Wellcome MarkShot to our community!
The aggressiveness-slider is not considered to be that important. I myself don't pay much attention to it. It is generally believed that if you put it in the direction of "furious" AI nations will wage war more and thus have less money left for other things, such as tech advancement, sending merhcants and colonists. No one of us players knows any exact figures in this math. If I want to have a real challenge and select a small nation to play I sometimes put the slider at furious just to make it more difficult for me to survive and expand in the beginning of the game. Try starting as Novgorod for example. Not at all one of the smales and poorest nations to choose but very aggressive neighbours and if you play on furious you can be almost assured that Moscow, Sweden et all will come after you within short time
The other slider is much more important. If you put it it's highest value it means that when you have made many bad and evil things in the game many nations will declare war on you automatically which can turn out to be a tough challenge. There is a specific threshold for this to happen, one which you will learn more about as time goes by and you read more posts. I can deduce from your position just now that if you had played on Very hard, as is the name of this difficulty, you would probably have been far away from this threshold. The main source of becoming a "Bad Boy", as the name for this is, is taking provinces from other nations in war and you have not increased your territory in a bad way that much so far although you seem to have expanded a lot but I suppose that you got some of these territories thru the specific inheritance events that Austria is blessed with.
Apart from this there are a lot of cheats the AI nations do to keep up the race with the human player. The less difficulty level the less number (and degree?) of cheats they use. I have never bothered to try to remember all those that I have heard mentioned on these pages. Apart from this I believe that the mor ediffuclt game you choose the more money the AI naitons will have relatively you. I am not sure about the facts on this point.
In toto I don't believe your position would have been much different.
----
There are a lot of us who are happy with trying to answer your questions. Just keep them coming.
However, there is one deity, called Johan, who knows the answers to all questions about the game. If you call his name in the proper manner it happens that he descends to us earthlings and grants you the answer to the question most dear to you. These moments are the most treasured ones among all of us.
Good luck and enjoy your game!
