I haven't noticed a significant difference yet. I should note this is my first 1.24 game (or at least, first that I've played more than 25 years... I imploded as Taungu and ran into a wall of Ming as Jiangzhou). The last one was on 1.20 as France, and in that one I was the one who was expanding more than what was realistic.
What I have seen is far better than EU3, where Austria and Bohemia were infamous for expanding like crazy, without consolidating their gains. And, sure, expansion is easier than in 1.5.1, when the aggressive expansion limit was 30, it was really easy to hit that, and coalitions were a dime a dozen, but on the whole I feel the limits to expansion in this game seem right. It's not like the 1.6 patch when they completely overcorrected for 1.5 and it was almost impossible to trigger a coalition. And manpower and money are still quite real limits. I have bankruptcy notifications enabled, and quite a few nations have gone broke in this game, including Portugal, Crimea, and Muscovy (and I didn't have any involvement in the Portuguese or Crimean cases). There may have been slightly more consolidation in the HRE and Italy than usual this game, but it hasn't raised alarm bells, as the Emperor is weak and Naples has done a very good job with diplomacy, almost always having clear advantages when at war. I do fear the French-Castilian PU, but that's due to good fortune on France's part.
As for my game, the coalition war is over, and victory has been achieved! I played moderately defensively, keeping all my troops nearby, mostly in around southern Denmark, with occasional forays into northern Germany. My forts in Lubeck, Hamburg, and Schleswig were never taken, though Stade was. Concentration of force allowed me to win most battles - except when Bohemia and a couple of their smaller allies similarly combined force - and gradually whittle down their forces, with Hesse and Mecklenburg doing a good job of supporting my troops despite partial occupation of their lands. The Ottomans kept them distracted by invading Salzburg (who has most of Bavaria) with large numbers, Novgorod reinforced my main lines, and Lithuania was kind of pitiful and distracted by rebels, but didn't majorly mess anything up. And somehow, Holland did not get crushed - I guess my enemies preferred to invade my lands to theirs. They occupied Utrecht, and I eventually linked up with them by occupying Friesland itself. In the end, I took a bit of gold and gave Utrecht to Holland in the peace deal.
In the meantime, Muscovy has collapsed, perhaps Permanently, and a Cossack horde has formed in southern Russia as well. Aggravatingly, though, Nogai forced Muscovy to give 8 provinces back to Novgorod (which had been occupied since the 1440s), but Novgorod subsequently gave half of them back to Muscovy
. At around the same time, they released Estonia and Livonia as vassals, and sold two arctic provinces to me. I eventually realized this was to avoid Merchant Republic penalties for having more than 20 provinces. It throws a monkey wrench in my hopes for them eventually forming a friendly Mother Russia to my east, though. I still plan to stick with my longest and most trustworthy ally, but am not sure what it bodes for the east.
