization

[Gooblah]

Okay, I'm on my way to conquer Justinian's continent. He has 10 cities, and the land mass is pretty big. When I conquer it, I will face a problem: Assuming I keep most of the cities, and re-settle cities that are badly placed, I will have anywhere from 8-12 cities on that continent. It's around 30 tiles (shortest length) from my capital. I'm expecting three options:
1) Colonize the entire continent, making a vassal with lots of land. I'm wary of this one, as the vassal will have all my techs (right?) and a lot of land to power research with.
2) Colonize part of the continent, making a vassal with some land. This will ease distance costs (also, do continental costs go away with State Property?), but the vassal will still have a high tech level.
3) Don't colonize anything, just plop down a Versailles or Forbidden Palace and put Courthouses everywhere. This one sounds good, but crippling maintenance costs irregardless of buildings seem a possibility.
This is my first colonial experience. Any advice would be great!

 

[Refar]

Staate Property does take away the Colonial Expenses completely.

Is this a game you was refering to in the stories&tales forum ? If so... You can Afford some colonial expenses - running SE you can use the slider for money. Put down the Versailes there, to help a bit. Also you have a lead and are teching fast - go for communism for Staate Property.

 

[Gooblah]

Yeah, this is the same game.
I conquered the continent, all right, but the amount of troops I needed far outweighed my expectations. Anyways, I took your advice and built Versailles in Thessalonica, the Christian Holy City and the most central city on his continent. That, combined with moving the Palace to the isthmus city, brought me from a -107 GPT deficit to +55 GPT!