Give it to Persia!...

[Servius]

As Fisherking said, giving a neighboring province to Persia seems likely to just lead to Persia declaring war on you.

This is another reason why I like GB.
A) As an island, the home provinces do not share a land border with anyone.
B) As a naval power, it's well positioned to earn money through trade, which lessens the need for large land holdings to generate income
C) I can capture many islands (particularly in the Carribean) that generate trade goods and don't share any land borders

I'm running a GB campaign right now where I gave the finger to America and Europe and headed directly for India. I waited for the M&Ms to take out Goa and Ceylon, then I took out both M&Ms. Wouldn't you know it, but once I had mastered India, my bestest trade buddy Persia declared war on me because we now shared a land border. So I took over all of their lands too. The advantage here is that I could have left the territory of Persia alone, which would have meant that I only had a single land border with a single province, and thus a single foreign nation that I was already at war with. But Persia is pretty rich so I took it anyway. Now I have two full stacks of veteran East India troops in Persia staring angrily across the borders towards the Ottomans and the Russians, just daring them to give me an excuse. With India bottled up, I returned to America and zerged all of North America in a handful of years. Once I finish with South America I'll be back to having only a single territory that shares a border.

OOO! I just thought of an alternative. If you can, give border territories to protectorates who are ALL READY AT WAR with their new neighbors. Protectorates at least tend to remain loyal allies and won't attack you very often, and if they're already at war with their new neighbors, you won't be dragged into any new conflicts.

[Slaists]

As Fisherking said, giving a neighboring province to Persia seems likely to just lead to Persia declaring war on you.

This is another reason why I like GB.
A) As an island, the home provinces do not share a land border with anyone.
B) As a naval power, it's well positioned to earn money through trade, which lessens the need for large land holdings to generate income
C) I can capture many islands (particularly in the Carribean) that generate trade goods and don't share any land borders

I'm running a GB campaign right now where I gave the finger to America and Europe and headed directly for India. I waited for the M&Ms to take out Goa and Ceylon, then I took out both M&Ms. Wouldn't you know it, but once I had mastered India, my bestest trade buddy Persia declared war on me because we now shared a land border. So I took over all of their lands too. The advantage here is that I could have left the territory of Persia alone, which would have meant that I only had a single land border with a single province, and thus a single foreign nation that I was already at war with. But Persia is pretty rich so I took it anyway. Now I have two full stacks of veteran East India troops in Persia staring angrily across the borders towards the Ottomans and the Russians, just daring them to give me an excuse. With India bottled up, I returned to America and zerged all of North America in a handful of years. Once I finish with South America I'll be back to having only a single territory that shares a border.

OOO! I just thought of an alternative. If you can, give border territories to protectorates who are ALL READY AT WAR with their new neighbors. Protectorates at least tend to remain loyal allies and won't attack you very often, and if they're already at war with their new neighbors, you won't be dragged into any new conflicts.

The pain with protectorates is that 1) if you only have one protectorate, it is highly likely that your ally (if you have any) will declare war on it even when they do not share a border. I have had landlocked (at the time) Russia declare war on my protectorate 13 Colonies when I played Britain. If you decide to side with the protectorate, your global ratings will suffer badly. If you decide to side with the ally, your global ratings will suffer too... 2) If you have more than one protectorate; one of them is highly likely to declare war on another resulting in a global diplo hit to you regardless of the side you take.

As to my Persian case: they have had Hanover for 15 years now and neither they have declared war on me, nor on any of the other European nations bordering them. It seems, Persia is not supported by the generous (towards the AI) CA cash granting script. Hanover has no Persian troops whatsoever and I can see that the public order has been right on yellow all this time.

As to Britain: the only problem I have with playing that faction is that it is VERY EASY...

[Dead Guy]

I've taken Flanders from France and sold it to minor nations over and over in my current campaign with GB. Park an army in the netherlands, capture Flanders, walk back into the netherlands, sell it off for 22k to Savoy/Genoa/Knights/Dagestan(!), and watch as France takes it back. France will soon be at war with everyone :p Persia didn't want it, they said their tax collectors wouldn't be welcome there.

[Beskar]

I did my victory conditions one game, I was either Prussia or Austria, and everyone kept DOW-ing me, so What I did, I conquered everyone and the thing is, I had those native American protectorates, so once I conquered them, I replaced them with Native Americas and ended up with the entire game owned by native Americans almost.