it's just that I don't think they realized that people wanted a proper paradox game in space rather than just another 4x game which is flashy but ultimately shallow.
Rather, I think that their existing fanbase isn't really their main target audience. It's aiming to decisively claim the throne of space 4x, which is a hotly contested title, and perhaps the most coveted one in strategy gaming now. But to get a big market, the common adage of game design is that you must appeal to folks who would be turned off by complication. So they tell us they've got pops like Vicky 2, but in fact they have one "pop" per province, who has a species and a position on the four values sliders, but nothing like a religion, a sense of needs being fulfilled or not, no diversity within that province, and likely not even population numbers.
Espionage will likely be DLC, and religion's fertile ground for that as well, but the lackluster pops, the lackluster characters (basically the MoO2-style leaders; just modifiers that you stick somewhere), and probably other lackluster things that we don't know about, are inherent parts of the game's fundamental structure, and are unlikely to get a post-release DLC improvement for a long time. CK2 has been out for four years and they're just now improving on the council. Although to be fair it wasn't that bad to begin with and they improved the technology barely over a year after it was released. On the other hand, EU4 is still based entirely on mana pools.