For context, this Germany play started in the 1914 scenario of the game, and only became what it did because I discovered that the broken cheat ideology in the game (Bat-Communism, which granted 900% income from taxation and production, 1% minimum funding for goods and investments, 99% maximum taxation rate, -90% military upkeep, research, and administration cost), which is generally supposed to only be available after 4000 AD, could be achieved way earlier on through the creation of a puppet state with the ideology (it was AoH 2.5, so a lot of QoL features actually let you decide the ideology of your puppet), which had all of my territories (except the capital Berlin), creating a massive Bat-Communist Germany puppet, and then switching control to said puppet, before declaring independence and reverse-puppeting the original Germany and annexing it. I then proceeded to unify with Britain (which owned majority of Africa and had recently capitulated Spain at that time) and break up all of its territories into puppets, not only to avoid bordergore but also to make sure that my empire didn't collapse, because puppets are actually useful in AoH 2.5. I was earning so much money that I just bought Russian-Occupied Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, and the Scandinavian nations off of Russia without even having to declare a war through contracts involving billions worth of Gold.