With the "recent" change in how revolt risk works, there are new economical penalties for having a "wrong religion" that stack upon the old ones.
Basically, the current situation is that the lower the tolerance for the specific religion, the greater the penalty becomes (-5% for each +1% revolt risk). This works fine, in a sense, because that allows us to see a scaled economic penalty to provinces according to the degree of religious oppression, because a lower tolerance increases the revolt risk (and thus, indirectly, the economic penalty).
This is also a problem, from another point of view, because this leaves us with even bigger economical penalties than before for having a province with a "wrong" religion, and I find it hard to justify from a historical accuracy viewpoint. The Ottomans had no real trouble taxing its orthodox population; it may in fact have been paying more taxes than the sunnites in the core lands. I am unable to justify the current situation where a fully tolerated religion suffers from economic penalties (30%).
Besides the design problem (that is at least what I consider it to be), there is a practical one as well: when the change of how revolt risk is handled was made, the tradeoff of getting fewer rebellions was that the economical penalties would increase. This seems rather fair and good, but what happens if we throw the "wrong religion" penalty into the mix? Under ideal conditions, the provincial revolt risk can go up to 20% before the scale becomes easier on the player; past 20% revolt risk, only the yearly rebellion risk increases - the economic penalties can't go over 100%. This means that for every +1% revolt risk, the only negative effect is the down-scaled rebellion risk (once per year instead of once per month); once past 20% rr, we get the "nice" treatment (less "whack-a-mole") without getting the associated problems that we're supposed to get (i.e. -5% economic penalty). The problem with the "wrong religion" penalty is that it lowers this "maximum" by 6% to a rr level of 14% (after which only the yearly rebellion risk increases). Add into this mix the fact that provinces of a "wrong religion" often also have a "wrong culture", we get another drop to 8%. A disconnected province would lower this value to 6%, but that fact will be disregarded.
Considering the range of possible revolt risks based upon religious tolerance and war exhaustion (and culture, which gives +1 or +2), 8% is not a very big number and is easily exceeded. Past this number, the negative effects of intolerance and war exhaustion just don't escalate very much. If I don't recall incorrectly (I haven't played in a long time), the two could easily climb up to close to 20% when combined, depending on stability and other factors.
I would thus like to suggest that the 30% economical penalty for provinces of a "wrong religion" is replaced with something else instead, or completely removed. That would make the economic conditions worsen all the way up to 14%, rather than just 8% (subtract 2% for disconnected provinces).
One suggestion would be to replace the direct penalty with a revolt risk penalty (of, say, +2%), which would require a greater degree of religious tolerance than the current system (i.e. the intolerance penalties would become visible at greater tolerance values than currently). This would have the benefit of helping the AI while keeping things challenging for the human players. For instance, the AI Ottoman Empire should be able to perform much better with the 30% penalty removed, because A) it has LOTS of wrong-religion provinces that it has a hard time converting (and shouldn't have to either, according to history) and B) the AI has access to more tolerance sliders than human players and can therefore maximize tolerance towards more religions than the players can.
This being said, I would also like to see the "wrong culture" penalty reduced, because the old +1 (or +2) revolt risk penalty associated with it increases the economic penalty by 5% (or 10%) once the total rr is bigger than 0%. Not a big difference, but one that should be noted anyway (besides the fact that the culture income penalty also affects the revolt risk system in pretty much the same way that the religion penalty does, except that it has no associated sliders).
Basically, the current situation is that the lower the tolerance for the specific religion, the greater the penalty becomes (-5% for each +1% revolt risk). This works fine, in a sense, because that allows us to see a scaled economic penalty to provinces according to the degree of religious oppression, because a lower tolerance increases the revolt risk (and thus, indirectly, the economic penalty).
This is also a problem, from another point of view, because this leaves us with even bigger economical penalties than before for having a province with a "wrong" religion, and I find it hard to justify from a historical accuracy viewpoint. The Ottomans had no real trouble taxing its orthodox population; it may in fact have been paying more taxes than the sunnites in the core lands. I am unable to justify the current situation where a fully tolerated religion suffers from economic penalties (30%).
Besides the design problem (that is at least what I consider it to be), there is a practical one as well: when the change of how revolt risk is handled was made, the tradeoff of getting fewer rebellions was that the economical penalties would increase. This seems rather fair and good, but what happens if we throw the "wrong religion" penalty into the mix? Under ideal conditions, the provincial revolt risk can go up to 20% before the scale becomes easier on the player; past 20% revolt risk, only the yearly rebellion risk increases - the economic penalties can't go over 100%. This means that for every +1% revolt risk, the only negative effect is the down-scaled rebellion risk (once per year instead of once per month); once past 20% rr, we get the "nice" treatment (less "whack-a-mole") without getting the associated problems that we're supposed to get (i.e. -5% economic penalty). The problem with the "wrong religion" penalty is that it lowers this "maximum" by 6% to a rr level of 14% (after which only the yearly rebellion risk increases). Add into this mix the fact that provinces of a "wrong religion" often also have a "wrong culture", we get another drop to 8%. A disconnected province would lower this value to 6%, but that fact will be disregarded.
Considering the range of possible revolt risks based upon religious tolerance and war exhaustion (and culture, which gives +1 or +2), 8% is not a very big number and is easily exceeded. Past this number, the negative effects of intolerance and war exhaustion just don't escalate very much. If I don't recall incorrectly (I haven't played in a long time), the two could easily climb up to close to 20% when combined, depending on stability and other factors.
I would thus like to suggest that the 30% economical penalty for provinces of a "wrong religion" is replaced with something else instead, or completely removed. That would make the economic conditions worsen all the way up to 14%, rather than just 8% (subtract 2% for disconnected provinces).
One suggestion would be to replace the direct penalty with a revolt risk penalty (of, say, +2%), which would require a greater degree of religious tolerance than the current system (i.e. the intolerance penalties would become visible at greater tolerance values than currently). This would have the benefit of helping the AI while keeping things challenging for the human players. For instance, the AI Ottoman Empire should be able to perform much better with the 30% penalty removed, because A) it has LOTS of wrong-religion provinces that it has a hard time converting (and shouldn't have to either, according to history) and B) the AI has access to more tolerance sliders than human players and can therefore maximize tolerance towards more religions than the players can.
This being said, I would also like to see the "wrong culture" penalty reduced, because the old +1 (or +2) revolt risk penalty associated with it increases the economic penalty by 5% (or 10%) once the total rr is bigger than 0%. Not a big difference, but one that should be noted anyway (besides the fact that the culture income penalty also affects the revolt risk system in pretty much the same way that the religion penalty does, except that it has no associated sliders).
