Current Economic Collapse System Causes Massive Waste of Time For All

[cxxccxxc]

There was a massive 300k army storming into South Spain for 8 months. The entire nation was surrounded, Portugal aligned itself with France, there was a secondary war Spain had with Britain who was about to ally with France.
Then, economic collapse. I suggested to end the war after a prior massive slaughter of transports, but the nation didn't listen. Now? Now the army had to pull back because Spain "changed hands." Now nobody owns it, it didn't change hands, the hands that held it had a heart attack after picking fights with multiple naval super powers. Instead of "economic collapse turns states neutral", it should lock all economy sliders to 0, all ships are immediately forced back to port for repairs, every start of turn during economic collapse brings -20 Naval Prestige and mothballs all ships, and from there the nation can work to get its GDP back, lose its wars correctly, etc. This way, the player can still lose from an economic collapse (with some chance for survival in case of extraordinarily exemplary performance before the collapse) and players aren't shafted because of economic collapses.

[Kratin]

I can only agree with you.
Spain in particular (France and England sometimes in my games at least) will always have a major war within the first few years and thus have an economic collapse, mostly without my doing and without being bolked.
of course all colonies are lost for the rest of the game.
Countries without colonies are not so bad, the home countries are founded again after some time.

[Deadpan_Alpaca]

I can agree on the matter as well: collapsing nations add little to the player's "fun" due to removing targets for naval engagements. Less countries means less ships means less naval battles.