I think this is really important.
EU made a real effort to make you behave 'historically', in the sense that BB, stability and the cassus belli system were constraints on your ability to cynically pick fights and gobble up Europe one prinipality at a time. But the problem was that there really wasn't enought to do when you weren't at war. I'd spend a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the next year's revenues to come in so I could upgrade a couple more buildings and, well, waiting for the next war to start.
Running a country should be a challenge in itself, especially in this time period when there are the challenges of industrialisation, urbanisation, and an accompanying growth in literacy and so people's expectations and political awareness. Add to this the associated growth of nationalism, which is a nineteenth century concept closely linkes to these phenomena and was a real challenge for countries like Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire which were dynastic and military accidents rather than nation-states, and you have a whole raft of challenges for the player to be dealing with quite besides international relations.
As far as they're concerned, what's striking about the nineteenth century is the lack of major wars. So much was decided through devices like the Council of Europe rather than on the battlefield.
This is such a great period, with so much potential nuance. I really hope they try and translate even some of this into the game. I loved EU, don't get me wrong. But what the previous poster said about an almost-RPG like immersion in internal politics would be perfect, though doubtless too much to hope for.
