I've been gone for a long time, with college and work sapping my time coupled with other internet websites. For the past few weeks I've been playing a mostly hands off game for the MPM mod after finding some free time. Like last time I was an island nation waiting for the time to pass as I saw the world play out.
I did meddle a few times, the only substantial one was ripping apart the Ming after the Yan State broke away on its own. The Ming gradually annexed all its former pieces so the overall effect was not what I thought it would be. Apart from that I saved Ireland after I saw it form naturally twice. The other times were just selling provinces that should never exist under the ownership of that faction, but after around 1680 or so I didn't touch a thing.
So... shame on me.
[video=youtube;hPgJGzooaoM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPgJGzooaoM&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Prussia I never touched, even though I did pray that Austria would beat them nothing could match that particular Lucky Nation, though the Osman Empire was in fact stronger and larger, it wasn't as powerful nor as influential as it should have been.
The Mughals formed and became an economic and military powerhouse, which I found was awesome. France, Great Britain, Portugal, Two Sicilies/Naples, and Spain couldn't crack that country, even though it was dozens of techs behind.
Russia didn't expand the way it could have, it had an openning into Siberia to colonize, but never did. It conquered the states to its east, but never annexed them. It was annoying when they ended up selling their rights to Siberia to the Italians because they wouldn't move.
Khwazermia is not Kazakhstan, and came out abnormally strong quickly reaching the Pacific, before wrestling with the Yan State and Korea, even conquering bits of the Golden Horde.
Which reminds me, the Timurids resurrected themselves more times than any other state on the map, sometimes from Khwazermia sometimes from the Mughals, but the true oddity comes from the Golden Horde, which collapsed, regrouped, collapsed, regrouped, and then maintained themselves as a Mid-Level power fighting off the Poles and Russians throughout the game, though nearing the end the tech gap was too great and started to fall.
The Russo-Austrian Alliance was the strongest powerblock for a few centuries before the Franco-Prussian-Swede alliance overtook them. The Empire of Sweden was briefly the strongest country in the world, before Prussia betrayed them and later France abandoned them. Nearing the end they began to rebuild themselves from being fundamentally crushed.
Great Britain formed and then suffered a most unfortunate existence. The Sicilians, Irish, French, Swedes, Prussians, Brittanians, and the Iberians (all three) constantly maintained a presence on the islands. The French, Prusisans, and Sicilians were the alliance leaders of multiple conflicts, while the others contented themselves to merely capturing all the mainland territories and asking for all the cash they had.
All in all this was a pretty fun game to watch.