Paradox: please change the way of boosting stability!

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Although this is a personnal point of view, you make it sound as a truth. When I westernize, I expect to get rebelions all over the place (as is implied by events about people resisting westernization,...), but with the current design, I just don't. I press the magical stab button, and everyone forgets about my innovative policy. It should be a slow process, with a tough begining, and things smoothening over time, which is what a limit to stab raising would provide. Same for other situations; a stab hit during war and going in the negative could be an incentive to peace out quickly rather than suing more favorable terms.

A similar system for WE would make for shorter wars, rather than the old total war system; if I were limited in how much I could lower it, I would have to sue for peace at some point, or face the risk of dangerous rebelions. You would have to weight the possible gains and the possible losses; that would be a more logical soft cap to expansion; if you could manage your own business fine, you could keep expanding, but if you were to be a bit too ambitious and involved in a tough war, then you would have to pay the price for it. The current design just doesn't make sense; there are many mechanics that on their own could mimic disaster system, yet rather than having a "disaster-like" scenario happening with low stab while involved in a messy war with low legitimacy (rebelions because of high unrest; no need for dedicated events), it makes those modifiers insignificant and implements revolts through events.

By the way, the "time-limited fashion" used to be how it worked in EUIII, with similar modifiers (revolt risk,...); you had to choose how much gold to spend monthly for stab and tech (rather than MP), so it's not really a suggestion "without additional strategical consideration", as it would be a direct mimic of some of EUIII mechanics (one of which were better in my view). I'm guessing it has been changed to make things easier rather than just a "MP sink", but it failed at it and both stability and war exhaustion aren't modifiers to be feared anymore. Even inflation; I can be the Aztecs, get like +0.15 monthly inflation and still keep sitting bellow 2. Might as well outright remove inflation and just pop an event "you're mining gold! pay 50 ADM to proceed!" from time to time.

What I mean is that the game tries to be complex, has many modifiers, but in the end it just add rules on top to make this apparent complexity insignificant. I could go on about how I either sit on 0 prestige at start or 100 prestige 50 years in, but this is getting off topic.

Stability has very little role in how many rebellions you get inside westernization processes, though. I do not see how changing how stability works would make westernization harder. Seriously, tolerance of the true faith and minus revolt risk modifiers play a much larger role than stability (Stability only swings from a +6 to -3 range on revolt risk, so once you get it off -3, it's already mitigated by tolerance for most nations.). Going religious or humanist (or both, but that's overkill) single-handedly confirms getting very little rebellions during the westernization phase, and stability is not a part of that one at all.

Making WE decay over time instead of a button would not make wars shorter because the AI demands to fight wars to the death, even if it's over one province halfway across the world. War exhaustion is hardly a player concern, not because they can pay it down, but because it goes down after war and because DotF and Innovative -WE decay exists. Buying off WE through the button has limited use outside of a very heavy truce-break strategy, and those tend to take Aristocratic and Diplomatic anyways, which would theoretically speed up the process WE ticks down through the button anyways.

Stability drops are too common for them to be a feared variable. If they were less frequent but had greater repercussions, I would be inclined to fear them, but the frequency of stability drops means they're not very dangerous on their own. The very fact they're not that dangerous on their own but are that frequent is balance, because stability drops being both common and dangerous would be far too easy a game over scenario.

Inflation is on its own issue, but in most cases where you have to care about it, you grab economic anyways to passively mitigate the damage gold income does. I see no reason changing inflation would be better in that regard.
 
Stability Sucks

So I've skimmed through this thread, and because it is about something I had been thinking of myself, here is my suggestion. This is a long post because there's a lot of factors and because, well, because this is Me we're talking about here.

I'm going to start off with something I thought I would never suggest;
Stability Sucks: get Rid of It.
There I said it, and I'll say it again; Stability Sucks. It's this completely arbitrarily defined and modified number that just floats off in the ether and magically impacts your entire nation because magic with ridiculously massive swings in its effects because of its comically small scale of possible values for the immense amount of influence it has. Stability was useful in previous incarnations of EU when Rebels were so one-dimensional as to be worthless, however with the new Unrest System and my suggestions below it is no longer needed and I would argue actively detrimental to the game.

Yes, it's detrimental. I mean, what gameplay does Stability actually add? An ADM sink? A sense of Dread that comes every time some random arbitrary pointless event that's only still in the game because its a Running Joke at this point pops up? Arbitrarily preventing you from taking certain actions completely independently of the actual situation in your Nation? Making it so that you can have No rebels, 0 RR in all of your provinces, Full Manpower, 100 Prestige, 100 Legitimacy, and a full Treasury and an arbitrary -2 Stability will still open you up to all of these bad events and prevent good events?
And all of this because....
Reasons?

Stability isn't fun, it doesn't add any meaningful gameplay, and it just Sucks.
And besides, it isn't necessary any more. We've got something that is better in every way, is properly localized and reacts to the actual situation of your Nation, and is just far more realistic on top of all of that;

Everything Stability can do Unrest could do better.
....And on a more localized basis that's actually somewhat representative of the current internal situation of your nation rather than just a random event that arbitrarily decides that your entire country is now 'less stable' than it was before because reasons.

Now this will be a major change. Stability has been one of the cornerstones of the game since day 1 and it is extremely important for a lot of things. Stability requirements enable or disable massive event chains. Stability is required to Reform Hordes, Westernise, Declare War, and a whole host of other things. Stability impacts Taxes, Manpower, Trade, Prestige. Every aspect of the game is somehow affected by Stability, even if only indirectly.

And that's all really part of the problem, because Stability is a single nation-wide number, rated along an absurdly short scale for how powerful it is, that exists independently of the entire rest of the Situation in your country. Events that lower stability can be crippling and orphan times you have pretty much no way to actually deal with them. I mean, when your stability decreases, what do you do? You either just suffer through it, or you spend ADM points to instantly magic the problem away. Those are the only two choices you actually have. The only other things that come even close to a choice with regards to stability gain are primarily luck driven such as hoping for a positive event.

Stability Sucks, get Rid of It.
And move all of its effects to Unrest.

Right now Unrest does pretty much nothing to a province except increase the likelihood of an actual Rebellion, and that's The Single Biggest Problem in the Entire Rebel System. That single fact is what requires Paradox to just make Rebel Troops more dangerous, primarily through numbers, because that's the only way for Unrest to actually have a Bite. And that's a dumb way of doing it when there's a vastly simpler way of making Unrest Dangerous without just spawning more and more troops out of the cosmic ether; Let Unrest eat into your Taxes, Manpower, and other Provincial values.

Unrest's Effects should be;
1) Reduce Local Tax, Production, Manpower and Trade Power, possibly reducing them all to 0 if there is enough Unrest.
2) Reduce the Support Limit of the owner of the Province, and at high enough levels even provide Minimum Attrition
2A) This minimum Attrition and Support Limit Penalty will not apply to any nations who support those rebels financially.
3) Increase Recruitment Time of Regiments and Ships as well as decreasing the Reinforcement Rate for Armies, Navies and Fortresses in the Province.
4) Dramatically increase Coring Time and, ideally, at very high levels not only prevent coring completely but actually allow events that will outright Remove your Cores from the Province.
5) Reduces the Defensiveness of the province, especially if the Besieging Power has supported the Rebels.

And possibly some other effects I am not thinking of. Feel free to make suggestions.

All of these Effects give Unrest a bite to it beyond the one involving Rebel Armies, thus letting us get Rebel Armies actually in line, letting us normalize them and even leave them Weaker than a Nation's Armies, which is generally appropriate, without actually making Unrest something you can just outright ignore. Sure, the Rebels that spawn in a province may not be able to stand up to your army, but if they lower your tax and manpower enough you'll be looking at a problem when some other Empire comes knocking, especially if they can lower your manpower enough to actually impact your National Force Limit. Even if you don't have the sorts of threats that would be able to hurt you, you'll still be less effective than you would be if you didn't have any Unrest.

Now as a side point, all of these changes do bring up a point of discussion that needs to be had; What scale should Unrest Use? Currently, the scale looks like it is a 0-100 based Percentile Scale, however 20% Unrest is exceptionally high. Should we maintain 20% Unrest as very high and make it so the penalties scale highly with the Unrest, such that a 20% Unrest might apply a -80% Local Tax modifier? Or should we re-scale the Unrest modifiers themselves such that 20% Unrest is minor and it's once you get to 50% that you need to worry and at 80% becomes Catastrophic?

Personally, since the scale is shown as a Percentage and since the other major local variable, Local Autonomy, is 0-100 I would prefer the Latter, but with Unrest having a slightly larger effect than simply a 1-to-1 relation. I would want things like Wrong-Culture to provide an Unrest of 20 rather than 2, and for an Unrest of 20 to reduce your Taxes and other values by 30% or so. In the end the tangible effects would not be too different, increasing the numbers to fit a 0-100 scale would largely be a cosmetic change to help unify the UI of the game. Really you'll just wind up with a lot of numbers that need to be multiplied by a factor of 5 or 10 or so to make Unrest more similar to Local Autonomy.

Now for the next step, We've got this reduction of Tax and Manpower, we might as well use it for something;

"Tax and Manpower drained by Rebels should be used to calculate the size and strength of the Rebels themselves.
Yes, now that Unrest directly bites into Taxes and Manpower instead of being tangentially related to Taxes and Manpower, and since Provinces with Unrest are automatically assigned to a specific Rebel Faction, what you lose is What The Rebels Gain. Rather than use an arbitrary progress bar that just gradually ticks up until the Rebels conjure soldiers from The Endless Unholy Chaos of the Cosmic Warp, Rebels will have their own Manpower Pool and Treasury. The 'Lost' Manpower, Taxes, and Trade power in the provinces those Rebels are active in will instead go to The Rebels themselves, which will then determine the Rebel's Army Size and Treasury.

This will also let us give Rebels an actual Force Limit which is what will determine how many soldiers they can rebel with, which will in turn let us Compare the Rebel Strength to the National Strength on a numerical basis. Rebels won't rebel when a magic bar fills, they'll rebel when they feel their Force Limit compares favourably to yours, similarly to how Factions work in CK2.

Because of this Rebel sizes will limit themselves in a dynamic fashion which adjust itself to your Nation and the provinces themselves. This will give smaller nations some much needed breathing room without making Rebels completely insignificant compared to larger Nations. It will also prevent you from getting 50 Thousand Nationalists in Siberia. Those Provinces will be so small and their Manpower so pitiful that even with 100% Unrest it would take Decades to gather enough for 3-4 Regiments.

It also means that, as you can consciously attempt to reign in Unrest, you will also be able to consciously attempt to reign in The Size of any brewing Rebellion. Or you can just ensure that even at their strongest they're still not strong enough to challenge you, thus while they may have high Unrest which will divert Taxes, they won't actually Rebel. Or any number of other possible strategies that this will allow.

So what about actual Foighten toype Rebellions?
There isn't much here that needs changing without completely changing the entire Combat system, which granted is something I would like to do, but isn't the subject of this post. Most of the changes I want to see are about where Rebellions come from and get their strength from. There are some minor changes though, mostly intended to encourage you to not let a Rebellion Fester and to allow a Rebellion to grow Naturally as things progress. Like initially, they won't get massive armies out of nowhere, but they will be able to bolster their forces when they achieve some successes.

First; Rebellions will continue to draw Taxes and Manpower from Provinces they have Unrest in. It is this Manpower which will go towards Reinforcing Rebel Units and which they will also be able to use to recruit new Regiments and Mercs in provinces that they are active in, with the recruitment getting faster the more unrest there is in the province, eventually reaching normal recruitment rates at 100% Unrest. This will let you continue to try to bring down Unrest even after the Rebellion has started in earnest, allowing you to undercut the Rebels and ensure they 'lose their steam' as it were. Their Armies will have a slight reduction in Upkeep Cost, but, in particular for Nationalists trying to establish a new state, the debt of the Rebellion may be inherited by the new government.

Second; Should a Rebellion take control of a Province they will get a significant bonus to the taxes and manpower they draw from that Province, possibly giving them the full 100% if they have at least 60 Unrest or so, providing them with a considerable boost should they actually establish themselves. It will also let them recruit Regiments at full speed and reinforce at full speed. Letting a Rebellion establish itself can ensure that it grows much stronger than it otherwise would. This can be especially dangerous because this will lower your Manpower and Force Limits, encouraging other Rebel Factions to rise up at the same time. Ideally I would actually prefer to also add a "Loyalty" value, which is effectively Unrest but the Opposite, but that might be a bit too much to ask for.

Third; With their Treasury, Manpower Starved Rebellions may hire Mercenaries. These Rebel Controlled Mercs will behave exactly like normal Mercs. That way even if we create a Rebel Type that only Diverts Taxes or Trade Income without diverting any Manpower, they'll still be able to fight. Also it's just fair. You can hire Mercs, why can't the Rebels?

Fourth; This game desperately needs a system to handle Defections. Seriously, some of the most dangerous Rebellions in History were because they were literally The Army itself Rebelling. I mean for crying out loud this was practically every single civil war in the history of the Roman Empire. Paradox gives this only the most basic slight nod through the Ottoman Janissary Events, but even those don't actually cause any Defections, and that's bad. Given that every Regiment already tracks their Home Province (it really does you can check it in the save its more than just the name of the regiment), the foundation is already there for Provinces with High Unrest to see their local regiments defect to the Rebels. In addition, there should be an increasing possibility proportional to Unrest for the Fortress itself to rebel alongside The Rebels. In the event you reach 100% Unrest this should be almost guaranteed, with those Armies and Fortresses switching their true allegiances and getting little Rebel Flags to show this in the same way that Regiments in Victoria 2 get rebel flags.

And, to stop you from just disbanding rebellious regiments to completely circumvent the system, when such a Regiment is disbanded the manpower goes straight to the Rebel Faction. Likewise, when the Rebellion actually happens the regiments will not immediately turn into rebel armies with 0 morale to be slaughtered on day 1 by the rest of the loyal regiments that made up their army like in Victoria 2. Instead they will disband, and add their manpower to the Rebel Faction, possibly with a slight delay or bit of attrition dependent on how far from their home province they were. After all, Austria did station regiments far from home to try to undercut possible rebellions.

So where did the rest of the National Effects of Stability go?
Again, mostly to Unrest and Rebel Factions themselves. Why have some arcane country-wide penalty to taxes when you can have it naturally applied to the provinces that are actually rebellious?

For things like Stability checks, rather than looking at an arbitrary sliding scale which can be completely disconnected from your Nation's actual situation and which has too few stages to be properly reactive, this system will actually look at Rebels, their Progress, and other things that actually matter.

For instance, Stability Checks will now be checks to how strong the Rebel Factions in a country are. Checks that used to require Positive Stability will now require that Rebel Factions don't collectively control more than 30% of the National Manpower Pool. Events that used to only happen at Negative Stability now start happening when Rebels control more than 50% of your National Tax/Manpower. Major event chains like The Time of Troubles will look to things like Warscore, Manpower, Rebel Control and Prestige rather than arbitrarily to Stability.

Or a Disaster is fine too.

Speaking of Disasters, what about Stability Affecting Events? Again, have them effect Unrest instead. Some very few may be National, but most shouldn't be. Even the Dreaded Comet would impact one province and the neighbours (even across national borders). Decisions that increase or decrease stability will provide an immediate increase or decrease to the Unrest in a province, or possibly apply a province modifier. Some events may directly add Money or Manpower to the Rebel Faction in the province.

Also, because Unrest is a scale with a much wider ranger of possible values, that means that current events which didn't warrant stability changes can now be incorporated into this system, either with small National Effects to Unrest, or localized effects, depending on which is better suited.

And that's it.
I think.
Well I also have stuff to say about how we should completely remove Local Autonomy Floors in favour of Local Autonomy Expectations and how Over-Extension is absolute total garbage in its current incarnation and should be replaced with a dynamic system of Administrative Upkeep to make sure large or far-flung Empires have a greater cost to reign in their ability to expand but that's for the next two posts I think maybe...
 
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TL; DR

Kidding, I read a part. Actually I´m fine with Stability as a concept, what I disagree with is the execution. And you can replace things that Stab does by changing other parts of the game, but that´s some major work that will have to wait another version.

Also no Stab means no place to put the bloody Comet and thus Johan will probably never agree :)

The way I see, what you want is actually the Militancy concept from Vicky 2 in EU in a specific format.
 
@Vishaing, some excellent points there. I agree with your fundamental concept about unrest - that it should have across the board effect on your province re tax/manpower, etc. On stability, right now it is an extremely blunt instrument that may have outlived its usefulness in EU.
 
@Vishaing, some excellent points there. I agree with your fundamental concept about unrest - that it should have across the board effect on your province re tax/manpower, etc. On stability, right now it is an extremely blunt instrument that may have outlived its usefulness in EU.

As usual, Vishaing has great ideas. I hope the devs will give them serious consideration.
 

Really brilliant solutions. Also that whole rebellions overhaul is what I was thinking about for a long time. Rebels should act more like armies of normal states - not only stick to their provinces but sometimes also attacking government army no matter where it is. Im tired of seeing much stronger rebels who don't move from their provinces and are just waiting for me building army in my homecountry. For example when Im playing Burgundy and there is Dutch revolt, and I have little army and start to build more in my capital, it should be possible even for dutch rebels to go and destroy my army in Burgogne and then return to sieging provinces in Netherlands. Also they should merge their troops more likely.

One more addition to you solution of troops loyalty - palyer could avoid that just by recruiting everything in his capital but ont in provinces with foreign culture. Maybe paradox should introduce maximum numer of troops that can be recruited from each province based on their manpower? For example in Burgogne i could recruit maximum 10 regiments, in Holland 15 etc. So player, if he wants to have the biggest army possible, would be forced to rely on troops from every province.

Also stability rate could remain but not affect anything - only easly show us and other players what is condition of the country. For example with 90% avarage unrest it will show -3 stab, with no unrest +3 stab.
 
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Wait, comets can have positive effects too? :O

Only if you fulfill some specific conditions like natural scientist and maybe innovative (I do not remember)
 
The way I see, what you want is actually the Militancy concept from Vicky 2 in EU in a specific format.

More or less. Basically, stability has to be connected to ground realities, and not be some kind of ethereal number that can be increased despite having massive unrest in the country.
 
More or less. Basically, stability has to be connected to ground realities, and not be some kind of ethereal number that can be increased despite having massive unrest in the country.

Massive unrest should actually be connected to ground realities as well. As is, you can have the English heart get large amounts of unrest because they conquered seven provinces halfway around the world, and that's hilariously stupid from a realism perspective, especially if it was a relatively effortless and clean war.
 
Massive unrest should actually be connected to ground realities as well. As is, you can have the English heart get large amounts of unrest because they conquered seven provinces halfway around the world, and that's hilariously stupid from a realism perspective, especially if it was a relatively effortless and clean war.

But that begs the question that in the opposite situation (long war ending in defeat) you would lose Stab...

If Stability gain was a bar that had to be filled, you could easily simulate that. Won major victory -> progress, lost horribily specially if was the agressor -> go backwards.
 
Massive unrest should actually be connected to ground realities as well. As is, you can have the English heart get large amounts of unrest because they conquered seven provinces halfway around the world, and that's hilariously stupid from a realism perspective, especially if it was a relatively effortless and clean war.

On the other hand, integrating those provinces should cost something - and I mean something realistic, not just ephemeral mana points. The whole state structure should be an ever increasing investment, leaving you with the decision to centralize and pay a lot, delegate a bit or delegate everything. In this contest, CNs should be something not per se mandatory, but de facto so: controlling slices of a continent BEYOND an ocean, and trying to do it directly, should bankrupt the most solid nations, leaving CNs as the obvious choice.
 
But that begs the question that in the opposite situation (long war ending in defeat) you would lose Stab...

If Stability gain was a bar that had to be filled, you could easily simulate that. Won major victory -> progress, lost horribily specially if was the agressor -> go backwards.

Losing stability for losing a war would actually make a lot of sense
 
Stability has very little role in how many rebellions you get inside westernization processes, though. I do not see how changing how stability works would make westernization harder. Seriously, tolerance of the true faith and minus revolt risk modifiers play a much larger role than stability (Stability only swings from a +6 to -3 range on revolt risk, so once you get it off -3, it's already mitigated by tolerance for most nations.). Going religious or humanist (or both, but that's overkill) single-handedly confirms getting very little rebellions during the westernization phase, and stability is not a part of that one at all.

Making WE decay over time instead of a button would not make wars shorter because the AI demands to fight wars to the death, even if it's over one province halfway across the world. War exhaustion is hardly a player concern, not because they can pay it down, but because it goes down after war and because DotF and Innovative -WE decay exists. Buying off WE through the button has limited use outside of a very heavy truce-break strategy, and those tend to take Aristocratic and Diplomatic anyways, which would theoretically speed up the process WE ticks down through the button anyways.

Stability drops are too common for them to be a feared variable. If they were less frequent but had greater repercussions, I would be inclined to fear them, but the frequency of stability drops means they're not very dangerous on their own. The very fact they're not that dangerous on their own but are that frequent is balance, because stability drops being both common and dangerous would be far too easy a game over scenario.

Inflation is on its own issue, but in most cases where you have to care about it, you grab economic anyways to passively mitigate the damage gold income does. I see no reason changing inflation would be better in that regard.

Westernization on its own increases unrest by 5, so while you might mitigate the stab effect, you can't counterwheight both westernization and stab. Also, keep in mind that low stability hurts legitimacy. If you throw in all this the event effects (loose legitimacy or MP? Random rebelions, or an opportunistic war), and say limit stab increase at 1 per year, I think that at the very least, the 1st year, with +11 unrest would feel tough. 3rd year, at 0 stab - from there things would calm down.

As for your other suggestions, if I were to have to pick all the idea groups you mentionned, I would already been halfway through the playthrough and couldn't really have the chance to colonize or diverge from a game to another. Sure, late game you can bypass most of those, but it's not something that can be done early game. Also, mentionning defender of faith neglects the fact that the AI sometimes claims it, that the average country shouldn't bother with it because 500 gold is quite an investment unless you're a blobby blob and you don't want to loose it or be involved in wars that are lost in advance and you have no interest in. I also commonly go for other ideas early game because things like -25% core and cheap merc is sometimes better than no WE when I can buy it down anytime anyway.

I'm not trying to say it would be game changing, and that any single stab hit would hurt terribly (it shouldn't), but at times, when things start getting messy, then a stab hit should push you closer to the edge rather than just force you to press a button.

Inflation, well yeah, for Mutapa and Aztecs, economic is nice, but again, I think you'll agree both are better off with exploration first; you also mentionned it yourself, there are other needs, like humanist; I personnaly felt it important to have aristo as 2nd idea to catch up. Even then, out of those, when you have 1 or 2 gold mines rather than mountains of gold, then I don't think that economic is a must while inflation does build up in the mean time.
 
I would go for 'remove stability', but it being such a core aspect of the game affecting, well, everything, removing it completely would have to wait for EU5. Adding a timer for it to take effect would be good enough for now I think.
 
Westernization on its own increases unrest by 5, so while you might mitigate the stab effect, you can't counterwheight both westernization and stab. Also, keep in mind that low stability hurts legitimacy. If you throw in all this the event effects (loose legitimacy or MP? Random rebelions, or an opportunistic war), and say limit stab increase at 1 per year, I think that at the very least, the 1st year, with +11 unrest would feel tough. 3rd year, at 0 stab - from there things would calm down.

I would assume a player would not be foolish enough to try to westernize on low legitimacy, so that's already looking at a solid ~-4 (-3 from high legitimacy, -1 more from tolerance of true faith bonus from legitimacy). Most nations I see end up having at least 5 tolerance of the true faith (Most of the common religions on game start have at least +1 tolerance of true faith), so you're looking at a -8 just for existing. That's already the +5 from hitting the westernization button and then half of the stability drop as well taken care of. Once you get out of -3, you're fine. Bonus points if you happened to hit the button at +1 or +2, depending on luck with +stability events, or luck into a theologian. I really doubt changing stability ticks would do anything to this.


As for your other suggestions, if I were to have to pick all the idea groups you mentionned, I would already been halfway through the playthrough and couldn't really have the chance to colonize or diverge from a game to another. Sure, late game you can bypass most of those, but it's not something that can be done early game. Also, mentionning defender of faith neglects the fact that the AI sometimes claims it, that the average country shouldn't bother with it because 500 gold is quite an investment unless you're a blobby blob and you don't want to loose it or be involved in wars that are lost in advance and you have no interest in. I also commonly go for other ideas early game because things like -25% core and cheap merc is sometimes better than no WE when I can buy it down anytime anyway.

I would assume you wouldn't pick them all up in the same game, or have pressing need for them instantly. A nation like Portugal is going to hardly have any use at all for Aristocratic or Diplomatic if they're just going to focus on colonizing, for example, so assuming that I'm saying you can just outright ignore these things in every game ever by taking x, y, and z idea groups is a bit of a farce, considering it's bad play to do that on a lot of nations. Most nations do not have problems with everything this thread talks about. War exhaustion should not be a problem outside of a truce break strategy or being on the losing side of a war in multiplayer if you play half-way decently, anyways, so it's perfectly fair to prioritize other things instead over it. Typically DotF strats are centered around mid-lategame, as well, and generally are focused on nations where they're the only nation of that religion (ie Ethiopia (Coptic), Russia (Orthodox), any player nation that decides to go Reformed sort of falls into this as well) or they're going to be involved in a lot of wars over a continuous period of time, and generally by this point 500 ducats is chump change.

I'm not trying to say it would be game changing, and that any single stab hit would hurt terribly (it shouldn't), but at times, when things start getting messy, then a stab hit should push you closer to the edge rather than just force you to press a button.

But this is what happens, though. AI Muscovy/Russia falls apart a lot because of this - they annex a lot of Sunni land, then get a stab hit, and then spiral into rebel hell and fracture. The AI in general prioritizes raising stability over coring provinces (even when it's more expensive to do so while overextended), so it gets trapped in stability hell due to bad priorities. The AI has this happen to them quite often, to be honest. The player can tend to play better (and prioritizes certain things better than the AI does), so it tends to avoid a lot of the whole "oh man I got hit by a stability drop, now my country is going to implode on itself" shenanigans the AI falls into. Nothing changes in this regard either, except making RNG more volatile for the player and even more dangerous for the AI.

Inflation, well yeah, for Mutapa and Aztecs, economic is nice, but again, I think you'll agree both are better off with exploration first; you also mentionned it yourself, there are other needs, like humanist; I personnaly felt it important to have aristo as 2nd idea to catch up. Even then, out of those, when you have 1 or 2 gold mines rather than mountains of gold, then I don't think that economic is a must while inflation does build up in the mean time.

As Mutapa and Aztecs you can get away with something else first because they're native faiths, so they don't get absurd inflation from having gold be a large percentage of their income (as gold isn't a large percentage of their income, as they're natives). It would take quite a long time to build up to the point of being threatening to a nation like the Aztecs, and by that time you'd probably be like three idea groups in, or pushing through westernization by then, maybe even later than that.

Also, how does Aristocratic help a nation catch up? The military tech cost bonus is only a marginal amount compared to the neighbor bonus, and the neighbor bonus is where most of your catching up comes from.
 
One more addition to you solution of troops loyalty - palyer could avoid that just by recruiting everything in his capital but ont in provinces with foreign culture. Maybe paradox should introduce maximum numer of troops that can be recruited from each province based on their manpower? For example in Burgogne i could recruit maximum 10 regiments, in Holland 15 etc. So player, if he wants to have the biggest army possible, would be forced to rely on troops from every province.
My solution to that problem would be to Make the Manpower Stat, rather than something that is added to a national Pool like Base Tax, be a local pool, similar to Victoria 2's Soldier Pops which is then allocated to regiments.

Really like half of EUIV's problems stem from Paradox thinking they can just hack out Population without introducing anything at all to actually represent the number of people in the province. Granted the Population System in EU3 was also terrible and needed to be heavily overhauled, but not having any Population System and just making half hearted allusions to Base Tax representing it is even worse.

Personally, I don't get why they don't introduce a simplified POP system like the one in EU:Rome.

Massive unrest should actually be connected to ground realities as well. As is, you can have the English heart get large amounts of unrest because they conquered seven provinces halfway around the world, and that's hilariously stupid from a realism perspective, especially if it was a relatively effortless and clean war.
Yeah Over-Extension is absolute total garbage and has been since day 1. I have an idea on what to replace it with, but that will wait until Episode 3 of my "X Sucks: Get Rid of It." Series. My next post will be about Local Autonomy Floors, because those also suck and are an immensely unrealistic and un-fun idea.
 
Really like half of EUIV's problems stem from Paradox thinking they can just hack out Population without introducing anything at all to actually represent the number of people in the province.
Given what the EU3 population system did, they were actually correct. EU3's population system was so terrible that hacking it out was a clear gain, since it removed a piece of pseudorealistic complexity with approximately zero discernible gameplay value.

Now, there are arguments for a better population system than EU3's, but I'm in the "do it properly or not at all" camp, and doing it properly is out-of-scope for EU because to make it produce a sufficiently satisfactory outcome to justify the complexity, you end up dragging in far too much of Vicky.