I've been playing the combined version of Man the Ramparts and IMO the penalties for being low on public order is super punishing and restricts choices too much.

It especially sucks ass in the early game (like the first 20 turns) where you have very limited options to gain public order. The penalties are so severe for having bad public order that sacking and looting are basically non-options, especially because of the extra negative control you get from having low public order. I read your other comment about it, but I agree with the other guy that it's essentially a deathloop once your happiness dips down there at any point.

You say that we should build public order buildings and recruit hero/lords with control trait to counteract unhappiness, but the penalties says otherwise. Most factions can't build PO buildings till tier 2 so they come up too late to react to negative PO. Looking at my current empire game, a tier 1 settlement that just dipped into -26 unhappiness will take 7 turns! to upgrade to tier 2 and build the PO building. By the time it's finished, the settlement would most likely be in the next tier of unhappiness with worse penalties. This doesn't even cover the fact that the PO building only nullifies the first tier of negative control, it's not enough to start pushing my settlement to positive by itself.

Heroes and lord are quicker alternatives to counteract negative control, but that's either rng to get the right trait or tiems (and trait alone would stem the negative happiness penalty, not even help getting control to positive) or you'll have to spend a lot of money on units to make that "local army" positive happiness actually be a significant number, which is extra hard with higher recruitment costs and lower income.

also while I like the idea of halving replenishment rate to prevent instaheals, when its combined with negative public order it essentially makes the entire province a dead zone for healing, even when you're in a settlement. Again, it's so harsh it makes sack or razing such a penalty if you own any other settlement in the province. There was a situation in-game where it felt like I had to abandon an entire province because I couldn't replenish an army in it to defend against an attacker.

I get what you mean when you say "if the population is unhappy, why should they get happier?", but it's meant to be a slingshot towards 0, the same way positive public order tiers give negative control to push you back to middle (which I see you kept for empire at least).

I think one thing you underestimate is just how many sources there are for negative control. Aside from sacking and looting when taking over new settlements, there's enemy army presence, corruption, confederation, events etc. This is in contrast with positive control which are in traits, skills or buildings. Another thing to notice is that there exists negative control spikes, but all positive control sources are basically passive.

If you don't want positive control in the unhappiness public order tiers then I can accept that, but I don't want negative control alongside the penalties as it basically nullifies one source of positive control. Frankly it just turns the province into "you can't do anything in this entire area for several turns until a rebellion starts" as the penalties are too severe to build/recruit anything in it nor stay in it with your army.

Also iunno if it's out of the scope of your mod, but adding more sources for positive happiness would help make the public order changes more digestible. Like either buffing the current sources or adding new ones. An example to buff is the lord control skill from +1 control each level to +2. Adding small positive control to military building and buffing the public order buildings to actually be more than just "remove collected income penalty". Dunno if buffing the military presence positive happiness is possible but it would be cooler if the "curfews" were stronger.