Well, ending my fist game in v1.30.4 + Emperor for a Spanish Forever Golden achievement run in VH difficulty. With no exploits. So ending it in 1750s.
I love the new estate mechanism. Far more immersive to me. Also the crownland percentage is something I find more logical. And the fact that if you give privileges to the estates your absolutism decreases (before you can have 100 absolutism and 90% influence for all three estates.
As for the new buildings, I ignore them for most of the game, but in the 18th century, I had to invade Great-Britain and Great-Britain has 226 heavy ships, and hundred of frigates. So I had to build a navy able to face it, and I had not enough sailors, even by hiring them in my CNs. So I created naval hiring offices everywhere, and this did it. I also build manpower buildings at the same time, as I was drowning in money. I also tried coastal batteries where I knew English ships will come.
Regarding the merc companies, I didn't use them for probably the first 150 years, as I did not have the money or the need to, making manpower management crucial. And then I could only hire huge merco companies. I would really like to have the choice of companies of all sizes at any time in the game. Now in 1750, I should say it is saving me time. My ally Ming called me in an offensive war vs Ayutthaya. I had no troops in the area, but in less than twenty clicks I raised 6 60k stacks in 6 provinces in the area. OK, you could do the same with army models before.... And I had 30k ducats to spend like that...
Regarding Hegemony, the -100 relationships to everyone, including allies, vassals and CNs, suck a lot. And if that was not enough, there is also a -20 modifier for alliance. Clicking on it makes me change from the guy almost everybody in the world wanted to ally (+9 diplo rep, 1st world power) to the guy everyone hates and nobody wants to ally. Well, that is not fun. I have won the Hegemony achievement, and I will probably not click again on it, except if going on a WC. Fun fact, in my VH run, I had economical hegemony, the Ottos (my allies for 250 years... until I choose economical hegemony) are starting to have military hegemony and Great-Britain would probably have started naval hegemony very soon (when I attacked them, they had 226 heavy ships and were building several a year. ).
Catholicism: in this game, I switch from Catholic to Protestant to Catholic again. I won scores of Papal Influence converting my provinces and those of my vassals/CNs, and so was able to take all papal bonuses, plus control the Pope half of the time and take mercantilism upgrades from time to time. I also love the new Bulls: being able to launch a Crusade in late game is nice, other bonuses are cool too. The fact that they apply to all Catholic countries is also more immersive, as the Pope is not working only for the Curia Controller, but for all Catholics in this case. As for the congregations, -50 ADM for having 10% DEV bonus could be valuable for boosting a province or a group of provinces for institution (you usually spend more than 500 MPs for this).
Defender of the Faith: I find the idea of level of power depending of the number of countries interesting, even if it would be better if the DEV of the countries was integrated to the calculation. For some reason, I found very hard to keep the Catholic DoTF, as soon as I fell below 100 prestige, either Scandinavia or the Commonwealth took the title if I took it more than two years before.
HRE: well, I became Emperor relatively late (the fact that the Catholic lost the League War did not help, so I had to switch to Protestant) and the Empire was a mess. Such a mess that rather than taking the long way to reform it, I prefer losing the Emperorship, switching back to Catholic and destroy the HRE. I saw none of the Imperial events. Not a good experience for me.
AI: my experience (in VH difficulty) is that I saw no big powers go into debt spirals. The countries I saw in debt managed to recover most of the times and were in debt for good reasons (lost war, institutions). As for the tactical AI, while small enemies continue to flee to Siberia, big enemies seem to me better to concentrate armies and not getting wiped stack per stack. I lately invaded Great Britain with 450 men, found the same number of men in face of me and we danced around each other during all the war without the AI doing an obvious mistake. I guess the fact it was on an island makes it more probable, as the AI won't calculate a path to Siberia. The war vs Ayutthaya saw also coherent defence by Ayutthaya, but awful work by AI Ming (that had zero mandante and probably no desire to engage due to poor morale/trop quality except if with a huge superiority). The AI is also able to mount sea landings and is not commiting suicides at sea. On the other hand, the AI is still unable to build new forts and only OPM or small countries upgraded them, probably because they have no more building slots available. The war vs Great Britain was won by me because I landed directly on London with all my troops and it was only a lvl 3 fort, with an artillery barrage it fell in one month, before English troops can gather to oppose me. Its only ally, Augsbug, a German OPM, had a fort level 9 and it fell just one month before the end of the war (I had in the years before attacked allies of all other GB allies, to force them to cancel the alliance).
Governing Capacity: I find the mechanism better than the limit of states, and far better than the territory corruption of the last patches.
Missions Trees: most of the times I ignore them, as I find them either useless or OP. Of course I am doing a Forever Golden run, so I have to do it. I can't comment on any new mission tree, as I have not played anything in this version than Spain.
Another changes in v1.30:
_ the high attrition to troops carried by boat more than one month. I started my game as usual, and around 1500 loaded 30k men to conquer Madagascar after buying a province here. Well, when they arrived from Spain, the 30 regiments had only 6k men remaining... Ouch... I did not waste manpower like that twice. It is certainly slowing world conquest, but is more realistic, so I'm OK with it. By the way, hiring local mercenaries or finding local allies is so important for wars in colonial aeras, as it was in history.
_ trade companies everywhere: playing from Europe, it is not such a big change, but being able to have a trade company in Creta, Cyprus, Japan or Yemen is cool. Well, it should be possible to have 50 merchants now.
