Well, as it stands I see no reason to worry. As I said, I accidentally slipped down to "worse than dishonourable scum " from my previous glorified position as "Hated throught the entire world" and that's roughly where I like to be during the first 100-150 years. It relieves you of the need to get a lot of CBs (since everyone else is nice enough to DOW you) without getting completely ganged up on. The only time I was in a bit of trouble I just toughed it out, was patient, and after about 5 years of contant pressure I was fine.
France has done a bit of annexing too and ought to draw its own fair share of attention. I left shawng1 in a nice cosy position with +3 stab, tons of cash, lots of turf, great MP, a booming economy, a protected northern flank, and decent armies. It'll be interesting to see where he goes since his first reign is only about 4 years or something. I fully expect that we will be DOWed by someone soon, but we have more than enough resources to defend against anyone and I managed to consolidate the holdings to resolve one little problem that was hamstringing me earlier...as you will read.
What I think we
really need is the Reformation - to give us another religious slider to play with. It was no picnic trying to balance Catholc, Orthodox and Moslem sliders when you've got provinces with all three types and you're at the tail end of a 5 or 6 year war.
One really nice thing about Venice is the Naval quality which helped immeasurably. Aragon, Castile, England, et al might have more troops, but once you sink their entire navies it no longer matters. I also did 3 DP adjustments to make us significantly stronger on land so now we can go toe-to-toe with most of the big boys.
When I died we were #2 on the VP list, only slightly behind the Timurids who'd had the 600 VP (due to the "Disintegration of the Timurid Empire" event so they don't really count
) and #3 was a long way behind.
I think our future doges will find themselves wondering who to
kill or subjugate next, rather than worrying about who's coming after them...
I made the decision conciously since there are quite a few shortish reigns coming up and I could foresee doges being a little reluctant to initiate war on a grand scale knowing that they'd never get the chance to see it through. Besides, ol' Tomasso is a blodd-thirsty bastard.
