tI only somewhat followed vic 3 but wasn't the general consensus that economy is better?
In some regards, but in a lot of ways it's better just because they gave up on representing certain things.
The supply and demand model still exists (and keep in mind, none of these models are models in a theoretical economics sense, they're not based on solid foundations). Populations (which still have their unique traits, and it's not like Stellaris, you don't have "12 pops of British," you have, say, 124,824 British) work jobs where they produce goods that are either sold directly to the market or are sold as factors of production at other things. Instead of using a stock model (where goods can accumulate), they're modelling it as a flow model (goods sold/made per day), which is a huge simplification in terms of not representing unsold surpluses but prevents it from breaking in other horrific ways.
They're also representing infrastructure now instead of the old system where national prestige and spheres of influence completely determined market access, so it's a lot better in that regard, now building railroads and steamships and the like will make transportation cheaper which will be reflected in how goods get distributed.
The buildings are also improved because they have things like production methods you can set - think like a city-builder game where you have different modes you can assign a building to - so you can represent in a more nuanced way the differences in industries in place and time.
All of this will also interact much more directly with warfare. Used to be, things like blockades were just a "+10 Victory Points" type deal, but now things can get destroyed, convoys can get intercepted, etc.
Overall it's way better, but where they cut back is instead of the businessmen making decisions autonomously, the player has control of resources. It's still not too bad because there's an Investment Pool separate from the Treasury, representing that the business' private money isn't for state use, but it does mean you have micromanagement hell and there's no way to stop the player from building industries in a strategic way for state purposes, whereas in Victoria II you could only use persuasion (represented through National Foci) to encourage an industry, not just will it into existence.
It and the army system are also contradictory, because they justified removing player control of warfare on the grounds that "central governments don't control that," which isn't even correct since heads of state regularly gave strategic orders to commanders, but central governments sure as hell don't plan what kind of new machine a factory uses or where to build a pig farm under laissez-faire.
