Bavaria strategy
From EU3 Wiki
Playing as Bavaria it is vital to choose a good advisor. Go for one providing a high landtech investment or production or trade. The key is to get a higher landtech level than your enemies. Investing in naval research is useless.
As always when playing a minor, try to ally with your big neighbours. Austria would be the best choice, or at least bohemia, so they do not fall in your back. Salzburg is a great target of an early annexation raid. It's wealthy and will be taken by Austria if you don't rush for it.
I recommend to wait until the other minors in your area ally with each other. Most of your neighbours only have one province or very few. So anmexing them at one or trying a turbo-anex is possible. Meanwhile try to send numerous traders to venezia, lübeck, vlaanderen or liguria to get a good trade income. With that money, build up an army of about 5000 or more men. While time goes by, wait until someone declares war to you and then do the easiest thing to get new land: attack their ally. In my game, Meissen allied with the Palatinate, but Meissen had no possibility to send their troops to me. So i conquered the Palatinate's provinces and got them in my realm. Try similiar else, but avoid declaring war to someone by yourself, because they are all in the same religious group and the stability hit would be awful. Of course, the common tactics like lending money that they cant pay back, fabricate claims or send warnings are useful to get at least a casus belli.
At some point, you will get closer to the real hard enemies: france, burgundy, austria, poland, lithuania and the ottomans. You can try to ally with one of them, but they will certainly break the alliance some day. The worst thing happened to me: Lithuania allied with France and both declared war to me...pe prepared, and save the game often to different savegames. As for the Ottomans, i managed to have only one border to them. There i stationed as many troops as fit in the province. Then i felt strong enough, i declared war to them and cleared the whole balkan. Be aware, that the Ottoman army is based on quantity: 15000 men armies are common for them!
Hamburg is often invaded by England. You can get it from them, but they will then declare war to you very very often. As long as you keep playing in the middle of Europe, they are no real enemy. They will send ocasionally a fleet carrying 1-3 regiments, so keep your coasts guarded. Most times they try to invade you from the north, especially through denmark, sweden or norway.
Once you have united Germany and keep wide parts of Europe, you can start with very different actions: go for Africa, conquer the near east (Jerusalem and Mecca give a nice bonus), set up colonies in America or conquer the Aztecs and Mayas. Or try to wipe Frane, England or Castille from the map. Keep in mind, that "Deus Vult" becomes handy outside of Europe, and beware of the high attrition in tropical provinces.
