That's a truism. But your claim that X "is at best going to appeal to a niche group of players" - you have no evidence for that. You and Paradox have never tested that. You're just claiming it as true with no evidence whatsoever and with no attempt whatsoever to attain evidence.
The one empirical test that has been (completely unconsciously) made of this happened when the "land_morale" factor was added to the game. That change, which was made to make battles between armies of similar tech levels work better, also had the side effect of greatly magnifying the relative advantage of Europe. And the playerbase showed no sign of noticing the difference.
Now it's possible that the changes I made to my mod would be hated by the player base. I've absolutely no doubt that some of the changes that I've make to my mod would be hated by large sections of the player base. But this particular one? My change basically restores the game balance between European and non-European countries to what it was before the land_morale factor was introduced, while keeping the advantages that the land_morale factor introduced. Based on the player reaction to introducing the land_morale modifier, I doubt that the player base would notice the change had been made.
And implicit in your post is the claim that the relative advantage incidentally given to European tech countries by the introduction of the land_morale modifier is the difference between EU IV being a mainstream game and EU IV being a niche game. Seriously??? I don't think you've actually thought that through. And, if you seriously think that's true, why do you think that using universal AI westernization as a really, really clumsy way of restoring the military balance between European tech and non-European tech countries to what it was before the introduction of the land_morale modifier is a good idea? If restoring the Euro-non Euro balance to pre-land_morale values would turn the game into a niche game, how is restoring that balance by means of near-universal westernization a good idea? By your own logic, universal westernization would turn EU IV into a niche game.
Which it clearly doesn't. Hence your logic is flawed. I see no evidence that anyone at Paradox or associated with it has ever given this issue any serious thought. (This is consistent with the hypothesis that Paradox staff like near-universal AI westernization for reasons unrelated to game balance. Because if you seriously thought that universal AI westernization was a poor solution, it's not hard at all to find alternatives.)
And there are many possible algorithms for combat resolution that would meet those specifications - the current one is far from unique. It's simply the easiest to implement. It assumes that the combat stats (infantry_shock, cavalry_shock, etc.) have to be multipliers; that the algorithm has to be composed of multipliers and only multipliers. But that's by no means true - for instance, you could reduce the differences between the multipliers at different tech levels, and add a term to the combat algorithm that gives a flat penalty to the army with the better tech and a flat penalty to the army with the lower tech. That would keep the importance of having high land tech (which is hardly necessary; even with the reduced effect of land tech in my house rules maximizing land tech is not a "strategic decision" it's a no-brainer), keep the advantage of European countries over other European countries with slightly lower land tech, it would still keep the advantage of European tech over non-European tech countries, but if you plug the right values in it would reduce the advantage of European tech over non-European tech countries to the same extent that near universal AI westernization does.
That solution took me 20 minutes to write down, less to think of.
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