How big an empire can grow, realistically?

[delra]

On the example of Carthage:

The assumption is that the capital stays in Qart-Hadast and is never moved from there. It'd be game-breakingly lame to move it.

In EB1 we could easily grow an empire controlling all of North Africa down to Egypt as well as Iberia, southern France and all of Italy, with the good parts of Greece and southern Anatolia - and still have it functioning and controllable.

Corruption and squalor are higher in EB2. So my question is: What's your biggest empire like, how far have you reached before it became unbearable to maintain? Can Rome control all the lands she historically control without hassle, can Parthia, Seleucids? Can you play Macedonia and redo Alexander's conquest without having a full stack of troops in half your cities as they are too far?

How large can one stretch?

[Sint]

I Eb2? The upper blacksea region/crimea+part of Thracia and the some of the steppe provinces, I didn't realy to make it as big as possible I was more focused on getting rich from traiding.In Crusader kings 2 the vassals make having a big realm a bit harder Oh and all of the seleucid regions+part of Pergamon and Egypt managed to get it stable after a while.

Can Rome control all the lands she historically control without hassle,

They didn't exactly controll it withouth hassel in reality

[Dago Red]

Without the more complex vassalage system of paradox games or the newer TW games (from Shogun on, though still nowhere near as thorough), a big empire seems unwieldly. In those games you can effectively call bigger areas your dominion without actually having 100% direct control over them. The "game" still counts them as yours though, which is an improvement. Does the M2TW engine consider your vassals as part of your empire for victory conditions, for example?

It should, but I don't recall that being the case. I'd like to see that be a reality in terms of game feature.

[MIKE GOLF]

I believe that the MTW II engine does recognize vassals in terms of victory conditions. Though it has been awhile since I have researched that. In my own game I have adjusted the 'distance to capital' penalty in the settlement_mechanics file to make large empires a little more manageable.