I've been revisiting anno 2205, infamously the ugly duckling of the Anno series of RTS games. I don't mind so much the fact that it's different, lacks customisation and random map generation - I'm bothered because the game is so slow to progress through on challenge settings, and it feels like a game designed just to artificially waste your time; in other anno games, you can always pull tricks to dig yourself out of economic crisis - selling off assets and surplus goods, completing quests for other parties, or taking loans. 2205 is very very confined in terms of what you can do to financially recover in the early game and forces you into a lot of military events.
Yeah I never imagined the end game of those historical map-painters would be good; either it ends right away or, like you said, stagnation.
I've only played one map painter game and I never went back to the genre because it was too complicated for me. This was like... 7 or 8 years ago TBF. I'm more interested in ones with base building elements or economic planning - Victoria and EV ask you to look at some spreadsheets and use that to guide your nation towards greatness. I would have given Victoria at least one other go since then but I bought it on amazon and lost the install I think ๐
I can heartily recommend gicing vicky 2 a try despite its' age (kinda clunky and less polished but plays fast, a campaign can be done in maybe 10hrs). It's actually the game that got me back into grand strategy during the pandemic. Pick it up on sale like I did or via yarr, heart of darkness is a necessary dlc and not included in the base 25$ price tag, kinda insane for a 20 y.o game.
EV - europa universalis 5?
Part of the problem with Eu4 is that they in the "later" (somewhere post 2018) updates aimed to make every nation "viable".