Prussian campaign

[BeeSting]

The game starts in 1700 after hundreds of years of complex political and religious policies....surely?

Nonetheless, lands were politically annexed in the timespan coverd by the game. The raison d'etre of the grand alliances that characterise this era was to prevent wholsale annexation of lands by a "superpower", namely in this case most of Europe against France at some point or the other.

If these alliances had not been so sucessful there is little doubt in my mind that more (most?) of Europe would be speaking French now. If Britain had succumbed to the Jacobites and become a client state of France, how long would Prussia, Austria and others have been able to resist?

So did these alliance go to the point of waging a total war to overthrow the French monarch or to occupy and annex the entire nation?

And there is no process of political annexation in ETW, you simply march your men and grab all their lands, which is now further simplified by making Spain and France one province each.