Mecklenburg strategy
From EU3 Wiki
[edit] Starting position
You start as a wealthy country. You have the best trading centre and the whole Holy Roman Empire trades through it. Your starting policies are always one of the best on the map. Your Free Trade setting and also Narrowminded setting make you both a very good trader and a very good colonizator later on.
Your CoT is the biggest on the map and it will stay like that for a while, depending on the pace of colonization. You already have five merchants inside, your priority is to ensure such a status for the whole game.
National ideas and research is quite obvious with a country like Mecklenburg. First fully invest to get level one in Goverment Tech and take one of trading national ideas, national trade policy or shrewd commerce practice, depending on your likes. I take shrewd first. After that research production level one to get workshops. Build them and move on to researching Land tech level at least three. After you have it, full investment into Trade, until you outpace everybody else, check to ledger to see how much of Trade Italians have, they are your main competitors. After you have outpaced them, turn autosend to every CoT you know about on and forget about the whole trading problem. Autosend will do the rest for you.
Advisor selection with such research is quite obvious. One remark though, unlike most of countries, you don't need a stability advisor at all. You're too small to have costy stability. The advisor will be useless for most of the time. Take research guys if you can, if not, leave empty slots.
Your main problem is your very low manpower. You can hardly field a few thousands of infantry before inflation starts eating you. So your first priority will be to get strong and reliable allies to defend you should something evil happen. Like a war with Lithuania...
About your neighbours, to the north there's Denmark busy fighting with Sweden. Later France is very probable to join the action as their alliance with Norway is quite stable and withstands many years. You shouldn't look to north at all in your expansion plans. The land there is poor, manpower is low, attrition is deadly, nothing good to take. Try to stay friendly with Denmark, they shouldn't attack you unless you have no army. They want Sweden more. Fools.
You have to expand at cost of other HRE countries. Hamburg and Bremen both are very wealthy and tempting to take. Before you do that though, make sure you have allies to aid you in case something goes wrong.
In this part of HRE there's always something like a strong regional union of Anhalt, Saxony and Brandenburg. Those three ally with each other early on and stay together for most of the game. Your first move in your game should be to offer Royal Marriage to both Brandenburg and Saxony. It will raise your relations with them and instead of proposing their alliance to Anhalt, those two strong and quite big countries, will propose it to you. Thanks to that move you will take place of Anhalt in their alliance, and will have two good and reliable allies behind your back. If that fails, Denmark and Pommerania will have to suffice. But Saxony and Brandenburg are your best choice, really.
After that you may proceed on uniting minors around you. Luneburg, Bremen and Hamburg are very good targets to attack, vassalize and diplo-annex later on. After that proceed to Pommerania (the same culture as yours) and any other state that looks weak and doesn't have powerful allies (powerful = Austria, Burgundy, Lithuania, Poland, France, so on).
The trick is not to annex them. This would hurt your trade too much. Instead, offer them vassalization and demand all the cash they can pay. This way quickly you will have a few hundreds in your purse and this will allow you to build a bit bigger army to take on some of stronger minors like Hesse or Bavaria. Also, if they have two or three provinces (like Bavaria, Munster, Palatinate, Cologne) be sure to rob them of their additional provinces. They cost 2 BB each, might seem a lot, but you're in a badly need of additional manpower. So make sure your vassals stay with only one province. They are easier to control and less likely to break away this way.
The most important thing is diplomacy. If you have a monarch who is a talented diplomat, use him to the utmost extent. Get Royal Marriage, military access and other free deals with every HRE elector you can reach. Bribe Saxony and Brandenburg to tie them closer and closer to your country. They should accept vassalization offers later in the game, after you have absorbed a bunch of smaller countries.
Your aim is to become the Emperor. It gives you an ability to field huge armies for the country of your size. This way you can swallow little ones easier, one by one, and also defend yourself effectively against all the enemy incursions.
After 50 or so years you should have at least the north of Germany united under your rule. It depends on the skills of your monarchs and also is randomized by the way minors ally with each other. But the final result will be usually like that, you have everything between Bayern and the Baltic and from Pommerania to the Netherlands.
After that it's time to proceed on a bigger prey. You have two ways. You can go on Burgundy to take Dutch provinces from them or take on Austria to unite Germany. It is very random which of those two will be weaker and smaller. The idea is to jump on the weaker one and rob him of all his power, cash, manpower and land. If you jump on Austria, take their gold provinces. If you attack Burgundy, take the wealthiest Dutch lands.
When you fight a war, play it smart. Check first who is the leader of an alliance against you. And ignore him. Move your armies on smaller countries of the alliance, assault and take their homeland quickly. Take any provinces you can, vassalize them and demand cash. After you have killed all the minors involved, move on the biggest country. It is sometimes even worth having whole your homeland besieged. As a reward you will be uniting German states much quicker than if you killed the big country first and accepted white peace with its minor allies.
Also, do not ally with your vassals when they have only one province. They are of no value in your wars and you risk them being annexed when you are attacked. Also every war you drag them into will damage your relations and will cost diplomats and cash to improve. So ally only if they have two or more provinces. When your vassal who you're not allied with is attacked, they will ask you for help anyway. So they are under your protection even without the alliance.
