The history of mankind must start with Rome, then CK2, EU4, V2, HoI4, THEN Stellaris. Methinks.
Although I'm split on HOI (because the situation at the end of V2 may or may not lead to it making sense to have an ideology-based war), otherwise I agree. Still, I've yet to play EU: Rome. Although I do own it and intend to play it someday, despite the mediocre reviews. I love the Rome timeframe, have read several books by contemporary (200 BC -> 200 AD) Romans in the past year, and enjoy games in that time period - I just have prioritized Rome II Total War and Civ3: Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire over EU: Rome in the past year.
And that leads to another question: Is there an EU: Rome to CKII converter? Or an EU: Rome to CK One converter, and CK One --> EU3/EU4 Converter?
No there is not, but honestly you absolutely don't need it. After all, the only things that would carry through are the name of the empire and its symbol, what would a converter actually do (except maybe copy-paste the flag) ?
Yeah, that's a good question, and part of the reason why I was curious if about a converter if there really was one.
I'm not sure there is an actual consensus. Plenty of grognards actually like all the features, plenty of hardcore agree with the systematic hamstringing of big empires to prevent blobbing (and TBH I can see their point even if I don't find it fun).
The consensus is that Art of War is the best DLC. Beyond that, it's pretty much up to individual opinion.
MY opinion is that I can stomach the changes up to just before Cossacks. After that it's just too irritating and annoying - I despise the estates, the states/territories, corruption and so on.
I just went to 1.14 because before that my export would break, but I actually disabled the Cossack DLC itself.
Yes, Art of War being the best DLC is a consensus, and the best version is subject to debate.
I think there are likely to be three common preferences:
1.11, before Common Sense and Development. 1.12 completely changed the building system, including removing unique buildings, and added development to absorb some of the excess monarch points from not needing to spend any on buildings. Personally, I felt that 1.12 without Common Sense was a bit flat, but 1.13 with Common Sense still hit a good balance (I did not play 1.12 with Common Sense or 1.13 without). 1.11 also is the last version before the new Fort system. While it was an adjustment the first game, I've grown to like the fort system. But I can see sticking by 1.11, too, especially if the person in question does not own Common Sense.
1.13, before The Cossacks. The Cossacks introduced Estate and the new Diplomatic Feedback system. My personal thoughts are Estates are mildly interesting but I'm not sure if they really justify the level of attention needed to make good use of them, and that I'm not that keen on how with the Diplomatic Feedback system, trust is an element of investing favors into trust, rather than Trust being based on how you actually behave. I feel like trust should be based on whether you honour/dishonour alliances, not something you have some active control over.
Latest - AFAIK, there aren't any especially controversial changes with Mare Nostrum, but I haven't been following it very much either.
I do like my 1.14 single-player game, but whether it's really any better than my 1.13 games is tough to say. Estates were kind of interesting in terms of "if I let an estate get 80%+ power, what happens?", but I'm not sure they're really a great feature. Although with the change in 1.15 so that they require 40% approval (instead of 30%) to be content, they may be a bit more interesting.
From a QA standpoint, they should probably say screw it, if you don't wanna buy the DLC you just can't update your game. They already stopped selling their games on non-steam platforms.
If they were going to do that, they might as well bring back expansions, which are inferior to DLC, because at least you have the option not to buy music, unit packs and the like.
I kind of have mixed feelings on this. IMO, the real advantage of the current system is that you can buy the expansions/DLC/whatever you call them piecemeal, instead of in succession or having each new one include all the content from the previous ones (as in Civ3/Civ4). With an expansion every few months, having each new one include the previous ones doesn't really make sense for the developer - almost everyone would skip every other version or more. But if you had to buy each one individually in order, a lot fewer people would be in the market for the most recent one than in the current system.
OTOH, they do have to make sure that each combination works and doesn't have too terrible of gameplay interactions, which at 8 expansions or whatever it is now is rather complex. It also might hinder design decisions a bit. So while I can see that despite the QA complexity, the current system may well make the most financial sense, I can also see that it may not be ideal for design - there's the "if we add development, how is it not going to be completely broken for those without the DLC?" questions that are not necessarily easy, and (specifically in the case of Common Sense/1.12, but also more generally) they may not have always been able to get right.
As for Steam, I recall that for CKII, over 90% of their sales - and IIRC, over 95% - were on Steam before they went Steam-only. While that made me a bit sad from a competitive marketplace standpoint, as well as that I was one of the minority that had bought via Gamersgate, I have a hard time arguing that it made sense for them. Granted, if you can guarantee the Steam version is exactly the base version + Steam integration, the QA overhead may be near zero, but if you couldn't guarantee that, the decision makes sense. And last I checked, EU4 still worked with Steam completely closed, so it's not like it require Steam to run anyway.