[@Lennon79] As for your mention of us being able to control the provinces around us. I had figured you would throw in some ''random'' events to make life difficult.

And my province for example, has large ambitions but its location (All though on the ancient Silk Road) wouldn't be very rich, and would thus have a difficult time to push through industrial reforms. Now i'm not a meta-gamer, but others could use their neighbours to their advantage. (You should take the map with the provinces now, and add a bunch of NPC warlords, just use halfs or parts of provinces to form areas i'd say.) Maybe you can decide our relations with neighbours?