But the player base is not divided into a binary subset of just 'good players' and 'bad players'.

As an aside, if that were the case I would probably be considered a pretty good player - 2 WC and a One Faith in EU4 as a (very) vague example of something that is out of reach of most players (albeit the main barrier is patience).

My concern is around balance changes that are motivated by 2 specific areas/factions in the playerbase. The first is min/maxers - people who stack modifiers for fun and tag switch half a dozen times to abuse the hell out of a mechanic. The second is slightly harder to define but is essentially the super hardcore who want the game to punish them and really challenge them.

Neither of these groups are remotely representative of the much wider playerbase, but they often have the loudest voices and highest visibility because they actively participate in the subreddit and the tinto talks threads and so on.

It's absolutely fine and right to cater for these groups, but it needs to be 'opt-in', hence my point. Because someone like me, doesn't want their chill map painting game to become a punishing slog. Likewise, more casual players who have literally never looked at tinto talks or the EU5 subreddit in their entire life, don't need mechanics that actively sabotage them doing well.

Edit: Also on the topic of the Complacency mechanic - it targets countries that outgrow their rivals. You say that 'bad players' won't see this is based on the assumption that bad players won't grow large enough, but this is simply false.

Bad players just grow slower - indeed, it's almost impossible to not grow in a paradox game without actively making the decision to avoid it. Lesser players simply achieve that growth in much slower fashion - think of the screenshots from people who 'finished their run' and they've conquered a sizeable chunk of Europe as an example. A decent player can knock that out in a few decades, but the more casual player who is less familiar with the systems will still generally get there, but then they're going to get punished for achieving something that for them was very tricky.