Is anything being done about the bug where Stalin can kill the entire Right Opposition before the civil war, locking you out of the post-coup/civil war focuses because it requires Rykov to be alive or Bukharin to be in charge?
TBH the balance with the Civil War content really needs some looking at. There are a lot of false choices in the focus tree. For instance, with Trotsky, it's kind of pointless to even bother with Primakov and Tukhachevsky because unless you immediately beeline for those focuses and immediately start the civil war, they'll be executed. There's a lot of things like that too, where you can take focuses to unlock advisors, only for them to be killed anyway. It's very frustrating, especially when you have so little leeway in focuses to take in the first place.
Other false choices including choosing between military support or framing the military. The Latter is the only real option, because with military support you spend political power to raise paranoia and raise military support, or gain the support of a general who may just be purged anyway; or you can frame a general and reduce paranoia while increasing army support. There's no actual choice here. Diverting attention to the military is the no-brainer option.
In general the only thing that really matters for the civil war is gaining PP and expanding your on-map control. All the cooperation against Stalin related focuses are a waste of time. I think all of the civil war prep focuses for the communists have to be reduced to 35 days from 70, for sure.
Additionally, it's not cool that Bukharin's assassination of stalin is RNG based. It's something you have to commit your entire preparation for, eschewing secret headquarters and on map control. If it fails, then you have no choice but to end the campaign and start over. It also takes too long, thanks to myriad 70 day focuses.
I think it says a lot that on youtube you can easily find dozens upon dozens of people doing monarchist or Trotskyist playthroughs, but only a single person that I found did a Bukharin one. It's too much of PITA to be worth it.
The Monarchist civil war was supposed to be the hardest Anti-Stalin route, but it is actually the easiest, and has the most benefits in building back after the Civil War, while Trotsky in comparison has absolutely nothing to help make up for all the time and resources you lose spent in civil war.
It's frustrating because there is all this content is here, but a lot of it is underpowered/unbalanced to the point where it's not really worth doing unless you like sawing off your own legs.