I'd be very interested in seeing this tutorial AAR continued. It was just getting to the part that I'm most interested in seeing: how all of the various factors affect combat. For me, the economics aspect seemed easy enough to figure out, but I keep getting handed my posterior on a plate in just about every engagement. Even when I've got numerical superiority (giving me overlaps on both flanks with Cavalry), a leader with positive traits, full supply for a couple of months, morale at its maximum, and terrain working in my favor instead of against, my troops seem to take excessive casualties compared to the opponents. I win often enough, but the after combat report shows me with (for instance) -548 Cavalry versus -723 and -1736 infantry versus -929. The cavalry on the flanks take almost no losses, but everything else in between (cavalry and infantry) gets hammered.
The tutorial's bias against minting seems to be excessive. As pointed out, Inflation is a big negative, but if you can mint a bit and still keep inflation in the low negatives, it seems like a wasted opportunity for free Ducats. About 20-25 years into the game, I discovered the statistics charts, and noticed that my country was the ONLY one to have 0 inflation over that period, while I was typically getting about 1.0-1.5 Ducats a month out of it nearly the entire time.
[ After a few more days of checking, I've come to the conclusion that excessive minting will seriously impact your research budget over time. Doing a small bit of it while Ducats are in short supply definitely beats taking a loan, and it can help you afford a few nifty buildings or other long-term improvements that may prove more useful than a few extra research points. When you've got a positive end-of-year cash flow already, it should probably be avoided or kept to a minimum. In short, he's right, to a degree. ]
Otherwise, it's been very informative to see not just WHAT is being done, but WHY.