Lets keep the economists out of this!

[screwtype]

It will certainly be more complex, not less

When I think about it, I don't know why they persist with the "province" system at all. Provinces made sense when the campaign map was Risk style but what point is there when you have a detailed RTW like map?

I think with the new map style, maybe it would be an idea to drop the province system altogether and just have a free flowing map with all kinds of different topography on it. Then you would simply choose good locations to build your cities and castles, for example you might build your cities near a good natural harbour, or in a place where the soil is fertile, or a location that would advantageous for trade.

There's a heck of a lot of things they could do to make the map more interesting and give the campaign more depth, but they seem frightened to take the plunge and get away from the elementary economic system inherited from earlier games.

And BTW, a more complex economic model does NOT necessarily mean more micromanagement, excessive micromanagement is usually caused by bad design. In RTW, for example, one of the things that made the economy a pain to manage was the badly designed interface.