>>2231170
Like I said, they were busy in other wars, so they were just sending one 10-20k stack at me after another, which I could beat because I'm rich and can maintain a lot of soldiers.
Early on I just focused on getting rich in provinces I had, not waging wars for land.
I think if you're small there's no real need to move capital. I moved it very late - it would cost me 25k gold to move capital - what I did is I removed all trades and disabled all minting/taxes, and after a month passed this reduced the cost to something tiny like 1k.