What gameplay mechanics to prevent late game boredom/ avoiding just being a map-painting exercise of whole world?

[Johan]

I am looking around the various dev diaries, and having various issue with a lot of PDX games when it comes to late stage gameplay, there is often not a lot you can do other than just keep expanding your empire until you painted the entire map in your colours.

So far we've not seen anyone that have expanded that big in internal testing, and some struggling with even getting historical Russia.

Then again, our QA only had on average about 5k hours in eu4 before being hired..

 

[Johan]

Internal testing so far goes up to the end date ? Or are you more focused on some specific period (i.e the start game) ?

longterm close to end date

 

[Johan]

I hope it means you're not gonna make the game easier because of that.

ofc not