I'm not the most avid enjoyer of either of these franchises [just a personal preference, I find civ to be too "board game" like, when I prefer more simulation like games], but I was trying to think of why the new system [civ switching] felt off to me. Maybe this was obvious to other people but I finally realized what bugged me about it.
It's just too rigid. You're always switching from Rome into spain or something like that. But the problem is that it doesn't feel like your civ is evolving, because it isn't. It's just changing into a different one.
Imo, the best way to make these systems is to not have a "civ" at all. Rather decide the characteristics of your civ. This could be as broad as "sailing culture" to replicate civs like the Polynesians and phonecia, or it could be as specific as to what writing system you use, or if you even have one. But instead of just being "Spain but slightly different" it actually feels like you're going on a journey and forging your own civilization through a story. This would be great if you could get some anthropologists to work on it, along with political economists.
In another example, maybe certain traits could be decided over a long period of time. I.e, being stable could give you a trait that promotes staying at peace and not expanding, but at the cost of making changes in government harder and harder the longer you are in that position [i.e, pre-1911 china].
Or they could be instigated by some event and become more ingrained if they aren't changed. For example, you could choose between forms of government justification. Perhaps you would have bread and circuses, which would make you really stable as long as you have a surplus of food and amenities, but unstable if you lacked them. Conversely a divine right of kings would make people more docile in general but requires an organized religion and you need some religous or legal justification for wars against people on the same continent [or something. Idea is WIP obviously]. The game should also force some amount of instability on you, but should also make that a good thing in some cases. If you have a government that's too stable, like mentioned above, then maybe you slow down tech and cultural advancement, or economic ones. Or at a certain point it's just impossible to keep your government if the modern economy is incongruent with your civ. [This shouldn't require a complex pop system or anything. Just as you advance through the tech tree your settlements will have a system of deciding economic and political power of classes(as in, economic decides who the main producers of society are and political decides what change can be enacted). So if x settlements have dominant proletariat economic power but dominant Bourgeois political power, then in times of instability there can be a revolution to replace the Bourgeois power with proletarian power. [Note:this should actually be a tiered system, or have a third thing called control I.e, peasants and serfs could be the dominant economic power but can't actually take political power without the help of another class like the Bourgeoisie or proletariat. So a settlement could have peasant economic power, Bourgeois political fervor, and land owner political control.]
Obviously this does lose a large chunk of the appeal of civ being more board game like and leading a civ with a leader who both give bonuses you need to play around to win. But I feel like both humankind and civ 7 need to go "all in" on the idea for it to work, rather than going half and half and pleasing no one.
[Note: Obviously all of the ideas here are half baked examples. This came to me right after i woke up from a nap. Also no I will not try developing it myself because I'm not an anthropologist and more importantly my coding skills are less than abysmal. I more just wanted to rant because trying to figure out my problem with both of these games was bugging me]
Victoria 3 still has the dlc problems but the free patches have helped.
For eu5, I haven't played it but I much prefer the 1337 start date. The problem with the 1444 one is that all the big players are kinda already decided. England never goes Angevine, France doesn't even want England anyway, Austria is already strong and the emporer, the Ming essentially start in their golden age, the ottomans are already starting their intial roll onto Constantinople, and Spain and Portugal are already set to be the main colonizers. Sure there's some things like Hungary and Prussia, but imo 1337 starts with a much more variable start date. The 100 years war is at the beginning and not the end, the ottomans have to actually defeat the varna crusade, the yuan are teetering on collapse and you either have to save them or arise out of them, etc. I think that's more interesting than "oh look Spain took over the entire new world again"
I find 1444 to be an interesting start exactly because there's so much to pick from. But PDX games are games you cheese through and through, which explains why I stay on EU4 and don't stray too far lol after I put in all this time learning it. You have to learn all the mechanics, the events and the ways to trigger the events and cheese and abuse as much as possible to get exactly the result you want; I think they went for consistency when it comes to EU4's design, some events are hard-coded to always fire a certain way if the AI receives it and cannot deviate from it.
It's very cheesy, and playing the games historically will only get you so far in PDX games which can be seen as a drawback since most people (me included) when they first pick it up want to recreate historical events. For example there's an achievement to conquer Britain as Ming (named the copium wars lol). The best strat is to form a line moving northwest and through russia and sweden, then attack Britain from the norwegian shoreline. You can win the achievement by the 1520s and never have to no CB since you have the force tributary state CB on any neighbor. From there I guess you could continue to conquer Europe early and prevent both Spain and the Ottomans from ever developing.
I wish they would overhaul Africa in one last DLC though, it's still a severly underlooked area of the world even after they've overhauled every other region (mostly).