Money is more important than tech, though giving the industrial & enlightenment techs to nations you plan to conquer will help your own budget later on...

Giving money is the best. Giving money outright offends my sensibilities, but buying regions for outrageous sums does not. After buying Ceylon from UP for 60K, UP captured first French Guyana and then Flanders a couple of decades later. It has too many stacks sitting in both European provinces now.

Alas, buying Florida (~300K) and Cuba (~600K) from Spain did not help it so far. It's armies reached the France-Flanders border too late. And France actually lost all of its Canadian possesions two decades after I purchased New Foundland for ~ 100K. But at least it conquered Boston and Maine first. I suppose my purchase of Jamaica from the British for ~ 300K might have had something to do with the massive British armies that steam-rollered through North America...

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