1502 country update
@Tiber was doing quite well, conquering his way to a pretty large country. Then his ruler died unexpectedly without an heir, and he ended up being ruled from Constantinople. He's got quite a few claims to work with, but a junior partner in a personal union can't fight their own wars. He'll have to hope the union falls apart, or he'll have to break it. Though there might be some value in being allied to a strong
@hobbers.
@Abizzz seems like he's stuck in the middle of Europe, but that's only if you ignore the very tasty minor countries who surround him. They're all part of the Holy Roman Empire, which makes it harder to conquer them, but it's not impossible. He's currently at war with
@Dan, but it all seems to be to the benefit of Brandenburg, who have somehow made it so far surrounded by you guys. His quantity idea group might mean we'll be seeing even more wars from him.
@Andycoleno9 has had an up-and-down game. Or maybe a down-and-up game. He's struck up a strong friendship with
@P-Nut, though sources can reveal that the Italian might not be too impressed with andy's attempt to make himself Italian. He's yet to conquer Hungary, but maybe Leopold or his son Leopold can do something about it. He's one of the few to choose the diplomatic idea group, so maybe he's not looking for a fight.
@Organic Potatoes has done precisely zero conquering, yet still finds himself doing quite well as far as making money goes. He's got some very strong ideas already, so maybe it's time to get off his ass and actually attack
@altodevil soon. He's pretty close to claiming literally every single province he can, so what's it all going to amount to? If
@Eboue is willing, they could take anyone on.
@PSV is another who looked like he might be in a bit of trouble earlier. In the end he only lost two provinces, so he's actually grown since the start of the game. He's currently in a personal union under
@Salt Bailly, but that might not be so bad. As long as it doesn't last forever, that is. He seems to be falling just a tiny bit behind on technology, which he should try to do something about. Though his early religious national ideas mean he's probably not very scared of the imminent Reformation.
@RedSky is another who seems to have run out of small countries to bully. He's claimed the one province of
@Crackers that he can reach, but we all know
@Solius will snap it up if he can get his greedy coral hands on it. RedSky has a
very strong set of allies, so he might even try to take on
@Eboue at some point. He's doing
very poorly on national ideas, only doing two when others have reached double digits. He's strong, but he doesn't want to fall too far behind on that.
You might think that
@VeevaVee would harbour some bad feelings towards
@P-Nut after their brief war that saw
@Andycoleno9 sneaky into Italy, but... nope. They allied back up again almost immediately. He's also somehow found hobbers, which might make andy a little bit worried. VeevaVee did lose his dynasty earlier, but on the bright side his heir is called Luigi. He's taking the quality ideas, which is bad news for his rivals.
@AnotherLondonManc is a serious person. He's conquered Tunisia (the brighter yellow means that it's just a territorial core, basically not AnotherLondonManc
proper. He's got claims every which way. He chose the aristocratic ideas, which does a lot of different things. He could use it to attack, but he could also sit at home and boost the value of his provinces.
@BD is doing quite well, though you can tell from his claims that he's maybe not too satisfied with the sharing of spoils so far in his super alliance. Interestingly he only has a single claim in North Africa, which you would think he would target. Despite not growing a whole lot (I think two provinces?), he's one of the top money makers, largely on account of his trading acumen.
Finally, we come to
@Denis79. He's not small, but you can tell by the map just how many provinces he's lost. Some might argue they were never really
his to begin with, but I don't think that will hold up in a court of law. Also the year is 1502, so there is no law. He could really do with making some better friends, though. Right now he's allied to the tiny Byzantines, which is almost guaranteed to bring him into a war with
@hobbers at some point. At least he's picking defensive ideas, so maybe he's had enough warmongering.