Brittany strategy
From EU3 Wiki
Small and weak economically. A target of french and british expansion. Historically inherited by French kings. To survive, Brittany will need a lot of skill in diplomacy and careful planning of colonial expansion.
[edit] Beginning 1453-1460
Fear not my friend! It's not all that bad. You start at war with England but you have a strong ally in that war - France with her huge armies and skilled generals. The war will be won, no matter how much effort France will put into losing it, it will overcome England sooner or later, it's just far more stronger at the moment than Brits.
The only thing you can do is to get something from that war. No point in helping France, it hates you all the time no matter what you do. Try to get 50 ducats for a peace deal after the French crush the English army from Gascogne. Should work.
After this pointless war is over you have to realize one bad thing, you are a target of French expansion. Your poor four provinces are their cores. So you will need friends, and by that I mean powerful ones. Diplomacy is key here, provided you don't want to be kicked out of Europe. Look around this big blue blob in the middle of the map (yes, France). What they can be afraid of? None of France's neighbours can win a war with them alone. You need to ally with at least a few of them. Burgundy is number one. Aragon is number two. England is number three. Castille and Austria can also come very helpful as they are usually those with the biggest armies. Forget about HRE, small countries will be chewed and eaten in no time and will make France stronger instead of weakening it. If you manage to ally with Burgundy and Aragon you're pretty safe for a while.
Now look at the map. You are at a peninsula. Look at your country's sliders, you are very naval oriented, love free trade, the only thing holding you back at the continent is low value of narrowmindedness and lack of explorers and conquistadors. Deal with that. Move your slider to narrowmindedness, more explorers per year means that you will be quicker able to build an empire capable of beating French ass should they come after you. Having dealt with the sliders, there are two more things to do. One of them is employing advisors. In every guide I wrote I encouraged using those who speed up research over the rest, then stability, then number of colonists (if applicable), then the rest, whoever is available. One last thing here. Treasury. We need Quest for New World quickly. So we freeze our income at 0.1 gp per month and move Goverment Tech slider to max the right. Should speed things up.
After that we have no other choice than sit and wait for around two years until first Goverment Tech is invented. Use that time to build up your alliances with Burgundy, Aragon or whoever you want to help you when France decides it's time to take your land (Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Castille?). Avoid pissing off France at any cost, even when they go after one of your allies. Hope they will play with England and others long enough for you to build up enough to at least stop french killing machine for a while.
