the way the community at the top decides to diplo lets high offenses run more rampant. if i had guaranteed cfs why the hell would i bother running anything beyond bare minimum defense outside of war? permanent ghettoficiation by reducing kingdom size to 20 basically locks out kingdoms without a full roster from ever being able to compete.
if the game were decided entirely by war stance, then defense is more useful and sorely undervalued on attacker provinces. it's the huge gains that can be reaped from timid provinces that are unwilling to fight back that make high offense such a lucrative strategy, in addition to the broken overpoweredness and assbackwardness of chaining.
removing overpopulation desertions from the game would be a great first step, in favor of mechanics that reward more strategic thinking. it would require steps to prevent hellswarming