Not sure. I returned to it for a bit to look over my options. As noted, no allies will join me if I declare offensive war. We share borders, yet they have a distant war malus.

Clicking declare to view the force balance shows my 72k troops would face 1.3 million. Not great odds.

EU IV is in really good shape in a lot of ways. but the late game is a bit off. One of the biggest issues in my view is that colonisation occurs at far too high a pace. This means that any colonizers end up with massive alliances in short order. A Great Britain with 300k troops has another 700k from their CNs. That's just madness, that these CNs in 1650 are among the most powerful nations on earth. Something must be done to slow it all down.

Success in this game, if you're going expansionist at all -- and who doesn't? -- means you have to be able to get it done on your own much of the time, and if you can have allies help along the way all the better. But that means a vast majority of nations are especially difficult to play. Nevers, Netherlands, Lubeck, Tuscany and small nations like these will struggle without help from allies. It works some of the time. But some of the time it does not and leaves you stuck, unless you're a much better player than me I guess.

So instead I've nearly failed at another achievement, Navigator. This one requires being Portugal and owning provinces in Africa, India and Indonesia by 1500. A very specialized sort of goal (and I usually avoid the timed ones). I was able to reach India by 1480, which is pretty good, but Vanjangyar or however it is spelled had already taken Maldives and Ceylon, which I was hoping would be small nations I could no-CB and pop the achievement. I cannot no-CB Vanjangyar and their alliance and hope to win.

So that leaves me with the possibility to charter a province but they want 3000 ducats. I have 800, make 11 ducats a month profit with everything shut off, and have less than 4 years left. I need about 1000 ducats to fall in my lap.

It used to be that as Portugal once you discovered India's coast you would get Goa by event. But I guess this was changed and now it comes from the mission tree, but this requires owning Zanzibar, which means another far-flung war that I won't win as no allies will join. When you devise plans, cross-check them against the changes and make sure it all still works the way you think it does lol.