I'm inclined to agree with the assessment that early rulers tend to conquer alot of land -- but then, alot of players try to conquer alot of land early in the game to build their income so they can fund building, colonization, or BB wars.
It is notable that this tends to happen alot in collaborative AARs, and in this sense I think Venice was a poor choice, simply because there's a Doge with a (comparatively) enormously long reign as number two on the list. The same rules we're expecting to limit Venetian expansion in later reigns -- primarily the fact that, in a few years, you can't follow anything through to conclusion -- don't apply to Francesco Foscarini.
That said, having already played cleanup for Lord Joseph in the Burgundy collaborative, it's not all bad. Personally, I liked what I was able to do in my reign. Sure, it wasn't as flashy as what LJ did, but I managed to consolidate things pretty well and get a good handle on the rest of France. I think the only *really* bad thing to do to your successor(s) is hand them an enormous BB war. That's the only real ground rule I would establish.
Ultimately, if you don't like massive expansionism, it's possible to sit on your hands and spend your reign building walls and deploying merchants (I might), but that's just not possible if your predecessor hands you a badboy mess. (Sorry to disagree with you so strongly, MrT, but while you may consider BB an advantage, I *never* like to fight at a time or place of the enemy's chosing if I can avoid it. Handing a player such as myself a massive BB is a curse more than a blessing -- which is why, as soon as I opened the Burgundy file, I shook my head and said, "Oh, man..."
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