My 45h EUIV run: Sweden.
Finally the long awaited immersion pack Lions of the North has been released! I could finally have a chance to play with Sweden, one of my favourite countries of this time period. It should be noted that my 1st campaign in Empire: Total War and EUIV way back in 2013 was with Sweden. The Tinto team has done a great job with this update, a lot of bugs have been fixed, no new major issues and great improvements to existing features! I really like the new government reforms and the new monuments, too.
So my 1st step was obvious - declare independence from Denmark. I could have gotten allies to help me in the war, but the reward to fight it out alone was simply too tempting to not try to do it. Even though Denmark was allied to the Teutonic Order and they outnumbered me, I just had one thing to do - not let them combine their armies. Now that the battle system has been greatly improved from the 1.33 almost non-existent stack wipes, I completely dominated the battlefield. The only thing I wish I had was stronger navy, but I still managed to land troops on the Teutonic shores and managed to peace them out after stack wiping their army and defeating their newly built one. After that I just had to lure the Danish navy away so I could get my army over the straits to Copenhagen. I succeeded in that, when they just left 1 ship there and sailed with the rest of their navy to blockade my ports, they didn't manage to get there back in time. In the peace treaty, besides declaring independence, I also took Skane.
After that, I turned my attention to Gotland and Novgorod. I noticed that Gotland doesn't have any allies and it hasn't joined the Hansa trade league. It was a golden opportunity to strike, if I delay it, they might get some allies or raid my provinces again. After that, I attacked heavily weakened Novgorod, it had already been defeated by Muscovy and was just reduced to Karelia and Archangelsk regions. It was a very easy war, they just has 3k units and I took from them 2 provinces, I could have taken more, but I wanted smooth borders.
In the mean time I had made an alliance with Poland to protect myself from Muscovy and to help me expand my newly born empire. I was preparing to attack Livonia next, but then Muscovy invaded it through Estonia. Muscovy has been more expansionist than ever before, so I couldn't let them grow even bigger. I changed my plans and attacked Muscovy instead, while they were busy sieging down Livonia, I did some small stack wipes in Ingria and captured Novgorod. Soon after that we drove them out of Livonia and occupied most of their lands. I made sure that they don't get to Siberia and made them cancel their vassalation of Perm and additionally took Ingria and Novgorod for myself. It's funny that later on Bashkiria colonised Siberia instead.
The next obvious moves were to finish off Livonia and get a PU over Norway. After that came a more peaceful I started to make colonies and built up my economy. After a while, since my expansion was restricted, I had to break my alliance with Poland, they had taken Courland from Livonia and I was very interested in getting Prussia and Danzing. So my main ally became Austria for a short while, until I embraced Protestantism, then my main ally became Bohemia. Since I became the leader of the Protestant League from my mission tree, I declared it in a very favourable moment. My 30 Years War just lasted 3 years. I had France and Great Britain on my side, while their only important players were Austria and Poland.
After winning the war, I wasn't elected the emperor, Oldenburg was. So I started to work on to improve my relations with Electorates and get my diplomatic reputation as high as possible. I couldn't beat Oldenburg in votes, Bohemia was a close call, too. So what did I do? I simply conquered Oldenburg and immediately got elected! From then on, endless wars started to bring order to the Holy Roman Empire, from enforcing religion to expanding my own empire along the Baltic coast. While I managed to get 1 million men army by the end of the campaign, I became an economic hegemon.
Since this run was very intense with a great mission tree, becoming the HRE emperor, waging wars one after another, colonisation of the New World, Africa and India etc. next week I'll take a bit more relaxing campaign outside of Europe. After that I plan to go back to Europe again!
My colonial nations:
New Sweden (13 Colonies)
New Smaland (Mexico)
Gustavia (Caribbean)
New Livonia (Colombia)
My vassals: Saxony, Poland, Lithuania, Kyiv, Tver.
My allies: Mexico, Brunswick, Italy (formed by Tuscany), Serbia, Greece, Mamluks.
Luxembourg has a PU over Great Britain.
Bashkiria has colonised Siberia.
Strong Dai Viet and Korea.