This game of Europa Universalis III is going really, really weird.
First and foremost is the distinct lack of a french powerhouse. ANY french powerhouse, Frace or Burgundy or otherwise. Early in the game someone broke France into pieces (burgundy, I think) only to get smacked down by a resurgent Champagne, who I allied with, expecting them to form a new France and then we would be unstoppable. Instead, they attacked a minor HRE state with 500 allies and I dropped our alliance. France is now about as broken apart as Germany.
Bohemia isn't exceptionally large, at least for EU3, but it's long and stringy, essentially a line of provinces from a Uberhaxxor Pommerania (?) past powerhouse Austria (the most normal thing in the game, tbh,) and into old Ottoman Territories around the Balkans. Speaking of the Ottomans, they dissolved a long time ago. Saruhan had a brief heyday before the Mamaluks came up and wrecked shit before falling to internal pressures. Now the balkanization continues down there as well, stopping just before the middle east. Yes, that's right, the pile of city-states stretches from Brittany all the way across Europe and into turkey. And they all have about 70 alliances in a massive web that means anyone declaring war is immediately crushed into even smaller states. Me and Castille are the only Western European Powers left, and Castille is content with Africa, so we don't do much business.
America is a giagantic patchwork of provinces claimed by the aforementioned Citystates, mostly Normandy and Brittany. There's quite a few Castillian provinces as well. I seem to be the only nation with any territories connected to each other, like a giant blob of red in a rainbow sea. It looks like a dog ate a bunch of crayons and then threw it up all over the Americas.
Scandinavia has formed. Yes, Sweden managed to annex both Denmark and Norway within the first century. They seem to have sat on the decision for a while, but have finally formed a major eastern powerhouse... And then half of Iceland got conquered by Aquilia. What? Yeah, the same Aquilia that sits down near italy and is conquered by Austria, usually quite fast? In this game... That actually almost happened. Except in it's weird, almost-definitely-a-glitch way, it decided to Balkanize Aquilia. So in response, they STOLE HALF OF ICELAND.
Ming has been almost entirely consumed by Manchu, Russia managed to be formed, Vyjingaginar or whatever dissolved. I, England, own Cylon and have been using it as a base for my colonization of the Malasian Archepalago and Oceania in general. Wu is a minor two-province state in the middle of China somehow fending off both Ming and Manchu but never doing more than what's needed to survive... Japan is being slowly united by Minamoto and Tachibana, despite a brief resurgance of Tiara. Pegu, a state I paid less attention to than Mecklenburg in previous games, is slowly conquering Malaysia. The Timurids have refused to fall, but have been very very slowly shrinking since Timur died. I have some serious pirate issues becuase my economy went to shit after I converted to protestantism too soon.
Speaking of which, apparently Eccumenism makes your colonies change into heretical religions... which is a good thing for me, since my tolerance of heretics is higher than my tolerance of protestants. Somehow. That awkward moment when Cuba becomes Eastern Orthodox is made even more awkward when that means Cuba actually grows faster because your nation is not Eastern Orthodox. On the Eastern front, I've converted most of Cylon to Protestantism. Waiting for them to become catholic through random chance so that they grow faster (?!?!?!?). Confucious has eaten Buddhism, pushing it out onto the fringe of malaysia. There's a random shinto province in the middle of Ming that makes no sense. Something weird must have happened. Korea owns Okinawa, which tells a small story...
To sum it all up, the world is a mess and I just need to rule it. Mostly because the game has run out of colors with which to represent new states. However, difficulty arises in that any attack on any minor state can set off a chain reaction resulting in WWI happening in 16th century England and that shit's just not acceptable. The map looks like a quilt sewn by a schizophrenic, seethes like a pile of maggots and the only superpowers left are either too far away or hate me.
And I have lots of inflation. This game...