Like... why do they get to be a huge nation plus have like 10 puppet states as well? Why does the WRE and ERE not get to be one large nation with many puppets/vassals as well? The WRE in particular had devolved in to a decantralized entity by this point, with the governors of Spain, Britain, Gaul and Africa all basically independent nations who only obeyed the emperor when they felt like it. The ERE had the same problem, with entire provinces ignoring the emperor and revolting against him.

So why do the Sassanids get to be this way but nobody else? It makes them so outrageously powerful that playing as the ERE is very tedious at best, impossible at worst. The Sassanids themselves will maintain 3 or 4 full stacks while each puppet will bring 1 full and 1 half stack (or more). You have like 20 full stacks wandering all over Anatolia 2 turns after Sassanids declare war on you, sacking and desolating every single city you own. It sucks.

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Even as a player on hard you can very quickly reach a surplus of 15000 per quarter without taking a single region from the AI. The tribute of the puppet state is something to behold and with their wealth increasing thanks to the Pax Sasanium with trade, capex etc it becomes larger and larger in my campaign until I halted my campaign after breaking the ERE in a blitz.

Obviously so many trade partners mean that you can export all of your mostly expensive ressources* with ease even after upgrading them all, as well as having an increasing income stream through tarifs and long term partnership.


*you can also quickly and cheaply grap iron from the desolated westernmost settlement of Arabia Magna...

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