There are some places where you think “Do you even deserve to have sovereignty if you’re going to fuck everyone and everything up for the foreseeable future?”
Offer your help to weaker nations in return for some control over them, so you can actually govern them competently. When you have enough power, purge the corruption that keeps those places as shitty as they are.
In order to do empire right, one has to maintain the principle that all the empire’s citizens are equal, and should all have the opportunity to gain power in it.
