Tainter talks a lot about the Eastern Roman Empire and why it survived. He talks about how they were able to radically simplify their civilization to save it.

For example: they got rid of the entire centralized military bureaucracy and replaced it with the Theme system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_(Byzantine_district)#Org... ) which was basically a sort of farmer's military club franchise where farmers where also in the military and bought their own weapons and also conducted civil affairs. This held off invading muslim hordes for hundreds of years. They also replaced the massive central administration with a very minimalist king and court. They basically did a massive corporate re-org and decentralization to save the empire. It's a pattern that not many civilizations have pulled off.