Civilized in 1904, with 4+ rp, got ultimately crappy techs since was in Russian SoI. World economy was total shit, only thing worth producing was Luxury Clothes and Fuel, everything else was going bankrupt right away with negative tarrifs and almost full tech trees for input and output technology.
Then declared war on China to be released as puppet, beat them and their sub-states badly, they lost around 300 brigades total. As I usually don't like conquering land as Korea, I stopped at humiliate and release myself. During the war became Great Power, lasted for few years and managed to sphere Japan, but strangely enough Sardinia-Piedmont decided to go on dreadnought spam. Can you imagine country with such small economy putting out over 30 Dreadnoughts? Well they did and I lost GP. Near the game end I was 2-3 months from becoming GP, as Sweden was getting their asses handed in war with -60% war-score against France, Prussia, USA and some others, so they'd definitely fall under me, + my Dreadnought spam has just begun, with over 50 in production since once again for hell knows what reason I didn't discover the Dreadnought tech for over 15 years(I had invention, just not the small tech)..but sadly run out of time. ;<
I liked interface and new stuff, although economy balance is terrible after 1880s, I definitely enjoyed the fact that game runs much faster end-game than before.
ps. Was played on very hard difficulty, but does that even make a difference ? I didn't notice any compared to "normal".