On the plus side of playing Mecklenburg was a good start, due to a location right next to the Lübeck market. It also was a good experience of the reformation within the HRE. I didn't do any discovery or colonization. Absolutism was boring, I felt it was easy enough to push through. And the Age of Revolution was just annoying, with revolutions happening on a random 1% chance per month unless you lower all your taxes (which I did after the first revolution), and the revolutionary war being not very interesting.

I don't think I'll play much ironman in the future. I'm not really that interested in achievements, I just didn't want to have none of them. It was more a proof of concept that the game *can* be played on ironman from start to finish.

My next run is probably going to be Portugal. However, I might need to use some console commands for that. Paradox is still tuning their AI, as people tend to complain both if it is too aggressive and when it is too meak. The problem is that an AI that acts okay in one region of the world might end up with unwanted outcomes in another region of the world. The current AI is made in a way that results in Castille almost always attacking and crushing Portugal. That is already true for AI Castille against AI Portugal, and then gets worse for player Portugal, as players tend to make their country richer, and thus more desirable for aggressive neighbors.

Now you might say that the historical reality of Portugal resisting being taken over by Castille and later Spain is an abnormality. But EU4 managed to make that at least a possibility, while EU5 hasn't gotten that far yet. So if I want to play a game in which I don't expand in Europe and concentrate on exploration of the new world and colonization, I will need to cheat a bit. It should be possible to force Castille into an early alliance / defense union they wouldn't accept without cheating, and go from there.