Well i agree, France is just like every other country, but the one of strongest, the problem is it's already OP, much stronger than historically, so some of french fans would change their mind after some more "flavours" realising they got worse France.
But maybe main reason of France without unique mechanics is that it's just role model for other countries, France is just getting everything faster, like late game goverment etc.
By the way in my opinion they should do something with Austria, it's very fun diplomatic country but based on luck, it should be more stable because most of time it ends up badly as AI(well on multiplayer it's much much worse but devs can do atleast something with single), players also have sometimes problem to get related countries, they should get unique diplomatic options stabilizing their strong position in Europe, and to balance things up let's say provinces of burgundy will inherit with change of emperor or something, i think they deserve that because they are getting really poor mid/late game in comparision to everyone.
HRE needs less generic, maybe some court intrigue and partnership(as difference from alliance) mechanic, would work even better with italian countries, instead of just "coalition or not" (but that needs better AI and i think your guys are done for now after great job they did last patch), i think HRE DLC with austria would be nice, with free french patch or something.
There are also problems with Spain Portugal and England, they are not properly colonising Africa and especially Asia (something like provinces in India never happens). Last one is
practically never great colonial power as in history.
Eastern is fine, i think Teutonic order and Poland are a little neglected, especially first don't need much work to give more depth (Poland have problems like France, they've got stron NI and historically bad or none of mechanics, especially Third Rome destroyed the opportunity a little because it's content is totally opposed to polish pattern, like cossacs as cavalry instead of infantry, same with jews when poland got totally 0 events having more than Mamluks but i mentioned it a lot of times i won't torture u guys with this anymore)
And i think there should be more unique effects of provinces and something like incidents in Japan, i can make example with Poland which i know probably most of all, in 1412 in Zagreb there was a deal between Jagiełła and Sigismund of Luxembourg, the emperor offered 13 cities(and around) of Spis in pledge for borrowing 7,5 tons of pure silver, the cities were supposed to be leased until debt repayment but that never happened, and those cities were under polish control until 1769 just before first partition of Poland(with small break when hungary tried to get this back but gave up after papal court decision in favour of Poland made in 1489 Breslau , then after XVI hungarian parliament made demands for hungarian kings get this back in form of repurchase as u see there is a lot of place for events with a lot of options, it's also sad hungary and poland are almost always rivals), first leaser was famous polish knight Zawisza the Black,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawisza_Czarny, and those cities were later source of Lubomirski magnate family wealth.
Map of regions under polish control (both green and cyan)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._towns.jpg/300px-Map_of_Spis_pawned_towns.jpg
i hope u enjoyed this historical curiosity and i hope we will get better Europe in game
Ps, if we have Golconda and swedish copper Falun we should also get very nice boosted Potosi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potosí , greatest silver and gold mine in all early modern history
