Livonia, 1601:
A solution has been found to the southern border question. For decades, centuries even, Lithuania has been on our southern border. For most of the 1500s, they were weak, but it wasn't ideal, for two reasons. The lesser reason is that they hated us, saying that we controlled Lithuania proper, which by later years had been a fact of life for longer than anyone could remember. The other was that their weakness meant the door was open to the Ottomans in particular, but perhaps the Crimeans or Horde or Bohemians, to take over their lands whenever they felt like it, resulting in a hostile neighbor, especially if the Ottomans or Bohemians were the ones to take action.
So, we were looking for good options. Allying with the Horde had long been on the table, and became plausible after secularization. But they weren't particularly strong, and allying with the infidel still rubbed the Landmeister-turned-zealous-King the wrong way. Lithuania had been splintering, however, with Polotsk, Chernigov, Zaporozhia, and Galicia-Volhnyia, in clockwise order, gaining independence.
Zaporozhia was our first choice. Located in the south, and a Republic that cared less about differing religions, they would be a nice bulwark. But, while we were busy conquering Prussia, the Crimeans declared war on them. We hurried to make peace, leaving the task of conquering Westpreußen unfinished, and offered the Crimeans an alliance, which they accepted. But before they could call us to arms (maybe all their diplomats were on faraway missions), the Crimeans achieved 100% war score and annexed them. Back to the drawing board.
Galicia-Volhnyia was our next choice. But, while we were busy conquering Polotsk and occupying Ryazan (whom we converted to Catholic), the Lithuanians declared war on them. A pattern was emerging. Realizing that time was not on our side, rather than making peace and offering them an alliance three days before their defeat, we simply used the army that had occupied Polotsk, and declared a separate war on Lithuania, on whom we had claims, calling in Austria and Hungary to ensure overwhelming force. This was highly successful, and we took all Byelorussian lands controlled by Lithuania, making it our fifth accepted culture (after Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Prussian; we converted the one Baltic German province to Latvian). With the caveat that Austria lost Gorizia to Venice, but oh well, they can't defeat Venice to save their lives. Then, offering an alliance to Galicia-Volhnyia, we found ourselves called to arms and fighting Lithuania again, resulting in the lovely southern border seen above.
It's not perfect; Galicia-Volhnyia could use a few more forts. But at this point we have secure buffers from both Bohemia and the Ottomans, and have established the limits of our ambition in those directions. The east remains splintered, with some thoughts of trying to make Nizhny Novgorod a partner, and Sweden... oh, Sweden. They declared war on Karelia and Beloozero, and re-conquered the former and took provinces from the latter; we honored the call to arms but did not fight, and peaced out Karelia early, and then broke the alliance in protest. Sweden proceeded to guarantee Beloozero against anyone else's aggression, and would like to renew the alliance. We are of split opinion. They've also made claims on all of Terra Mariana, or Old Livonia, so our trust level of them is not exactly what it used to be; what's to say they won't say "just kidding" should we renew the alliance, head east, and then decide to press those claims some day?
It also finally feels like we're a major power. We've been a Great Power for... 50 years? But it always felt like we could be overwhelmed by a neighbor, most often Bohemia, and needed that strong alliance network. Our inflation was bad in 1500, our corruption was bad in 1575, and our autonomy was high until we realized we had a problem in 1523 (I nerfed the base autonomy reduction in my mod, to -0.05 at peace and 0 at war, so my autonomy was long-term trending up once events were counted in). But in the 1590s, things started crystallizing into a coherent whole. Inflation was 1%. Corruption was low. Technology, long a weak point, was now above average (the mod makes techs cost 750 instead of 600, and severely nerfs neighbor discounts, so there's now a variety of tech levels even within a geographic region). New Livonia has become a good colony providing healthy profits, and New Estonia and our up-and-coming new colony are on their way; New Estonia had even landed some troops in West Africa to help conquer Kong. Thanks to gold, we had lots of profits, even when increasing our European army to a record 36,000, enough to feel secure, and our navy, while not necessarily going to win every battle on the Baltic, was at least close to the same level as Denmark's. The Ottomans were still scary (but we had Hungary to help against them), and we know we don't want to scuffle with Castile in the New World, but we now feel able to hold our own on the world stage, and like we could rock Bohemia's world if we wanted to... oh, wait, what was that?
Castile is the Emperor now. And they will protect Bohemia, unlike Bohemia's arch-rival Austria. And Hungary is allied with Castile, and will help them.
Yeah, so not everything is hunky-dory. The silver lining of the War of the Protestant League is that the two Catholic electors are united together, and they saw fit to elect Castile, with few-to-no Catholic monarchies left in the HRE itself. The King of Castile is getting up there in years, and would need a Pragmatic Sanction to win again, so Livonia is campaigning to become Emperor. We'll see how it goes. For now, Bohemia is, regrettably, still going to control too many Polish lands.
Spoiler :
A solution has been found to the southern border question. For decades, centuries even, Lithuania has been on our southern border. For most of the 1500s, they were weak, but it wasn't ideal, for two reasons. The lesser reason is that they hated us, saying that we controlled Lithuania proper, which by later years had been a fact of life for longer than anyone could remember. The other was that their weakness meant the door was open to the Ottomans in particular, but perhaps the Crimeans or Horde or Bohemians, to take over their lands whenever they felt like it, resulting in a hostile neighbor, especially if the Ottomans or Bohemians were the ones to take action.
So, we were looking for good options. Allying with the Horde had long been on the table, and became plausible after secularization. But they weren't particularly strong, and allying with the infidel still rubbed the Landmeister-turned-zealous-King the wrong way. Lithuania had been splintering, however, with Polotsk, Chernigov, Zaporozhia, and Galicia-Volhnyia, in clockwise order, gaining independence.
Zaporozhia was our first choice. Located in the south, and a Republic that cared less about differing religions, they would be a nice bulwark. But, while we were busy conquering Prussia, the Crimeans declared war on them. We hurried to make peace, leaving the task of conquering Westpreußen unfinished, and offered the Crimeans an alliance, which they accepted. But before they could call us to arms (maybe all their diplomats were on faraway missions), the Crimeans achieved 100% war score and annexed them. Back to the drawing board.
Galicia-Volhnyia was our next choice. But, while we were busy conquering Polotsk and occupying Ryazan (whom we converted to Catholic), the Lithuanians declared war on them. A pattern was emerging. Realizing that time was not on our side, rather than making peace and offering them an alliance three days before their defeat, we simply used the army that had occupied Polotsk, and declared a separate war on Lithuania, on whom we had claims, calling in Austria and Hungary to ensure overwhelming force. This was highly successful, and we took all Byelorussian lands controlled by Lithuania, making it our fifth accepted culture (after Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Prussian; we converted the one Baltic German province to Latvian). With the caveat that Austria lost Gorizia to Venice, but oh well, they can't defeat Venice to save their lives. Then, offering an alliance to Galicia-Volhnyia, we found ourselves called to arms and fighting Lithuania again, resulting in the lovely southern border seen above.
It's not perfect; Galicia-Volhnyia could use a few more forts. But at this point we have secure buffers from both Bohemia and the Ottomans, and have established the limits of our ambition in those directions. The east remains splintered, with some thoughts of trying to make Nizhny Novgorod a partner, and Sweden... oh, Sweden. They declared war on Karelia and Beloozero, and re-conquered the former and took provinces from the latter; we honored the call to arms but did not fight, and peaced out Karelia early, and then broke the alliance in protest. Sweden proceeded to guarantee Beloozero against anyone else's aggression, and would like to renew the alliance. We are of split opinion. They've also made claims on all of Terra Mariana, or Old Livonia, so our trust level of them is not exactly what it used to be; what's to say they won't say "just kidding" should we renew the alliance, head east, and then decide to press those claims some day?
It also finally feels like we're a major power. We've been a Great Power for... 50 years? But it always felt like we could be overwhelmed by a neighbor, most often Bohemia, and needed that strong alliance network. Our inflation was bad in 1500, our corruption was bad in 1575, and our autonomy was high until we realized we had a problem in 1523 (I nerfed the base autonomy reduction in my mod, to -0.05 at peace and 0 at war, so my autonomy was long-term trending up once events were counted in). But in the 1590s, things started crystallizing into a coherent whole. Inflation was 1%. Corruption was low. Technology, long a weak point, was now above average (the mod makes techs cost 750 instead of 600, and severely nerfs neighbor discounts, so there's now a variety of tech levels even within a geographic region). New Livonia has become a good colony providing healthy profits, and New Estonia and our up-and-coming new colony are on their way; New Estonia had even landed some troops in West Africa to help conquer Kong. Thanks to gold, we had lots of profits, even when increasing our European army to a record 36,000, enough to feel secure, and our navy, while not necessarily going to win every battle on the Baltic, was at least close to the same level as Denmark's. The Ottomans were still scary (but we had Hungary to help against them), and we know we don't want to scuffle with Castile in the New World, but we now feel able to hold our own on the world stage, and like we could rock Bohemia's world if we wanted to... oh, wait, what was that?
Castile is the Emperor now. And they will protect Bohemia, unlike Bohemia's arch-rival Austria. And Hungary is allied with Castile, and will help them.
Yeah, so not everything is hunky-dory. The silver lining of the War of the Protestant League is that the two Catholic electors are united together, and they saw fit to elect Castile, with few-to-no Catholic monarchies left in the HRE itself. The King of Castile is getting up there in years, and would need a Pragmatic Sanction to win again, so Livonia is campaigning to become Emperor. We'll see how it goes. For now, Bohemia is, regrettably, still going to control too many Polish lands.
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