I played two very different countries (Lauenburg and Haidi-Ming) since the patch, and I can tell the experience is vastly different according to rebel depending on your situation. The smaller you are, the less room you have to deal with rebels. The bigger you are, the more rebels seems manageable because there are never überstacks. Now, I think this is normal that playing a smaller country is supposed to be more difficult, so I doesn't complain. The peasant wars in Lauenburg had also been a pain, and I thought I would rage quit a few times. But I thought I was in a race against the clock and decreased the autonomy rather fast, so this may be my problem.
Playing the Mings, I had some rebellions, but had the reflex, especially at the begining, to increase autonomy, which prevented many revolts. Harsh treatment has also scaled surprinsingly cheap with Mings and very costly with Lauenburg, perhaps because of changes or because of a different situation.
So :
- If you are little (or have the cash for that and don't have sufficient troops), don't hesitate to hire mercs to destroy rebels.
- In war, your allies can help you against them (I would like for them to do that also in peace)
- Decrease autonomy only when you think unrest would also decrease in a short amount of time (when they are at -7, -8 or lower) or when you don't care if they rebel.
- Increase autonomy when you judge a province could be a threat by revolting.
If I take into account what I said about mercenaries, sometimes increasing the autonomy could be considered as cheaper in the longrun, since you don't have to pay the mercenaries nor the possible loans. Peace can be profitable.
