The borders... They are awful.
Yes, but that's the minimum required provinces for forming P-L (Minus Meckenburg that I released as a pupet) since P-L requires a lot of provinces that might just be 1 in a much bigger region.
What are the brown and blue countries taking up some of the former Austria-Hungary?
Blue = France
Red-ish-Brown = Austria-Hungary
Austria has been consummed by constant occupations for the last 40 years (not by me) either by France and Italy or by Rebels. Austria-Hungary formed under a occupation, but in the decades of revolt that followed Austria broke free
I have to say that playing Poland - Poland-Lithuania was really fun. It seems a bit hard being a small nation with huge claims on land all in the hands of 3 Great powers that surround you.
I first struck NGF when they attacked France in the hope of taking a step towards uniting Germany, and overran them and took 2 regions I needed. As soon as the peace treaty ended I attacked again and took the rest from them.
I then turned towards Austria (who I had been allied with to keep them off my back) and I narrowly won the first war taking one region. In the second war with them I got the rest and then just fortified the border like crazy. I was stuck at this for a while because NGF, Austria, Russia and Gb were all allied one way or the other making them a bit too hard for me to take on. Managed to strike at a time when GB and NGF wouldn't get involved and Austria was unable to fight me because they were fighting the french and the Italians.
Took 4-5 provinces off Russia in the first war (they sent 2 250k armies to fight me, and left them open for encirclement) and after the war they had a communist revolution (voiding the peace treaty with me). They dropped off the Great Natiosn list and I added them to my Sphear that allowed me to form P-L, but I didn't get the lands off them that I actually needed for forming the country, so I reloaded and attacked them instead taking the rest of the land. And that is how I got to where I currently am.
I currently have 34 armies (one in every province bordering Austria and Russia, all with 36k soldiers in them