A very popular question is
>what is this shitshow
Most of central Europe in 1337 was in what's called the "Holy Roman Empire."

It was a decentralised Empire which was ruled by a Holy Roman Emperor-with the Emperor being chosen by a group of electors. All those tiny little nations are playable, and many have serious potential. The Holy Roman Empire (HRE) has two main types of nations;
>HRE formables
>HRE unifiers
The "formables" are nations which can later reform into larger nations that may leave or even overtake the HRE. Examples are Holland/Brabant, which can later become the Netherlands, or Brendenburg, which can later become Prussia/Germany.

The unifiers are nations like Austria, who are based around maintaining their hold on the Imperial Crown and reforming the HRE to be a more traditional "unified realm." Since you probably won't be doing much colonising, your focus will instead be on diplomacy-and religion. When the Protestant reformation hits, the HRE will fall into religious conflict-which usually erupts into massive wars.

In our timeline, the HRE ended when Napoleon defeated Emperor Francis I at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805-leading to a chain reaction of events that resulted in its dissolution. Now, you can either save it-or destroy it even sooner.