First of all, I never played EU3, not even the demo, so I'm not affiliated with EU3 by any means
. I only played EU2.
The EU engine is not capable of handling minors very well. A country with one province may get annexed pretty easily; once the enemy army is in, the province will be captured sooner or later. To get as much realism as possible, the province system would have to be abandoned, and the game would have to be an RTS or something like that. A battle in a country's only province represents a struggle for the control of that province. If the defending country loses and has no allies, than it's almost certainly toast.
That's not how things happened in real life - for one thing, strategical or tactical genius of a leader (such as Stefan cel Mare) will make a big difference. Like I said, to get great realism, you need to scrap provinces and come up with something else, but provinces are what makes this game unique and fun.
Correct - Paradox Interactive is a company and has to come up with a product that will make a good profit. If more attention is going to be put in Western Europe and North America, the product will make a better profit. If attention is put into Asia or Balkans instead, the product will make less profit. Why can't you put as much attention in Asia and the Balkans? Like any company, Paradox has limited resources (time and money). Resources have to be allocated wisely. The way Paradox allocated their resources resulted in a commercially successful product - EU3.
On a slightly different note, check out the boxshot for EU1:
http://www.gamersgate.com/index.php?page=product&what=view&sku=DD-EU1&cat=all
(I would post the screenshot here in post, but I don't know how
o )
There are four flags on the boxshot - Swedish, US, French, and I think English. From a marketing point of view, those are very good choices. Even though the game EU1 ends in 1792, and you have less than 20 years to play as the US, US flag is on there. I'm sure this has netted Paradox quite some $.
Yet still, Johan decided to give something more to the gamer, so he made the game extensively moddable. In EU2 it is possible to simulate Moldavia fairly well within the limits of the game engine. From what I've heard, you can mod the map easily in EU3. Try modding Moldavia and see what happens when you give them more provinces and opportunities in general. If you succeed, than play the mod you made and you should be satisfied.
By only playing EU3, there is no way you can possibly know that. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. The game was first and foremost made to represent territorial exchanges between big countries and things like colonization or religion. Eastern Europe was a secondary priority.
I have skimmed through the thread and read some of your remarks. Here's one more thing I would like to comment on:
Again, it takes resources to conduct research. And Mr. Meier's research is not perfect either - in his game a republic or a monarchy can construct the pyramids, but some reading and critical thinking will inevitably lead you to the conclusion that such a feat as the pyramids can only be constructed by a despotic government (due to issues with labor efficiency, allocation, and administration schemes). I doubt Johan had to do less research than Mr. Meier - while the latter's game spans the history of human civilization, the former had to take many more factors into consideration.
You can have a long and interesting discussion about the philosophy of making commercial strategy video games, but you will most likely arrive at the conclusion that a company has to put emphasis on making profit.
Personally, I think Johan is cool. He released the source code of his previous games, and it seems to me that he really does care about the casual gamer.