Could you post a short guide on how to do this ? I dont see how you can stop Portugal and England form colonising as Tuscany that is not really strong in the early stage of the game. Also how to stop Muscovy from expanding east ? And did you got PUs ?
Congrats, and dat ending date *_*
Thank you. So, to do this, you want to expand really fast to get your economy going asap. It's a really gamey start, but here it goes:
1- Day 1 rival Urbino, that will give you a Conquest Urbino mission. Pick that. Ally Austria. DoW Urbino. Call to arms.
2- As soon as your diplomats comeback, ally Milan and Savoy. Call to arms. When they come back, Ally Venice and Mantua. Call to arms. Urbino might ally Aragon or Hungary and call them to arms. No problem, all you want is Ancona and you have some allies. You'll go over your dip relations, but it's worth it. Build a couple infantry and cavalry. Don't bother with advisors for the time being.
3- Rival Siena and Modena. Fabricate claims on them. Check their alliances. If they have allied any of your allies, don't peace out Urbino yet. Else, annex Urbino. DoW Siena, siege. DoW Modena, siege. Call only Austria, Savoy and Venice to these wars. Important: Don't call Mantua. Optional: fabricate claims on Genoa.
4- Wait a couple months, call Mantua to arms. They'll reject, giving you a casus belli. DoW Mantua, siege. Check Milan's alliances. It should be allied to Austria and you, no one else. If they allied Burgundy or France, you'll have to make another plan. Else, call Milan to arms when they will reject. DoW Milan, siege. Optional: DoW Genoa, siege, annex.
5- After all those sieges are done, you can annex Siena and Modena. Vassalize Ferrara, Mantua and Milan.
Here's the explanation... you want to ally everyone up north for 3 important reasons: reduced AE (no crazy coalitions), easy casus belli (also no claims getting discovered) and to be allied to your enemies allies. There's some chances that this step-by-step won't work as planned as alliances change from game to game. The point is to get into war against weak nations (Siena and Modena) using your next target's allies. By doing this, when you DoW Milan, for example, Austria can't join the war against you because it's already in another war on your side.
Now you're a pretty big nation in HRE almost at game start. No need for any HRE allies anymore. Just call them into wars they'll reject, so you can break alliances without relations penalty. Ally France and Burgundy. Try to keep them busy to stop them from going into war against each other. Your next targets are Papal States and Venice. After these, go for Naples. This one should get Portugal into war against you (probably allied to Aragon). Get Porto and Bragança. DoW Castile, make it release Galicia and Granada. Feed Porto and Bragança to Galicia. DoW Galicia, vassalize it. You can just core Portugal yourself or feed it to Galicia from now on.
England is actually pretty easy, just go ahead coring everything. If England didn't annex Scotland yet, get access from Scotland and get your entire army there. Else, you need to build some ships to beat them in the sea. Italy has so much money and coastal cities that it shouldn't be too hard.
Muscovy is tricky. By 1490, you need to make some alliances with Denmark and Lithuania. Increase relations with Novgorod and enforce peace when Muscovy DoW it. Call Lithuania and Denmark to arms and make them release Perm. Get any colonies they might have built and sell it to Perm. In my game, I was really unlucky. Lithuania got beat up by Crimea+Ottomans and Denmark allied Muscovy. So I had no allies. I had to beat it by myself around 1530. Muscovy was already in the middle of Siberia when I finally got a province there. You can see it on my screenshot, a random italian province up on Siberia. It was my blockage. Every time Muscovy annexed Sibir, I'd DoW and make it return cores/release.
