Heh, I stopped caring about whether or not anything in my playing was efficient a long time ago. Generally, I feel that with most nations it's easy enough to end up in a situation where you're ahead of time in everything if you build up your infrastructure etc. properly and get good provinces, and at that point the difference from having bad provinces drag your tech down is negligible.
Oh, "good provinces" is not a problem in this game - I play Holland, converted to the Dutch empire. The netherlands with most of current day belgium and parts of northern france added is pretty rich, and cored. Two inheritances (a hungary blob and a great britain blob) made me grow way too fast though..
Really, IMHO it's a problem only if really many or all of the provinces in your starting position are ultra poor. In that situation you have to be careful with this and pick your spots more. The only situation where I might go as far as release vassals because of this is if I have one or two good provinces and a plethora of crappy ones. But I never claim to be optimal: as far as game success goes, I feel that making the most of your situation is more important than optimizing the situation. And I find it more fun to play like that.
Oh, I don't really want to be optimal either. But I do wonder whether I really want to continue the path of conquering small bits and pieces and vassalising the rest, or just go ahead and convert the HRE so that I can start blobbing like mad. The hungary land really does seem to make that a worthwhile option, since it has no land connection otherwise.
Now, stability recovery is a different beast to some extent. It does get problematic when you're really big. But even there, things like wrong culture/wrong religion provinces, infamy etc. are more important factors than just province numbers. This is one of the easier games I've had in this regard - as a huge part of my provinces are either converted from a pagan religion or colonized, my culture and religion situations are excellent. Of course, I've worked towards this with my colonization policy (blocking rivals, aggressively seizing colonies that are still flippable).
I just took the -5 stab hit to go to protestantism. Some very rich provinces around Antwerpen converted there. Recovery of one point was somewhere in the 10 year range, with full investment. I still have overextension though (after the inheritances) so that kinda hurts. Luckily some missions and a great man event really helped me get that back up or it may have become a real issue.
However, the main issue I have is culture. I am confident I will be able to religion flip most of the remaining important provinces, but culture is an entirely different beast that I do not quite understand how to manage. Especially with the huge amount of magistrates I need ..
The year is about 1525 or so, so I have still plenty of play time to rectify that. Once I figure out how
(Besides, this thread really isn't about -my- game. Sorry for drifting off-topic.)
Last but not least, welcome to the thread! You totally managed to make me rant! :rofl:
Thanks. And you're welcome