What's up with all those timers...is EU4 a MMORPG?

[GAGA Extrem]

AE, OE, manpower. Waiting game.

Have you ever tried Magna Mundi for EU3? There you had to plan some things 100 - 200 years ahead of time.
Anyway, thats why its called Grand Strategy: Your action have long term impact and may come back to haunt you even after several decades / hours of gameplay.

It is certainly annoying from time to time to see your expansion being hampered by these game mechanics, but thats part of the game.
In real live nations can take decades to recover from a war or to smoothen bad relations with their (former) enemies. Thats part of the game.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Nah, a lot of us are looking for a game like we were shown in the demo - one where you could have plenty of historical wars (like the Balkan conquest by the OE) without having the game degenerate into WWI. Right now, just about anything will eventually result in you going into AE/Coalition hell if you get big enough. In one of my recent games, taking provinces from Russia was giving AE to the Irish minors (and no, there were no dipomatic ties nor same religion).

You can always tweak the AE gain from certain stuff, so it shouldn't be too hard to tweak the game to fit your liking.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

So EU3 was a grand strategy game because it didn't have any achievements?
...yeah, that sounds legit.