All the Decentralized Countries have names and governments. But they want to do them right because the gameplay experience should be significantly different. These are 'Decentralized Countries.' Post-launch, they want to make them playable eventually. Most of Africa, parts of inner South America, and a few surviving native tribes in North America (including the Lakota, Dakota, and Cree) were not playable. Well over 100 playable countries, but not all countries are playable.Zoomed in you can see realistic clouds and stuff drifting over the landscape. Zoomed all the way out it looks very similar to the Vicky 2 paper map.

You can definitely zoom in further than HoI4, so I'd say the map overall feels bigger than the HoI4 map. They did say specifically that it isn't done yet. The pre-alpha map we saw looks better than HoI4 but worse than CK3/Imperator.Visually, urbanization will spread across individual Provinces within a State.(According to Google, that's around 13,000 - roughly 18 Provinces per State on average.) Provinces are subdivisions that you usually only interact with for maneuvering armies and when colonizing (which is done one Province at a time as you add more Provinces to your Colonial State), and there are roughly the same number of individual Provinces as in HoI4.Even at game start there are some cases of having more than one State, gameplay-wise, within a single 'State Area.' This creates a new State that is only one Province in size. It's possible to split existing states, such as when you demand a Treaty Port in a war or Diplomatic Play.There are about 730 States at game start, which are the smallest unit you will interact with for purposes of politics and economics. The map is divided into States and Provinces.4 ticks per day, so the number of ticks per campaign is similar to EU4.Victoria 3 is more about diplomatic maneuvering, shaping your society and laws, building and industrializing your economy, and 'tending the garden' of your nation.

Victoria 3 confirmed