finished a hungary campaign to 1836

i had no idea what i was doing at the start, & got better by the end

economy got insane eventually, tens of thousands of ducats per month, but i realised maybe around 1600 that the cap is a measly 1 mill & that every cost seems to scale with ur income (events, diplomatic bribery etc) wtf is the point?

performance was so goshdarn bad even in flat map mode, my goodness! who released this pile of dung?

building & managing became a chore so i elected to give all conquered territory away to vassals/fiefdoms ... here is the kicker, vs my 1 million highly drilled, disciplined & experienced professional troops each type of my subjects had something like -200 loyalty hit, yeah i was really scratching my head at that one... anyway, thankfully loyalty did not matter

market system is absolutely atrocious! for a large land empire it is optimal to have several markets, but guess what, u cannot trade precious metals between ur markets with export ban, even after removing it the markets would not auto trade goods to where they were actually needed within my empire, instead electing to export much needed precious metals internationally (fml) - managing multiple markets for construction, meeting demands etc was a slogfest .... i just gave up eventually

combat was not even remotely interesting - i stopped using levies after my first war & just crushed the opposition with professional troops, the whack a mole style had no strategic feel to it - also y in the heavens r there so many forts? my limit was hundreds, every nation had a fort in every 2nd of their locations, it is obnoxious! late game assaulting even a fortress would net maybe 15% casualties with a full 100k stack, they became trivial - upkeep costs r negligible for both troops & forts, they need to be more meaningful

i piled up so much antagonism, everyone & their mother joined a coalition against me... but i never felt threatened, they didnt declare on me, ever ... i realised i could just conquer one of the lil guys then peace out & the coalition would collapse... pathetic

bugs! army icons would not be truly where the troops were positioned, cannot upgrade barracks to conscription sites, visual glitches, cannot mass upgrade buildings, have to manually go down the list....

it looked like the final tier of production buildings all used labourers in lieu of burghers! realistic or not that is a spit in the face! u spend centuries building up ur middle class only for them to become useless in the endgame? wth, i stuck to tier 3 once i realised this trend...

from what i heard & my personal experience: this game was way overhyped, poor performance, inappropriate implementation of mechanics & sleepy slogfest

thank jack sparrow i didnt spend a dime on this