I started a game as Mecklenburg and unsurprisingly I have a good economy (I have 5 merchants in most of the European Cot's). But, trying to expand my borders is nigh on impossible mainly due to 1 big problem.
The emperor is always someone big and powerful like Austria or Hungary and I have already had 1 war where I tried to annex Luneburg and Hungary dance across Germany with 30,000 troops and, obviously I got defeated terribly. Fortunately they weren't feeling too expansionist and I managed to negeotiate to give me back my 2 starting provinces and give Thuringia back two of their provinces.
I just don't know how I'm going to be able to expand if the emperor is someone exponentially more powerful than I am and always defends the smaller or equally sized country I invade.
Anyone got any tips?