Spain in 1650
Started off as Castille in 1399, attacked Portugal a few times, eventually annexing them. They were allied with England at the, somehow I managed to get England to release a bunch of nations I forget how, I think it was a combination of high prestige on my part, winning naval battles, and eventually shipping my armies to their home soil when Portugal was out of the picture and avoiding their doomstack while sieging their other province. Oh yeah, and they had some territory on the mainland near me that they eventually ceded to me as well. I made the released nations my vassals and eventually diploannexed them, as can be seen from the map. There was also another war later on with England to get their remaining territories in Scotland and on the mainland. After that my rep was getting a bit high so I left them be...until the present day. Currently planning another assault on them in 1651.
With Portugal taken out of the colonization race, I turned my attention to Aragon, Granada, Morroco and Algiers, getting a nice bonus from the reconquista mission for Granada. Eventually they were all OPM and eventually annexed, Aragon netting me some islands in the Mediterranean as well. At this point I already had the national bank idea and had just gotten the Quest for the new world, so I decided to recover from my wars and nearly dishonourable scum reputation and start exploring, spurred on by the new trade route to India mission. I also had some conquistadors exploring south from the conquered Morocco territories.
Eventually I discovered America, and as you can see, colonization was successful. There were some French colonies but I'm getting to that. Right, so everything was going great, colonizizing, getting ready to expand east in north Africa, exploring and then France declared war on me. Fotunately I was expecting this, and had prepared agood sized army in preparation, I also called in some of my forces from africa and England proceeded to gangbang France with some vassals in Europe Ihad acquired over the years through pure diplomacy. We fucked Fance's shit up, nd I had him release nation, mostly ones along the coastline, cede his colonies and cede a few provinces, notably Antwerpen.
With France broken I was riding the gravy train, colonizing, exploring, annexing small countries, diploannexing my vassals, vasalising all the little countries in europe, except the archbishoprics and republics, the rare war with France, attacking african and american countries. Sometime during al this the reformation began. On the one hand, gah, colonies randomly converting and giving me even more rebels and vassal converting, hurting relations. Also hurt relations with countries that I was busy vassalising. But on the upside some of those annoying archbishoprics and, most importantly, France, converted to the protestant faiths. Dingding! I grabbed the unam sanctum idea, and the rest is history.
Around this time I started noticing that my sealane efficiency was only in the 50ies, even with my horribly huge fleet. As such I made my chief objective making a land connection between my provinces in Africa and Madrid(Oh yeah, forgot to mention, formed the spanish nation at 1500ish). Fortunately I got a mission to attack Naples, which I did, bringing their fried milan into the brawl, which I then stole some provinces from, with the help of my vassals mostly switserland and savoy. I also vassalised milan and eventually annexed naples completely. The papal state which had grown to 4 provinces joined in during one of the wars or italy, and was reduced to OPM status.
Since this is getting too long lets skip the rest, since you can fill it in. I managed to conquer most in my path with my much higher manpower until finally only two poland provinces at the Baltic Sea were blocking me from my land connection. The year was 1620ish. As you can see from the map, Poland is frikken huge. As such I spend the next few years building up forces, waiting for war exhaustion, reputation and nationalism to drop. Finally, at the beginning of 1650, I attacked with about half to two thirds of my entire total army. The fighting was intense, though most of his armies were split up dealing with rebellions. I lost about a quarter of my troops in the fighting, and eventually got a 75 percent warscore, barely enough to get the two provinces I wanted and a hefty tribute. Immediately my sealane efficiency jumped to the 80ties and I turned my attention to putting out rebellions caused by my 10something war exhaustion.
Oh yeah, and thanks to owning the majority of catholic countries, and bribing the electors of the HRE, I am permanently the HRE and the Papal Controller.
Oh yeah, and the papal state has territories in Scandinavia for some reason.
Current Government:
Administrative Monarchy
National Ideas:
National Bank
Quest for the New World
Press Gangs
Viceroys
Unam Sanctum
Bill of rights
National Trade Policy
Sliders:
Centralization: -3
Full Aristocracy
Full Free Subjects
Full Mercantilism
Narrominded 3
Navy 2
Defensive 1
Discipline 1