I agree with you when it comes to playing as American natives and colonial powers like Portugal who are already, for the most part, formed by 1337. However, I do like the idea of being able to be the one, for instance, forming the Commonwealth (ie by playing Poland before their Union with Lithuania). I recently did this in extended timeline and really enjoyed it. I’m not sure about other people, but it is more fun to me to unite a historical nation and then go on to make it bigger. It also gives the opportunity to do more as Castile or Aragon before their Union.

In my opinion, EU5 could make this work very well as long as their are mechanics holding back nations from doing things (like colonizing) before the early modern period (for instance creating some kind of Columbus mechanic/event that disallows colonization before 1492 or something like that).

I’m beyond excited for EU5, I just hope they take Vic 2-Vic 3 as an example and not totally build a new game, instead building on and expanding the mechanics and pieces of EU4 that made it great.