I'm watching this with interest for sure, although I do got a lot of fears for the game, I don't think Wiz did a particularly good job on stellaris, it had a lot of problems when he came in, to be sure, but I think he also caused a lot of problems to be added over time as well. In particular (not totally Wiz fault, but he at least has a hand in it) a LOT of stellaris problems probably come down to the fact that it's economic and internal political simulation is essentially nonexistent, so like, it's the opposite of what one would hope from Victoria, which really makes me worried for Victoria.
As for the pop system, I think there's a legitimate fear that they'll implement a system like they have in stellaris which is just sorta not great. Especially from a performance perspective, right now pops dragging down performance is ruining the game design of stellaris, which is why stellaris probably needs to simplify the pops down to some sort of statistical system so I can totally understand why people want Victoria to start with some sort of more reasonable system. Too be honest, a pop system or a statistical system, I think both would work fine, but it's important that the designers pick a system that they can make actually work without dragging the game down, and so far they've not shown the ability to do that. Luckily, I suppose victoria has a bit more of a limited scope so hopefully they can find a system that works...?