This game is my favorite and when it comes to iron man mode, it makes it very challenging and it requires a sufficient amount of luck in order to conquer the world and to prevent your situations from occuring. I've spend more than 700 hours trying to make my nation large as possible. When I first saw this game 2 years ago, I used it to observe what the ais' are going to do and then I got tired of it. I came back to playing it a year later and decided to play as one of the irish minors and I conquered almost all of Ireland except pale (which England owns), I was trying to expand throughout Scotland but then England jumped at me and I got pissed off so I decided to play the smallest or minor nations to play as. So far the results was at "I did terribly." But now I learned that its about the luck in order to be successful as playing as a minor nation. I am doing great so far in my recent games!