50 AE for taking one province?

[Zakath]

I'd be fine with doing this, if only the AI had to do the same thing. The AI gets lower AE than the player in every case - they also seem to get their claims discovere much less frequently, and if a coalition forms against them, unless they've made some pretty serious enemies, it'll only be of a few local minors. Call confirmation bias all you want, but I've seen an aggressive Brunswick with two provinces taken and about eight claims on surrounding provinces by 1456, and they're still at 0 AE.

I call confirmation bias

It all depends on your relations, alliances, vassals, and how long it's been since last warmongering. I'm frequently at very low AE in the HRE, but rarely 0 AE against _everyone_, and my coalition foes tend to be the very countries I've taken land from in the first place. AE in the HRE is manageable, but it requires you to take baby steps when expanding inside the HRE and keeping your diplomats constantly busy.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Then you're doing something wrong. Before you start warmongering, always remember to send out your diplomats to improve relations with as many people as you can. It was considerably easier to expand as East Frisia in the HRE as long as I constantly had all my diplomats out telling everyone how awesome I am around the clock. Only time I got a large coalition is when I got cocky and tried to take three provinces in rapid succession.

And the HRE is the only place where this seems to occur. I just took ten provinces from Persia in as many years as Khiva, and they're the only nation in a coalition against me right now. Even Kazan, my rival who borders us both, has only gotten tiny fractions of AE.

That approach is inefficient. Diplomat time is precious, and it is usually better used on dusting up relations with a big ally or working your vassals as an expander. It is much more efficient to manage AE using these techniques:

- Force release of nations and/or let vassals occupy provinces with their cores. You yourself accrue no AE for these things whatsoever. Later, you can vassal the target and feed him back his land.
- Use CBs that give less AE, religious is great for this with Deus Vult, though until you start getting heretics in Europe it's a bit gimped there. Still, religious is excellent in general since it also has BROT.
- Conquer in different theaters to keep AE down. For example, if you chain truce-break on Vijaynagar, the other Hindus will have > 100 AE with you quickly, while at the same time Baluchistan has ... 0.

If your goal is to expand (which is the design purpose of the game according to PI), then you don't want to spend too much time using diplomats to pre-improve relation and sit between wars. There is usually a better use for your troops and diplomat-months, even if that use is a bit distant.

Once you are strong enough that you + big regional ally can overpower all nations in a region, then you can think about going all-in on a coalition chain. Doing so essentially allows you to break truces without penalty and completely cripple an area into cowering, broken remnants.

Unfortunately, the coalition mechanics essentially force-pigeon hole the above in some form right now, unless you're willing to just stay small and/or expand very slowly.