Just being able to vassalize released nations on peace deal would make that option a lot more useful.
Actually, I was thinking of that as a way of encourage the destruction of big countries without the player directly taking control of the land, be it by himself or by vassals. Being able to release a vassal country would be interesting too, though.
@Manwe_Sulimo Reading your comment made me realize that, while I wanted that discount on releasing countries, I cannot think of many examples (maybe the decline of the Ottoman Empire) in which it's what historically happened. Historically, it seems the tendancy was to "blobbing" along geographical lines, and the HRE managed to stay more or less a collection of small principalities.
Now about Charles V and the Habsburg, their grip was weakened by coalitions, unrest due to religion and distance. Two of those are represented in-game. I guess what is lacking is then a malus on control based on the distance of the province and a way to represent how difficult it is to rule an separated empire.
How does WS translates in that? It doesn't. Never did Fredrick II told himself that he couldn't take more than Silesia because God didn't want him to. He told himself that Silesia was more than enough to expand Prussia and that his goals were reached. Administratively, he had a whole province to add to his country and diplomatically, he had only a CB on that region. Taking Praha, for example, would have made him much more ennemies. Moreover, taking more would have imposed to him a prolonged military campaign with uncertain rewards.
I guess what I want is for the game to encourage us to have the same kind of reasoning instead of limiting us "artifically". The limit should come from the game mechanics we interact with (AE and OE), not from a number we have no idea where it comes from.
Ideally, with much more diplomacic tools, you could have things like reactions from neutral countries and allies, saying they won't let you take X provinces even before you took them in the peace treaty. You could learn that if you lose a few more troops in a war a country could attack you, thus discouraging you of pressing further. Those would be far better blockers on expansion than warscore.
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