Are Coalitions fixed yet?

[Chipawah]

WAD you say? So, coalitions should remain the one diplomatic action that doesn't have a cost of some sort, thus AI has 0 reason to calculate whether to join or not? And far flung tribal and oriental nations that you may not have been even discovered, should always join the coalition against some European power for expanding against other Europeans? And I've never seen the AI form a coalition and start a world war over the AI taking provinces in Morroco, but boy oh boy, if you don't follow the "grand strategies" of vassal feeding, or 1 province wars, you'll be dealing with world war 12 by the time the game is over.

It uses up one of your diplomatic relations for starters, so there is certainly a diplomatic cost to it. I have never had to go through any extreme tactics to keep my AE reasonable and coalitions acceptable, I can usually claim up to four provinces without causing any long term coalitions to form, and I don't want to claim much more anyway because of overextension, so I don't see the need to limit my expansion to just one province very often. The "grand strategy" is to simply make sure that all your neighbors don't hate you at once, like any sound nation-builder should do.

 

[unmerged(815621)]

That would make coalitions pointless, and easy to abuse (being able to peace out with everyone) so even if I like the idea, I doubt it would work well in the game.

It serves the purpose of what it is designed to do, keep an emerging power in check. If you already own half of Europe, clearly they did not do their job, and now they are a pointless menace.

Coalitions form under two conditions, if you play well. The first is over aggressive day one actions. The second is where you blobbed to the point that maintaining AE is no longer practical.

The first case is just silly as you still are not going to be a threat to anyone. The second is just plain asinine, as by this point you should be able to beat the entire world in a war. Coalitions should form to keep you in check when you can take on France +1, not Bavaria +1. Likewise when you can take on all of Europe + Russia + ME + Africa + India and effectively pounce them all, I am pretty sure you should be able to almost take what you want, with the consequences resting on being able to maintain your winnings.

For the people that would bring up vassal spamming as a mechanism to stop OE. One fix would be the further you are over your diplo limit, the more uppity your vassals should become. It should work in a way similar to CK2 when you are above your landholding limit. Of course, this means that there would have to be consequences to the diplo limit, but this should have been a 1.0 idea. Instead, its not even a thought.

 

[geminisama]

It uses up one of your diplomatic relations for starters, so there is certainly a diplomatic cost to it. I have never had to go through any extreme tactics to keep my AE reasonable and coalitions acceptable, I can usually claim up to four provinces without causing any long term coalitions to form, and I don't want to claim much more anyway because of overextension, so I don't see the need to limit my expansion to just one province very often. The "grand strategy" is to simply make sure that all your neighbors don't hate you at once, like any sound nation-builder should do.

Increasing relations with your neighbors is indeed a needed thing to do, but it's still nearly moot due to the mechanics, if you're not Austria with it's sheer amount of diplomats and dip buffs. If I'm Spain, and take some land from Morocco, Native Americans, Oriental or African nations, EVERYONE the world over is still going to be pissed at you irrationally, even if you've got the full diplomatic corps out and about mending relations. Sometimes I like to go into the coalition map mode, and just stare at the AE values that some of these nations get over things that shouldn't infuriate them, or even irk them slightly. I remember this one time, I was playing as Byzantium, slowly recovering, and after a hundred or so years of fighting my natural enemies, (Ottomans), peacing out before OE gets to 100%, etc.; SWEDEN of all nations decides to start a coalition against me. Then, every single power of Europe joined in, along with some countries I certainly hadn't discovered yet, and world war soon broke out, because I had spent the last 100~ years fighting INFIDELS for my CORES/CLAIMS.

 

[unmerged(815621)]

I was playing as Byzantium, slowly recovering, and after a hundred or so years of fighting my natural enemies, (Ottomans), peacing out before OE gets to 100%, etc.; SWEDEN of all nations decides to start a coalition against me. Then, every single power of Europe joined in, along with some countries I certainly hadn't discovered yet, and world war soon broke out, because I had spent the last 100~ years fighting INFIDELS for my CORES/CLAIMS.

While mechanically it does not make sense for people to care; historically, Europe wanted Byzantium to fall. Naturally, if they got powerful again, Europe would pry step in and put a stop to it.

Besides, its not irrational for the world to be mad when you disrupt the status-quo by going on a world conquer spree with Spain. Creating monopolies of gold and trade would be a guarantee in real life for the powers that be (Britain, France, Austria, etc) to come knocking on your door to make you stop.

Britain was able to at the end of the era out of luck and mechanics that are not simulated in the game (Fall of Spain and Portugal, France and Netherlands not having a navy to compete, the fact that sea invasions did not really happen). That monopoly came crashing down when people no longer wanted to be ruled over.

 

[panionios]

Although coalitions should not be nerfed, if you get 100% score with one of the coalition members, it should allow negotiating a separate peace with that member.

 

[geminisama]

While mechanically it does not make sense for people to care; historically, Europe wanted Byzantium to fall. Naturally, if they got powerful again, Europe would pry step in and put a stop to it.

Besides, its not irrational for the world to be mad when you disrupt the status-quo by going on a world conquer spree with Spain. Creating monopolies of gold and trade would be a guarantee in real life for the powers that be (Britain, France, Austria, etc) to come knocking on your door to make you stop.

Britain was able to at the end of the era out of luck and mechanics that are not simulated in the game (Fall of Spain and Portugal, France and Netherlands not having a navy to compete, the fact that sea invasions did not really happen). That monopoly came crashing down when people no longer wanted to be ruled over.

You're absolutely right as that's how it went down historically, but there are a few notes to make; the Spain example was from my experience, and I wasn't attempting a WC, or even, "Large Chunks of Earth Conquest." It was still early, and I was messing with another continent. The ensuing peace didn't even see 1/3 of the land attributed to me, and prior to that event I wasn't very aggressive (I didn't even expel Granada). When I say the mechanic is broken, I sincerely think it's actually broken, as I've faced the same issue several times. Early game massive coalitions when I didn't make the choices needed to cause it, has to be a bug.

Bugginess aside, I don't have a problem with the mechanics themselves, just how they work. I've never attempted a WC in Eu3-4, and I don't wanna see coalitions, or AE/OE go. I do however think they need to be heavily tweaked; more cost/downside to forming a massive coalition, maybe a diplomat must be occupied the entirety of the coalition, or MP/Cash. I'd also like to see coalitions become regional, as it's totally ruining immersion when nations from far flung corners of Earth suddenly form/join a coalition against me for virtually no reason. While not to the extent it's currently exhibiting, nations around you should in fact get wary of your aggression, something I don't deny, but there has to be costs, and I strongly feel tweaking how peace works in a coalition would make the game better, not worse. You'd still have the player-checks for aggressive expansion, but it would be much less of a chore to deal with coalitions if you could actually makes gains in the war provided you can overcome the coalition, or merely peace out with individual members for steep sums of cash/prestige/score. As for OE/AE, maybe decrease it's effects (AE) on your neighbors, while making OE a bit harder to get rid of. I think rapidly coring provinces with next to no revolt risk is more gamey than waging war, or being able to make peace with individual members of a coalition.

if you get 100% score with one of the coalition members, it should allow negotiating a separate peace with that member.

I like this idea, and it could be a step towards appeasing both groups of the EU4 players; the Warmongers will be able to profit from the coalition if they can overcome their neighbors, and you can't just day 1 peace out with all your enemies, so coalitions don't become moot. If you have to work towards making peace possible with individual states, I fail to see how many could have a problem with it, unless you deep down have some irrational hatred for warfare in the game.

 

[HansBaer]

Although coalitions should not be nerfed, if you get 100% score with one of the coalition members, it should allow negotiating a separate peace with that member.

So you can conquer the whole world in 20 coalition wars after you blobbed for 150 years? Don't think that's the way to go. It's ok for major enemies, but what about 1-5 province minors joining the coalition? You can force vassalize them all at once and 100% against a minor is really easy, even if you loose the war.

 

[zodium]

So you can conquer the whole world in 20 coalition wars after you blobbed for 150 years? Don't think that's the way to go. It's ok for major enemies, but what about 1-5 province minors joining the coalition? You can force vassalize them all at once and 100% against a minor is really easy, even if you loose the war.

I'm favorable towards letting 100% occupation allow separate peace, but that's a fairly serious flaw I didn't think of. It's not really balanced entirely by OE as-is. What if occupying the war leader to 100% unlocked separate peace for every member, instead of each member being independent? Then you could take 25 base tax, but it would be substantially more work than without a coalition.

 

[Chipawah]

Increasing relations with your neighbors is indeed a needed thing to do, but it's still nearly moot due to the mechanics, if you're not Austria with it's sheer amount of diplomats and dip buffs. If I'm Spain, and take some land from Morocco, Native Americans, Oriental or African nations, EVERYONE the world over is still going to be pissed at you irrationally, even if you've got the full diplomatic corps out and about mending relations. Sometimes I like to go into the coalition map mode, and just stare at the AE values that some of these nations get over things that shouldn't infuriate them, or even irk them slightly. I remember this one time, I was playing as Byzantium, slowly recovering, and after a hundred or so years of fighting my natural enemies, (Ottomans), peacing out before OE gets to 100%, etc.; SWEDEN of all nations decides to start a coalition against me. Then, every single power of Europe joined in, along with some countries I certainly hadn't discovered yet, and world war soon broke out, because I had spent the last 100~ years fighting INFIDELS for my CORES/CLAIMS.

I don't share that experience, I don't tend to play majors, but in the end I blob out to huge empires anyway and the coalitions I´ve faced are always neighboring nations, usually in the same region. I agree that if you don't expand in america for 100 years, there´s no reason why the Aztecs should suddenly join a coalition against you, because you annexed Malacca, but I haven't had that happen either. In my games the coalitions have been logical, usually directly connected to the area I just expanded into.

If this happens to you while you are still only a minor to mid range global power and simply claim a few provinces here and there while other majors can annex half the world before anything happens, then I understand that the mechanic seems unbalanced. But when people play a war-mongering France or Germany and go on a rampage through central Europe, I don't think there´s anything wrong with the mechanic if they end up with a tedious, permanent coalition situation because in that situation there should be something slowing you down.

 

[TheBloke]

Increasing relations with your neighbors is indeed a needed thing to do, but it's still nearly moot due to the mechanics, if you're not Austria with it's sheer amount of diplomats and dip buffs. If I'm Spain, and take some land from Morocco, Native Americans, Oriental or African nations, EVERYONE the world over is still going to be pissed at you irrationally, even if you've got the full diplomatic corps out and about mending relations. Sometimes I like to go into the coalition map mode, and just stare at the AE values that some of these nations get over things that shouldn't infuriate them, or even irk them slightly. I remember this one time, I was playing as Byzantium, slowly recovering, and after a hundred or so years of fighting my natural enemies, (Ottomans), peacing out before OE gets to 100%, etc.; SWEDEN of all nations decides to start a coalition against me. Then, every single power of Europe joined in, along with some countries I certainly hadn't discovered yet, and world war soon broke out, because I had spent the last 100~ years fighting INFIDELS for my CORES/CLAIMS.

Iniitial point: I entirely agree that coalitions need major further work, I believe they are currently an unfinished, beta-quality mechanic that is OP and needs major work.

However, I do believe AE and coalitions are manageable in many circumstances. What I quoted above is not my experience. I don't know if it's different for Spain, compared to England whom I normally play. But don't see why it should be different.

Example:

I have a 10-nation coalition against me in Europe. I spend a few years increasing relations with many of them, sending gifts, rivalling rivals, send war subsidies, genearlly improving relations.

I also get new alliances with Algiers, Morocco and Tunisia. As to why, that will be come apparent shortly. This puts me 3 over my DipRel limit, so I am losing some points, but I only expect it to be for a few years so it's not terminal. (At this point in the game I can have 7 max DipRel - including 1 bonus I got from a temporary, 5-year event.)

My next target is Mali, in Africa. I declare war against Mali, which means I also fight their ally Kanem Bornu. I 100% occupy both nations. I do Full Annexation on Kanem Bornu, then immediately release the whole nation as a vassal. From Mali I take the maximum five provinces I can get from 100% WS. I then Release as Vassal three of those five Mali provinces using the Jolof cores, then I feed my new Jolof vassal the fourth of five Mali provinces. The fifth I hold onto, incurring some OE. I keep it because it borders Songhai.

I use my new border with Songhai to declare a crusade against them. I DOW them with that CB, get 100% WS, and annex all but one of their provinces. I then immediately DOW them again a month later, incurring the -3 stab and AE hit for breaking truce (I immediately boost back to 0 stab.) I 100% them again, Full Annex their last province, then I release the whole of Songhai as another vassal.

Then I feed Songhai that fifth Mali province I took in the first war, taking me back to 0% OE.

So I have just conquered three African nations - a total of 18 annexed provinces - in three back-to-back wars, the last of which was a Break Truce.

With Mali I now have something stupid like -450 AE. What about in Europe? How much extra AE did I incur? I didn't. My AE dropped by around 30. I made a net profit on AE against everyone in the world except African nations. After the last war, Mali joined the coalition, but 8 out of 10 of the European members left.

Why? Because all those huge African AEs, like -120 for annex Kanem Bornu, are only -1 or -2 to distant European nations. And every time I did Release as Vassal (remember I did annexation in the war, then REleased as Vassal - I didn't use Release Nation or Force Vassalise in the peace), I got a flat 2 AE reduction per province to the whole world.

So my conquering in Africa not only gave me a whole bunch of African vassals - whom later I will annex of course - it actually reduced my AE to Europe.

Finally, back to those three alliances I took with Morocco, Algiers, Tunisa. Why I did that should be obvious. Those were three big African nations who definitely would have joined the coalition, because they would have got a huge chunk of AE from all my conquests. So I 'bought them off' - I allied them before I started the wars, and I therefore incurred pretty much no AE with them at all.

A year or two later, after some more Improve Relations, I broke off those alliances with Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, to save on my DipRel slots.

The end result of all this is that after I ended my last war, all but 2 of those 10 coalition members left the coalition against me. Because, as I mentioned at the start, I had been boosting relations and sending gifts etc with as many of them possible, all during the long years of my three African wars.

Is this gamey? Yeah. Personally I really enjoy this sort of stuff - it's like a big puzzle, working out what relationships I need to massage and manipulate, and the correct order to conquer territory, and which peace options to use, etc.

Anyway my point is simply that usually you can manage relations and you can keep coalitions to an acceptable level against you. It does require some careful planning. Coalitions definitely need more work. But I don't regard them currently as game-breaking, just game-changing (and not necessarily, for me at least, always for the worse.)

 

[conanbarbairan]

It was broken. Read again what I posted. No game should be like that. If a country conquers another, it is irrelevant whether they were part of a coalition or not. They should be able to lose provinces.

Agree 100%

Yes, coalitions are there to stop you to expand too quickly (+ aaaaall other anti-expansion /anti-humanplayer/ 'features' like OE, AE etc), but if you are already strong enough to defeat powerful coalition(s), you should be allowed to make separate peace with your defeated enemies (of course you still get all other anti-expansion maluses as usual); it is both historical and logical that way.. I can't believe people defending current /broken!/ mechanics - imagine Napoleon was unable to annex/vassalise some conquered/occupied italian/german minor duchy just because G.Britain refused to negotiate?!

What's next, return to EuropaUniversalis(1) rules - maximum 3 provinces per peace treaty?

 

[geminisama]

I don't share that experience, I don't tend to play majors, but in the end I blob out to huge empires anyway and the coalitions I´ve faced are always neighboring nations, usually in the same region. I agree that if you don't expand in america for 100 years, there´s no reason why the Aztecs should suddenly join a coalition against you, because you annexed Malacca, but I haven't had that happen either. In my games the coalitions have been logical, usually directly connected to the area I just expanded into.

If this happens to you while you are still only a minor to mid range global power and simply claim a few provinces here and there while other majors can annex half the world before anything happens, then I understand that the mechanic seems unbalanced. But when people play a war-mongering France or Germany and go on a rampage through central Europe, I don't think there´s anything wrong with the mechanic if they end up with a tedious, permanent coalition situation because in that situation there should be something slowing you down.

To be fair, coalition wars would still be tedious, and a player-check even with coalition tweaking. Say they implemented the ability to compile peace treaties with a coalition member you have a 100% WS with, fighting a coalition would still mean you have to beat back the allied armies of the coalition, spend monarch points, cash, and manpower, while having to carpet siege each individual member state to have a chance of leaving the war on "top." Afterwards you'd still have to deal with OE and AE, and as a result, possible future world wars if you don't tone buckle down for some peace. Maybe adding passive buffs to coalition members as Zodium proposed, would make people less objected to "nerfing" coalitions, by countering the new player options.

Iniitial point: I entirely agree that coalitions need major further work, I believe they are currently an unfinished, beta-quality mechanic that is OP and needs major work.

However, I do believe AE and coalitions are manageable in many circumstances. What I quoted above is not my experience. I don't know if it's different for Spain, compared to England whom I normally play. But don't see why it should be different........

While you seem to have worked out method that you enjoy, and works around the mechanics, I'm sad to say I haven't had the same conditions as yourself. While I noticed AE rising much slower in Europe than [Continent You're Waging War In], and vise versa, it still gets absurd when massive world wars break out over non-European and Colonial territories, when as seen by your tests and data, shouldn't be causing major coalition wars period if you're not actually being aggressive in their backyard continually. If you're being silly, and just conquering and annexing every single nation you can in Europa, I can very well see them forming a massive coalition to stomp your ass, but my experience with EU4 has had them break out over taking a handful of provinces from non western nations, numerous times, no matter what nation I play, and no matter my empire size. :/

What's next, return to EuropaUniversalis(1) rules - maximum 3 provinces per peace treaty?

3 provinces would be too liberal.

 

[jacksone]

While you seem to have worked out method that you enjoy, and works around the mechanics, I'm sad to say I haven't had the same conditions as yourself. While I noticed AE rising much slower in Europe than [Continent You're Waging War In], and vise versa, it still gets absurd when massive world wars break out over non-European and Colonial territories, when as seen by your tests and data, shouldn't be causing major coalition wars period if you're not actually being aggressive in their backyard continually. If you're being silly, and just conquering and annexing every single nation you can in Europa, I can very well see them forming a massive coalition to stomp your ass, but my experience with EU4 has had them break out over taking a handful of provinces from non western nations, numerous times, no matter what nation I play, and no matter my empire size. :/

Do you pay attention to the tip that shows exactly how much AE you will incur in a peace deal? It should be pretty transparent, allowing you to know why the coalitions are forming. If you truly are getting massive AE from non-local contries then it's a bug, but keep in mind it is local to the region. Just because you never attacked England itself, if you are taking provinces in N America right next to their colonies you will incur AE.

 

[joelzhl]

I feel separate peace should be possible but the condition must be very strict. For example, you need 100% warscore with the target country and at least 50% overall warscore for the coalition war.

However, if we allow separate peace for coalitions, we also need to allow separate join war for new coalition members. If you separate peace out someone and in the process and greatly angered a lot more people, it make sense that you might have 10 more enemies in place of the 1 you peace out.

 

[Jomini]

Coalitions are still broken. The are utterly ineffectual at threatening the player. The challenge they represent is utterly trivial (take war goal, take cap of enemy, wrack up battle wins by defending mountains, and let the AI get blown away by mass attrition). The only thing they do is require you to either adopt an exercise in tedium or abuse the coalition joining mechanics (make peace, new state joins coalition, declare war on new state, everyone comes back in war with no manpower). Why people want easy, boring mode is beyond me.

I'd far rather have coalition wars with risks - losing could mean losing half the empire. Rather than being able to completely ignore coalition wars, because hey at worst you peace out for four provinces. It makes no sense to me why we want a "speed bump" rather than a "brick wall". Hitting the coalition barrier should be a major change in the stakes of the game. Win big and you start taking over Europe (for example if Napoleon, having vassalized most of the HRE, Spain, and Poland - not mentioning his direct conquests - had beaten the Russians into submission what would have happened: A. He takes a few border Russian provinces and then has his empire revolt or B: he vassalizes Russia as well.

Honestly, I think the best course of action is to get rid of the "100%" warscore phenomena. This requires a whole bunch of dancing so you can actually take a big bite out of a country, but it works horridly in coalition wars. Suppose provinces had fixed warscore values (e.g province A is worth 20 thanks to tax, trade and manpower, province B is worth 30). It doesn't matter who owns them - that is how much warscore you get for occupying them. Blockading a province gives a percentage (e.g. 10%) of its warscore value, blockading all ports gives a flat 10 warscore bonus and occupying all provinces gives a flat 15 warscoreTo balance things, we have a geometric progression in spoils. Taking province A costs 20 warscore. Taking Province B costs 30. There is a geometric ratio of 1.2 so taking A & B means you need 54 warscore taking yet another 20 warscore province means you'd need, roughly, 82 warscore. So on and so forth (e.g. taking ten provinces is something like 1000 warscore). This has the advantage of making big peaces possible - but only for crushing victories against huge power blocs. This also means that while coalition warfare is vastly less efficient than avoiding coalitions, the game doesn't stall into acute repetitive boredom whenever you face a huge coalition. Lastly, and most importantly, this gets rid of the easy, danger free mode blobs have right now.

Now I'm sure some people prefer easy mode where you can't lose seriously and argue they are against "painting the map", but the game loses most of its fun when you aren't facing real risks and the current coalition setup (just one war, every 5 years, that can be bought off with a few provinces) is a huge risk removal system for big blobs.

 

[Djoums]

So you can conquer the whole world in 20 coalition wars after you blobbed for 150 years? Don't think that's the way to go. It's ok for major enemies, but what about 1-5 province minors joining the coalition? You can force vassalize them all at once and 100% against a minor is really easy, even if you loose the war.

That can be dealt with, for example prevent any province/owner switching when negociating peace with ayone but the warleader and the war target. That way you can't take provinces, vassalize or return cores (release nation should be fine imo).

 

[blindx0r]

So I won a war with Crimea as the PLC, and took 3 provinces from them (Lower Don, Kharkov and Borisogwhatever). I looked at who'd take AE before accepting the deal, and Crimea and Ottomans had a lot, of course, but I don't care about them. Muscovy was getting 30 some, since they're right nearby, which makes a certain amount of sense, but OTOH you'd think they'd be happy to see a Sunni horde lose. Spain had 40 something, as they somehow ended up with Kaffa from Genoa (not sure how that happened) and then decided to annex half of Crimea, but nothing I could do about that currently.

So I accept the deal, and Muscovy immediately starts a coalition against me. OK, annoying, but I'll wait that out, and I wasn't planning on attacking them any time soon anyway. I'm just hoping I don't get them and Spain together in the coalition. Instead, who joins the coalition? Austria. What? I didn't remember them getting any AE, they have no provinces nearby and we're not neighbors. I look at their diplo screen, they're outraged at me and have -45 attitude, but only -5 is from AE.

Seriously? It's WAD that I get Austria in a coalition against me because they got -5 AE when I took a big 3 provinces from Crimea? How does that make any sense?

 

[unmerged(815621)]

I look at their diplo screen, they're outraged at me and have -45 attitude, but only -5 is from AE.

Seriously? It's WAD that I get Austria in a coalition against me because they got -5 AE when I took a big 3 provinces from Crimea? How does that make any sense?

Outraged + AE + you having OE will generally get the, in a coalition against you. Its not just the AE that will do it, but all other modifiers.

While I think coalition wars need to be fixed, how countries join coalitions is fine. They could make it a little more transparent, but a country that hates you should be more willing join a coalition from minor expansion than not. However, with the way coalitions work, it just makes things even more of an unnecessary pain, more so than enhancing coalitions.

 

[Valynor]

Although coalitions should not be nerfed, if you get 100% score with one of the coalition members, it should allow negotiating a separate peace with that member.

In the spanish succession war France occupied Savoy, but Vittorio Amedeo kept winning almost any battle against them and in the end he became king. That's because he was in a coalition.

 

[Bibor]

When provinces change owners, they change governments and rulers, not indigenous population. Which is accurate for 99.9% of historical events in the given time period. When you "win a siege" over a province, or the whole war for that matter, you win against the government - nobles, kings, courts. Not the people. As you can tell by reinforcement caps, only a fraction of actual population serves in the armies.

When provinces change hands, it's the administration that's gone, not the people. Basically, someone tells them "you're ours now". And the reaction is either "oh, okay" or "no way, we rebel".

A warscore of 100% means that the government, not the people, decided they capitulated and have no more diplomatic or military manoeuvres they can pull. In case of coalitions, its the political will of the whole coalition.

Coalitions in EU4, but true for real world history as well, are defensive in nature. And wars themselves are called "Punitive wars", aimed at reducing the aggressor in size, not the other way around. This reflects the fact that the spirit of several minor nations has the moral high ground over a rapid expansionist.

It's only natural that the warscore mechanism works more in favour of the coalition than it does for the target.

Now, almost 580 hours spent in EU4 taught me that in the 400 years timeframe, you can easily, by diplomacy and by war (with very minor vassal feeding) gain from 50 to 200 provinces throughout the timespan, depending on your starting position, without even joining the colonisation game. Considering the limits of infrastructure in that time period, that's a pretty accurate picture of possible events.

Now, before you say, "but Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Alexander", consider, again, that it was kings and princes that were defeated, not populations themselves. Napoleon didn't conquer whole Europe, he liberated it, in his own way, by sweeping away old customs and rule where he went. Ultimately, he wasn't very successful, but he did plant the seed for the future.

In short, a fix presumes something was broken.