Indeed. Paradox has a completely misplaced idea of what DLC should entail. DLC's should be additions to a game, things that can spice it up a little. Paradox mixed it up with "DLC's must be essential to an enjoyable experience". Not that I'm really surprised that they've mixed that up; Paradox is a company that would cut their game up into a million pieces and sell them for a high price per piece. EA's DLC policy seems generous in comparison.
I don't mean to disrespect, but you are one the "whales" that allow Paradox to sustain their ridiculously greedy DLC policy. I mean, 20€ for an update, which combined with a unit pack and some music reaches a staggering 30€. Whole games are sold for that price or in that price range, and this is just a DLC and some visuals.
Still, I like the second part of your comment, especially when we take the first quoted post from
@Granty. The DLC's are actually essential to have a fun game. There are a ton of
basic features that are locked behind a paywall. Granted, it's a long time ago that I played the base game, so I can't actually remember the various features anymore. But I'm pretty sure that for instance the HRE etc feels entirely void if you play without DLC's. Your friend has now tried EUIV without DLC's, and the experience was unsurprisingly completely bare bones.
That is the problem of Paradox DLC's. Take an example of the Total War series, there you buy factions who each have their unique play style or feature to use. It's not like you
have to buy that faction pack to be able to do X. In EUIV you must buy the DLC to get access to
basic interactions. The future siege-button which finally would cut down on the atrocious micro management mouse clicking hell.
An excellent comment. The DLC policy that PDX has used for years has always been to lock QoL features behind pay walls. As
@Johan tellingly concedes "people will pay for these additions". Yeah, who would've thought that people want a good experience while playing your game. Sadly, instead of fixing your game as you should, you decide to charge money for stuff that should already - or already is in the game, but isn't available to the player.