One of the nice things about taking Piedmont and Nice is that we now form the entire western border of the HRE, and with our annexation of horde land, we'll pretty much form the eastern border too. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/110.png[/IMG] There's still the slight problem that we haven't fully "drilled through" the HRE, joining up our eastern and western territories. We're relying on military access from the likes of Bohemia to allow us through, rather than using our own provinces or those of our vassals (who are just as good, being guaranteed to let our troops through). We're nearly there, though, thanks to having the vassals Trier and Hesse. If we can just vassalize Thuringia, we'll have a full guaranteed path through between our territories. As we have no CB against them, we just go ahead and declare a war of aggression on Thuringia. They don't have many allies, and we can easily take a +4 infamy hit, so vassalizing them should be a snap. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/111.png[/IMG] That high infamy limit also gives us a fantastic opportunity in this war to net a bunch more vassals, given how many small nations have joined in to defend Thuringia. We end up netting Cleves, Ansbach, Brunswick, and Thuringia itself! At this rate, we'll have a [I]de facto[/I] united HRE consisting of us and our vassals. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/112.png[/IMG] And there we have it - a guaranteed path between our east and west territorial flanks. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/113.png[/IMG] Thuringia are now vassalized, allied, and giving us military access. We did have to wait a while before vassalizing them for our infamy to drop. As you can see, it was just barely below our limit after vassalization. That will take quite a while to work off. With our territorial connection assured, time to get back to the hordes and the colonization of the Americas. Actually, it could be that the Golden Horde sort out our "buffer zone" problem for us, too. If they capture back Abkhazia, it will destroy our colony and we won't find ourselves up against Qara Koyunlu. They do indeed later go on to indeed capture back Abkhazia before it defected to us. Thanks, Golden Horde! Of course, now that they've done that we need to actually deal with them. Send in the troops! [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/114.png[/IMG] We now have the tech level to build an embassy (further infamy reduction per year). Let's build it, ohhh I don't know..... here. That should help to get our sky-high infamy down - slightly. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/115.png[/IMG] I'm pretty glad we've got some excess troops to leave back in Burgundy proper now, seeing as how France seem to have acquired a core on Valenciennes again. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/116.png[/IMG] We get a nice event here for a free move towards Innovative. Having passed the Liquor Act, we now have no reason to stay Narrowminded beyond getting more missionaries... and hopefully we can achieve that through several other means. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/117.png[/IMG] Been trying for a level 6 Theologian for some time now and finally got one. He is put to work posthaste as an advisor. We're gonna want to convert everywhere to Catholicism as quickly as possible... and much of the world has not yet learnt the Good News. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/118.png[/IMG] This event is just too juicy an opportunity to pass up, so we take the free core and declare war immediately. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/119.png[/IMG] Hafway through the war, amazingly, Poland have the gall to fully annex Brandenburg! We're pretty strong now, so I think we can afford to declare war on Poland for this. Looks like we can get 3 territories for 3 infamy - a bargain price! Burgundy declares war. If France and Austria had intervened, it would've been their funeral. That's probably why they didn't bother. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/120.png[/IMG] Holland are forced to cede our newfound core province to us. Shortly after that, Milan cave in, allowing us to concentrate on our war with Poland. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/121.png[/IMG] After an attritional but relatively straightforward war, Poland is totally defeated, and made to cede the 3 HRE Brandenburg territories to us. We also nab Carpathia for an extra 4 infamy as it looks a bit ugly down there separated from the rest of Poland, as well as making them release Lithuania as an independent nation again. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/122.png[/IMG] Now, I'd been meaning to do this a bit earlier in the game, but we've finally got around to discovering the traditional whipping boys of the North American content; the Shawnee. Our ships need a place to dock, and what better place than our own captured North American province? As we're going for a world conquest, we're being hyper-aggressive. We'll go for a full annexation. We don't even want to call our allies in for this one; we have a ship with 12,000 troops, and we're going to attack very aggressively. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/123.png[/IMG] The Burgundian expeditionary force immediately lands and seizes its colony, so beginning the European invasion of the Americas. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/124.png[/IMG] It appears that Cherokee is Shawnee's vassal and have joined the war on their side. OK, we can work with that. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/125.png[/IMG] Wait a minute, how did that fort get there? LOL! Cherokee and Shawnee are at land tech levels 2 and 1. Perhaps the Creek researched land tech 3 and built it before being annexed? We do indeed spot some Creek patriot rebels over in Timucua (sadly they too must be crushed to clean the area up). [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/126.png[/IMG] We can't just seize Tuskegee because it belongs to the Cherokee, who are Shawnee's vassal, and we can't seize Apalachee because somehow, it has a fort on it. So those become the 2 provinces that we demand as part of our peace deal with Shawnee. Annexing them completely is possible, but would give us 4 infamy. We're just barely going to stay under our infamy limit as it is with this deal, so full annexation has to be left for later. We sure could do with some missionaries to convert all these conquered lands, though. We'll have to investigate ways to get more. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/127.png[/IMG] Even with the mighty Burgundian economy in full swing, money is tight and inflation is rising. We discovered Kongo some time ago, so we use a common trick which is to declare war on them via the Colonial Conquest CB... not because we're interested in taking their land (at the moment), but simply because we want to raise war taxes. Keeping wars going with Animist/Shamanist nations that have virtually no allies just to be able to raise war taxes is a handy tip for boosting your income when it's tight, and it shouldn't increase war exhaustion [I]too[/I] much. Maybe now we even have the resources to fight the Timurids to the southeast? It's also more crucial than ever that we start getting as many colonists and missionaries as we can. We'll be able to afford them, and they're necessary for speedy world conquest. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/128.png[/IMG] Burgundy steadily continues to make permanent incursions into Golden Horde territory in the east, even to the point where our apparent "centre of weight" has shifted there! The real heart of the economy, of course, remains in the Bourgogne region, but those former Bohemian territories we captured earlier have now cored after 50 years, so we have a strong presence in western and eastern Europe, not to mention a nice foothold in North America. Surprisingly, the Golden Horde's leader seems to have stayed alive up to this point and so we haven't had a sudden bunch of rebellions in Golden Horde territory. Nevertheless we concentrate our colonization targets at their non-core provinces, trying to defect them away first (mostly the ones up north in the Russian region). When there is a Golden Horde succession crisis, we don't want those rebels popping up all over the place, even if our armies could defeat them. It's just irritating. One thing I hadn't predicted about my vassals is how useful they would be at "mopping up" horde territory. It can be very annoying to move forces around the vast territories like North Ufa, but vassals generally send their armies there to occupy the land on your behalf, meaning that we now have a 100% occupation of the Golden Horde. [IMG]http://game-point.net/misc/eu3/burgundy/129.png[/IMG] So, Burgundy has made a good start towards world conquest, although clearly there must be a constant push for new territory. I think Burgundy just about has the resources to take on Qara Koyunlu and then the Timurids to the east, after colonizing most Golden Horde territories (and probably annexing Ukraine) - every now and then, we build another army to help us deal with our expanding and somewhat unruly empire. We're going to want to get a move on with annexing Timurids land though, before they have the inevitable break-up into non-horde Muslim states (usually dominated by Persia and Khorasan, I find). It's 1 infamy per province to take their land on the Holy War CB, but 0 infamy to nab horde land! I know which one I prefer.