The light in the sky
- "Chancellor, is that a meteor I see?"
- "No my liege, it's your mountain of debt collapsing on you"
- "Mmm, really? Never knew that my debt could light up the sky"
- "Well, it's not exactly your debt that glows sire, but the fires of dozens of rebel armies funded by Jacob Fugger. He wants his money back."
- "I see, so what do we do now?"
- "it seems the advanced finance tech that allows derivates is still centuries away. I fear we have no choice than to give up."
- "Well we had a good run, I hope we meet again in the near future my friend"
- "But, but, what are you gonna do my liege?"
- "Pray for the english peasants to watch the sky. A lot...."
Things went roughly as planned. I conquered some english main land provinces and discovered the Americas somewhere in the 1450's. DoW'ed the Iroquois for a -2 stab hit becuase I didnt have a CB. That was all planned. What wasn't planned was the absolutely sorry financial state the Iroquois nation was in. A meager 500 gold in the coffers was far too little to pay all the debts I made to fund the England campaign.
On top of that Scotland declared war on England and dragged me into their war. This was a mistake, I should have broken the alliance. Now I had to up the army maintenance and start war taxes to pay for it. Turned out I still was losing 3-4 gold a month while war weariness was fueling rebellions all over the place. In the end I was declared bankcrupt while being overrun by rebels......
How now, brown cow?
Not sure how to progress from here. Any strategy will probably start with annexing the other irish OPM's, question is what to do next. Pruning England while they're fighting France seems the best option but it's sooo expensive. Alternatively I could try and attack Scotland once they DoW England but that would leave England really powerfull. The other option is to try and take Meath by 'rebel conversion', leave England alone and focus on the Americas first. Last game would have been ideal for that with the early death of our monarch and his competent replacement, chances are this won't happen again very often.
For now I'll go with "If at first you don't success, try, try again."