Well, Paradox made HoI4 as VERY restricted game, where tech and other gameplay systems fall apart after few years of a simulation. So yea, simulating population loss during allied bombing, that doesn't happen. Properly simulating generic tech research, well they can hire me as consultant, have decent tech research, and throw it under carpet on the ground they want something streamlined accessible to every idiot, and in contrast to real world tech research, predicable.
Resource stockpiling, not gonna happen because it can and WILL be abused. And AI is unable to conserve resources until it would conquer resource areas.
Just recently, I complained about how easy is to simulate WWII submarine combat. Stage 1 and 5 is basically spreadsheet. Stage 2 and 3 has about 3 easy solutions that are basically a simple math. Only stage 3 and possibly 3a needs a little thought and some programming, mostly to properly integrate with rest of naval combat. (Each game has different naval combat model.) Funnily it seems even War in the Pacific doesn't simulate naval combat that well.
Proper air combat is just wet dream.
So yea, the simple solution for most of these problems would be hiring me part time as a consultant, I might push them into correct direction, and HoI5 might look decently.
Another problem I seen from my analysis is most people don't wanna play WWII game. They wanna play conquer the world with tanks, aircraft, ships, space warships, stuff. Earth has interesting geometry, thus different starting positions require different strategy. But, they don't wanna play historical US, or historical Germany, it gets boring. And what game companies are doing... They give them another WWII era game. Because according to idiocy of gaming companies who don't bother of doing an analysis, people are German Wehrmacht lovers, US patriots, or whatever and that's why they are buying it. So, instead of putting effort into proper simulation, they are putting effort into proper models, into naming the same aircraft type differently when it was researched in Germany, even if in game it has EXACTLY THE SAME STATS. Basically, current game development is a child like effort, with theirs excuse being but we are getting paid as employers of a company, thus we are professionals.
The Paradox tragedy is amplified by HoI4 at the release was relatively decently in comparison to HoI3 designed game, that tried to remedy pitfalls of HoI3... then they spend several years to make it worse.
