Personally, I absolutely love Dharma and everything that came with it. Unlike others, I found it perfect and long awaited.
But aside from that, I do feel that EU4 is running out of ways to implement ideas, without heavily abstracting them into obnoxious mana system which ultimately makes those ideas unfunny in practice and loses the original purpose of being added in the first place.
The biggest issue is that they aren't adding features that could actually work out realistic and well. EU3 actually had population system (with integrated manpower count) in it for example - they abstracted it down to those three mana powers. EU3 actually had better trade simply because it wasn't hardcoded to flow in one direction only. Marching into Russia during winter, especially in mods, slowed your army down and eroded it to the point that you had to run back, whereas despite multiple additions climate only matters in some areas in EU4. Manpower took a generation to recover like real life, whereas you can have a hundred thousand men wiped out and back by 8-10 years.
The second biggest issue is that even if they do add features, they aren't coherent and don't integrate well with each other. Corruption was the worst addition that did nothing except be a pain, while also not actually adding much of substance. Religions are turning fast into "go into this window and click that button every few years for bonus". You can do things that you couldn't do either in real life or in previous EU games so easily - change entire cultures en-masse or turn a foreign land into your capital homeland and such, simply by spending some magic mana.
It has turned into a game where much of the time, you are playing a mana manager rather than a semi-historic simulation strategy game it used to be. When you aren't watching out for mana, you are watching out for some abstract number like "I want +5% discipline so I can create those space marines". I think those achievement-hunting zero-immersion powergamers may or may not have played a factor in turning the game into this.
There is entire threads simply listing what the people want most - features that make the game realistic and immersive, without actually turning into one more mana to watch out for or another button to click every 5 years. There is even call for something that mods managed to implement, like population, realistic natural disasters like floods/tsunamis/volcanic eruptions, realistic military management, navies that actually matter...and Paradox is not adding any such requested features.
I love the idea of a pirate republic and flagships. I love the music they add each time. But they won't do much because naval gameplay remains stale and sometimes entirely not worth getting into. Unlike real life where having a navy was a major goal for every country worth its salt. Battles both on sea and land are still boring - you can spend an hour renaming your regiments and ships and they get wiped out in minutes. Small nations who packed a huge punch simply by building large fleets (Cyprus, Knights of Malta/Rhodes, myriads of nations in Asia etc.) simply cannot do so because this game has overpowered the big nations a tad bit too much.
When and if there is an EU5, I want it to be designed ground-up without the mana, and not take things right as they stand in EU4. Remember - EU4 itself was a very modernized, improved version of EU3 at release (and did it very successfully). But that formula can only be used so many times before it becomes stale. EU3 was a step up from EU2 with a big difference from the very roots. Same should happen with EU4 to EU5.
I have nothing against this DLC and I find it nice (just an immersion pack after all), but I do wish for a change in overall development for this game in regards to feature integration and mana.
