Feel free to ask questions about why I made certain decisions, etc etc!
My initial strategy was to combine my armies and join in the French attack on Austria. My ambition was to grab a couple of provinces, and then spend the rest of the game being nice to Austria. Economically I got Magdeburg busy working on my first corps, and started producing lots of iron and textiles - I want some more corps counters and some artillery! I made lots of treaties - giving free passage and guarantees of peace to anyone who would spare some overseas colonies. Part of the reason is that giving them these things helps improve their perception of me… I also established a few trade routes, trading my surplus iron and horses for wine and textiles, but I also took some gold and food - again, this was mainly to improve other nations' view of Prussia (although I did want the wine!). Population wise we were expanding, with a couple of growth each month.
Austria surrendered quite early to all powers, including me, and I was able to take both Bohemia and Prague, which are Prussian objectives. At the same time, Galicia (another Prussian objective, and previously Austrian) went neutral, so I declared war on it and invaded with the army. The peurile Galicians went running to the French begging to be protected from me: the French issued me an ultimatum: let the war lapse or else. I figured the French couldn't possibly be silly enough to declare war on me: they were fighting Russia in parts of Austria and Prussia, there was a British army inside France, and the Swedes were marching. So I told them my war was going ahead. I was wrong in my analysis: they stood up for the protectorate, and declared war on Prussia.
EDIT: In fairness to the AI, they had just received Austria's unconditional surrender, without losing many men.
[By now, I had accepted Empire status, largely because of all the colonies I had been getting as a result of treaties…]
I immediately allied with Russia, and instructed my ally to gather his forces at my capital. It wasn't threatened yet, but I knew it would take the Russians a few months to get organised and then travel there, and I reckoned that would be the place… Meanwhile, Britain got Portugal as a protectorate, but lost the army in France (mostly prisoners), and Spain marched armies north to help its French ally.
French forces beseiged Berlin, but I steadfastly continued with the siege in Galicia, wanting it conquered before I turned the army west. This was a risky decision, and I was in some doubt about it. However, the next month the Russians relieved the seige of Berlin - my morale was at -458 at this point: couldn't have run it much closer! [If the enemy occupy or beseige your capital you lose 275 morale every month until you go under -750 and start being forced to surrender by insurrectionists.] I finished with Galicia, and moved to Berlin to consolidate.
EDIT - here I gloss over several important battles where we focused on capturing French artillery. Having Russian armies in the neighbourhood allowed me to call them in as reinforcements several times, as well as fight some battles jointly. The French attack on Prussia only failed because (a) most of the Russian army came down to help defend me (b) the Prussians fought darn well. And even then, in was very very close!
By this stage, I had built a couple of corps counters, and filled them with infantry and a bit of captured French artillery - why build artillery when you can confiscate it from the French! I sent the army to take Batavia, one corps to grab Bavaria, and left one corps with the Russians to defend my home. Why not smash the remaining French forces and move on Paris? Even more than defeating the French, I wanted LOTS of their territory: I wanted to conquer some before they surrendered, and given the huge alliance fighting them, this seemed safe enough.
At this stage I got an unpleasant surprise - an Austrian army took Bavaria before I could! I wanted Bavaria. Darn! I assume Austria's enforced peace with France was over, and they had rejoined the coalition and declared war! Still, it relieved some pressure…
To cut the story short, we conquered Batavia (using the Prussian fleet to blockade during the seige - I knew they would come in handy one day!), and occupied Kleves, Palatinate and Berg. We then reset the Russian rally point to Paris, and moved a large army (about 100,000 men, including 5 artillery divisions, 7 cavalry divisions, 4 infantry divisions organised in one army with 2 corps and my 8 leaders) to besiege Paris. We were joined by a 60,000 Russians (with more coming), and 80,000 Austrians who were allied to the Russians if not to me.
Saxony were so impressed with me they asked to be my protectorate: yeah! 96,000 men, and Saxony comes with a corps counter (and lots of cav). I hadn't done anything deliberately to make them like me: but I suppose beating up the French helped!
The French counter attack was significant: 131,000 men under Napoleon. There was a surprise, however, somehow Spain was allowed to participate in the battle - I didn't know COG did that! (At this point Spain and I were not at war with each other!) I am not sure what would have happened in the battle if I had taken a pot shot at a Spanish unit - in the event they went haring after Russians, and I was busy turning the French right flank while putting a cav charge into their supply caissons. I suspect the game would not have allowed me to shoot at them.
Anyway, the battle wasn't bad - we significantly outnumbered them, and at this point the French were poor on artillery and cavalry - I had already captured most of it. [The POW camp in East Prussia held 17 French divisions and 2 generals at this point, and 4 of the arty divisions I was using started the game French!]
