Kalt,
I don't know what game your playing but I have a Danish empire on Expert that has taken Spain Africa Egypt etc..killed of the Almohads, Egyptians and Turks and currently in 1218 income is 25000 + and profit of 10,000 florins a turn. Only had 1 turn of rebellions in 3 of my provinces which were beaten soundly. This happened when my king died.

There is not another faction in the game that would want or dare go to war with me, so it's effectively game over.
The only chance of things going a little awry will be when my king dies again and his current high influence(9) will be gone.
However I have already countered this effect twice ingame so far each time raising a new king with influence of 3 or 4 right back up to 9 influence within just a few battles/turns.

Maybe I was lucky at the start but I ahve seen many other people saying the game is too easy on Expert. I'm not after the glory of saying I am the best player, I'm after a cracking good but very difficult campaign game.

On the siege thing the point is that a crack siege army will be costing you alot(with triple support costs) of maintenance while you sit there. The rebellions will not be peasent rebellions but full on high-tech faction revolts allowing the besieged army to sally from the castle and join up with these new troops, giving them a chance of breaking the siege or at least cutting the besieging numbers down significantly.

Going back to your point though, there is nothing in current game to stop you putting a low number of troops in a province, wait for the province to rebel and then move your general in to crush the rebellion and level up. Increasing disloyalty will increase the size and quality of the rebelling army making this not such a wise thing to do. At least it will with some rejigged AI rebelling troop mix.

'At that point, wtf is a player supposed to do except to spend massive amount of time teching up a few provinces, then moving on and teching up a few more, etc'

mmm... how about currently not bothering to tech up but just conquering where and when you want at will with the limited troop variety that the low tech gives?

A slower expansion and teching up will give you greater troop variety and battle options and make you think about where and when to attack, not just go on a mass global walk about crushing whomever gets in your way.

'If you made every province as hard to control as Portugal, the game wouldnt be even possible for any but the best players'

I really don't see a problem with Portugal at all, not 1 revolt in at least 50 game turns since I conquered it.

But that's the way it's supposed to be on Expert. If this change was made and you found it too difficult on Expert then turning down the difficulty level is always an option. The point is the game is too easy on the hardest level it needs to give the ultimate challenge and have people quaking in their boots when they play it.


Count, to stop the counter of having lots of spies in a single region I suggest having a cap of the effects of these units effects. e.g. Having more than 3 spies in a province will still give you the same effect as having just 3 spies.

It was a huge problem with STW that a Shinobi army with zero support could destroy enemies by rebellions.