The only way I can think of to achieve (2) without some kind of "congrats, you have won the game, stop playing" cap on the effectiveness of conquest is to make Release Country cost zero DIP and be much, much cheaper in warscore.
That's a faulty point of view and you know it: up to Napoleon, most of the minors of Central Europe were still there. Hell, aside from inheritances there were little changes in borders in Europe, up to Napoleon - France conquered Alsace-Lorraine, Poland was partitioned, the Ottomans expanded. That's more or less everything that made a real impression on border changes. And while the Congress of Vienna reduced the nations of Germany drastically, there were still a lot of them around. Really, history saw no blobbing on the EU scale, and what happened didn't happen via conquest.
But then you look at Timurids/Mugals, conquest of China, Spanish conquests in Americas, Ottoman conquest of Egypt,..
The only way I can think of to achieve (2) without some kind of "congrats, you have won the game, stop playing" cap on the effectiveness of conquest is to make Release Country cost zero DIP and be much, much cheaper in warscore.
Which doesn't actually sound like a good idea
There is very little you can demand in a war in a single-player game that is worth more, in the long run, than shattering the Commonwealth.
The conquest of the Ming and the Mamluks need to be separated from the other examples: it was a takeover of a whole collapsing nation, and I've already pointed out in the past that something needs to be done about them. I've got nothing against colonial conquest, either, but it should also be noted that most of the massive conquests out of Europe happened in depopulated America, over the span of forty to a hundred sixty years, with India being an example of how an attempt of conquest wholesale would go (at best, with the best diplomacy, shrewd conquest, and great general, requiring decades at the end of the timeframe to be even partly done). The white tiger is the Mughal Empire, but - while such a thing should be obviously possible - it shouldn't happen all over the world, and it shouldn't result in the partition of Eurasia between few powers.
I wasn't aware the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt was collapsing before Selim the Stern decided to stab them in the face and take all their land.
Before? No. But the war itself caused the destruction of most of the Egyptian army (high WE), the Ottomans were welcomed in most of the Levant as freeing them from the Mamluks (high unrest, unaccepted culture), and not one but two Mamluk ruler fell in battle or were captured and killed (-4 stability). A complete, absolute loss is way too easy right now, but it's undeniable that the Mamluk sultanate melted when the Ottomans invaded. The lowering income from the Indian trade route (which did not collapse, as many think, but still suffered) didn't help.
But that is a thing, Europe was filled with collapsing states, the very obvious examples would be Poland-Lituinia, which, shared the fate of Egypt more or less. There was Spanish succesion, that could result in huge France-Spain, with Spain being quite weak, and, to a point, collapsing. There were plenty of problems with Russia as well, 1612 Polish invasion could potentially wipe the country out, if things would go more favourable for Poles.
