A very cursed race, here.
At first, I selected Hungary, got the burgundian inheritance (quite surprising) and played colonial Hungary.
When I became the HRE Emperor, I noticed the Knights of at Rhodes survived AND were part of HRE for some reason. I designated them as elector when a position became vacant.
Then I formed Hungary-Austria after taking the PU and I pushed east so hard that Poland (which always kept the lithuanian PU) became a baltic power with no polish citizen in the kingdom. Please note that I refused to take the Polish-Lithuanian PU to make the game a little more difficult. Genoa has done well but his progress was thwarted by the mighty persians who felt a strange attraction to the North Pole.