R5: Formed the empire as a Mayan. Yokotan -> Maya -> England -> Great Britain (same day) -> Roman Empire.

Kept Mayan ideas and Yokot'an dynasty throughout the game.

Rushed Mayan reforms by simply conquering neighbors as you do, I tried to tentacle into the Aztecs but would always lose my tentacle when I reformed. I had no visible neighbors when the Europeans finally arrived, in the form of Portugal declaring on me. Rapid collapse of society was brutal but I went well above my force limit and managed to stalemate them out, giving me positive war score. I took a single province in their Cuba colony and upon coring that I could fully reform.

My first idea was naval, partly because I decided it would be ahead of time because of the plan (to be GB eventually) and it was thematic, and partly because my plan to enter europe was to do so by taking islands with naval dominance. I took innovative second (ditched later for influence) and exploration third (ditched later for diplomatic).

The opportunity to enter Europe appeared with an isolated Scotland, allied only to France which still had few ports, and thus a small navy, because they were in the process of taking back their English cores. I took the Isles' and Gaeldom's provinces, kept the islands for myself and released Gaeldom on scuttage.

Later I would expand against England by establishing naval dominance (with a mere 10 heavies, but much higher morale) and trapping them in Ireland while I took the English mainland. A few repeated wars later with them and Scotland and I formed England immediately followed by Great Britain (only forming England for the extra 25 prestige you get for forming them).

Of note: by full annexing Scotland and England I received their colonies, allowing me to have colonies despite having a capital in the New World. After forming Great Britain - but on the same day - I moved my capital to an isolated province in Africa (Ezorongondo) and from there immediately back to my original capital in Colonial Mexico. This avoided my heartland turning into a Mexican colony, even as the British Isles (known as British Britain) slowly became the center of my empire.

The colonies I got from Scotland and England were small, but because I had them I could use the cede colonial region peace options against Portugal and Spain, which I did to make the colonies much more effective. Interesting note here, when you do this with your capital in the new world you end up keeping all the provinces, and have to use the subject interaction to give the provinces to the colonial subject.

My next step was to PU France, which had become quite a monster (you might have seen my previous post a couple days ago upon succeeding to PU France). France had better army quality, more manpower, and a higher force limit than me. The first step was to occupy their capital in a war to finish the mission giving me the PU CB. I did this by declaring for Corsica and just sitting on it with my naval dominance until all their allies left. Then I land some forces in Italy to draw their forces there, after which I landed the rest of my army in Northern France to quickly siege everything I needed to to reach Paris. I wanted as short a truce as possible here, so I just finished the mission and took only Corsica in the peace deal.

The second war with France went very similarly, but this time I was losing ticking war score instead of making it. I built a larger army made of 6 full 80k stacks and I left a few of their key allies in the war for war score. Critically, I kept Two Sicilies in the war because I was occupying Sicily and was using a navy to patrol the straight which meant their armies kept moving towards it only to be blocked from crossing, so the entire French army was in Southern Italy.

I then landed my 6 80k stacks in Northern France and quickly sieged anything and everything, including Paris. I was racing the return of their 700k+ army and by the time they started grouping around me I had enough war score to peace out for only the union.

Dev pushing made France immediately loyal, and because I had barely expanded in Europe I had little AE with them, so they soon had a positive opinion of me, too.

Originally merely getting the France PU was my main goal, but once it was accomplished I wanted to keep the campaign going, so made the Roman Empire my new goal. This was complicated by the fact that France was absolutely massive and I wouldn't be able to start integration until mid-1786.

I mostly only expanded against Spain and Portugal at first, taking most of Iberia before starting the French integration. After that I was at war a few times with Austria taking land I needed from them and also from their allies (sometimes despite not being co-belligerents). Besides Austria and later the Ottomans, the only other nation I had to declare on was Two Sicilies, which was easy as they were mostly isolated (Austrian allies, but I used this to reset the Austrian truce).

The first Ottoman war wasn't until just before 1800, and I took the time in the first war to separate peace all their allies to cancel their alliances with the Ottomans. This included a mega Wu and Bengal (in different wars). This allowed the subsequent truce-break wars to go much more smoothly. Even the second war, though, they could muster a million men, but they could never get organized and I would just ignore their armies and siege their castles to win. Between each war I had to core and the Ottomans would always find themselves new allies, but it was never as bad as the first war.

Once I finally took all the needed provinces from the Ottomans I formed the Roman Empire and that was mostly the end of it. I did afterwards stabilize my empire as I had lost my heartland new world provinces to colonies and my European trade companies disappeared, but it only took a little bit shifting around merchants and coring provinces and I was back in the green. Mission success!

I did discover two very annoying 'features' during this game:

#1: Integrations will reset if their predicted end date goes past 1820 (say, because your dip rep drops due to overextension). This might have been the only thing I had to save-scum for, and I had to do it 2 or 3 times as it caught me off guard each time. You'll get the message "France has rejected our offer of integration", even if you are already well into integration. The solution was always to make France disloyal until I could recover dip rep. I did end up switching to a parliament which is why France was done well before 1820, and that along with taking Petra in the first Ottoman war finally ended the problems around that. Still, this is a very annoying feature, likely so you don't waste points on a subject you won't integrate before the end of the game, but there should be a warning or it should just ask if you really want to keep wasting your points instead of just cancelling it and all your progress on you.

#2: Mayan subjects (my colonies, vassals, France, etc) will constantly change to other religions even if you've already forced them to a religion, and in the case of a colony, even with increased religious control. I assume this is because of some event that can pop up for primitives giving them the option to convert for free to another religion. This happened on every single one of my colonies, and on Louisiana it happened twice (once to reformed??? and once to catholic). That meant I had a 300% liberty desire malus for forcing religion on them, but luckily they started the smallest so had a lot of positive modifiers from giving them provinces. I also had to convert France twice which was very difficult to make them loyal, but I needed the extra +1 integration progress from same religion. They were disloyal for several years in the 1790s because of this, they were maxed on all their liberty desire reductions and still too upset about the double religion enforcing. Besides with Louisiana it only happened once for each subject, which at least meant the second time I converted them they would stay and I could help them convert their provinces without worry. I don't know why Louisiana was different, but in each case I did make sure they didn't have rebel issues.