[Micah]

Oh, one more bit of advice: grab a few nice-looking land provinces from indies if you can at the beginning of the game...while your land troops aren't much threat it's a safe bet that your land-neighbors will leave you a few provinces to ensure that they don't have to deal with being raided. Just a good way to leverage a bit more territory. Don't go crazy topside though, the more land you have the more worthwhile it becomes to attack you, since the reward goes up while the threat of retaliation remains relatively flat.