So I'm Poland. Formed the Commonwealth, had a rough seventeenth century due to my own idiocy and a bit of bad luck (westernized with a bad king, finished westernization with tercios while all my rivals had Mauricians), but I've dealt with it, and Poland in the mid-eighteenth century is on par technologically with the rest of Europe, its army respected for its quality and offensive nature, and defeated or humbled my rivals Hunagry and Bohemia, the latter by giving back a bunch of land they took from Catholic Brandenburg back to them, and then a bit more. The unanticipated result is the rather unpleasant surprise of one day in 1750 or so finding out that Brandenburg can defeat a Polish army twice its size, I imagine because of its ideas. It's not really a huge deal, as by now I can just swarm them under an unlimited pile of eager young Russians, Hungarians and Balkans, but it did make me thankful that I didn't go through with my earlier plan of re-Catholicizing northeast Germany and creating an effective counterweight against the Emperor within the HRE by making a large and friendly Brandenburg. It also rocked me back on my heels a little when I thought I could look forward to a late game of steamrolling everyone.
Has anyone else encountered a situation where an ally or subordinate nation they've helped along greatly suddenly became too big for their boots and had the horrifying moment of realization that "oh god, I've created a monster"?
(I kind of imagine that's what Napoleon would have felt too, had he lived to see the rise of Germany.)
Has anyone else encountered a situation where an ally or subordinate nation they've helped along greatly suddenly became too big for their boots and had the horrifying moment of realization that "oh god, I've created a monster"?
(I kind of imagine that's what Napoleon would have felt too, had he lived to see the rise of Germany.)
