Chapter 16: Focus on R & R ( Relations and Reputation)
The last decade saw Denmark complete Humanist ideas under its young and capable ruler Emperor Frederik II 6/5/2 .She ended the decade with 18 diplomatic relations: 8 alliances with royal marriages, 5 Personal Unions and 5 vassals. She had reached an economic size that allowed a healthy budget surplus even in times of war , and improvements of Great Projects became a common destination of Imperial ducats. So from this point onwards, Emperor Frederik did not need to "paint the map" as much anymore, but rather focus on moving those 8 alliance-marriage relations towards the Personal Union destination. And an early opportunity to move one nation along the pipeline came when the ruler of Portugal died and his successor lacked an heir. Immediately Denmark requested a Wittelsbach be designated as heir, and the Portuguese obliged
The heir was not called Christian for once ( he was Frederik) , and was 20 years old. The current ruler of Portugal was younger ( 15), so not an ideal situation, but worth a shot and the cost of aggressive expansion with the Catholics of Europe.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman war reached its end as the Sultan was willing to give full concessions. And in that peace, Denmark strove to enlarge her Personal Union partners , particularly Poland, to protect them from unwanted inheritance.
Denmark gave two provinces to ally Georgia, in the Caucasus culture region . Two provinces in the North Anatolian coast went to Lithuania ( via transfer occupation for one of them). That gave the option of future enlargement of Lithuania in Anatolia if needed. But the bulk of the annexation went to Poland. And most of he annexed provinces were low development, which maximized the province count for Poland ( the metric that really mattered in preventing inheritance). The areas annexed included Palestine, Sinai, Transjordan, Syria and Northwest Arabia. Notably absent was Jerusalem, which was high development, and which Denmark wanted to directly own one day for its monument.
Now because Poland did not own a core on the Red Sea, she would need a long time to core all of the annexed land. To help with that Denmark held on to 3 provinces that she cored herself, then later transferred to Poland.
The creation of Polish Mashriq added about 15 provinces to Poland's total , putting them in relatively safe zone from unwanted inheritance. And to make sure unwanted inheritance was kept at bay, Emperor Frederik took the advice of
@Steckie and released Ashanti as a minor African vassal who would be reabsorbed back in 10 years, to keep Denmark diplomatic reputation from being too high.
Ashanti was chosen because they were small and because that gave a reconquest casus belli on neighboring Kong, who held the nearby province of Gyaaman , home of the Asafo Mercenary company
Now in addition to managing Reputation, the Emperor was looking to improve the number of Relations Denmark could get . And there were two Great Project monuments whose upgrades would give Denmark the ability to have more diplomatic relations . The first, and easier one, was Kanbawzathadi Palace in Pegu.
However that monument also gave unwanted Diplomatic Reputation. .The second monument was harder to get to, but did not carry with it any "maluses" , and that was Chan Chan citadel on the Pacific coast of Portuguese Peru.
Emperor Frederik began preparation to acquire both monuments for Denmark. For the first one, he sent spies to Egypt to fabricate a claim on the Andaman Islands, which were within sight of Pegu . For the second monument, he looked for ways for Denmark to establish a core on the Pacific coast to allow the future annexation of Chan Chan. And he settled on the English colonies in Central America, at a location where just two provinces separated the Atlantic from the Pacific ( Panama Isthmus was uncolonized, but sadly Denmark had lost her colonist). And since DEnmark had permanent claims on England , a war was easy to conjure. The only precaution was to make sure that Denmark occupied the key provinces first, before subject-of-subject Cuba got to them
[I was not sure if you could transfer occupation from subject of a subject, it turns out you can]
The war was very brief and England quickly agreed to cede her 5 provinces in Central America.
Denmark immediately gave 3 provinces to Sweden to increase their count. Then began the coring process of Xicaque on the Atlantic to be later followed by coring of Lenca on the Pacific. Denmark did not take any land from England in Europe, despite the fact that England's provinces in Britain siphoned some of the income out of the Channel Node. And the reason for that was avoidance of more aggressive expansion in Europe and preservation of administrative power, which has been in short supply ever since the stability hits in the Cousins' War and the completion of Humanist IDeas (Denmark was behind on administrative tech).
Meanwhile, Frederik continued his father's quest for the secret to longevity , and began the final upgrade of the Halicarnassus Mausoleum
He then turned his attention to securing the Great Monument at PEgu, and for that he wanted to annex the nearby Andaman Islands held by Egypt. But he discovered that Egypt was guaranteed by Ethiopia, and he did not want to alienate his marriage relative and ally. So he took a roundabout way to attack Egypt , by declaring war on Kong, allied to Songhai who was allied to Egypt.
The main objective of the war was quickly achieved after Cairo fell , and Denmark asked Egypt to cede the Adamans ( and the Comoros while we were at it). There was no need for Denmark to take land in Egypt ( it would just aggravate Ethiopia) and Denmark let Egypt keep her provinces in the Moluccas so they could continue to colonize the remaining vacant land.
Now the war with Kong continued on for a bit longer, until Denmark was able to annex Gyaaman, home of hte Asafo mercenary company .
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After that DEnmark began the war on Pegu, who was protected by Ayutthaya
Soon after that war started, a new King rose to the throne in Georgia, and Denmark prevailed on the court there to designate another Christian Wittelsbach as heir . The designated Wittelsbach heir was younger than the new Georgian King, so it was likely he would die before getting to rule. And Denmark needed to be vigilant
[check the drop down notification] to make sure a fresh Wittelsbach replaces him in that case (As of the end of the decade , he was still in the line of succession). That way Frederik moved yet another country one step further on the pipeline.
Also during the Pegu war, Atwixia ended up losing her war with Atahachi confederation, and losing it badly.
Denmark was unable to enforce a white peace in that war because Atwixia was the aggressor . And while the Danish rank and file thought this was a defeat ( after all , the map at the end of the chapter will show territorial losses), the Emperor saw a silver lining in that outcome. He was playing the long game, and knew that one day in the future Denmark would have another Personal Union in Europe in need of growing her province count ( in particular, he was thinking about Brittany and Gascony) . Native provinces on the coast of North America ( i.e within coring range of Western Europe), formed an expansion outlet for those nations, and could be a stepping stone on the way to expansion in Colonial Mexico as well ( same as was done with Sweden) .
Now back in SouthEast Asia, Denmark completed her war with Ayutthaya and Pegu, and annexed Pegu province.
The province was not cored immediately. Rather the upgrades of the Kanbawazathadi palace were begun immediately, delaying the coring process (this had the added benefit of keeping Diplomatic Reputation lower, as suggest by
@jak7139 ) Thanks to the flush treasury, the upgrade was done to Significant level, and work was begun on the third ( Magnificent) level.
With one additional diplomatic relation gained from Pegu, and another one on the way, the Emperor decided to expand the "pipeline" base, and added Milan to the list of marriage+alliance nations.
Milan was a good candidate to become the Italian culture subject. And noticing that DEnmark had a healthy supply of diplomatic power , despite being well over the relations limit, he decided to add more nations to the pipeline. And here he chose the tiny principalities of Beloozero and Nizhny Novgorod.
Interestingly, both were tributary subjects of Kazan. And due to their small size, favors with them were grown very quickly . As for avenues for their expansion, the easiest would be diplo-annexation of Karelia and feeding the provinces to whichever of the two principalities was lucky enough to become a personal union first(as a side note, Karelia has been having lots of problems since its inception, going through bankruptcy a couple of times, and having rebels all the time, and falling behind on technology. This was due to receiving a lot of provinces from Denmark whose development was stripped to benefit the capital cities, and having her trade diverted for a long time).
Having secured and upgraded the Pegu monument, the Emperor now looked for ways to do the same with the Chan Chan monument. By that date, Denmark had a core on the Pacific ocean ( the one gained from England earlier in the chapter). He just needed a way to go to war with Portugal indirectly ( to avoid having to break the alliance and royal marriage). Unfortunately, the one ally Portugal had that Denmark had a casus belli on was Kiche, and they just got annexed by a monster Aztec.
(For the curious, Aztec had a revival after Spain was made into a personal union of Denmark, and thus became unable to help her colony New Spain by declaring war or enforcing peace. New Spain once held much of Northern Mexico (the reb blob on the status maps at the end of each chapter) , but her territory had shrunk down to just 2 provinces) .
There were only two ways left to indirectly declare war on Denmark: a declaration without casus belli on their ally the Knights, or a declaration on a Catholic nation that would call Portugal as Defender of the Catholic faith. As Denmark waited to get claims on such a nation ( preferably Savoy or Nevers), news came that Boris Wittelsbach ascended the throne of Bulgaria.
Emperor Frederik waited 5 days for the monthly tick to make sure a new heir was not going to pop out of nowhere
[not sure if that was wise or not]. He then claimed the throne, waited the 30 days to send a new diplomat to break the alliance, and holding his breath that another baby would not be produced out of nowhere, waited another 30 days to finally declare the War for he Bulgarian Throne on December 6, 1598.
Now everyone anticipated that this war would be a cakewalk, given that Bulgaria had no allies ( Denmark was their only ally). But the war ended up requiring micro-management
[I played it on speed 2] because of this:
The Ottomans took the opportunity to declare war on Bulgaria, who had just lost Danish protection. This presented a challenge to Denmark, because the Danish advance was bottlenecked at Plovdiv fort , while the Ottomans had a wide front through which they could enter Bulgaria ( and no, Danish troops could not traverse Ottoman territory ) . The fear in Zeeland was that the Ottomans would reach the capital Nikopol first, or would occupy enough land to deny Denmark the warscore necessary to secure the Union . The Danish military had to act fast, and the solution came through the use of the navy, which quickly loaded up mercenaries recruited in Mentese and regular troops from Egypt, and invaded the Albanian coast of Bulgaria.
Once Danish troops landed in Albania, it became race with the Ottomans to see who would occupy more BUlgarian land. ANd in the race to the key fortified city of Branicevo , Denmark beat the Turks by just one day , thanks to using Forced March (Denmark had finally caught up on administrative tech).
After that it was a simple matter of waiting for Plovdiv to fall to allow Denmark to besiege the capital Nikopol. And as the decade ended, Denmark had secured the occupations of all of Bulgaria, minus two provinces that the Turks managed to take. There is no doubt that once Nikopol falls, Bulgaria will accept Union with Denmark, and that means Denmark will be in a defensive war with the Ottomans.
And on that happy note , we close the chapter with the appearance of Global Trade in Denmark's Lincolnshire province in England ( there was never any doubt that it would spawn in the Channel).
And before we show the global domain of Denmark, we will note that Memel is no longer Lithuanian culture, and Chelmno is being converted from Polish to Prussian.
Those culture conversions were used as sinks for excess Diplomatic power, which is still in abundance despite the large number of relations Denmark is engaged in ( and which is why small nations like Milan, Beloozero and Nizghni Novgorod were later added to the pipeline).
Of Denmark's 10 alliances, Wittelsbach heirs are in the line of succession in 3 of them
Besides, as "benevolent" rulers the Danes should spread the imperialistic love, or some such nonsense 
