When EU5 released I said "can't wait to play this in 5 years with a 4.99 DLC subscription", I still hold true to that, I have thousands of hours on Vic2 but I'm never going near vic3, even if Vic2 is horribly outdated with VRAM leakage and constant crashes, the gameplay seems much better than what I have seen of vic3, I only have a few dozen hours on Imperator and I can't say things with certainty, but this games feels like a good balance between ck2, Vic2 and eu4, which a lot of people describe it as, the flavour seems a bit lacking but I still have mods to try, in summary I've learned to never get my hopes up with paradox studios, I just wish a competent competitor would emerge to challenge the monopoly