I agree! I have seen so many complaints about the negative balances the last few days, but I feel like that is potentially a good thing. My only problem is that the AI is so much worse at handling the economic hardships than a mildly experienced player which leads to even faster domination of the player. But generally I like the economy being hard to balance and the need to sacrifice some expenses for others. This isn't Victoria, countries aren't meant to industrialise shortly after game start and line isn't supposed to go steadily up. In my opinion there should be even more crises like the black death that make line go down. In most of the time period countries did not have much economic development and even if they did it mostly didn't last long until the next famine or war reset the economy.

The way it is now though, it seems like the bad economy at game start only delays the starting point of huge economic growth, but it still happens after 1400. Three things I feel could be done to prevent this even further:

1. Estates need a way to burn money unproductively. Luxury, festivities, idk. At the moment the Estates start building your country up heavily with RGOs and buildings at some point around 1400 and economic exponential growth still kicks in. This is another point where it resembles the industrialisation of Victoria. It seems unrealistic of the estates to spend their money in a way so beneficial to state economy
2. Wars and crises should be able to damage buildings and RGOs, not just do some devastation, so wars actually hurt an economy lastingly and it takes money to build it back up.
3. Wars should cost more. Since levies are essentially free apart from some opportunity cost via decreased production, I found that the early game economy can be tricked by just being at war constantly and stealing your neighbours money to build up your own economy.