I always find this discussion interesting. I don't personally tend to play Paradox games at all so I've no real horse in the race, but I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the model. It's designed around people being able to buy the specific parts they want, and those specific things having a good level of quality / depth to them.

Like, if you're really into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house thrown into a "kitchen sink" DLC pack that you can copy-paste over and over into your city with no options to customise or expand on that, or would you prefer an entire DLC dedicated to that style so you can build a full district or city in that style?

And conversely, if you're not into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house in that style thrown into your DLC pack that you don't care about and won't ever use, or would you prefer your DLC pack to contain things you are interested in?

Maybe the average consumer does look and think "wow, I really need to spend $404.40 to be able to play the game" and decide against it, I don't know. But personally, if I see a game has DLCs like "specific niche cosmetic option pack #2" then I see them as not at all necessary, and figure I can play the base game first and just buy any additional packs I want later.

C:S1 is basically designed around most players not buying every DLC. You only buy the ones you want. Also, wait for a sale. $404 over the entire time the game has been out is also not that bad. Sure, buying it all at once it's a lot, but the player buying every DLC has probably been playing since launch. Think of it as a subscription for new content. You can not subscribe and still get plenty of content (every DLC added stuff to vanilla for free), or you can pay the fee to get everything. If this is your genre, you want to give then money to keep making improvements. If they don't make money you don't get anything new.

Buy only what you need at first and then go from there.