I thought I'd update on the game I first posted. I managed to blob my Austria properly on the European landmass. Even having a large war of attrition with Russia where I lost more than 700k manpower but still managed to take some territory from them. Here is the preparation:
My vassals and allied Aragon whom I released... but didnt manage to diploannex so declared and annexed later
Here is the extent of the invasion to Russia:
And now its 1805 and I have to think where else to expand to complete my blobgame
This was my first AoW game and really weird events in the beginning of the game (the destruction of France by Burgundy and Spain and successful PU wars/missions for Hungary and Bohemia) probably allowed me to gain more power in the center of Europe and dominate aggressively from there. Spain didnt colonize much and stayed quite weak. GB did expand to the west but their armies had no chance to interfere with their puny allies wars on the mainland. Ottomans were on a decay course from the start. and Russia didnt touch Lithuania or Poland much so I managed to get there first.
PS. The Byzantium vassal - I was somehow tricked to be realeased since there was an uprising on Cyprus and I just clicked to Accept the terms without reading what was up... So that has also changed in the game. Anyway they still remained as my vassal so I might be able to annex them by the end of the game.
Any good suggestions what country to try to play next? What might be fun in the context of AoW?