I think I am done, I will pass the baton. Played 25 turns.
Took Corporation from Willem for peace.
Lost Kremlin race, to Vicky, who promptly upgraded a pile of siege to cannons.
DoWed Catherine
I took Hastings from Vicky, and a large stack of Cannons with Curassairs showed up. Things were looking decidedly dicey until rifling came in. Upgraded our little stack of by now very injured Maces. Problem solved.
The wars took a long time to get going, as both Vicky & Catherine threw the kitchen sink at us. The naval battles have been particularly nasty. Catherine has lost at least a dozen Frigates attacking/killing our navy, she still has lots of Frigates roaming the seas picking off our galleons that are trying to drop settlers off to the arctic/antartic coasts.
Vicky is down to 2 cities, and is 1 turn from getting Rifling. She will give us her second city for peace.
Catherine still has 1 decent city, but that should fall next turn. She has 5 or 6 further crappy city scattered around. I would strongly recommend taking 1 for peace, and regrouping. She has so many Frigates that it is very difficult to get troops onto her other landmasses. A surprise DoW and multple beacheads should solve that issue.
Other than that there are a lot of settlers being built. Joao has 23% of the land, we have 43%, and we need 64% for domination, so we do not need to DoW him, just settle all of the rocky outcrops.
Culture slider is running at 50% just to maintain happiness. At one stage, we were at war with Willem, Vicky & Catherine, and Willem was in emancipation. Paris had 18 unhappy citizens when its pop was 19! A whipped theatre and 70% culture rate finally stopped us losing a pop every turn.
Here is the updated bodycount:
New Empire:
Other screenies: