Being a fan of Paradox Franchise with dozen, hundreds, thousand of hours playing (EU, HoI, CK and more recently IR, my favourite), I'm writing today my very first post ever, here on this Forum. As a matter of fact, I am absolutely delighted by the depth, potential and total immersion provided by IR today. This game has been denounced so badly until recently and finally now it is going to get its rank honored soon I think by both the players community and the critic. I would like to endorse the hopes and fears of several contributors in this Topic.
On one hand, I do support and I am confident in the success of all the efforts made by the developpers to improve the game day after day towards the 2.0 version. On the other hand I fear that some of the new mechanics to be offered (Manpower, Missions,...) will not really go in the direction that I expected.
Indeed, for the sake of the challenge, I have almost always prefered to play a lower medium or minor nations, i.e. Epirus, Avernes and Attrebates, humbly managing to equal more or less the final ranking of Rome and Carthage. (Conversely, in CK3 I always find it much more exciting to play a Count in order to conqueer large parts of Europe).
To conclude, my wish is that the developpers will maintain a viable balance of power between small and major nations sothat it will always be possible to overcome the well known giants if you are doing your warmonger job very well and/or if you are lucky.