I had all of the basemap bits open from the Italy map I posted a few days back, and after finishing another interesting game, I figured I'd whip up another map again tonight, and here is the result:
Using the Pops of Darkness mod, and this time playing as Estonia-United Baltic Provinces. It was a fairly easy playthrough surprisingly. Everybody wanted to be my friend for some reason, which was strange considering I had no industry, military power, or resources to speak of. I took turns teaming up with Great Britain and Germany, mainly for my own survival. Russia made a few lacklustre attempts at invading, but in the end proved pretty ineffectual. It did allow my German neighbours to grow considerably though, which was probably not wise, but it worked out in the end. Even when they went fascist they still wanted to stay friends. Russia's general weakness also left Austria alone.
Austria was pretty stale throughout. They never really allied with anyone, invade anyone, or were invaded by anyone. They just trundled along happily, right up until a liberal revolution dethroned the Habsburg's, leaving a relatively stable Social-Democracy in its wake. Outside of a brief spat with Turkey, Austria just sat back and built a massive ammunition and small arms industry, basically being the sole provider for the rest of the worlds constant warring.
France was doing great, right up until she tried to push her luck in demanding a free Poland from Germany, and was hit with a nasty great war. The great powers were more or less split, leading to a nice long world war one that stretched from 1901 to 1909, and ended with France being heavily dismantled, much to the United Baltic Provinces benefit as we absorbed almost all of her previously expansive colonial empire in Africa.
A few things of note though...
One: the communists... my god the communists. They were everywhere, and they were angry. Russia was hit first, followed by a successfully expanding Ottoman Empire. Egypt fell next. At one point basically all of South America decided to paint their flags red, but eventually democracies came in and kicked the communists out in a few spots. They never really teamed up, which is good or the world would have been communist before the end.
Two: The Sikh Empire. Usually they just sit there and let the Brits boss them around, but after somehow breaking free from the shackles, they decided to go all militaristic and push to the coast. By the end of the game they were back into the British sphere, but they had a heck of a ride while they were let loose.
and Three: The USA. In almost all of my games they really don't do much. They capture their traditional territory and then go all isolationist. But not in this game. In this game, they went colonial and anti-communist crazy. They colonized Guinea and invaded an expansive Communist Turkish North Africa, ripping it apart into Mali, Niger and Libya in successive wars. They invaded Egypt, who was going through a revolution, and crippled the country, leading to a fracture between Egypt and Sudan, who both ended up communist anyway.
But the best part... the crowning achievement in my time playing this game, was the US invading the Communist Turks, resulting in a US Sphered and allied Iraqi dictatorship.
From my end, the game was pretty standard. Build up literacy and eventually an industrial base, survive between big regional players, and steal a slice of Africa. I snagged Belarus from Russia in a couple of wars, mainly for something to do. I never hit Great Power rankings, but by the end of the game I was sitting in 10th and would have been in the running. After colonizing, and then acquiring French colonies after the war, I created several protectorates in Africa, because why not. I was the worlds leader in automobile and airplane constructions so there is that going for my little republic.
for anyone interested,
here is a link to a much larger version of the map.