Considering that improving Journal Entries appears to be a key plan going forward, I have some suggestions from my own experience playing the game:
- Please improve the EIC's Journal Entries. I've made a forum post about it but I categorically do not like the way forming India as the EIC works - I think an independent India should be created via revolution or via a separate JE, not by declaring independence as the company. The "success point" of the EIC should be transitioning from an apartheid state into a dominion with Home Rule that has all the indian cultures as accepted, I think.
- I feel like the Austro-Hungarian compromise should be a little bit more of a loss state for Austria - ideally, they'd probably be aiming for a more pluralistic state without massive compromises to powerful Hungarian landowners. Obviously, I don't think the player should be encouraged to go ahead with their germanization policies as a "victory" state.
- Reconstruction in the US needs to be easier. 20% loyalists is actually insanely difficult to accomplish, let alone with the radicalism you get in the region - it's actually easier to make African-Americans a primary culture and get black presidents in the 1850s than it is to successfully reintegrate southerners into the union, which is crazy
- Countries need to have actual incentives to go against the Risorgimento. As it stands, pretty much every italian AI nation will declare support for unification, and as a result a player who wants to make use of the mechanic to foster radicalism in non-unifying Italian states will almost always be unable to.
- The "River of Coffee" JE for Brazil is absurdly difficult because the game mechanically does not create enough demand for coffee at the moment, even if the price of it is at literal rock bottom. This also makes it really difficult to complete the Brazillian National Identity JE without a massive amount of warfare
- Any JE that gives you assimilation as a reward should have this reward removed, because assimilation is almost useless right now - the "Conquest of Algeria" journal entry, for instance, will give you assimilation in the algerian coast. The problem with this is that assimilation literally cannot work in a minority group's homeland state, so this bonus does nothing except for foreign populations that do mass migrations to Algeria, which is clearly not its intended purpose. Either that, or Assimilation as a mechanic should be fundamentally reworked
- It is absurdly difficult to make the Boxer Rebellion happen. If you're doing well, it won't happen, and if you're doing badly you'll probably splinter before it happens.
- The Meiji Restoration operates on the assumption that the Shogunate are outside of the government but the Shogun is still in power. It makes it seem like the shogunate is abolishing itself, which doesn't make a large amount of sense. Outside of that, I'd say the Meiji Restoration is one of the better JEs, so less complaints here
- The "Earning Recognition" JE operates on standard of living and GDP per capita, which are ridiculously difficult to increase for countries with very large populations - I don't think this makes a lot of sense, considering that a few great powers frequently won't have GDP per capita and SoL in the top 50, which will frequently be dominated by random tiny british protectorates. I genuinely believe it makes more sense for this to be changed to total GDP, rather than GDP per capita. Literacy rate certainly makes sense, but I also think technological progress should count towards earning recognition. This JE was added to try and make earning recognition diplomatically more of an option, but right now it seems like not only do the diplomatic maluses to recognition count more than the diplomatic bonuses, it also seems like earning it through warfare has gotten harder, too.
