Italy Megacampaign: Part 25: 1754-1770: Mare Nostrum Pacificum

Step by step just taking a few trading outposts turned into a plan to conquer more or less the entire Pacific Coast. There was no realistic way to grab every tiny island, but Australia was necessary and easy to take.

Afterwards I asked Ayutthaya and Champa to be my vassals - that's a new idea in American diplomacy.

Right, time to stop this retail fighting and go for the real prize - Ming. Simultaneously fighting all its tributaries with any coastline.

I finally expanded my 12inf 4cav 8art stacks to 16inf 4cav 10art. Nowhere near 30inf 30art style stacks people recommend for optimal fighting, there's no point throwing money away.

It was a true war between leading great powers. I had many 30k army stacks, but they were never in the right place. I had 4 fleets of 15 heavies and 30 transports each, as well as some lights and spare heavies near capital. Two of those fleets were constantly busy transporting troops to deal with rebels popping up on various islands and escort the transports. The other two I couldn't really use separately, as Ming had enough heavy ships to challenge that. Even 30 heavies in a stack wasn't really quite comfortable.

Because of this limited power projection, Ming's armies were far too numerous than what I could throw against them safely. In fact Ming invaded Alaska, and a big stack of revolutionary rebels spawned wiping out one of my 30k armies. Overall I had sufficient numbers, about half as much as Ming, which is usually enough, but limited capability of concentrating them where I wanted.

I crushed Ming's expeditionary forces in Japan, Java, and Alaska.

Most serious fighting was in Korea. There were a lot of close battles, some won, some lost.

I pretty much gave up the whole Southern front, my poor vassals possibly already regretting signing up. I only went there after everything else was over, and Ming abandoned its tributary Luang Prabang.

Eventually all the rebels were defeated. I managed to get into negative manpower and had to use my professionalism reserved. I didn't even get everything I wanted, that is Japan, but then does anyone ever?

The most important thing is that this is finally crushing Ming's mandate.

In all this mess, Italian rebels spilled into my country and they got independent 2 province Brunei. That's most annoying, as foreign rebels don't display their counter. There's been so many cases of rebels popping up somewhere, seceding, and then getting either sniped or guaranteed by another power. It makes the world feel a lot more dynamic.

I wanted to get into another war against Russia and Denmark to seize some Danish colonies, but Commonwealth dragged me into their pointless war against Nogai and Russia first. Oh well.

So instead I setup third vassal of Malacca and get them some land too.

In a hilarious turn of events Orthodox Egypt guaranteed independence of OPM Mamluks exiled into Arabian desert. Kingdom of Jerusalem got one of disasters and collapsed to rebels of all kinds.

Meanwhile, Vic2 converter is nowhere to be seen.

I'm not trying to exclude anyone, as Ming and Indian secondary powers are still huge, and everyone has random islands all over, but I'm clearly the dominant power of this hemisphere

Italy and Spain colonize extensively. Everyone else has some colonies.

I got some bases beyond Ceylon - Goa and on Northern Swahili Coast.

I definitely want to cleanup Korea and Japan, probably grab a bit more of Russian Far East, not really sure what would be other plans.