Italy Megacampaign: Part 22: 1705-1723: Global American Empire

Enlightenment spawned, and I really needed it, as it unlocks coal. So I dev pushed one of coal provinces, and it turns out that's not even close to helping me. Dev pushed province is just 2% of my development, and penalty for being on wrong continent is just enormous, so all the universities, neighbour bonuses, and institution spread bonuses, still don't add up to that much.

So I second dev pushed my capital to 50dev. This was mostly to get age bonus. Still nowhere near needed 10%.

I even chartered a trade company in Borneo in place prospectors claim coal might be found.

Then I chartered another one on Ceylon, which due to some minor misunderstandings with the natives soon turned to control all of Ceylon's coastline. This was a fun little fight - 24k transport and small single stack against enormous fleet and over 100k angry Indians. Some fun diplomatic race and throwing ships away as delaying tactics, but it worked.

I really needed Panama Canal and relevant trade nodes, so I invaded Caribbean of South America. That's practically North America. It was mostly CNs and some leftover native OPMs, but one thing it meant was war against Ormond, Toulouse, and Switzerland - with alliance with Commonwealth being surprisingly of some use.

Then I followed the same invasion trick with Friesland, except it didn't go quite that well, together with Clever they had bigger army and bigger navy, fortunately sacking their capital fast was enough to convince them to give me half of their New World holdings at least.

That left Provence as the last minor to deal with, except Ming got there first, with 29k stack landing in Costa Rica. Ming, seriously? And it turns out Ming is a serious global power with up to date tech and half of Japan under its control. Fortunately Ming only took their money.

So, fun war against Provence and France. HRE guaranteed them, but did not follow its word. I had to hire port in Brunswick to transport my troops in multiple waves.

Il Presidente for life, elected at age of 21, died at age of 26. What the hell is this? The Reaper's Due on max settings?

I finally ran out of uncolonized lands, so my now free colonists are now increasing development in coal regions. I doubt they'll get them to required 20, but it will still save me some dev pushing. If Enlightenment ever comes that is.

I never played this long, so I have no idea what's going to happen in age of revolution. Is it going to trigger on its own somewhere, or should I help the AI?

It doesn't look like Vic2 converter is getting anywhere. If it doesn't happen in about 2 weeks, I guess I'll need to either abandon this megacampaign idea, or do a lot of coding.

Most notable on this map are enormous Egypt and Jerusalem. They far exceeded expectations.

All countries big and small are grabbing random land all over the world. I'm a bit late to this, best I'll be able to get will be a few scattered ports of no economic value (but it's still a free merchant to get to India).