byz feels more difficult to play (in some ways a better difficulty and in some ways worse), but theres one very specific part of byz that just feels utterly horrible to play. complacent decline

complacent decline is genuinely a horribly designed disaster, it feels almost impossible to prevent it from happening, and the consequences of it are so genuinely annoying. you get random kingdom level revolts for land you own, and you can't even know when its coming. i had it happen that i just got three in a row, some of which were from fully core'd land. and now that subject meta is dead, you keep a lot more land, especially considering the buffs that byz gets to integration speed, and as for byz specific, it will literally give you the consolidated corruption privileges. i found this out only about 5-10 years after revoking the noble one, and then i suddenly got it again. it feels like i was being punished for nothing just because for 30 years or so i decided to not go to war to integrate a ton of land and play tall for a bit.