well, its a crossroad...
just before patch MIKE they introduced/repaired the variable of militarism (better militancy of population, eh?).
we saw, that the net effect of normal reforms was not sufficient to lower this variable, they gave us two, then a third new reform to fight it and a medium sized economy can afford it, to lower 10% of this variable each year.
it as not better, it was broken and had side effects afterwards.
somewhat puzzling is that they bound reforms to requisites now, which are in one case identical to the threshold of the trigger of economic crisis...
once you reach the limit, you get the reform and normally it stays in your portfolio and even in case of world crisis, this militarism can be reduced to zero or stay below 5% at least.
thus, basically it is better with Mike, Nova and Oscar, then it was before...
for the spread between areas contentment, dont worry, i have the same in US and Russia in my campaigns.
for instance in US a gap between 43% and 96%. this comes from a whole compound of effects, reforms, events, techs, taxes and so on have different effect and impact on different classes of society.
this is one reason for great differences and also a reason why you will never see that the famous "tax reduces contentment"-message will make sense for the whole nation, but for areas only.
for your observation with the Prussian vassal nations, true, they are bad in shape, what ever you do. it was reported many times the last four months.
one reason is: they have most of the time nearly no trade activity, ergo probably no domestic demand covered, but are squeezing their people.
however, originally they would fight a war about unity in 1866 and even some parts of the Norddeutscher Bund / Northern Confederacy had been pressed into alliance and parts of their tiny estates fought against Prussia.
Never understood the reason why the events are floating... but hey, i start my ACW most of the times in the 1850s
maybe modding events, raising the contentment after the Danish War, the 1866 war and the 1870 / 1871 war are a way to deal with it... unfortunately i am busy...
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