The game is extremely hard now
Holy cow the AI does not mess around in war anymore.
On a tactical and somewhat strategical aspect they are still awful.
But on a long term aspect they have become absolute war machine.
They have every decision to increase levy and regular army size. Recruit a lot of regulars and mercenaries. Keep cash around and take loans just for wars.
In my Byzantium game I had a army of 10k regulars and was steam rolling Italy. I was always below 45 antagonism thanks to Byz special war goal.
Milano did the parliament war goal tricks on me. They got an instant war goal on me and instantly declared war on me. I did not see that coming at all since AI usually never declared war on someone below 45 antagonism.
They have Naples and the pope as allies. The pope has like 50k levies with 700k pops and 25k regulars. Naples and Milano have even more troops.
I just lost the war so badly I had to give up a lot of land. It's crazy this never happened before. Usually when you start to have enough regulars you can steam roll any AI even a much bigger than you. Because they don't invest enough in military. Now it's the opposite.
Also the stack wipe and infinite mercenary did not get patched today. I hope they patch it cause I don't want to check every month if the AI suddenly spawn 200k mercenary out of nowhere
