Context: The “Civilized” mechanic in Victoria 2 won’t be coming back in 3. It was an arbitrary system which gave “uncivs” (countries that haven’t westernized) maluses and an inability to access the normal research “tree”.
Instead, the countries in question will be modeled after their actual circumstances that put them at a disadvantage to Western powers (agrarian society, decentralization, no infrastructure, poor literacy, etc). You know, a materialistic approach that’s in line with the rest of the game.
Also, white chuds won’t shut up about some capeshit that came out years ago and it’s hilarious.
Not sure that this is a good argument, this is only true because PDX games try and fail very hard at being more than a paint the map blobbing simulator AND, very importantly, because the AI is purposedly handicapped in several ways. The case in point is Vicky was their only game(CK is more RPG more than "country management") where managing a country was supposedly more important than just blobbing.
But as soon as you are able to make a GSG that is deep enough to make civilization magagement interesting then the argument in favor of small/weak start diminishes. I think a good example of this is Distant Worlds which AFAIK is the only game that ever got close to that level of management and ironicaly because it had the ability to let the game basicaly run itself by letting the AI take over parts of the management.
The first step to their games being more than map blobbing simulators would still be changing this mechanic though. There shouldn't be arbitrary equal footing between Pueblo and Poland, but the internal mechanics of the tribal nation versus the feudal nation should allow for a similar depth of building the country. I can blindly conquer land as Caddo but I can't translate that material surplus into a city despite Native Americans in that region building a city (300 years prior) that was on par with London population-wise. A game that allows for Cahokias to develop is going to have depth that a game with a primitive/civilised split has never had.
Don't get me wrong I agree with the overall sentiment that this mechanic was bad and this is a step in the right direction. It is more about the nuance and context that PDX isn't good at making weak nations interesting without resorting to blobbing mechanics. The OP picture is nonsense of course because "wakanda" is no less ahistorical than a Ulm world conquest. Nobody actualy gives a shit about that.
I do think there is a discussion to be had about how PDX has resorted to DLCs and blobbing in order to for example sell you "Europa Universallis" at release and then slowly make it into "Rest of the World Universallis". Shit we need to have at release will surely be chopped away for a future DLC so we shouldn't be praising them blindly for making the rest of the world relevant on release day, I mean I should expect that to be the case and not have to wait 2 years for a DLC that makes Africa relevant.
That reminds me of what a pleasant surprise it was when CK3 released with a bunch of content and concepts from CK2's DLCs integrated into the core game, and generally how it decoupled systems from completely bespoke cultures and religions into more generic systems that mean for the most part anywhere you look you're working with a full-featured set of tools instead of how vanilla CK2 only had the Catholics as playable and fleshed out and every CK2 religion was a bespoke and idiosyncratic system with special mechanics.