strong p-l
I completely agree with dralizaar. First things first is to go after the golden horde and keep Russia in check. The thing to do here is to declare war in september and let them cross borders come October. They usually lose 60% of whatever forces they have just from the cold. Then I use a leader to slowly nible away their land until finaly, some two or three years later, I annex a country using a total army of maybe 50,000, while my western reserves of some 200,000 remain intact.
I normally wait a while before going after Courland or the Teutonic Order. Actualy, in a few short years Courland looses their 'vassal' status and has no alliances. This allows you to just walk in and take the place. Prussia too; eventually their 'alliances' end and it's a pretty good idea to just go after them even if means loosing 2 stability.
Just because Austria pisses me off, I try to vassalize Hungary before they do. It works when you make an alliance with them, but keep track of this as as soon as your alliance runs out, Austria is right there to form her alliance with Hungary. I lucked out in the current game I'm playing so I did the next best thing; joined that alliance. But it sucks because someone always keeps going to war and so the alliance expiration date keeps on gaining years. Damn it. If I only kept an eye on my expiration date with Hungary in the first place...shoot.
If you want to wage war on someone, but are afraid of loosing 2 stability, just wage war on Nippon. You have a permament causis belli, and more likely than not, someone's going to wage war on you as soon as you wage war on Nippon... granted, you must a high bad-boy. Usually, the 6 diplomats I have will keep me out of the big conflicts. I did that when I wanted to take Styria from Austria, worked like a charm. It's sort of cheating but I'd say the computer cheats when it says 'Decrease of Monarch values for 6 months' and the damn king stays dumb for the remainder of his reign.
In the Northern War campaign, Austria really starts likeing me for some reason. Even though I eventualy get a larger force than the Austrians, I can't attack their weakly defended borders to get those factories because they're the only person who likes me on the map.
Can't live with her, can't live without her.
For Poland, I focus on getting Infrastructure to 2 as quickly as possible. Then Trade to 3. Then infra to 3. Then trade and land tech. I wait till I have trade at 5 to go back to infrastructure. By this time my inflation is pretty bad so I need those governors rather than wait for the random -33% inflation. Level 12 land tech is really pesky because sometimes I only need 10,000 and sometimes, like now, I need 13,000. In times like this, I pray for
-33% inflation.
The Hanseatic League and all those pesky nations on the West eventually get swallowed up by P-L. But it really sucks at first because they usually get into pentuple alliances and you have to fight a combined army of 150,000 (???? When did that happen historicaly?).
One question, how the heck do I get a country to take my 'loan'? I've only been able to successfuly lend 20 Ducats to Sweden one time, this after trying over and over again with other countries.
Is there a trick to this?
My buddy was playing with Turkey and by 1610 he controlled basically the entire map. It was disgusting. He had all land tech before 1600. But that's another story.
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