My latest game as TO -> Prussia -> Germany.
Definitely one of the more fun games I've played so far, and my first time playing as either TO, Prussia, or Germany at all. I originally planned on simply forming Germany without becoming HRE, but we all know that never works. It's just too easy.
Most of my warring in this game was done opportunistically through missions, up until the point when I formed Germany and could pretty much do whatever I wanted. It's pretty amazing to go from such a vulnerable start to being the sole superpower on Earth. I probably wouldn't have survived at first if it weren't for Novgorod, who faithfully allied with me for about 300 years and protected me from pretty much every threat. They conveniently disowned me after I didn't need them anymore, so I didn't hesitate to beat them up when I got a mission against them. :laugh:
Austria was HRE for the first half of the game and so they were my biggest opponent, but I was able to take them out of commission (when I was still Prussia) by concentrating my relatively small army on their heartland and conquering their richest provinces or force-releasing countries from them. After I did that, the show was all me.
After I became HRE I decided to bring as much of Europe as I could under my control, so I attacked France and then force-released and diplo-vassalized a couple minors. If I had time to finish the job I would have taken out Spain next.
The only bad thing about having so many vassals is that you have to babysit the big ones sometimes if you want them to remain powerful, and I definitely learned that from this game. Burgundy was a pretty big power under my command, but for some reason they started having stability problems in the late 1700s, their revenue and army size shrank, and they failed to crush Mexican and UPCA revolutions. Their stab was at -3 for over a decade. I wanted to protect them because they were my single most powerful vassal, so I had to build a transport fleet and ship 40,000 troops across the Atlantic to put down the Mexicans and Central Americans for them, give them back the provinces, and hunt rebels until their stab recovered. It was pretty pathetic.
Other than that, it was a very successful game overall, and I'm very happy with how it went. I've got an army of 1.4 million, which is the largest I've ever had, so that's a nice personal accomplishment. Pretty fun stuff.
And here's another recent game as England -> GB using the Death and Taxes mod.
This has got to be my favorite game of all time. It was also the first time I used the D&T mod, which was pretty interesting but also pretty imbalanced. The tech rates are so out of whack that some Asian countries ended up getting guns before I did.
Nevertheless, this game was extremely successful and fun. Basically my goal with this game was to make Great Britain reach its full historical potential, by being the unparalleled naval power of the world. So I did exactly that. By the end of the game I had over 1200 fully up-to-date combat ships. 400 on the British Isles, for use in European wars, 400 in North America, and 400 throughout the Indian Ocean. I figured if it was worth doing, it was worth overdoing.
This game also taught me a lot about the naval aspect of the game that I never knew before. Even though I created a colossal navy, I eventually learned that good admirals are way more important than how big your navy is. I realized that by putting a perfect admiral on a 25-strong fleet, I could obliterate a 300-strong fleet without a scratch. So I focused on NI's that would give me more naval tradition (I really like the overhauled NI's in this mod). Eventually in the 1700s I got to the point where I could recruit one usually-perfect admiral every four years, and by endgame I had about 5 or 6 perfect admirals at my disposal. (Would've had more if they didn't die so dang fast!) :angry:
A lot of times I just used my massive navy for no strategic gain whatsoever, but simply to have fun trolling other countries. For example, one time I DOWed Ming just for the pleasure of obliterating their 300-strong galley fleet, blockading them 100%, and watching their WE go through the roof and revolts pop up everywhere. :laugh: It goes to show that naval power can be almost as deadly as land power. The only catch is, being a naval power is kind of a full-time commitment. Through experience I've learned it's much harder to build a powerful navy, keep it updated, and supply it with good admirals than it is to do the same with an army, and doing both is pretty much out of the question. Even at the endgame--taking into consideration that Ming's troops are still halfway-decent at the endgame in Death and Taxes--if I were to build an army worthy of challenging Ming, the maintenance costs would probably destroy me.
Another thing I wanted to do with this game was kind of RP a little bit and make Britain more politically glorious than it was in real life by taking over the the entire modern-day US and Canada, and as rich as possible by taking over India, the Caribbean, and Indonesia. My income is a couple thousand ducats a year, but it would be ridiculously higher than that if my army wasn't twice the size of my force limit. (That's what you get for going full naval and quality!)
It took a while before I was able to do a lot of conquest though, because of the disproportionately strong tech of the Asians. Hindustan was a massive, solid power for a very long time (with guns almost as good as the Euros), and I only managed to break them by jumping on them when they were at war with a bunch of Europeans, and blockading them 100%. Then I was able to start taking bites out of India. Indonesia had to be taken piece by piece as well, accelerating only in the 1700s as my tech lead got larger and larger.
I also focused a lot on trade. I'm at full free trade and I have monopolies in most of the big COTs of the world. I own four COTs, one of which serves both the British Isles and all of my North American colonies combined, so it's worth over 3000 ducats.
And yes, that is the Inca empire thriving in South America. Just goes to show how imbalanced (albeit interesting) the mod is.