This guide is not going to work if you have the DLCs. For a number of reasons starting with the DLC requires you to research nationalism. However I digress, I made this guide a while back when I had no clue how much the DLC mattered, but I have no interest in letting younger little ol Victoria II champion me down by not putting this back up.

Oh also this is not a 1, 2, boom done matter, this is not a guide for brand new players but people who at least know the fundamentals, but my other guide can teach you all the fundamentals and more… gotta love product placement

This guide relies on 3 common factors that usually do happen, or they couldn't, who knows but your odds are like 50/50 and people still gamble on 1% chances so looks like luck is in your favor. While this could easily be considered for speed runners, anyone could use this strategy, if you mess up just adapt. Anyways I'd imagine you skipped this and read the list or you are reading this and then hello!

• France cannot ally any major powers within the few years you do this.
  
• Bavaria hast to become a great power by the end of the truce with France.
  
• Must constantly keep a stronger army than Austria.

Don't hit play till you go to war. Raise the taxes and the tariffs,need all the money for national stockpile and military spending. (National Stockpile 100% and military spending 55%-60% or comfortability). Now you want to place recruitment national focuses on Brandenburg (Capital state) and Schlesien (Bordering Krakow, Russia, and Austria), the most populated states. Use all the extra brigades for artillery, as Prussia starts with barely any. Then finally declare war on Denmark, your artillery will be useful in the next step.

You want a fast and easy concure of your cores from Denmark. Not that big of a deal, weak nation compared to Prussia, you probably can't mess this one up… Hopefully. Anything else you can get later when you're a big ole Germany unless you're not speed running. But for now focus on not losing men as your troops will not be getting a break.

Unless you got thrashed by Denmark… You are immediately going to war with France once your troops are on the border. Don’t form the North German Confederation if you even could yet. All the german substates have around 1-2 units at least and are more then happy to die for you, instead of wasting time on more brigades, and it is a solid amount all together anyways. France should be easy, unless on the off chance they are allied to a great power. Most likely being Russia or the UK. The UK literally, unironically, not joking, isn’t going to do anything, to this day they just sit around and sip tea. If they are allied to Russia, there will be 3 provinces east of berlin that fall in a line, bottlenecking them and if they attack they will die. Take Russian states if you’re not speed running, more population early game is better then more developed.

Now you have peaced out with France for your cores, good for now until they endlessly attack you in the future for it. However hopefully Bavaria is a great power now, or at least will be turning into one soon as they do often enough. They will remove alliance with Austria… for some reason, and then almost always go for an alliance with Prussia… For some reason? This should be easy enough if you were able to conquer Denmark. If you lose… tough I guess, if you win, good job mission complete!

Form the North German Federation and then Germany, the added prestige is nice because it boosts you up in the global trade pool along with over-all rank. If you don’t know what being boosted up in the global trade pool means well just know it’s very good.

February 11th 1841. I could probably do better, but I'm not going to, I'm not about to nuke my game in order to go to base just to prove a point, and plus I don't think it gets much faster as this is done within 5 years.