I've been playing France for a while and I found a few things really awkward and gameplay killing.
Within about 5 turns Württemberg declared war on me for no apparent reason and I easily beat them and took their capital: game over for Württemberg.
Then about 5 turns later, Savoy declared war on me for no apparent reason. Again I trained an army, attacked, got ambushed and beaten first but retrained the army and sent it back in and voilá, took the capital: game over Savoy.
Then some 5-10 turns later the United Provinces declared war on (for good reasons), and I sent two full stack armies to the United Provinces and I'm currently besieging Amsterdam...
What I'm trying to tell is, that factions with just one province get wiped out the moment you win a siege and take over the capital. If you want to win a war, you have to wipe out the faction: it's all or nothing. There's no diplomacy whatsoever for the losing faction to turn to diplomacy, admit defeat/surrender and stay alive while paying reparations to the winning faction.
I've been thinking about this for quite some time and it got me thinking in vicious circles with no end because it involves so many factors in reality. So far I've come with a simple solution to this.
When you are at war these diplomacy options pop up when opening negotiations with your opponent you're at war with:
1) offer armistice: (opponent: accept/decline)
- armistice for a period of x turns (breaking armistice will make your prestige drop)
2) demand surrender: (opponent: accept/decline)
- demand region: x (cannot demand core region of a faction)
- offer region: x (cannot offer core region of your faction)
- demand payments: x
- become protector
3) offer surrender: (opponent: accept/decline)
- demand region: x (cannot demand core region of a faction)
- offer region: x (cannot offer core region of your faction)
- offer payments: x
4) offer white peace: (opponent: accept/decline)
(peace with no winner and loser, no win and no loss for either side; return to status quo ante bellum)
Capturing faction capital:
If a faction loses its capital then it will surrender unconditionally. It has to accept any demand made by the conquerors, without bargaining. Whether it will make them less popular (or better said more hated) or not towards the losing faction depends on their demands. The capital is of high importance because that's where your government resides.
Annexing regions:
With an unconditional surrender you can easily take over colonies of a defeated nation/faction and if possible you can even annex all of their territory, erasing the faction from the map.
In principle all regions can be annexed after you have captured the enemy capital.
However due to nationality conflicts and the rise and consciousness of nation states and national pride the following factions and their core regions can't be annexed and can only be made protectorates at best.
Great Britain: England
France: France
Spain: Spain
Austria: Austria
Prussia: Brandenburg
Ottoman Empire: Anatolia
Sweden: Sweden
In addition there should be a penalty in diplomatic relations towards all factions for destroying a recognized faction.
Anyway these are just ideas that still need fine-tuning and adjustments, because there's always some sort of exception to be found to this rule. However I'm convinced it should bypass absurd situations such as the United Provinces owning France and Spain and largely cover the post-war diplomacy of the early modern era and it's still of use for the present.
Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, complaints... Anything?