As I was bored and I had a colonialism CB against Castille, I decided it was time again to make sure my southern border remains safe. My original plan was to conquer Aragon (out of spite), but I don't have a CB and they didn't honor their alliance with Baden. In other words, I decided to declare war on Castille. My specific war goal is Murcia. One of the reasons I want Murcia is that it's a coastal city, and I need docks to raise my naval forcelimits; I have many colonies, so I need a large fleet to keep the tariff efficiency up.
Castille won't give access to my vassals, so they're stuck in Granada (my loyal vassal). So, off we go. Castille has some 20k troops, and I make sure I destroy them completely. I make them release the Maya's as a sovereign state, and I keep Murcia. Castille split in half, and I have their mediterranean coastline... plus a corridor to my loyal vassal Granada. I've also kept Salamanca, as I figured that conquering manufactories is a valid tactic.
What you can see in above picture is that the vultures are already picking at Castille's body. The Papal State decided it needs some provinces in Hiberia, apparently.
Three things happen:
-my king dies, and his successor is a moron;
-upon death of Charles the umpteenth and because of excommunication, Baden decides it wants freedom
-I get a random event that makes me lose 6 infamy
Of course my new king gets excommunicated again. This is getting tiresome... anyway, I declare war on Baden with the restore union CB. Somehow I can't restore the union in the peace declaration, so I annex them instead. And that was the last time the world has heard anything of Baden.
Unfortunately Baden gets aided by... the papal states. This way I'll never be able to get some papal influence... oh well. I get Modena out of it, because of the valid "your manufactory is now mine" tactic. Of course, when you're down the vultures are sure to get you, so Naples and Siena take over the pope's lands.
Luckily the moron king didn't live long, and the new king is gifted. My goals for the near future:
-build level 5 improvements: I can build colleges now, and I want 20 of them so I'll get 1 additional spy and magistrate each year. I'm building mints in the few top grossing provinces (those that have CoT's) and post offices in the others. Undecided about naval arsenals.
-settle the west coast of North America: I can do this because I'll soon get a core on mexican west-coast provinces.
-annex some vassals: I have a mission that'll grant me a level 4 artist, so I can take the stability hit
-see if I can be papal controller
I've added the world map and the vassal map for 1598. Funny thing about the world map: Sweden and Moscow are huge, but they have poor provinces. Bohemia is stomping Austria, but Austria doesn't care and just expands into the Balkan. Bohemia is cut in half by Ukraine (thankfully).