I was now bordering Serbian gold mines. After that, in a series of quick easy wars, I took all of the Western Balkans, except for the coastline to which Venice got first.
War with Milan was going to be really easy, except Venice guaranteed them. Well, Austria and Pope were willing to join, so I'm not going to say no to that. I removed Milan from the map, took Venice's gold, and broke the Venice-French alliance. Even on sea my puny navy (10 transport and 5 galleys) and not much more impressive navies of my allies was doing decent, as AI now always keeps half their navy to protect their capital, so all the sea except Gulf of Venice itself was very contested.
France inherited what was left of Burgundy, but that wasn't much anyway, and they were forced by HRE ultimatum to release the Dutch half of it anyway. In the end France got 3 fairly rich provinces for free, not too bad.
Castile lost their PU over Portugal, not sure how, as I wasn't really paying attention to that part of the map.
The ranking now has me as #5 Great Power, but it's all bullshit anyway. By income or army size, I'm more like #10. But it feels like 2 more wars with Ottomans and Venice each, a few diplo-annexations, and some cleanup, and I basially restored Eastern Roman Empire of Justinian the Great. Likely before 1550.
I'm also still in the HRE, and that means I'm limited to duchy rank, and that really hurts my governing capacity. If I integrate my subjects, I'll probably be forced to leave just to keep it from overflowing. Alternatively I could try to get elected as the Holy Roman Emperor, but that would be a lot of work.
Once I connect my Italian and Balkan holdings, that would be pretty much game won.
Unless something stupid happens like Castile PU over Naples, French PU over Naples, or Mamluks starting Sunni coalition against me, I'm not sure what could even go wrong at this point.
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