I just finished my
[COLOR="#AFoFoF"]Poland[/COLOR] → [COLOR="#AFoFoF"]Commonwealth[/COLOR] Ironman game:
It goes without saying that I could have been much more aggressive. I was going for the achievements "Poland can into space" and "Winged Hussars", and, being that this was my first game going to 1821 as a nation in the Eastern tech group with no intention of Westernizing, I wanted to ensure that I had the necessary monarch points to hit level 32 in all three technologies. Besides, if I had expanded further west, we wouldn't get the benefit of seeing the fruits of Austria's labor as the Holy Roman Emperor. It's rare in my experience that an AI nation successfully forms the HRE country if the player is playing as a European state. Note also the rather large Armenia, which I didn't have the heart to destroy. I thought about guaranteeing them to protect them from the Ottomans but the Armenians stuck close to Russia throughout the game:
The endgame scoreboard:
A rather interesting development that I believe occurred in 1483, after an interregnum. I had been Austria's stalwart ally at the time, and we had a royal marriage (a situation which was reversed once I inherited Bohemia and, as a non-HRE state, instantly became the primary target of the HRE's ire, which resulted in the alliance network that would last until 1821 -- the Commonwealth allied with France versus Austria/HRE allied with Russia). The Polish von Habsburg dynasty lasted until the end of the game:
Religion in Europe with the Curia, which I controlled virtually the entire game, and the world religion map:
Accepted cultures in the Commonwealth:
Commonwealth domination of Eastern Europe's trade. One thing I'd do differently if I played through this game again is take all of Scandanavia, vassalizing Norway and feeding it Sweden's landlocked provinces while I annexed the entire Baltic coastline, and then move my capital from Warsaw to Danzig/Gdansk, changing the culture there from Prussian to Polish, of course (I lost Prussian as an accepted culture when I took three provinces from the HRE nation):
Lastly, for the lulz... The mid- and late-game were defined by constant wars with Austria/HRE and Russia, most of which I was dragged into by the most aggressive AI ally a European player can have the lack of foresight to befriend, France (though the Blue Blob wasn't so Big in this game). Calling the Austrian Emperor's generals "godlike" would be a gross understatement, and, despite the fact that I tried to limit my creation of generals to moments in which I had as close to 100 army tradition as possible, I never got a general with a fire score above 2 during that entire conflict-plagued era. I sure was besieging provinces fast, with several 4s and 3s for generals' siege scores, and my 4 regiments of cavalry per 64,000-troop stack were benefiting from some insane shock bonuses, but during the all-important fire phase of battle, the Austrians generally ate my lunch. Here are my generals in 1815, years after the final continental war had heard its last shot fired:
All in all, not very impressive in the "empire" department, but it was a fun game and I achieved my long-term goals.
