Sweden reaching for China by land by the beginning of the 17th century? Good grief.
Sweden nearly bordering you makes the army sizes more important again, too. (Sweden has slightly less soldiers as you have, that 30k stack could be ugly)
Sweden wouldn't normally be a problem due to their poor manpower (compared to Ming anyway), but I'd check how many population-rich Russian provinces they've conquered on the way – you might need some serious peacock artillery to fight them.
The main threat is having a large tech gain and better troops per tech level, so it will take a lot of care just to fend them off (at the moment I'm at Muslim tech but I've left the army at E Asian types). I reckon, having followed a few Prawnstar AARs that I can manouver them into a stalemate in the case of war (& hope for attrition to cause them w/e), but I'm in no hurry to have a war with any Europeans - not least at the moment, all their holdings are pretty useless from my perspective (last thing I need is a load of underdeveloped grain provinces). But aldiq is right, since artillery isn't location dependent thats my main source of power - but I need to get the Temple faction out of power (hard with Shaowu's stats) so I can build over force limit and really increase the volume of guns in my stacks.
One threat is dealt with (the French), another is lurking just beyond the horizon. Sweden reaching you the long (non-naval) way - that's a bit disconcerting. Should fan the flames of the usual 'Paradox overpowers Sweden' argument for a while.
Considering the Swedes' evident martial prowess (fighting their way across Russia - something a rather great lot of people have failed to achieve over the centuries), their presumed lead in military land tech and finally the plain fact that they're your friendly land-based neighbors... considering all that, perhaps Queen Mother's peacock/Swede crossbreeding program is somewhat poorly timed.
She is ordered to do penance in the next post, which she really doesn't like. The gain, for all the threat, is even more tech gain (or do you just need one more advanced neighbour for that)?
In any case, a reminder to vote in the Q1 ACAs here and in the inaugaral AArthenas thread here, the last Crusader Kings 1 Crusadaar's chalice here or catch up on the HOI3 AARs you missed earlier here (which is in the prelminary voting round).
Anyway the next post proves that domestic unity is a vastly over-rated thing:
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