I second that.

The glorius achievements were real fun, and it made for some pretty fun and challenging games(like frantically trying to capture a province before the time is up).

I also loved the exp bonuses tied to specific regions, though there's something I loved more: units only recruitable in a certain province. It made the game much more "real" to only be able to train for example Bulgarian Brigades in bulgaria, instead of being able to train them all over the place, and it made certain provinces really valuable, even if it wasn't worth anything financially.