Long after the fact, I decided to dredge out the old AAR saves from a folder I had put them in (one for every 20 years). and picked up the game from 1460, which was about where the campaign went off track due to failure to inherit any of the big HRE countries. FAR different, getting several breaks this time with low legitimacy heirs within the HRE, followed by a bit of spy work and forced PUs, and by 1590 I'm pretty close to where I was in 1700 in the previous game. Bohemia, Austria, Burgundy, Savoy, and Hannover have all been inherited as cores, a significantly expanded Lithuania inherited as non-core territory and cored over 50 years (much of it with an Overextended penalty), a bloated France inherited and only a decade short of coring, and Britain and Pomerania just forced into PUs.
Ottomans are gone, with all but a couple of their former provinces in Hungarian hands, and a continuous line of coastal provinces to Alexandria. I'm also two provinces short of linking up between Asian Minor northward to my thrust through the Golden Horde's territory, and Georgia is presently Moslem, so that's at only 1 infamy per province. Muscovy briefly cut off my advance just past the Caspian Sea after I broke the Golden Horde's armies, but I just wrecked Muscovy and they're now being torn apart by revolts. China, here we come. I've blocked all but a handful of coastal provinces in North America, and all but two of those remaining are low value frozen wastes or else colonized by Britain (which I expect to inherit eventually).
Portugal is the only real competition left, with a huge navy, but their 50K man land army is no match for nearly 200K troops with higher tech. I expect to easily surpass the previous game's endgame progress by 1700, if I don't get bored with the lack of challenge.
Ottomans are gone, with all but a couple of their former provinces in Hungarian hands, and a continuous line of coastal provinces to Alexandria. I'm also two provinces short of linking up between Asian Minor northward to my thrust through the Golden Horde's territory, and Georgia is presently Moslem, so that's at only 1 infamy per province. Muscovy briefly cut off my advance just past the Caspian Sea after I broke the Golden Horde's armies, but I just wrecked Muscovy and they're now being torn apart by revolts. China, here we come. I've blocked all but a handful of coastal provinces in North America, and all but two of those remaining are low value frozen wastes or else colonized by Britain (which I expect to inherit eventually).
Portugal is the only real competition left, with a huge navy, but their 50K man land army is no match for nearly 200K troops with higher tech. I expect to easily surpass the previous game's endgame progress by 1700, if I don't get bored with the lack of challenge.