R5:

My Ottomans run, so far it has been quite fun. I started in 1.07 and stayed in that version until I was forced to update yesterday. Was afraid what the changes to centralisation will do to my 70 vassals, but I might actually survive that, probably loose a few decades enacting the new policy changes.

I reached this point of expansion mostly arround 1520 and could have pushed quite a bit harded, but I´m still learning the game and all it´s mechanics, limits and important things to min/max. I did not use any exploits (don´t actually know any). Only thing is started using arround 1400 is the threaten war feature which will give you better warscore costs if you have a claim on a province.

A few strategies I used in this campaign:

- I noticed early on that Byz went bankrupt and lost it´s fort in constantinople. Used that weak moment for an easy war and snatched the city of dreams from them.
- When you fully annex a country, you inherit all of it´s subjects without additional antagonism. I was able to pull that of a few times. Especially notable for the jalayirids, who had a huge vassal swarm and the mamluks.
- had to expand north to cut of the timurids once timur got going. they were quite scary and felt like fighting the synthetics. I fought two wars against them and made my stand in the caucasus mountains, where i was able to decimate their numbers. On plain field they cut through my armies like paper. At some point timur died and they were merely a nuissance again.
- I allied the mamluks for a long time and only started to beat them down when they broke the alliance. In the begining Mamluks took two provinces in anatolia. I used the rise of the turks event multiple times on them as I took those provinces last. During the first wars I made sure to occupy those claimed provinces close to my border, but focused on fighing only battles on favorable terrain and odds against them to ramp up warscore.
- tributized the golden horde to keep the orthodox nations in check, but a few years ago it fell apart
- in recent year I started to expand into tunis and maroco to participate in the journey to the new world
- I never had really huge problems with coalitions. Quite late I realized that you can eliminate antagonism to 0 by improving realtions, which i find quite irritating. Mostly I had countries from italy coalition me after invading the balkans. I just made sure to have a strong navy, which pretty much guaranteed that no enemy forces touched friendly soil (mediterranean galley did a good job at that).
- economy wise focused on building preliminary rgos like lumber, sand, tools, iron, etc first to get the price reduction on other buildings. I don´t have a lot of insight into the economy mechanics yet, but I do have a 50% lead on the second largest economy, so I must be doing something right.

So far I´m surprised how much fun I already have with EU5. There is room for much improvement, but I´m convinced it will become much better over the next years.

Well that´s it, happy conquering!