A modest game as the Republic of the Commonwealth. Mostly playing with trade and economy stuff.
Only within the last few decades I have been able to take chunks outta the Ottomans. League War ended in total Protestant victory, Austria converted after the war but emperorship ended up in Bohemia's hands. Strangely due to the success of the Reformation they ended up passing a number of reforms after the war.
My Elán is supreme! In terms of warfare no nation can stand before me at this point, sure the Ottomans got more development and such. However they rely almost entirely upon mercenaries. Having around 150k mercenaries during peacetime and 300k at war. Sure they got twice the numbers, but whats that worth when their troops are paper. The Ottomans also never bothered to upgrade any of their forts, like any of the them at all. Even Constantinople is still only a 3 level fort. I suspect this is due to their reliance on mecenaries draining their economy. Kinda feel like relying excessively upon mercenaries should trigger some disaster where mercenary companies take over regions and carve out their own princedoms, akin to the Cossack Independence disaster.
Doing pretty well for myself. The area around the Commonwealth as a good amount of Coal for industrialization. Part of my strategy for dealing with the Ottomans centered around (hopefully) denying them access to Coal. Launching invasions into Crimea and Hungary to stop them from improving their economy. Only recently have I had success with this, taking the state of Azov and a chunk of Hungary. Dunno if I wanna continue this game, late game is laggy.
Other interesting things include:
Early partition of Castile, resulting in Great Britian and Portugal carving up the new world between. Great Britain also stayed Catholic. Portugal got most of North America, Great Britain took Central and South America (minus Brazil ofc). Castile is still exiled on the Canaries. Forever alone.
Strong Timurids.
Muscovy being my personal punching bag. Whenever I needed money for upgrading my forts I declared a war against them and stole all their money and forced war reparations.
Independent and strong La Plata.
After the Ottomans took most of Egypt, the Mamluks expanded south as if to run away from them. Wasn't until around 1670-ish the Mamluks was finally annexed.
Decent Netherlands, along with Dutch Kongo.
Scottish Greenland.
Gelren West Africa.
Iceland formed, though they are an OPM owning only half of Iceland.
Ming Colonizing Siberia.