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Strategy:
Normally, there are two strategies for a small dinky little one province nation like mine to survive the early game. One is proven and safe and the other is bolder and not so safe.
The first strategy is to ally yourself to some major power as soon as possible. By being in an alliance with, say, the Ottomans, you get several benefits. First of all, you aren't going to be attacked by your allies, so that removes one heavy from your worry list. Secondly, major powers may leave you alone because they don't want to risk a major war while minor powers don;t want to risk being annexed by your sugar daddy.
Additionally, you can go to war when your big brother goes to war, and you hope that you can nip a province behind the backs of your big brother's foes.
There are problems with this strategy. First of all, you never plan for war. The worst thing is to prepare for and declare war only to find that sugar daddy is laughing at you and leaving your alliance. So you have to fight only in reaction to events.
Secondly, if big brother gets into a fight with another major power, and you jump in, you could get annexed by said big power easily. If you are allied with the Ottomans, and Aragon comes calling, they aren;t going to be able to same me in time.
The other strategy is to ally yourself with smaller, one province powers. The goal here is to try to gang beat another one province nation with yoru ally and claim that nation as your own. This strategy should keep you safe from the small one province nations that may eye your territory because there;s a big difference in Athens decalaring war on me and Athens declaring war on both me and Corfu. We have double the provinces (or just one more, however you want to look at it).
The benefit to this is that you can act when you want to act. If I DOW on some one province nation, and my ally leaves me in a lurch, its not that bad. I may not win, but I'm not going to get chopped off at the knees in seconds. This allows you to expand at your pace, as you have need.
Disadvanatges are many. You have no protection should some nasty decide that your country's banner would look nice in their royal throneroom. There's no out, you are dying. This route is the fastest way to die in the game.
Now, my problem is this. All of the local major powers are natural enemies. Mamelukes and the Ottomans are natural enemies with their Islamic powers. I doubt I could get an alliance with them. I'm right next door to a whole mess of Ottomans.
The major Catholic Powers that are somewhat close are Venice (at Crete) and Aragon (at, um...Naples). Venice's power isn;t nearby though and Aragon is really far away.
There are some relatively close Orthodox mainland powers that might be of some use, but their lack of naval power means they couldn;t break a siege, for example. No sense allying with Hungary, for example, for just that reason.
As a result, I am not really close enough to Catholic Europe to rely on her for protection should things go poorly with the Muslims or the Orthodoxy. As a result, I can rely on alliances with Islamic powers, unlikely thing, or I can try strategy number two. Neither is appealing at the moment.
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