Minimally necessary sounds like the wrong term to use here, but let's break this down into manageable chunks.
"Making the game easier to play" may or may not have anything to do with historical accuracy. Let me us a CK example. In the original CK, finding brides could be a real hassle (bride finding mods FTW). In CK2, they made it much easier to find brides
and find brides that would result in alliances. It's easier to play the game (finding good spouses), but it's not more or less historically accurate. The interface was improved to provide information to the player in a way that makes it easier to choose.
As for "Making complex aspects simpler," there is a big difference between "player has no idea what is going on" and "player grasps how mechanics work." In previous Paradox games, there has been a constant complaint in reviews that the games' complexity are artificially increased by obscurity in mechanics or the interface. HOI3 was guilty of this in earlier iterations. So guilty, in fact, that the infamous "toughness doesn't work" bug was not discovered until some enterprising players were able to prove it using
very obscure testing techniques that involved modding the game and running comparisons. When a central combat mechanic is not working, but almost no one can even tell that it's not working (the Devs literally said that the game had been balanced with the broken mechanic because they couldn't even tell it was broken), there is a complexity problem in the game. So, when someone says they want to make complex aspects simpler, I assume they don't mean fewer mechanics or dumber mechanics, but they mean the mechanics will be understandable to the player. After all, I can't think of a Paradox franchise that has gotten simpler in sequels, so I have no reason to think the games will be getting dumber.
Then there is the whole "when historical reality and ease of play are in opposition to each other, history is always going to be sacrificed" problem. Ease of play is the wrong way to put it. Instead, it's better to think of it as "with limited development time for mechanics, and with a need for rational gameplay that can be understood with the interface available, sometimes historical situations have to be shoehorned into mechanics that already exist." The situation with Manchukuo is a great example. In HOI3, Manchukuo was a puppet of Japan. Despite its historical accuracy, I always hated how it worked within the game mechanics; the situation in Manchuria was not rational in game terms despite its historical accuracy. Do you know that there were games I would let Chiang annex Manchukuo, only to have me take it back and just run it as a friendly annexed territory, because it made more sense in game terms? Sure, I suppose a unique puppet/master relationship could have been used just for Manchukuo (some folks always suggested having Kwangtung Army Command as a special separate country), but that takes development time that might be better spent doing something like having better national focus trees. In HOI4, just turning Manchukuo into land owned directly by Japan, while not technically historically accurate, might actually make the game more rational when it is played, because normal puppet mechanics simply don't work well when modeling this particular situation. (I see Egypt in the same way.)
You may have been misled, then. This is a post Johan made in 2003 (he has said this over and over again, I just picked the oldest one I could find):
HOI is Currently Unplayable
I can't quote it normally, because the thread is closed and it's so old. Note Johan's comment at #5
And here's comments regarding the original CK in 2004:
And more:
There's nothing new about Paradox policy in this regard. Maybe you've been fooled by the quality of the games that you
thought they were simulations? Stranger things have happened.
)
