I can't speak to that either way (I haven't done a manual installation in a long time) but setting d-i passwd/root-login boolean false in a preseed file see

I can't speak to that either way (I haven't done a manual installation in a long time) but setting d-i passwd/root-login boolean false in a preseed file seems to still work just fine (to skip "creation" of a root account). The "sudo" package will be installed and the user created during installation will be added to the "sudo" group.