What's the biggest plausible country-wank?

Philip of Macedon and his entire family die in some accident. The Epirotes end up inheriting Macedon and Philip's reformed army, they go on to conquer the Persian Empire.
 
Courland colonizes basically anything other than the Tobago. Something big and out of the way from other colonial powers. Then they flood it with settlers from the poorer parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Couronian Borneo would be cool.
 

xsampa

Banned
What revolution?
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With Britain out of the picture, American Australia seems plausible. If !Super-Mexico also possesses the Philippines and the !US opens up Japan more violently, the (expanded) US would hold the gateways to the Pacific by 1900.
 
With Britain out of the picture, American Australia seems plausible. If !Super-Mexico also possesses the Philippines and the !US opens up Japan more violently, the (expanded) US would hold the gateways to the Pacific by 1900.
 

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Ribagorza County

It was one of the first christian states during the Reconquista. WI they kept leadership and created an empire in western Mediterranean with colonies in the Americas?
Wasn't a Ribagorza in play during the Compromise of Caspe?
 
I.e., what's the largest ratio of timeline maximum size/power to historical maximum size/power? Are there any countries that historically never got that large, but could have taken over huge amounts of territory with some slight changes?

To start: The Bulgarian empires were only ever regional powers, but if a few things had gone differently for the Byzantines/Ottomans, I can see them dominating the Eastern Mediterranean.
Italia Federation Republic by Samnites dominante Italy instead of Rome.
 
An obvious one is Germany winning WWI in 1914.

It’d be the end result of a complete Brandenburg wank. A tiny blotch of land that’s composed of sand, marsh, and forest, becoming through sheer will and luck a major continental, then global, power.
 
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I recently posted a thread on the idea of Sigismund von Luxembourg managing to simultaneously hold the thrones of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary (he held the latter two and was at one point a strong contender for the first), as well as being Margrave of Brandenburg and Holy Roman Emperor. Holding this polity together would be a great challenge, and odds are it'd break apart and re-coalesce at least a couple times, but we could potentially see a Polish-Bohemian-Hungarian-Brandenburger Eastern European blob (which also has significant possessions in the Balkans, with Sigismund, in this scenario, having defeated the Ottomans in the Nikopolis Crusade of 1396) under the rule of a continuing line of Luxembourg Holy Roman Emperors. This polity, which could well end up being colloquially known as Luxembourg after its rulers, could play a role similar to the Hapsburgs OTL, but, being even larger and without the Ottoman threat in its rear, might stand a chance of eventually reasserting authority in the broader Holy Roman Empire. Voila, Luxembourg enormously wanked.
 
Also, for a Classical-age one, Thessaly, which OTL barely did anything for most of Ancient Greek history, had a brief period under Jason of Pherae where it suddenly looked as if they were going to step into the power vacuum left by the collapse of Spartan hegemony and become the dominant power in Greece. While Jason or a successor's turning around and matching the achievements of Greece's OTL Macedonian conquerors/unifiers from there seems far-fetched, Thessaly, rich and fertile, had the potential to create a lasting hegemony if a longer-lived Jason had managed to craft a succession plan (OTL after his assassination Thessaly just kinda fizzled).

The same goes for Thebes under Epaminondas, which, after Jason's assassination, actually did briefly construct a hegemony. The wank here is less about area controlled (for 9 years Thebes was the clear dominant power in Greece), and more about duration; OTL the Thebans won a great victory at Mantineia that would likely have solidified their dominance, if Epaminondas and the two man he wanted to succeed him had not all died there. Avert this, and it's possible a Greece united under Thebes is ready to face Philip of Macedon when he comes knocking, and, having repulsed this threat, might be ready to function as a great power for the long haul. A unified Greek Peninsula probably stands a strong chance of blossoming into a large empire in the long run, as Alexander's conquests demonstrate.

One other Ancient Greek one: Corinth. It had perhaps the best strategic placement of any Greek city, was a center of trade, an influential colonizer and a strong military power. But it never managed to assert its dominance over other cities in the way that Athens, Sparta, or later briefly Thebes managed to do, and remained a small city state that seemed to punch below its weight for much of its history. I see no reason why a Corinth that gets luckier with its leadership and political stability can't rise to lead, and eventually perhaps even rule, Greece.
 

gurgu

Banned
Bulgaria 800/900 taking costantinople and creating a more stable and strong ERE called balkan empire instead of byzantine empire, it might be able to last to modern era( serbs would be bulgarized while croats would demand more authonomy as the greeks) with a Tsarigrad( Costantinople in slav) will have a 50/50 population bulgarian-greek
 
well i have this one timeline where North Sentinel island develops with the rest of the world and has a pretty sizeable south asian empire
 
Perhaps a Tibet wank of some kind. Imagine a Tibet without the Tang invasion of the Celestial Turks. Instead for the period between 600-900, Tibet has near constant success on all borders. We may imagine a Tibetan polity ruling the following:

Tibet
Kashmir
Kabul Shahis/Bactria
Tocharia
Zabulistan
Sogdia
Nepal
Bengal
Assam
Kwarezm
———-
Then to make it a true wank; see the Tibet devastate the Tang more than otl and succeed in a conquest of China and establish a rule over most of China in a light sense.

Okay, not historical, but your comment brought it to mind:

In my most recent game of CKII the Tibetans converted to Manicheanism and then ... invaded and conquered the entirety of the Indian Subcontinent. Meaning that Manichaenism is now one of THE world religions, and the Tibetans have been ruling a stable empire in India for centuries.

I was kinda shocked when, while carving out a nice Irish Empire for myself, I was like "Huh, I wonder what's going on out East. Haven't checked on them in a while ... Holy crap!" :D
 
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