Hi

I played this game a lot, and just took it up again.

I found that playing Sweden has a very fixed strategy to succeed on very hard.

1) Take Denmark immediately.

2) Take Poland piecemeal.

3) Maintain a large army to deter Prussia and Britain.

4) Take Moscow.

With this strategy I had a Long Victory within ... 50, or so, rounds, I don´t remember, but not far from it. 1729, maybe. I was able to nitpick and rollercoaster all of the big powers, because they were sedentary.

Point is, trying to do the colonial thing seemed impossible before. With this strategy, none of the European powers did anything at all, really. I had 25k florins a year, even with a huge army, and could do anything I wanted to, not betting on naval strategy at all.

For tech, I focused on intellectual and military tech. Auto resolved every single battle.

How quickly have you gotten a Long Victory with Sweden, and do you think there´s a way to do the colonial thing all the while Russia and Poland and Denmark are so aggresive after about ten rounds ?