Playing it frequently with every update, here is what has changed since then. They simultaneously made the military system both more straightforward and more annoying. It gave you more control over your army groups and what unit composition they had, which would make it easier at a glance and with less inputs to do something like make a colonial army that has cheaper/outdated equipment, or have an elite army group that gets the best gear. However, they made it unnecessarily obtuse to actually establish barracks and grow your military, as everything now has to be done through the fleet/army group. So instead of controlling your barracks or military harbors at the state level, you have to juggle them in the UI, and oh by the way there is no option to tell which one is which and if you want to downsize it will just pick one (so no longer can you make an army all made up of the most loyal pops by only building barracks in their areas). Paradox has said they are unhappy with how the military system is and it will be subject to a complete rework next year, including also making navies more impactful to fit the time period (such as ships being individual units that have to be built, in order to encourage arms races, as one example they provided of an idea).

But on the economic front, the game has gotten so much better than I imagined it would. There is now private vs. public building ownership, foreign investments being able to be done in markets so that if you really need a resource you can have your own people invest in it or build it as the state. They added "Owner Buildings" in the form of Manor Houses (Aristocrats) and Financial Sectors (Capitalist) that can own the buildings and manage them from afar so you no longer have to pull your hair out at the lack of qualified candidates to be Capitalist at your random ass sulfur mine in Indonesia. You can Nationalize foreign owned buildings but this could potentially lead to a war depending on how it is handled (or even Nationalize domestic owned buildings at the cost of radicalizing the owners), and on and on.

And now they have announced in November they are releasing 1.8, which will allow Corporations to invest in and build buildings related to their specialty, a rework of Political Movements to be more intuitive and able to be worked with, reworking Discrimination so that you can have different laws for different cultures, religions, and races instead of a blanket law. And they are making it so that you actually have to care about food availability and the lack of food causing famines, as well as adding "Harvest Incidents" that increase or decrease agricultural output to represent harvest conditions changing year over year.