Get bent. I didn't start a fight, Mr. Wiggles did with his sarcasm and blatant condescension.
To be honest, I just saw Mr. Wiggles pointing out one thing and your extreme overreaction, but I guess that opinions can vary.
As far as the Paradox forums, I don't care about your hard on for trashing them, that's your issue. I mentioned them because that's where you find the best examples of how the optimal way to play EU4 is with blatant cheese like Orthodox Ottoman HRE abuse.
When have I ever talked down on paradox forums outside my last post? And I was mostly commentating that virtually half of the threads on the forum are complaining about various features paradox has implemented/patched/not fixed/not implemented.
If you read the Paradox forums you would know that the game is not primarily a historical simulator. And if it were it would be a terrible one. They nerfed vassal feeding because Johan wants the game to be about conquest and because tons of people complained on the forums about it. Complaining on forums is one of the primary ways to change the game. Although if that was the goal the Paradox forums would be the optimal place to do it. In fact they gave a large buff, large being a relative term here, to direct conquest by dropping AE scaling for larger nations. Coalitions were basically totally nerfed, thanks mainly to bitching by people on the Paradox forums about how anti-fun they were.
Actually, I spend more time on Paradox forums than these forums these days. I am well aware of how it looks and the purpose of the complaint threads. I am also aware that they are going to be re-buffing AE in local regions due to the fact that nations were barely receiving any lasting AE, so the only coalitions were small OPMs.
Your argument about overextension is ridiculously contradictory. You first claim that EU4 is a historical simulator and then claim overextension makes sense. In fact overextension is perhaps the second most unhistoric mechanic in the game after Protectorates. Also, you can world conquest easily since Protectorates count for the purpose of world conquest but protectorates ruin the historical simulation argument because that's not how India was conquered. Which they are sort of but not really changing in the new DLC about trading companies. And of course the British Raj ruled India as vassal states for a long time after the Companies were dissolved.
While I disagree that OE is very unhistoric (administratively integrating new territory does take time, and puts strain on your remaining administration in the meantime) I can understand your sentiments that this is not expressed very well (since cores are treated as right to rule and established administration at the same time).
And protectorates are a fairly decent at simulating how Spain annexed the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, though ideally you would be able to annex them too, so I have little objection to them.
The Core and OE systems are actually immensely unhistoric. Please explain where in history you could spend 8 years doing some abstract thingamajiggy and suddenly that province will not longer ever rebel ever? Ridiculous no? Also accepted culture is non-historic as well, such as my Danish empire losing Norwegian as an accepted culture.
While I admit that it is true that cores are very unhistorical compared to what I would prefer (a population level acceptance of rule, combined with a method of wide scale revolts to free countries), I accept it as one of the concessions that had to be made because the focus of the game era (Exploration, Trade, and Global Hegemony) makes it impractical to take a more in-depth look on population in the initial release, though I hope that this will eventually be rectified.
Additionally, nothing is wrong with losing accepted cultures at the point that they are not relevant for keeping your nation stable. IRL Denmark also treated Norway poorly exactly because they lacked the manpower and wealth to resist Denmark at a meaningful level.
The reason world conquest is possible in EU4 is that over a 400 year period the same person with the same goals, and extremely gamey/cheesy goals at that, rules a country. No amount of mechanic change will fix this. Furthermore if we really look at history we see that a lot of stuff was dependent on a ton of other stuff. EU4 loses its status as a history focused game as soon as the first 10 or so years are over.
I will have to clarify: I see it as a historic simulator, not a simulation of actual history. I can play EU2 if I really want more historic worlds, and read a history book for direct history results.