I played a little Victoria II, the HPM mod, as (surprise) Greece.
It is pretty pointless, tbh. There are in essence two strategies you can viably use (that is, without taking luck into account).
1. The easy/cop out strategy.
You invade some african country (or, if you want to be adventurous, given you have two steam transports, an east asia microstate with good RGOs) and then take some province. This should give you enough of a cash flow to build a couple of factories and a larger army, but far more importantly it will allow you to ally with Russia early on (around 1840) and declare war on the ottomans (eg when their war with Egypt is going on). So if you play your cards right you can end up with two provinces (Thessaly and S. Macedonia are the obvious picks there), and then build more factories and armies to prepare for the next war.
2. The boring/realistic/a.r. strategy.
You don't invade anything, but research Romanticism and Idealism, for the prestige. This also will (with a bit of luck) allow you to ally with Russia. Only this time you won't have that big an army, and the Oriental Crisis (Ottoman empire vs Egypt) likely will have fired already. Furthermore, you won't have a good income and will risk going bankrupt if you don't micromanage.
Assuming all goes ok, you will end up with Thessaly and S. Mac again, but you also run the risk of being sphered by Russia (which is not cool, cause you then lose virtually all income by tarifs, and it's not like you have other equally serious sources of income either).
It is literally no use relying on international crisis in the early years, cause GB won't back you (unless you are sphered by it, which has the same issues as being sphered by Russia). Of course there is a chance to cause a massive war, eg you+Russia+Austria+France+Spain vs O.E.+GB+Prussia, which is definitely winnable, but will likely starve your population and only result in Thessaly being gained (which itself is not viable).
