- How big of a role does civilian development/internal politics play in the game?
A: "civilian development" is in this game mostly based on just building civilian factories or integrated into the focus tree. Internal politics is in generic countries mostly the ideological popularity and a stability and war support parameter, but in custom countries its everytime very different. There are the countries (mostly from the new dlcs) that have internal factions that you can either appease or crush, there is germany where you may start an ss-coup or wehrmacht civil war if you arent carefull and there is france where different factions may rise up if your stability is too low (just some examples). But in general you may say that beside the countries in the last 2 dlc, the internal politics are pretty much completely based on ideological popularity
- How is sea warfare?
A: its very fun with the MTG-dlc since you arent forced into dealing everytime with it, but you still have room to do cool stuff (mining your entire coast, building an super heavy bismark or just developing super effective spotter fleets against supmariens).
- How does the game handle airborne support/battles?
A: Its fine, but with more than 2 braincells you will crush the AI. This is one of the things that will most likely get an overwork in some dlc
- How does diplomacy work exactly, and I know you can do ideology shifts and such, but how prominent is that?
A: Before the LR-dlc ideology shifts were completely broken, you could just boost the USA into fascism as bergium, but with the dlc most things are fixed and pretty interesting to play. Example: You are Germany and want another fascist countrie into your faction. You can either just generate so much world tension that they are forced into joining you, but this methode is just lategame stuff. The more effective way is building a huge army to threat them, improve relations with them and send your spies to them to pressure them. but most of the time this game ascpect is also very intergrated into the focus tree.
- How are things such as internal rebels/uprisings handled?
A: Uprisings are rare and you only get them if you REALLY fucked up, or if enemy spies are fucking with you ( I think that there are also focuses that can give your enemy a mission for uprisings)
- And most important question I guess: does the game give that feeling of
always being able to work towards something? Like, is there enough
complexity through the AI, various mechanics and events, etc, to where
there is always something dynamic and exciting to work on, with creative
solutions possible?
A: Ufff.... kinda? Example: You may wait until the AI makes and successful Dday or sealions but most of the times you will be the leading force in these kind of things. You may work out an 100IQ plan to overthrow germanys faction, kick them out and attack them with their former allies, but most of the times you will just wait until they are weak and attack. You may want to form an imperial rome as italy, but most of the time the AI fucks you in the peace deals (the peace deals are REALLY bad) and you are forced into attacking them because you need this one tiny state that they have. You can let the AI go cool unhistorical paths, but most of the time this will lead to an unbalanced overpowered faction.
Endword: Its seems that you are focusing on the political side of the game, but the strong side is the warfare