I’ve run a bunch of observation games since the latest patch, and the new difficulty settings really expose just how OP Admin can be.
When other realms encounter serious problems, they sometimes entire a death spiral from which they never recover. Short of the Mongol invasion or the Fourth Crusade event, the Byzantines never fail to bounce back from even prolonged civil wars and the occasional loss of their territory.
I feel very strongly about this topic and I have some hyperspecific suggestions that I think would improve both the balance and the historical accuracy surrounding Admin.
Yes, Admin realms should be powerful, but they should also be highly centralized. When central authority is strong, the realm flourishes; when central authority is weak, it falters. Paradox promised this as part of the Admin government’s premise, but did not deliver on it.
For starters, ALL strategoi/governors should, by default, lack the ability to declare any external wars. In fact, no one, besides the emperor himself should be able to declare war without a strong hook on said emperor. As it stands, a huge part of the Admin problem is that the government type is overpowered all the way down. Even if the empire itself is embroiled in half a dozen wars, individual governors are just chilling, and maybe even still expanding the empire’s borders despite the crisis.
Strategoi/governors should be more focused on punitive raiding, and only declare war under very rare circumstances. Most of their focus should be not on conquering large swaths of land, but on outdoing and sabotaging each other in competition for prestigious positions. To reflect their role as stewards of the empire, they should instead be called to war as allies if their governorship is attacked and fight alongside the emperor himself.
I believe this shift to a wholly internal focus for vassals of the empire would actually be more satisfying for players, too. It would represent a departure from the usual gameplay of a vassal; instead of building tall as a “superduke,” the focus would be on climbing to the top in order to steer the empire.
With this change made, I believe only one further change need be made to balance Admin appropriately: making their powerful professional armies ruinously expensive. When the empire is on the defensive, fighting off numerous foes, it should be actively struggling to stay in the black, much less the green. The empire is rich enough as it is, and it stands to reason that an army consisting of something other than warrior-nobles who have all paid for their own damn armor and arms and horses should be, to use the phrase again, ruinously expensive. MAA, Levies, maybe even mercenaries - everything should be more expensive for Admin, and significantly so.
Thus, even a flourishing empire will eventually run out of money, whether the wars it is fighting or offensive or defensive. Maybe it will scrape out some victories and survive these wars, but struggle to escape bankruptcy for a number of years to follow. Or maybe it will lose land and… still struggle to escape bankruptcy for a number of years to follow. Either way it now becomes possible for an Admin realm to enter a death spiral, without strangely autonomous governors to save it by constantly nibbling away at the edges of bordering realms.
I sincerely believe that these changes would not just improve the balance of Admin, but bring it closer to what the developers envisioned for it. In good times, when the empire is united under a strong and well-liked emperor, it becomes a forced to be reckoned with. But in bad times when the emperor is facing civil, external invasion, and profound bankruptcy, it readily falls apart. It isn’t in danger of being split apart by succession, but it shouldn’t be able to rely on its governors to do anything other than hold the line.
