With very small minors, rather than mediums like Venice, Bohemia, etc, which GNG spam summed up very well, you need to get moving, and fast. For someone like Helvetia, Thurnigen, etc, you need to get out of the gate and conquer your neighbor, taking on some BB, but putting yourself in position to have a couple decades of peace. You need more than 1 province to do anything later, so getting that at the very start when there are basically no alliances is generally your best bet. After that, you can sit around and accumulate tech levels and have a nice peaceful time, allying and whatnot. But that first war to take over another small neighbor, in my experience, is crucial. I did very well with Algiers, taking all North Africa all the way to the East African coast, a large part of the Balkans, and most of Italy/Southern Austria by the end, but the only way it happened was a quick takeover of the Hafsid Empire. After that, I sat tight for quite a while and got into good alliances, taking land in alliance wars, diploannexing neighbors. In other words, after that quick conquer, I went into normal, patient EU gameplay. This sort of thing works well with small german states and others as well, in my experience. And, like I said, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Venice, or some medium like that doesn't have to make that crucial first conquer. I'm thinking of the very small minors here.
