Just now reading Brendan Simms new book, "Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present". If anything, that book paints a picture of how whenever a country would get the upper hand in Europe, competing countries would form a coalition to pull it back down.
Sure, one can argue that this is not "fun". But it is quite historical. I think expansion should be even slower and met with higher resistance.
Well, this gets at what, in my opinion, is THE fundamental problem in the game, but I'll get to that in a second.
Honestly, every EUIV patch I remember has been like this. With 1.2 I thought the zealous rejection or zealous adoration (choose 1 and fight to death for it, while insulting the opposite camp) of the changes was a one-time issue and PDS would solve it soon, but by now I am forced to admit that something's seriously wrong with the way this game is progressing. The only answer from PDS has been "everything's WAD"; then they change it, and inmediately say "it's WAD" again. Apparently "it's WAD" means "it's in the game and doesn't make your computer explode".
It's weird. Sometimes, they appear to completely ignore perfectly valid complaints. Sometimes they seem overly eager to implement some poorly thought out forum idea that doesn't fit well with the game.
I would hope both of those perceptions are wrong. But, to the extent there is a problem with the releases, it's partly (even mostly?) a consistency problem. I still cannot articulate what their design intent is toward expansion, five months after release. It actually would help if we could. Then people could decide whether to wait/hope for "improvement" in a future patch or get to modding the game, so that it's "right". And, if they're going to force modding to be the answer (a perfectly acceptable answer in my mind), they really need to allow mods to work with ironman and achievements, since so many people like those features. But they won't even allow random luckies on ironman, so I'm not holding my breath, there.
Here's the thing. I think they've actually told us everything we need to know about their design philosophy for this game. The philosophy seems to be this:
In very, very simple terms, the goal of the game is to expand, and the game is designed to limit expansion.
That's it. That's the point. That's the philosophy.
In very broad strokes, this makes sense, and is truly "WAD." I mean, take any game and figure that the point of the game is to succeed/win, and the game is designed to prevent you from doing so, thus creating a challenge for you.
The problem with THIS game is in HOW expansion is done, and HOW expansion is limited.
At the moment, expansion seems basically to be done primarily through conquest, but also to some degree through colonization. Trade helps make you money to run your empire, but it's really a sub-game. The game is basically about warfare and expansion, and that's what you "do" in the game. Everything revolves around it, and that includes the mechanisms designed to frustrate expansion.
It makes sense, generally speaking, for the game to have mechanisms that frustrate expansion. After all, if the point is expansion, where's the fun if you don't create a challenge that makes expansion more difficult? Players need to overcome limitations to feel like they've accomplished something, so, of course, there will be mechanisms that frustrate expansion.
What I see as the fundamental problem with this game is that there is hardly any modeling of internal governance, which apparently is also by design, since the point of the game is outward expansion rather than inward management. The impact of this, however, is that the only active things the player does is engage in warfare. Everything else in the game is very hands-off and highly abstracted, including the mechanisms that frustrate expansion (AE/OE). This has resulted in a game that fundamentally operates as follows:
Expand (usually by warfare), then watch the clock.
Instead of being constantly active, the player is only really active during expansion periods. This, apparently, is also by design, and it is this last piece that I think causes the most frustration and confusion because
it isn't fun and Paradox doesn't seem to realize or care. Instead, they keep messing with the limiting mechanisms in the game, trying to strike a balance relating to
speed, when what they need to be doing is focusing on
activity.
Think about it. All of the limitations on expansion are about curtailing the
speed at which you expand. But when you aren't expanding, there's nothing much else to do.
I would think that, at this point, as each consecutive patch is received with at-best-mixed reviews by the players, Paradox would realize that they can tinker with the
speed of expansion forever and still will never find the right balance because
that's not the problem. You'll never strike an effective balance because what's fine for one person in terms of expansion speed will be boring for another person. What this game needs is more to actively do as a player that ISN'T related to expansion, and that means hands-on internal management.
But apparently, this notion is anathema to Paradox because NOT having it is "WAD." And it was when I figured this out, shortly before the release of 1.4, that I decided it probably wasn't worth playing the game any more through all the various patches that would simply try to ignore this issue, and instead focus on tinkering with how fast you can expand. I still check the forums once in a while to see if anything's changing, but it doesn't look like it is.
Maybe that'll change in the future, but I'm guessing I'll just have to figure that this period in history is something Paradox just doesn't know how to implement in a game, and focus on other eras.
. It's not fair though; DOTA has been stable from a pure design standpoint for a long time...I would argue to its detriment due to the sheer difference in impact the various roles have on the outcome...but that's for another forum entirely (or at least off topic here 
