My latest big success, was creating Germany (from Frisia in straight line to St. Wallis or some northern italian province, then in pretty straight line to southern Hungary an up, up till the Danzig) from single-provinced Frankfurt, which has great trade preferences (the polities are very favorable like in Netherlands) and I've been bashing through the skulls of all enemies of my bigger protector, sometimes some well justified war against other german duchy and I eneded up with 560k soldiers in ~1750 year, and the biggest earnings the 1st statistic card says it 11k, but on the end of the year I gain about 3k, and monthly I'm balancing (depending on my merchants skills) from +5-10 monthly to -90. Game became really boring now because it's just killin' all of those left and bringing the light of Lutheran faith. I just hope that the new trade system (with routes 'n' stuff) will be much more interesting and flexible than current one in EU III with all DLC's.