What version and beta is showing? If you are in any beta, opt out of it.
You lose 1 point/month per 15 income you have. In this picture, I was progressing at 8/month IIRC (didn't quite have 45 raw income). What sucks about Kilwa is that you have to get exploration to westernize. Not true for Kongo or anybody near Mali, who can conquer Mali and start the moment Portugal or Castille finishes a colony in Trarza.
The real problem is NA natives, because they can get quite large before anybody in Europe gets near them, and even after that they have to wait due to government reform stuff.
Yes, the Call to Arms issue is still there; personal observations suggest that the patch may have limited its frequency, but not sure.
"Distant war" seems to be taken into account which eliminated a lot of the issues for me ever since I went to the beta. Other reasons still exist, but I haven't seen anywhere that anyone has isolated the circumstances.
The main issue so far as I know is that your ally will not join the war they said they would if, during the response to your declaration, your target successfully calls to their defense a nation that your ally is allied with in an ongoing war, but no allied with otherwise. Thus, I as Portugal declare war on France. Before doing so, my ally Austria had a green check, so I call them. But France responds to my DoW by requesting that its fellow Anti-Portugal Coalition members come defend it; one of them is Ferrara. Ferrara agrees. It just so happens that Ferrara is already involved in a war against the Netherlands, in which war it is fighting on the side of Austria. Austria now gets to respond to my call to arms and says, "Whoa, Dude, like no can do! Seriously bad karma attacking our helpers against the Dutch. Let us know how that attack on the Big Blue Blob goes! Later, Dude!"
