Only complain about 1.2 : Diseases & Pop growth
That’s really my main issue with the update.
I did two France runs up to 1800 (modern borders only).
In the first one, I built absolutely no buildings improving population growth, food production/capacity, or disease resistance.
Result in 1800: 21M population.
In the second run, I heavily invested in anything related to food production, irrigation, hospitals, sanitation, etc...
Result in 1800: 21.8M population, and honestly, most of that difference came from getting only two bubonic plague outbreaks instead of the usual three or four.
That feels extremely underwhelming and completely removes the sense of reward for specializing your country.
Historically, France proper reached around 28-30 million people by the late 18th century. And that was despite the devastation of the Hundred Years’ War, the French Wars of Religion, repeated plague waves, localized famines, and periods of demographic stagnation due to societal reasons.
In my campaigns, none of those situations happened at the same scale. Realistically, France should probably end up slightly above its historical population under those conditions, not FAR below it.
And from a purely material perspective, preindustrial France absolutely had the agricultural capacity to sustain well over 30 million people thanks to:
- its enormous size
- highly fertile soils
- favorable climate
- dense river network
The same thing applies to Japan which i have also played a lot. I have not really tested for other region but it seems that there is a bit of a problem regarding population growth and diseases and how the player can manipulate its country to focuse on this matter.