[tinkthank]

I agree that Mercs, at least some of them, are often too powerful. Certainly the Eternal Knights are. I also slavishly recruit all the mercs I can, whenever I can, even if it is only simply to keep my enemies from recruiting them.

As to Blood nations with no Growth: I play Abysia with some death (not a lot, usually 1-2) and it works just perfectly; capture 2-3 15k provinces, and that is fine for at least 30+ turns of blood hunting, then go get more. (Abysia gets no income or supply penalty for Death, so it's only population loss to worry about, and as of now, Death is so minor...)
A tiny bit more growth/attrition for growth/death scales would also be welcome in my book.

I think a nice idea would be to have a chance of "natural growth", but only if your dominion is that province is fairly strong. For each point of dominion, you could have a 5% chance of a .02 growth in one turn, all things being equal. Growth scales would add to this, and Death detract.

The 1/4 population drop bad incidents is certainly too much for its fictionalization, one would have to call it a "serious plague" or something. I hate it when it happens, too, but dont feel it should be nerfed, because otherwise Luck/Misfortune scales will be made even weaker than they already are.