It does to me since it makes the game so counter intuitive to play that I am spending more time trying to disentangle what the insane system actually is. Especially since the game arbitrarily sets a "proper" spending on tech, meaning that you cannot create a surplus without tanking inflation. Not to mention that inflation is not compounded but just a flat rate as far as I know.
Well it took me but a few hours to mostly understand the basics of how the economics work in the game, its rather simple, once again I agree that some things do not make sense but its not hard to understand.
It is true that it is impossible to create a monthly surplus without inflating, but you are not supposed to, you are supposed to incur small monthly costs then you receive a large sum of money at the end of each year which will contain that years profit(if you are not overspending). There are also ways to mint without incurring an increase in inflation, to name them all out would be too much, but they exist.
Quoted for truth. This here sums up an easy fix to the problem, to the point where it is mind boggling that it isn't this way in game currently.
Well its an easy fix, but not a quick one, if you end up racking up around 20% inflation your country is pretty much crippled, with everything costing so much its hard to run an army and its hard to even turn a profit, it could take 100 years or more to get that back down to a manageable level.
I have played EU3 enough to know that I do not want to touch it with a stick
This is also not true, it can be used its all about knowing how to use it and how to counteract it, I remember a multiplayer game I had with some guys, which one of them was minting I think around 40 denars a month, without racking up a huge level of inflation, in fact I think it didn't even add any. Bare in mind this was a bit into the game so he had taken the required measurements to prevent inflation.
Do not take offence to this Hekko but you seem to have not fully understood the game whilst you were playing it and again, economy is but a small focus on EU3 which is why its easy to understand, the game main focus in my opinion is warfare.