Advice on what to do next.

[Olligarchy]

Alright, the year 1650 is fast approaching and I have managed to form the Kingdom of Germany. I also have managed to scrounge up a rather formidable amount of colonial holdings, especially in the Americas, but now that I have managed to dismantle the HRE I look around and realize I am not even the largest blob in the world, or even europe! As such I turn to you for advice on what to do next.

View attachment

A list of my possessions:
Greater Constitutional Kingdom of Germany
Europe

• All of the German Minors, except Vorpommen.
• All Dutch provinces except Holland and Zeeland.
• Swiss holdings.
• Austria and its duchies.
• Parts of Bohemia.

Americas

• North Americas: from Florida (seminole) to as far as Ohio.
• South America: Coastal provinces.

Africa

• Madagasgar (3 provinces)
• St.Helena.

Asia

• Northern Half of Ceylon (formed East India company)
• Taiwan.

The Empire itself is stable, but has a relatively low war exhaustion so I can't fight protracted wars. The economy I have is the strongest in the world, and I can field around 200k men if necessary along with at least 100 ships, but after that I need to gear down for a while and let the economy recover. Most of the world is approximately on the 30 years war level in technology. I have a small lead due to having started with my CK2 save.

Keep in mind that I intend to transfer this save into Vicky 2 and from there into Hearts of Iron if possible.

So... what should I do?

 

[cotwell]

I'm not sure what you want for your pre-V2 save. Nice, defensible borders would be good, though, wouldn't they, since V2 is such a defense-oriented game (or at least seems that way to me...)

EDIT: you ARE Germany after all, and may eventually face the "encirclement" problem in V2.

 

[Olligarchy]

I've historically good relations with Russia and Prussia, also became the King of Denmark just now so I am considering going for a punch against Bohemia. I could get a two front far and free scandinavia from the yoke of the evil oppressors. They only have a single 18k man stack there and Denmark has 12 by themselves. The problem isn't really winning wars as such, I can pretty certainly take one or even two of the other powers in a slugging match, but if it prolongs I will lose momentum and start to weaken due to internal strife. Obviously "kill everyone" isn't really an option here, so I am hoping for strategic advice. Which countries to weaken for the next game and which to try and take out outright.

 

[cotwell]

I don't know how the transfer works. (Wish I did though.) Will Great Britain start that game as the #1 power or will they just start out however you leave them in EU3? Same question for France and Russia, of course. Sorry, I'm not really helping here...

 

[Olligarchy]

As far as I understand, the smaller nations of the general area merge into slave states for the main power. So France would take over Burgrundy, GB would take over what remains of Scotland and Ireland and so forth.

 

[cotwell]

One thing you could do then is think about where great concentrations of factories will be in V2 and take some of those places. Seems like you'd at least want to weaken France, no?

 

[JesterCorp1990]

I dunno. If anything, I think I'd grab some large allies and help them expand instead. Quite honestly, if you weaken any of the other major powers, then you are looking at a relatively boring Vicky 2 game that will like never make it to HoI3. As it is already, I can't see the game making it to HoI3. You pretty much have free access to Italy if you want it and you can stage a grand campaign of Africa from Cyprus if you felt the urging. Right now you have a base 5 major powers. France, Spain, Russia, Bohemia, and Germany. You then have the secondary powers of Milan, Great Britain, Lithuania, Prussia, and the Ottomans. You even have Portugal and Savoy in place to become secondary powers if another slips up. You have a well balanced game going into Vicky as it is from what I can see.

 

[cotwell]

I dunno. If anything, I think I'd grab some large allies and help them expand instead. Quite honestly, if you weaken any of the other major powers, then you are looking at a relatively boring Vicky 2 game that will like never make it to HoI3. As it is already, I can't see the game making it to HoI3. You pretty much have free access to Italy if you want it and you can stage a grand campaign of Africa from Cyprus if you felt the urging. Right now you have a base 5 major powers. France, Spain, Russia, Bohemia, and Germany. You then have the secondary powers of Milan, Great Britain, Lithuania, Prussia, and the Ottomans. You even have Portugal and Savoy in place to become secondary powers if another slips up. You have a well balanced game going into Vicky as it is from what I can see.

Good points. That might be a better way of looking at things. I did think you were already pretty well set up for V2.

 

[Olligarchy]

So I should just focus on helping my allies? :d I can definetly do that, figure I'll break up Bohemia into a more manageable blobs (free Sweden/Finland, maybe bits of hungary, croatia and others in the balkans), that way I only have to worry about Russia in the east, and they have been friendly for quite a while. As for Milan... I've watched with interest as they became the most powerful member in the HRE (excluding myself and bohemia since we only fought each other), they had five successive emperors and I believe they're pretty close to forming Italy. I did kinda crimp their chances when I went and gave them them a damned good trashing.

France is pretty weak, they keep fighting Burgundy and as such neither can really offer any real resistance. Hoping that Vicky will change that when they merge.

GB has been surprisingly pathetic in its attempts. It got beaten by the Inca, Milan has pretty much dominated them all game and they have had a generally bad run of it. With their vaunted Royal navy destroyed in the first century they have never really recovered.

All in all it has been an interesting game, but now that Germany is stable it does run the risk of becoming stagnant and boring pretty quickly. Thanks for the advice. Keep 'em coming, or make suggestions as to my next playthrough.

 

[JesterCorp1990]

Releasing the Scandinavian countries could add some flavor to your Vicky 2 game for sure. I also think grabbing some of the British holdings in India would do you some good as you have next to no real holdings in the Eastern world.

 

[cotwell]

Or going for China, if you don't want to weaken GB, but you still want more manpower.

 

[Olligarchy]

Hi guys!
Figured I'd let you see how my war against Bohemia went. In short... very well. I waited for a bit when they fought the Ottomans and then swooped in from two fronts (Russia helped "a bit") and... voila. Here is how the world looks without Bohemia dominating the eastern part of europe.

 

[n0thin]

Right now, you should be the strongest country in the world. By far. So it depends on what you want to do. You CAN do everything.

 

[unmerged(353072)]

I don't know about transferring or anything like that but what I would do is go to war with France (when war exhaustion is low) and cut them into smaller nations. Other than that I would say keep all nations as small and weak as possible.

 

[Olligarchy]

Agreed. There really is nobody that could stop me anymore. Going to play to the end and see the Napoleonic wars era, but then I'll have to consider if I want to continue. I doubt there would be very much challenge in Vicky 2 anymore...even less in Hearts of Iron. Especially since a generous usage of spies caused half of bohemia to become Poland again. "d'oh."

 

[grommile]

Figured I'd let you see how my war against Bohemia went. In short... very well. I waited for a bit when they fought the Ottomans and then swooped in from two fronts (Russia helped "a bit") and... voila. Here is how the world looks without Bohemia dominating the eastern part of europe.

You have an actual AI Russia in your game? I call hax

 

[Olligarchy]

Yeah, there's a Russia. They are also a rather major power. But for some reason they don't change their government from Merchant State!

 

[unmerged(271387)]

Conquer Elsass-Lorainne to troll france in vic 2

 

[Olligarchy]

Oh they're a vassal. I just don't want to integrate them since I don't have cores there.

 

[unmerged(271387)]

Annex Italy