I understand why AE was pretty harsh on the AI; in almost every recent game I have started France/Burgundy get destroyed by a coalition and any nation in the HRE which takes 2 provinces gets a coalition against them. I would like to see the AI not be so greedy in its peace deals. Maybe the AI should be encouraged only to take its cores/claims, even not go for the full 100% warscore war when it can get its goals with less. Most coalitions I have seen form against the AI were in the range of 40-50 AE after annexing 3-5 provinces outside the HRE. I feel like this change would result in coalitions being much less common and for the more experienced player almost non existent and blobbing would be even more pronounced. I am still unsure of the exact math behind AE calculation for different countries around the area you annexed but I would love to see high AE if a large nation annexes a small nation, less AE if you vassalise rather than annex, freeze AE decay during wartime or freeze its decay with nations you have a truce with (so that recent war targets hate you more and join coalitions after the truce timer) All in all I think there should be more opportunity to force people to release nations and to halt their blobbing, because It would be fun to scheme against more 4-10 province countries and not get 4 blobs in every direction by the end of the 1500s.