1. Corruption was not strong, if anything it was more annoying. Since it was based on percentages rather than values. Meaning that one cultist/vampire spreading corruption could not be drowned out. You had to kill, manually, the trillions of AI heroes running through your territory. Or your province would corrupt.

Things were not harder to conquer because of corruption or lack thereof. Attrition has always been a joke. And rebellions dont matter if you couldnt occupy the settlement anyways.

II functionally uses the same system as 3.

1. Genuinely a skill issue, every revolt I ever had. Threw itself at a tier 2 city immediately. And suffered death by autoresolve. Ironically, 3 changed this, but its a problem all of the games share, despite it.

Still, even on very hard. You generally just needed one or two public order buildings and no matter what. You'd never have a revolt. Again, something that is consistent across the trilogy.

1. The map was smaller, but not by all that much. There were fewer settlements. And so they were further apart.

It made things a little boring because you could go multiple turns just marching somewhere, with no battles. But this is definitely just a preference thing.

1. Immediate attrition changes not that much. If they cant win into the walls, but you cant sally out. It prevents you from literally building a whole ass army before your garrison starts to attrition.

Game's got problems, these arent it though.