Teutonic Order strategy
From EU3 Wiki
[edit] Overview
The Teutonic Order is a very interesting faction to play. Best of all is the location: with its back towards the sea. South is the giant Poland with its puppet Lithuania. East is Novgorod and west is Pomerania.
[edit] Strategy
If you start around 1450ish in patch 1.3 you most often end up with either Novgorod or Poland/Lithuania declaring war on you almost right away. The best way to avoid losing something right away is to immediately start building up your forces and borrow 200 ducats from the get go.
If you have time to build up before the war starts then great -- but if not, hire as many mercs as you can and go for grabbing some provinces. In 1.3 your first victim most often will be Novgorod. With the National Bank idea, after this short war you will end up 3 provinces richer and about 4% inflation due to trying to cover the debt.
As soon as you recover a bit I suggest throwing the same tactic against Lithuania (Poland will join in). This time borrow 400 ducats (do not get scared, its possible to repay the loans even though you will have to extend the loan for a total of about 10 years) and going all out against Poland first, getting a deal with them for at least 2 provinces. Then pick on Lithuania, in most cases getting about 3-4 provinces from them.
Rinse and repeat with 2 and 3 wars getting more provinces than before. It helps to attack when they are in the midst of one of their wars with Moskowy or Novgorod or both. After or during the process making Poland/Lithuania your vassals, it is necessary to be ready to take down Novgorod if it makes its move. This should not be a problem even in 1.3. After you can accomplish that you will have an inflation of about 15-16% but with getting some left over colonies in Cuba and central America you can easily take that down and still have a lot left over to further your conquest.
Of course, no trading or marrying or any other such silliness is possible...after all you are the Teutonic order...a religious militaristic organization with better things to do than stand on the market and sell marine supplies (your provinces' main product). PS and no alliances with small countries, however Austria, Denmark or even Moskowy if you can swing that could be beneficial sometimes though.
