True, there is no balance of countries. That lack of balance between them is what creates the varying difficulties. A game as England is much different than a game as a small heathen country, even if all the pregame options are the same.
Varying difficulties is putting it mildly, though, and there's just no way to get a "fair" balance at all. Which means you'll always be playing at a significant advantage or disadvantage - especially if you know how to exploit the mechanics.
This is just the nature of strategy games with this level of detail and this many moving parts. Heck, they have trouble balancing the simplest of strategy games - and you don't have to move much beyond Tic-Tac-Toe or Chess to find imbalance.
Expanding audience appeal is a double edged sword. I'm all for it when the game quality gets boosted from additional funds. Less of a fan when stuff gets dumbed down to reach the new audience (like vanilla WoW raids).
Obviously, I think this would add significant quality - and I still don't understand the problem with having it as an option.
Well, of course people would be complaining that working on a tangible hands-on combat system will take away from yet another iteration of the same feature.
I can't logically dismiss that.
Maybe it's just me, but I think the hands off approach is harder than a hands on combat system. AIs are rarely capable of utilizing the combat mechanics to the fullest, giving human players a clear edge that developers tend to lazily address by artificially boosting CPU resources. The lack of mechanics in EU at least creates an illusion of a more even playing field to me (assuming similar countries at least).
Certainly that's possible - and if you're worried about defeating the AI in combat - you could just play without that option.
That said, I'm one of those people who spent many hours of my life when I was younger beating the AI - thinking I was good at strategy.
At one point, it dawned on me that AI (at this stage and for many, many years to come) will always be defeated if you try at it. I realised that there's no competition and that it's a very simple matter of learning patterns and exploiting weaknesses.
So, today, I never play against the AI except as practice or to learn the mechanics. I never get excited by winning against the AI - because it's a given. It WILL happen - and the moment it happens - no matter how "challenging" the AI is - it will suddenly be stupid.
That's what people always bitch about in strategy games. They play until they learn how to beat the AI - and then they complain about how stupid it is - as if they were expecting an AI to be smart.
I find that somewhat amusing
But I digress.
Again, in a game like EU - with the insane amount of options available to you - there's no such thing as balance. You can, of course, pretend that you're playing a balanced game - but you're not. It's humanly impossible (or all BUT impossible) to balance a game with that many moving parts.
Adding a tangible hands-on combat system won't change that. It might be one more way to exploit the AI - but it's but a drop in the sea. Also, it might just bring some much needed tangible feedback to the experience. Oh, and you can turn it off in the options