Are peace treaties required for provinces to change hands?

[WFHermans]

Yummie!!!

I will check the Demo out now!

Giving orders to the whole province or even the whole civ is more realistic, after all does anyone imagine that Napoleon was giving seperate orders for every few thousand soldiers to be drafted?

The merchants are handled well in EU. You can micromanage or leave it to the AI.

[Seeker]

I tend to do it myself as soon as monopolies are available.

That is, if I have my own CoT...


Does anyone know what is different on 'hard' mode?

[Savant]

Less

province income for the player and higher BB for acting out.

[WFHermans]

Which means then you really got to make a dash for those CoTs, to get more money to offset for those lower taxes.

And being a BB actually helps once you have huge armies, the same way setting the aggression High helps you: the enemy will attack YOU and they will lose stability for it, not you.

The key yo playing is remembering those words of roman emperor Septimius Severus; ALWAY REMEMBER THE ARMY!!! (in latin).

With a huge army you whip anyones ass. Yes, even that of Napoleon.

And ONLY THEN come those luxury items, those artsy partsy schools, tax collectors with their sissy hats and so on. My advice, go for an all out medieval Soviet-style army and forget everything else! Believe me everything else will come to you!