Just a double check - is there any point in stating provinces that are either:
a. part of a trade company region or
b. part of a colonial region
My instinct is no, considering in a there's a 75% autonomy floor anyway for the former, and they're just going to turn into a colonial nation anyway in the latter. Seems like a way to save admin points to keep them territories, but maybe there's some bonus I don't see that someone else might
My instinct agrees with yours. Unless it's going to take a significant amount of time before you can form the CN or TC after gaining the province, it's probably not worthwhile-and if there is, you're probably doing something wrong.
I'm thinking over my first BBB attempt.
Do we have to start as France?
It's a tad crazy but I want to try and achieve it starting as England.
It seems doable enough. Have Burgundy, Castille and Aragon (?) Rival France and join in with the Surrender of Maine war. Maybe get lucky and have the BI fire in this period. The rest should proceed normally.
The only questions I had are whether I can successfully annex France before 1500 in order to reform France.
As has been answered below, you're certainly welcome to try it for your own sense of fulfillment, but you won't gain the achievement for it, as you must start as France.
You must start as (and remain) France
Technically, you must
start as and
end as France-there's actually nothing preventing you from being something else
in between.
This line references whether you have done a release vassal + play as, not tag switched.
You have to start as FRA, and cannot switch nation... so no England -> France.
Again, you
can tag switch, so long as you switch
back...but your conclusion is correct; since you can't start as England, no England-->France.
That said, even without the restriction, I don't think you could do it as England anyway, at least just via PU - there's a 50-year waiting period before you can do that, which means it'll be in the late 1490s at the *earliest*, and then you still have to go through the process of integrating France, which will probably take longer than you have. Not to mention, by the time you have that many provinces to complete the rest of the achievement, it might be difficult to culture shift unless you just left everything as territories.
In 1.19, you can get the PU via war early thanks to the Surrender of Maine event, after which point you don't even have to integrate, as you can
inherit starting in the late 1490s. It would require a substantial amount of luck, certainly, but were it not for the restriction of starting as France, it could actually be doable, in theory.
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