Been playing as Japan, reached year 1720 something. Was fun until Russia declared war on me and occupied my Siberian colonies. War lasted for about 20-25 years because the game was bugged or something. Russia didn't want peace because there was simply not enough to give. Offering 3300 gold, all the occupied provinces, and giving everything with a thumbs up was not enough, I mean what a can a man do, so many years of war + giving everything Russia it wants, and it cant invade my mainland? Trying to fight back in Siberia was a nogo, considering three of his ships could take down about 15 of mine and he had 100k soldiers there.
Seeing how useless my armies are in comparison to his after all the hard-work of building up Japan, I set up a colony close to a spanish one in Alaska and made it core to try and Westernize (tried earlier but couldn't find any whitelings to settle close to) so I could catch up with Russia in technology. Biggest mistake 2014. Not only did I have to go from +0 to +3 stability to just start it, it took me back to -3 stability, deleted all my admin, diplo and military points and it bloody wont start westernizing until I have +1 stability, and stability cost 320 per +1! Then I had to kill of about half Japan's population in rebellions. After a shitload of slaughtering my own people in Japan I reached the point of long boredom of rebellions and running out of manpower, I decided to say fuck this game and stopped playing as Japan.
Might try some other country or see if there's any mods to fix this shit.